Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

Beginning of Descent

Maysie stood at the base of the skull, shouldering her pack, thinking about how her 19th birthday alone was what drove her to follow Alder's advice. She had been content most all year until she had no one to celebrate surviving on the bird with. Mr. Kitty didn't even show up.

But the man who shot the bird with his gun in a drunken rage was a strong impression she couldn't shake. If Maysie could guarantee that the people she met were safe, she'd be on this trip, wholeheartedly.

She ran a mental list of her gear. Rabbit fur lined with thermal blankets stitched into a robe that could hopefully withstand the coming void was the bulk of her gear, aside from food. There was an obvious atmosphere on the head and the body, but the neck lost a lot of the benefits of gravity, although fresh air left the head, washing from the bird's breath, flowing over the skull and down the throat to cling to the increased gravity the asteroids brought.

It would be worse than bedding down for water--there would be little to sustain her, and certainly would push the edge of death for this run.

Maysie waited for the neck to expand wider than the head and took off at a light run through the feathers. The neck ruffs were short, about mid-waist and loosely packed because of how much the skin stretched and shrunk, so she had little fear of tripping.

The bird had reached a section of the asteroid belt that was thick with mid-chunky planetoids that widened the neck, increasing her chance of making it off this run alive.

3 hours into the jog and she could feel the crest of this asteroid had passed her, meaning she had maybe another hour before the air started to wane and she needed to get low and covered, to survive long enough to reach the next chance to run.

When she started feeling her breath catch, she sat down with her pack and took out a scant dry meal, and began stretching, hoping to avoid a cramp. Within a few minutes, her clothes weren't enough to stay warm and the thermal robe was pulled out while she tossed out the water trap (which used old umbrella mechanics, to make it quicker to place).  She curled up next to it and hunkered down to sleep.

It felt like Mr. Kitty nudged her awake when the next asteroid started passing under her. Maysie did a bare care of needs, repacked, and rushed to keep ahead of the swell from the rock creeping up behind her. This one kept her moving for 7 hours, through two sparse meals and breaks. She was no longer running but plodded along doggedly, not used to long-distance travel, with as small as the bird's head was.

She didn't see Mr. Kitty at all.

Maysie also ran through all her trapped water by the time she settled down again, so she went to sleep extremely thirsty.

Something about the lack of oxygen and dehydration left her dreaming of playing in a big wheat field with a young man her age--very pretty man, enough so that the shaking her awake took a solid jab from the cat that wasn't there.

This one was two whole days of trudging before she could collapse.

The variables between each asteroid the bird swallowed weren't consistent, but she suspected that it was about two weeks of traveling like this when she began to notice that her hallucinations followed one extraordinary man around.

Talon--she didn't understand his language yet, but his name meant Talon, so she called him that in her dreams. He claimed to be from another space-farer, searching the galaxy to make new homeworlds for mankind. It felt like she learned so much: star charts,  how some more basic advanced technology would work (that she had never seen before),  and the biology of common ancestral types like all "cats" and all "dogs". It was things beyond the encyclopedia set she grew up reading. It had been a few years since she had something new to study, so the hallucinations were worth her time.

The problem was that she would trudge through her waking moments on the asteroids and look forward to almost dying. Alder wasn't a religious man, but he did like the book of Proverbs when he wanted motivation to keep working:

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

Forgetting to set up her water trap, continuing to lay there when it was time to walk, and it would be death--not just want--that would get her.

She despised being awake so much that she complained about it to Talon. "Every time I'm asleep I'm here with you, learning things I never knew. Out there? I'm walking down the neck of the bird as it swallows asteroids big enough to keep a thick atmosphere. I'm getting so damned tired of trying to make it to the body."

"Wait, you're courting death to be here with me? You're not safely sleeping in a stasis pod?! You need to get up now."

"No, I want to stay!"

"GET UP!"

Up until this point,  Talon had never touched her in these dreams. This time he wrapped himself around her and kissed her forehead.

Like that would be anything normal. It was a dream after all. It felt like a pulse was sent through her and she jarred awake. Yes, an asteroid was on its way, and at this point, she could see several more behind it, but these were smaller, so she was in for short trips of hell where there wasn't enough atmosphere to take off the blankets, nor enough oxygen to do more than a crawl.

But crawl she would: on for an hour, off for four. She still went back to Talon, and now that she had a taste for being held, she refused to keep any distance between them and he had to suffer through her seeking comfort while he tried to teach her things she could understand--that's if imagination could suffer.

Maysie estimated that she was halfway through her trip down the bird's neck. Talon confirmed that the next few weeks would be the most oxygen-deprived of the whole journey.

He also told her he was honored to care for her in her last moments if it dipped low enough to be lethal.

That was the moment Maysie realized that Alder had never been well enough to make this trip with her. She cried in her dreams, letting out all the anger she had on him never trying to bring her down. That would have been a surer death for both of them.

But what an inarticulate mess she made of trying to explain her grief to a dream man.