Four months... Four long months. That's how long it has been, right? It was hard to tell anymore.
The concept of standard Earth time had fallen away as soon as Jevive had touched down on the godforsaken rock known as Cersa 4112. C-4112 is a small planet that had recently, and quite inexplicably, formed not too far outside of our solar system.
And not a moment too soon, if you would ask most. To say that Earth had fallen in to disrepair was a monolithic understatement.
Welcome to Earth, don't forget your portable O2! Yeah, just... uh, step over the rubbish, it'll break down. Eventually.
Jevive had a hard time remembering exactly why she had volunteered for the mission to scout the potential planet for population by the sickeningly rich. I mean, the money factored in, naturally. She could make enough to possibly have a little terraformed slice of nowhere up here for the risk, easily. And man, anywhere had to be better than the Earth-That-Is, that was true. Waking up in the middle of the night from night terrors to finding she had depleted her air tanks and had to gulp that bitter, dusty, lifeless air as she struggled to hook up a new one. At least here, there was air. Metallic tasting air, but air.
Somehow, these reasons didn't seem like enough to flee the planet on their own.
She left to flee the memories. In that small steel box that had served as her home for years, that son of a bitch lingered. Though physically long gone, it was like the smell of his clothes and rank breath still hung in the stagnant air. It probably did. She would rather slowly smother than spend one more night, dreaming of the things he did to her.
Jevive ripped open her last meager rations pack. She was down to the emergency supply now, and the drop ship was running a week late. It definitely wasn't enough to give her energy to get over the last small rise on the horizon, but she had to try. The dried protein tasted about as good as she imagined the soil samples she was absentmindedly collecting would.
"Collect the dirt, stick the sticker, put in pack." she said in a mocking singsong, thinking of the smug assholes that trained her like a monkey. They were real bright, but would they risk themselves for the samples they wanted? Hell no, they just wanted the credit. And the money.
The soft, red sand sifted quietly over her trough. The silence of the desert sucking up any small sound it could find and bouncing it back into her ears deafeningly. The lilting hiss of the grains sliding and grating making her grit her teeth.
The whole place sounded like a stern hush. It was painful. She shook her head and dug down another two inches like she had a thousand times before while choking her way through a mealworm cracker.
thunk
"The fuck?", she thought.
THUNK
THUNK
THUNK
THUNK
The resonating heartbeat of sound making her eardrums vibrate in ways they hadn't in months, sending her hands to her head to soothe the foreign agony. Her vision blurred as the hollow echoes finally worked their way to the other side of the planet to pester who-knows-what.
She hadn't seen anything yet, and was somewhat reassured that since the planet was so new, it was empty. But she watched those Sci-fi movies and who could say.
Jevive looked down between her slender thighs to see what had had hit the metal of her tool, tilting her head curiously. A small dusting of her hand revealed something... brown? Like the water at home. It was strangely solid, rough to the touch, and barely held in place. It was a... what was that word? Root.
The bits that come out of plants in the special hydroponic domes. It never occurred to her that they could be like this. Growing in dirt instead of suspended in air. She took the root delicately in her hands and ran her fingers over it. She could almost feel the life in it. A thrill ran through her.
She lifted it, scanning the horizon, searching wildly for a source. A sprig, a stem, a fallen branch. The barren land laughed at her, laughed at her like he had so many times. A cold, prickling rage rose in her, like frostbite on the back of her neck. She held tight to the root and pulled, shook, rippled it. Daring it with silent inward screams to show itself. The hushed shrieking in her head, accompanied by flashes of his wicked face, somehow more painful than the reverberating silence of the empty planet.
With one last heave, the last of the sand fell away. Jevive hoisted the root and cracked it like a whip, panting despite herself. The sound bouncing off the surface no longer even processing as the static of desperation to forgot turned to white noise in her ears. Anything to wipe it out. Wipe it out. Wipe it out.
She refocused her eyes, and what lay before her was one long, mild serpentine. Snaking it's way across the landscape, through a dune, and above the rise she needed to cross before resting. She scrambled to her feet, and looked around. What she was looking for, she wasn't sure. Approval? A sign? Like a root on a newly formed planet wasn't sign enough already of what to do.
She reached into her bag and hastily pulled out her carbon gloves, slinging her pack over her back, and holding firmly to the root as if the whole world would fall away if she did not. She began the hard trek through the soft, but cumbersome, sand. Sinking, finding her footing, and pulling her way along the mysterious vine.
Hours that felt like days passed as every inch of the fibrous rope mocked her.
"Little further darling, that's a good girl..."
Wipe it out. Wipe it out.
Wipe. It. Out.
By now the exhaustion was taking hold, she trudged, eyes unfocused. The silence hissing over her like endless waves. With every step her pack gained a pound, when she suddenly felt the ground incline under her boots. THE RISE. She had finally reached it!
Rejuvenated energy surging through her body, Jevive brought her knees high to her chest, running, feverish, an answer right on the other side of the crest. The crest that her weak and journey weary body tumbled down.
Somersaults, flips, slips, skidding, like a child at play, her body rag dolled down the steep drop into the dark red dune. She closed her eyes and pretended she was spiraling away from all of it. Every small impact taking the breath from her like a jolly laugh. She barely remembered what laughter actually felt like anymore, this was the closest she had been in years. Her lips almost curled into a smile when a cracking impact knocked her away from the revelry and into a harsher, more painful reality.
She had crashed against something far less forgiving than the sands of Cersa 4112. She drew a raspy breath and ran her hand up the intruder as she rolled to her back to stare at the empty sky.
"You deserved that, you asked for it."
With a wince, Jevive's eyes wandered over the sight of a much larger root towering above her. Reaching into the foreign sky, with gaping arms, like they intended to grasp the stars themselves and pull them down. Small pink orbs hung from it's hungry fingers, bobbing from her rib shattering impact. She marveled, with a rattling gasp. She had seen these before, and tasted one only once.
A peach.
Her thirst and hunger rallied to take the place of her pain as she reached to one that had fallen next to her. The smell. Oh, the smell. Such a small thing you take for granted in a wasteland. She held it in both hands, and brought it to her face, brushing her lips against it like one would a lover. Everything else in that moment melted away.
The fine hair tickling her, jolting a hitching laugh from her bruised and broken body. She gently pressed her teeth to the flesh, feeling it give way to her like a passionate kiss. A flood of sweet washing over her tongue and lips. Her eyes fluttered, every single past violation slipping away, replaced with the succulent taste and smell of virginal fruit. Washing her spirit clean, feeding her, wetting her insatiable thirst... filling the void in her for something... pure.
It's fleshy meat, swirled with her tongue, crushing under her teeth, scrubbing away all the angry words that called that cavern their home. Sliding down her throat and reclaiming every time he used it, pushing down the bile and the vile after taste. Leaving in it's wake a sweet syrup of innocence. A rebirth formed in hunger that flourished in a clay colored desert.
A hiss like the sands, like the planet itself, crept and shook from her lips. Rattling and beating it's way from her shattered chest. The metallic taste of blood rising to meet the sweetness of the meaty fruit. She closed her eyes and let the slithering embrace of ever-after wrap her and wind her in it's roots.
Jevive uttered one last rattling sigh, for once, a sigh of purity. Of release. From the tethers that held her so taunt and grounded to Earth and memory and pain. The last taste in her mouth, not the bitter wash of hatred and abuse, but instead of summer's that once were.
It was finally, and sweetly, all wiped out.
