Warm, red dust settled around the ship as it landed on the outskirts of the pristine white city that gleamed with a rose-golden hue against the two setting suns. The light footfalls of two young, spacesuit clad men echoed across the barren ground as they reverberated off the silvery metal steps of the ship.
Matt, his blue eyes squinted against the orange-gold light of the twin suns and the billowing dust, kicked up a tuft of coarse, tangerine sand before continuing on towards the city, Ares in tow. Ares was pale and green-eyed; his fair skin glowed golden in the hazy, soon-to-be-gone sunlight as he trailed behind his comrade.
The minutes drifted along in a comfortable silence as the two young men travelled, sweating beneath their heavy spacesuits, the suns lowering towards the horizon all the while. By the time they'd reached the mass of sleek, towering buildings, the twins had dipped below the red, hazy line where ground met sky, not to be seen until morning, leaving the dusty plains and gleaming city shed of its warm glow.
There were no lights on around the city; no lights poured out from the windows, no chatter drifted through the humid night air, muffled by sleek metal walls, no Proximan beings strolled around the darkened streets.
Ares' eyes were narrowed as he peered around for a single, telltale sign of life, but to no avail; the place was as cold and stark and devoid of life as the plains had been warm and golden and welcoming in the late evening sunlight.
Matt remembered the vid-clip his mother had shown him when he was young and small and free from the dark thoughts of destruction and death now filling his mind; a bronze-skinned humanoid woman with curling horns and dark gold eyes and heavy makeup, clad in sleek white robes, had spoken to the Earthens, her voice honey-smooth as it lilted and lifted and deepened in ways he knew no Earthen language to. No one understood her, but people long ago had analyzed the far-away signal and worked on a mission to the system it was from: the Alpha Centauri system.
And here he was, on Proxima B, born to a man and a woman on the three-thousand and forty-eighth generation aboard the Centaur, no sign of the enthralling, enchanting beings that had once spoken through space to earth all those years ago, surrounded by shining buildings whose luster was worn by time and chipped street art in strange symbols and jumbled figures.
"Should have brought Sa'Sha..." murmured Ares, one hand brushing along a chipped-tile mosaic. "We could use her artistic expertise." Matt nodded in agreement.
Shadows of past lives seemed to flicker across the mosaic's walls in imagination, hazy memories encapsulated by time in worn tiled figures upon the broken white wall.
Matt and Ares were never supposed to return to Earth, and neither was their crew. They were supposed to send a signal to Earth to tell them of their discoveries, and then settle down amongst the Proximans. But no one knew whether the Earthens were even around anymore — it had been 79,340 years, of course, since the departure of the generation ship, and if the Proximans no longer lingered in these time-worn towns, who was to say Earth and its civilizations remained?
A new civilization was to be established, then — Earthens, living amongst the burnt-orange dusts in the gleaming city, twin suns blazing, scorching overhead.
Aren traced his pale, slender hand along the tiled figure of a bronze-skinned Proximan woman, his voice dropping to a thoughtful murmur as he spoke. "I suppose these Proximans are no more..?"
Matt nodded, his gaze lingering on the bright light of the full moon suspended over the horizon. "They're gone, the Proximans that came before us. The ones that came before."
