13. Ree

13

Ree

The temperature on this planet is downright awful at night.

After what feels like a blink of rest, I wake up shivering. There's no way to get any warmer.

I imagine my black suit becoming thicker and nothing happens. It stays the same skin-tight, thin fabric no matter how many images of fluffy pajamas, thick robes, winter coats, or blankets I send at it.

I also know it doesn't respond to at least thirty different curse words or insults.

I check Silver, who looks exactly the same as she did before I fell asleep. I don't let myself dwell on my anxieties about her health or my guilt over leaving her.

I'll come back, but I'll be no good to her if I'm weak and dehydrated.

The metal of the ladder is cool in my grip as I scramble up to pop my head outside of the ship. There are all kinds of sounds that my mind wants to associate with insects and birds, but they all just seem very wrong to my ears. It's unsettling, and that is the last way I want to feel when I'm staring out into a dark forest I'll soon be trudging through. I can see flitting creatures the size of birds, but with the flight patterns of insects.

I have to stop myself from thinking of all the dangerous or venomous animals and plants on Earth.

Humans spent millennia figuring out what in their environment was safe to touch and eat. The thought of traipsing out into a forest without any of that knowledge is panic-inducing and I have to focus on my breathing to keep it under control.

Gawking won't lead to finding water, so I climb as high as I can on the ladder and reach my hands to the outside of the ship, looking for a place to pull myself up with.

It's wet, I assume from overnight dew, but the surface is rough enough that I feel confident in my grip. There is scorching and scoring of the metal hull in enough places that I'm sureI can climb down.

I spend a few minutes figuring out the best angle to leverage my body past the few feet of ship hull between the ladder and the top.

I shift my hands around to a few different positions then pull myself up slightly, testing my weight on the handholds. When they hold, I heave myself up, my ribs protesting, but healed enough that it doesn't stop me. I scrape my legs and stomach as I go, but after a few moments of effort, I'm on top of the ship.

I spare a look down, then have to fight vertigo when I think of the process I'll have to go through to get back down.

A problem for later.

I slowly re-situate my body so I can sit up and use the greater height I gained to figure out the best way to climb down to the ground. To the right of me I can see the line of damage we caused the forest when we crashed. It's a carnage of broken trees and scored ground.

To my left, there are trees right up against the hull and stacked together, their feather-like leaves already drooping compared to the surrounding undamaged ones. I wince at the sight, not only because I never liked the idea of that sort of destruction, but also thinking of just how rough our landing was and how lucky I am to not only be alive, but to be moving around.

I decide to take the route that slopes down and away from where the rest of the ship was and also leads toward the undamaged forest.

I can always climb back up. Possibly use one of the trees if I need to.

With that decided, I angle my feet down, then carefully roll over onto my stomach.

After about fifteen minutes of slowly and carefully choosing my next hand and footholds, slowed down considerably by continually needing to move my hair out of my way, I come to a sharp ledge. I can't see over it, and judging by the view behind me I'm still at least fifteen feet from the ground.

I take several very long minutes to convince myself to continue over the ledge.

I move down until my waist dangles over, then panic when my feet can't find any purchase. This makes me tense up my arms, which are screaming at me by the time I kick farther in and find my first toehold.

The angle is extreme and I don't know if I have the upper body strength to descend it safely, but I know by the way my arms and hands feel, I need to get down as fast as I can.

I keep moving down, and once I'm able to see around the ledge, I can tell that I have about fifteen feet of a sharply underhung climb left. I only get about two more feet down before one of my feet slips and it makes my body swing out and away.

I try to swing my legs back toward the wall, but lose my grip with my left hand, then instantly lose grip with my right.

I have the presence of mind to roll when I hit the ground, which saves me from breaking my legs, but also causes me to slam into a tree.

My back takes most of the hit and I struggle to pull air back into my lungs.

I lay there for a few minutes, waiting for my muscles to stop telling me just how much they hate me. I'm pleasantly surprised once that wears off that I only added a few muscle strains to my injury list.

It's still very painful to lift myself up from the ground and I stifle a groan of protest.

I doubt my landing was quiet, but there's no sense in announcing my presence to predators. I look around. With no sense of how to navigate forests or find water, I can't make an informed decision on which way to go now that I'm on the ground.

I'm trying, and failing, to ignore just how similar, but alien, my surroundings are, with the bark of the tree in odd shapes, what looks like grass and moss in colors that just aren't quite the right shades of greens and blues. Purple bushes.

And a purple sky, which I thought was just the fading light last night, but seems to be the normal hue. It's disorienting and overwhelming.

At least the dirt and rocks that the ship section displaced look pretty much how I expect them to look.

With no way to know, I guess the best course of action is to just walk into the forest right next to me, and so I do it without letting myself think any more about it.

I'm so engrossed in the process of making myself take one more step after the other I don't think of how I'll return to where I was. The realization hits soon after, and my heart skips a beat.

That small moment of panic leads to a stutter-step over a root with my left foot, which ends up cascading into three more trips that make me tumble into a bush.

The hundreds of pinprick feelings across my body let me know it's the equivalent of a sticker bush and it takes several minutes and lots of muttered curse words to extract myself from my attacker.

"Well, I guess I was technically the attacker," I admit, by way of apologizing to the prickly plant.

If I was in different circumstances, I would better appreciate the comedic value of such an ungraceful tumble, but right now it just feels like I can't catch a break.

I look around me, quickly noting that I can no longer see the ship.

"Shit, Ree. Don't be so dense," I chastise myself quietly.

I'm smarter than this and I really don't want to die on some alien planet because of something as foolish as not marking which way I came.

Just looking at the surrounding trees it's clear that I won't ever be able to walk in a straight line.

I don't even know which direction I came from thanks to tripping.

My heart pounds when I think of not knowing where the ship is. It's likely not something I should be near anyway, but the thought of leaving Silver without knowing how to find her again just feels incredibly wrong.

After a moment's thought, I turn back to the bush, take careful note of where it's damaged, then use that angle to find my previous path.

Here and there along the way I find bent or damaged foliage and realize that if someone as clueless as me can track my progress and I'm on a planet full of hunters and their prey then I've been stupidly careless.

Soon after, I get my first glimpse of the ship section through the trees.

"How in the hell am I going to mark a way back in a way that doesn't also mark where I go?"

No one answers my rhetorical question, of course.

I feel rooted to the spot. I know I can't stay with the ship. I also know I won't be able to find it again if I leave because I can't mark my trail.

I take a moment to curse just how useless I am at navigating thanks to always having GPS at my disposal, then shut the thought down.

It isn't helpful.

As much as I would like to delude myself that I can somehow return to Silver, it would merely be a soothing lie.

The hard truth of it is that I'm going to have to walk away from this ship and find water or I'm going to die. I don't even have the option of placing myself in stasis because there's only one functioning cryochamber.

Not that it would be an appealing option, but it's the only one I can think of that would allow me to stay with her.

I still can't make myself move away.

It's one thing to consider leaving Silver alone for a brief period, but I'm not sure I can make myself just abandon her.

I have to admit it's not even my morals that are truly keeping me here. I don't know if I can keep my mind from shattering without her after so many weeks of treating her like some sort of living talisman.

"Fuuuuuuck."