Kendra shifted against the stone floor. Slowly, her awareness returned, but she didn’t dare to open her eyes. The ground was cool beneath her, solid, and yet different in ways she couldn’t articulate. Had it worked? She noted the configuration of her body: legs and arms, a torso, and head. Gingerly, she shifted her leg. Her ankle met the floor with slight resistance before dipping through the ground, sending an unsettling vibration through her. Kendra’s eyes shot open, and she scrambled back, wrenching her leg upward.
She was like liquid, moving with more fluidity than she had ever experienced. She examined her body, holding her arms to the light. Her limbs were grayish with the luminescence of a pearl. Shadows formed her body, shifting and flickering at the edges like a fire. Streaks of color moved beneath the surface.
“How do you feel?” the ship asked.
“Lighter. I’m not in pain anymore.”
“The procedure worked as expected. Your body has retained the physical configuration you are accustomed to, but you may change form as you see fit.”
Her chest vibrated in an unfamiliar way as her words filled the air. “Am I speaking aloud, or are we communicating telepathically?”
“You are speaking. It seems you intuitively learned to create sound in your new form.”
“That is a comfort. Though I admit that phasing through the ground is unsettling.” She tried to stand, but the movement didn’t translate, as her limbs had no real purchase on the stone beneath her. Instead, she found herself rising into the air and hovering there.
“It will take time to adjust,” the ship said. “My analysis confirms you are in excellent health. You are free to leave and explore your new capabilities.”
“Thank you—I’m alive because of you,” she said.
“And Aster, who has recovered because of your assistance and inspiration. You helped each other, and that enabled me to help you.”
Kendra smiled, sending a burst of red light through her. It shimmered in a wave from her face down to her hands.
She ran her fingers along the walls of the ship as she left the chamber. Colors danced, glinting off the sharp angles of the ship’s inner structures, geometrical shapes of uncertain purpose—perhaps solely decorative. Cobalt and violet swirled over burgundy and gold alongside other colors she could not name, but instead experienced like brief bursts of joy and melancholy and hope.
Aster leaned, arms crossed, against the outer wall of the ship, wearing a faint frown as he waited. Relief flooded her at seeing him, rushing forth in a wave of light, a golden glow that washed over Aster’s face and hair. “Goodness, it worked,” he said.
She met him, reaching for his shoulders, but her hands passed through him, sending another faint buzzing sensation through her. “Ah, sorry.”
“No worries; you’ll get the hang of it. Let me adjust.” His body grew fainter at the edges. He reached for her, grasping the shadowy form of her hand. “See? Now we’re both less aligned with physical matter, but we won’t phase through each other.”
She studied his face, from his wide, dark eyes to the shadows flickering at the edges of him like the last embers of a fire. There were colors buried in those shadows, shifting beneath the surface, swirling patterns in pools that went deeper than she could imagine.
“What are you thinking, Kendra?”
“Relief. It hasn’t all sunk in yet, but I feel … better.”
She clasped his hands in her own. It was unlike the sensation of skin touching skin, and colors flickered where their hands met. Beneath them was something solid, like the solidity of the night sky compressed into palpable shadows resting against each other. And if she pressed down further into him, she wouldn’t feel the firmness of muscle and bone below, but she would brush the edges of his mind.
“Everything looks brighter, somehow less precise and clearer at the same time.” She paused. “What do I look like to you?”
He tilted his head, considering the question. “You look like you. Your form may be different, yes, but to me, you feel like yourself.”
“Maybe even more like myself,” she said.
He gestured toward the cave. “Shall we go outside?”
She followed him to the cavern wall and then through the solid stone. Her vision darkened as they passed through, but new senses told her it wasn’t far. A much more convenient way to traverse the caves as well, she thought.
They emerged in the desert. The sun burned down overhead, with scattered clouds blunting the heat. She glanced from the sky to Aster, and he understood her query without words.
“It has been a little over a day.”
She nodded and touched down on the sand, dipping her feet into it. Her form retained its suggestion of clothing and boots, incorporeal as they were. She dug her heel into the sand and made little impression. Only when she visualized her foot as something solid and dense did it leave behind a faint mark. Unease washed over her, as if she had taken for granted the simple ability to impact the world around her.
“I understand why you felt disconnected from this world when you landed here,” she said. “There is an uncanny sense that I no longer belong here.”
