8) Stars

After long days working to farm mushrooms, Helle's favorite thing to do was to lay on a couch in the atrium and watch the stars. It soothed his mind to look outward, away from all the things that had troubled him so much since he had been allowed to return to Galactica.

It was harder to worry when his hands were occupied by something. The act of plucking mushrooms from where they grew, of collecting spores from them to cultivate new seedlings to grow... Harvesting from their stock of fish and birds when they grew too large... Taking care of Halo in turns with his wife... Cooking... Those could all keep his mind busy.

It wasn't so easy when his hands wasn't occupied, when there was no task.

It was so easy to fall into fear - he was contaminated, after all. He shouldn't be sharing the same water tank as his wife and young child. What if the necrosis in his veins took over them as well? He would never forgive himself if their glows dimmed as well.

Endless what ifs circled his mind... And the only way to end them was to keep his thoughts focused on something other than himself.

Looking at Aerius from above (or below?) was pretty, of course. He loved the sight of the planet below, the swirling clouds and beautiful blue oceans, continents that stretched green, gold, and white below. It just... couldn't distract his mind in the same way. The spores in his blood came from there, after all, and one mistake in visiting had cost him so dearly.

It was more enjoyable to turn his gaze to the stars, to see them and wonder about them. Solaria had established some contracts with different alien merchants to buy their mushrooms, and he had found it enjoyable to daydream about where they came from. Were their suns young, like Aerius’? Or were they ancient, with impending doom on the way? Did their societies value the natural world the way his own did, or did they aspire to mercilessly rule it all? Which star in the night sky was theirs? What was it like to visit another part of the galaxy and potentially know when your home star would die, because you could not find it in the sky?

It was easy, now, to turn his mind to these thoughts, to keep it off of himself. Fears like his own seemed insignificant when he pondered the fear of the potential demise of another species. Or even of a starship’s destruction. (Sometimes he pondered their asteroid’s destruction… but the asteroid guns on the stations were well prepared to turn anything to dust that could harm a stable object in Aerius’ orbit). He suspected his thoughts about the stars were too morbid to be shared with his wife, but he still found them comforting. In the universe, he was not alone with pain or fear, and there were worse things to have to fear. At least he wasn’t a starship captain visiting a new planet and learning how many more years his homeworld’s star had to live.