Time and Dirt
(First Day -- Previous Day -- Day 10 -- Next Day)
Day 10
Heliopause Colony on Planet Vertumna, Medbay
“Solane, hey! Hey, I know it’s early, but please wake up. I was just in the park again, just when the second sun was rising, and when I saw the cosmos flowers unfurling their petals right in front of me it was like they were telling me: today is the day you will finally wake up. And the flowers have never lied to me.
And there are so many of them. I brought some with me for you today: Purple flossflowers, growing like tiny brushes. Snapdragons, with their flowers on a spike in all shades of pink, red, orange, yellow and white. Love-lies-bleeding... a strange name for a flower, but looking at how it has these long pinkish red flowering panicles that reach to the ground you can kind of see why it was named that. I still prefer the name velvet flower though. It’s so soft...
Or the many begonias, especially the clubbed begonia with its shiny green leaves that are funny to touch and bright red flowers. And the marigolds, looking like little suns, bright and orange...
Pity we never got the fruit trees to flower, though. Your mother had placed high hopes on them, but they don’t seem to thrive here at all. She would never stop bringing up how amazing apples, cherries, plums all taste like, though, and now I’m just left wondering... I just really would like to eat a fruit some day. Any fruit.
I mean, we have the few native fruits that seem to grow like weeds here, the blue bobberfruit that you gifted me a few times, but after what happened with the pixie bean we aren’t supposed to eat them anymore... and as much as I liked them and didn’t even feel weird, I didn’t want to risk it. It just felt so, irresponsible. And now that I’m in charge of the whole food supply...
I want to do the best I can. I know you always wanted, too. But we aren’t even 18 yet, Solane, and somehow the actual adults are proving so useless, those that are still with us at least. Not just in the garden, or even the council, but in the whole colony. It’s like they’ve all become followers of Governor Lum now. No one aside from me seems to even dare to criticize him anymore! Especially at the council I’m always alone arguing my point, and never getting anyone on my side.
Everyone else seems to talk so much stupid stuff, or-or worse. Ugh. Like from Seeq, the Chief Administrator... You know, he now proposed making next year’s Vertumnalia games the last ones! Like what, will he ask for all simple fun to be banned next, all the while refusing to provide help with work?
Not that he hadn’t already kind of ruined it anyway, having turned the strength competition that we both always competed in growing up into this ghastly excuse to beat some captured xenos half-dead, and the science fair became this simple trivia contest about his favorite stories or something.
I’m sorry, Solane, I’m ranting again here, when I want to support you and not weigh you down with my frustrations... There’s just no one else to talk to anymore and I know you’d understand me. I’m sure of it. Once you’re well again, we should do our own games. With no winners or losers. Like we did when we were small and had just landed on this planet, remember?
But maybe you don’t, actually... I-I remember hearing from Dr. Instance that something like this can cause memory problems...
I don’t want you to forget me, Solane, or the years we spent together, it’s just, just too horrid a thought. If necessary, I’ll just remind you of every thing we did together... that I can still remember. But my memory’s good, you can count on it! We can start tomorrow!”