He sat at the desk he had set close enough to the window that light crossed it without glare. The surface was narrow, deliberate. Charts fit. Excess didn’t. Outside, the day held steady, neither calling nor receding.
The star charts were spread in front of him, layered transparencies of routes and annotations. He was trying to remember where the event had taken place—not by forcing the image back into view, but by reconstructing its surroundings. Distances. Vectors. The logic of how he would have moved through space then.
A message came in while he was aligning two charts. He didn’t reach for it immediately. He finished the line he was tracing, noted the intersection, then glanced at the screen.
Opposite side of the planet. Night there.
That detail mattered more than the words themselves. The origin carried weight—dark while he worked in light, sleep while he was awake. It added color to the memory without supplying it. He felt the old assumption loosen.
It wasn’t on the other side of the planet.
The realization didn’t bring the event back, but it narrowed the field. Certain ports fell away. Certain sequences no longer fit. The chart simplified under his hands.
He read the message fully this time. Answered a line or two. Nothing urgent. Nothing that required shaping. The exchange could pause anywhere and still remain intact. He trusted that without articulating it. Trusted the distance. Trusted that the other person wasn’t waiting in the way waiting once meant.
He returned to the charts.
The distraction hadn’t pulled him from the work. It had steadied it, the way music once had in the cockpit—parallel motion, not interference. The memory still hadn’t surfaced, but it had edges now, a region instead of a void.
He sat back, hands resting on the desk, and let the narrowed space do its work. The desk stayed where it was. The window held the light, and time moved on without instruction.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
Travel in Life 