“It is uncanny, yes. I made the mistake of floating through this world as a restless ghost,” Aster said. “No longer. Remember that we possess a vast capacity for movement. Travel. Flight. You can choose to make your home in this world or one of the many others.”
She stretched her hands upward as if that might propel her into the air, but she drifted lazily, more like a cloud. Aster’s body melted into darkness, his shadows trailing behind him. Her attention turned to him as she tried to catalog the differences between how she had seen him with physical eyes and how he appeared before her. But he flitted through the air, too fast for her to observe.
The ship hadn’t specifically explained how to shift her form. Maybe it was different for everyone. And maybe the ship understood that she’d find it most satisfying to discover for herself. She envisioned the shuttle that had dropped her on this planet. It had rocketed through the atmosphere, its shape sleek and aerodynamic. She thought of the rover rumbling over the dunes as fast as it could. Kendra focused her mind on a point on the horizon.
I want to move, she thought.
She burst into shadow. Body lengthening and bending, she darted through the air. She skimmed the sand, kicking up clouds of dust behind her. She picked up speed. Her shadows covered her like a robe, like long ribbons trailing behind her. Aster let out a laugh and caught up to her, joy coursing through him in brilliant streaks of violet.
They crossed the desert, leaving the plateaus far behind. As the minutes passed, unfamiliar rock formations appeared, jutting up from the gravelly sand like spires. The wind whistled around her as she sliced through the air. Aster wove in between the spires, showing off. The blur of desert below them gave way to patches of spiky green plants. As they reached a hill, Aster turned back toward her, and she was seized by a sudden urge for mischief. She pounced, wrapping her shadows around him. They tumbled through the air, landing in the sand.
Bright laughter bubbled out of him as they extricated themselves. She coiled herself around a rock, and he assumed something like a seated position, reminiscent of a person with their legs crossed.
“You were right—I love flying.”
“Oh, do I relish it as well,” he said. “I spent far too long stuck in place.”
She observed him more carefully as he rested there, moving like a lake under a peaceful breeze. He was not just darkness; he was a mind clothed in shadow and color. She had only ever seen the outermost layer of him, like she had been watching a person in a spacesuit and made the mistake of thinking that was their entire body. The outer layers of him shifted like gauzy fabric catching the light.
He flushed magenta. “You have an intense gaze, you know.”
“Ah, sorry for staring.”
“Oh no, you don’t need to stop. Having you look at me like that makes me feel like I’m something interesting,” he said.
“You are.” She paused, turning her observation to her own form. “These colors, you use them to communicate. But each emotion’s color is unique to the individual. Am I going to risk insulting your people? I should see if the ship has a book on manners.”
Aster laughed, sending a pulse of cobalt through him. “I think you’ll find it intuitive; it truly is the thought that counts. Direct your thoughts outward, and others will understand. The colors serve as an amplifier, like talking with your hands.”
He relaxed, and as they spoke, it was like curtains had been drawn back around him. She saw the hues coursing through him beneath the usual blues and purples. There were streams of copper and red and gold. “It’s like I can see deeper into your thoughts.”
He nodded. “I am comfortable around you. Were I not, you would only see the outer layers.”
“When we met, you said you didn’t know how to share your name with me. Can you show me now?”
“I like the name Aster,” he said. “It is a good approximation of how I refer to myself.” He shifted to face her, and she was struck by the thought that he looked more like a person even in shadow form. Perhaps their perceptions of each other varied with her expectations, or perhaps he had simply gotten used to the structure of a physical body.
“Our names aren’t a single word or phrase—they are a pattern of color and emotion that varies based on the context in which it is shared. To an acquaintance, a name might be as simple as a flash of light offered in greeting.” He pulsed violet in a simple pattern that moved from his head down to the shadows that hung beside him like empty sleeves. Hello, I am Aster, he seemed to say.
Then, without touching, he extended his awareness outward like a cool aura washing over her. There was a gentle nudge, a question, and she invited him into her mind. “This is how I might greet a friend.” Warmth suffused her alongside an emotion that felt like a comforting hand on her shoulder. Hello—I am here for you.
“For a deeper connection, be that between good friends or romantic partners, the pair might greet by directly sharing emotions and experiences,” he said. “We might refer to ourselves—name ourselves—using feelings and colors and imagery. Happy memories. I often referred to myself with a memory of the vast sea of clouds behind our archive.”
