“Thank you, Céline,” she whispers, trying her best to keep from weeping.

CHAPTER

50

I am knowing what space is looking like, but in my rememberings I am often seeing it from cockpit of flying mech. And always there is being noise of war, much katakata and booming and screaming. But when I am watching stars fly past the window of our cabin so fast they are turning from points to lines, I am seeing also that the blackness is moving but not moving at the same time. It is looking like we are being frozen but I am hearing in my ear all the engine of the shuttle working and I am hearing even the small small part that is moving this spaceship and I am knowing that we are moving because of science and the way engine is working. But then I am also thinking something else is different between now and the space that I am remembering.

“It is so quiet,” I am saying to Ify.

That is what I am noticing even when we are docking, and then Ify is taking me to the shuttle that is moving us through space station docking port to another bay, where we are getting onto another shuttle and returning to space. We are moving fast, almost like Ify is hiding me. And all the while, as we are walking and riding bus and then riding new, smaller shuttle into space, Ify is looking this way and that. Like she is searching for someone who is never arriving.

After the short flight to Colony that is looking much bigger than where we are first stopping, Ify is letting out a sigh that is sounding like disappointment. Then we are entering space station that is being called Alabast and there is already conveyor belt that is taking us to other train that is taking us to the home where Ify is staying. Grace is staying on the train and going to a different place that Ify is not telling me about.