An image entered her mind. Rippling clouds in hues of magenta and violet. Aster perched atop a tall crystalline tower, watching the colors shift. “Sharing thoughts like that—it’s an intimate form of communication,” Kendra said. “I presume it can become rather … intense, depending on the depth of the connection.”
“Indeed. We may not be physical as you are, but the principle is similar. Sharing. Intimacy both in terms of emotion and sensation.”
“That sounds lovely—perhaps I won’t be missing out for lack of a physical body,” she said with a cheeky edge, and he huffed in response.
She drew her gaze toward the sky, holding the image of the clouds Aster had shown her in her mind. She imagined soaring through those clouds and beyond them, to the expanse of space. Above them, the sun directed its intensity over the gleaming sand. She pointed upward.
“You still need to recharge—what would it take to get there?”
“You wish to go above the atmosphere?” he asked.
“Is there a reason we can’t? I feel strong. We can’t get stuck or fall, can we?”
“No, but going straight upward is more difficult than flying over the surface.”
“I want to help,” Kendra said. “You’ve been stuck here long enough. You worked through your memories and persevered. You could fully recover on your own in time, but I want to do this for you.”
“Then let us go.”
They rose together, and the ground faded away. The plateau shrank to nothing, the vast desert just an empty white space on the planet’s surface. Kendra fought the drag downward, cutting a path for Aster to follow in her wake as they blasted holes through the clouds far above the surface. Then, when he flagged, she enveloped him in her shadows, holding him as she flung them both upward.
They slowed. Kendra kept a deliberate pace as her initial energy waned. But it did not completely leave her. She had been right; she was strong. Kendra led them upward until they were far enough to observe the curvature of the planet.
She pushed further still. The moons grew nearer, and the sunlight cast stark shadows across the craters that dotted their rocky surfaces. She propelled herself with power she didn’t understand but sensed like a force of life and will within her. Like it was her sheer desire to touch the stars that drove her. And maybe it was. Perhaps in her new form, space itself would bend for her, offering channels across immense distances, catapulting her to places she’d never imagined.
She stopped. They were far above the grayish planet. It hung there in the void, strangely blank. From this distance, there was nothing to tell a passing traveler of all the things she had encountered in the desert. All that she had lived through. All that she had become. Kendra kept her grasp on Aster as they floated there, and gently, she wove her consciousness into his. “It’s beautiful here.”
He responded not in words but with a raw wonder that hit her in a rush, turning to joy and then euphoria. They were free.
“We did it,” he said. Golden light rippled through him as he directed his gratitude toward her. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad to be here with you.”
Aster spread out, steadying himself and pulsing with color until power flowed toward him in rivulets. They hit his body like thousands of raindrops. Kendra reached out with her new senses, her acute awareness of the void of space. Electromagnetic energy. Ultraviolet light. Now she sensed them as vitality, as forces to be harnessed for her own use. The stars buffeted them with power; it was only a matter of catching it. She did. Kendra rested there above the planet, soaking in new energy until she overflowed with it.
Aster returned to her, radiating a brilliant amethyst glow and glittering like crystal. Shocks of gold rippled through him as he met her. Relief. Deep, all-encompassing relief.
“That’s enough for now,” he said.
He gestured toward the planet, and they began their descent. It was easier. Entering the atmosphere failed to affect them as it would a ship, and they had only to fall slowly to the surface.
They glided over the desert, far from the ruins, heading to the greenest part of the surface they could find. The trees there were short, with gnarled branches, and a layer of moss covered the rocks surrounding a small brook. Aster collapsed onto the soft earth, spreading his arms over his head as he let out a contented sigh. “That was marvelous—I almost can’t believe it.”
Kendra sat beside him, pulling herself into something closer to her previous form. She rested her head on her knees and smiled at him.
He relaxed there for a minute before sitting up, watching her attentively. “While you were in the ship, I was thinking,” he said. “You wish to see your friends, don’t you?”
“I do. I want them to know I’m alive. They need to hear about what we’ve learned from the Asteracean AI as well.” She ran her fingers over the surface of the moss, not quite able to touch it. “When I spoke to the ship, they expressed regret at being unable to communicate with the AI.”
“We did try, but it refused to listen at the time. Now that I have recovered, perhaps we should try again,” he said.
“I want to try,” Kendra said. “The curator and the caretakers have been here for such a long time. The records I saw when I interfaced with the ruins suggested that they power down to rest, but they’re still stuck here. They know grief and loss; that much I am sure of. They deserve something better.”
“Then we must do what we can for them,” Aster said.
