The shift change chime was soft, a three-tone melody that signaled the end of the rotation.
In the Sector Lead’s office—a glass-walled cubicle overlooking the bay—Sola was sitting in Jaren’s old chair. She looked small in it. Her desk was already cluttered with hydration charts and open comms channels. She looked overwhelmed, her brow furrowed as she debated a resource allocation with Dax.
Elara stood by the locker room door, wiping the day’s soil from her hands.
The old instinct flickered—a tiny, dying ember. Go in there. Tell Sola to prioritize the filtration buffers. Straighten the desk.
Elara watched them for a moment. She saw Sola take a deep breath, steady her shaking hands, and make a decision. It might have been the wrong decision. It might cause a headache next week.
But it is her headache, Elara thought. And she is strong enough to have it.
Elara turned her back on the command center. She walked to her locker, swapped her work boots for soft civilian shoes, and stepped out into the corridor.
The walk home was a study in navigation. The station was loud—announcements blared, transport carts rattled, people argued in the mess hall. The “noise” of the world was as high-volume as ever.
But Elara moved through it like a ship with its shields up. Not shields made of force fields, but shields made of differentiation.
She passed a maintenance crew struggling with a conduit panel. Sparks showered down. A technician cursed.
Elara didn’t stop. She didn’t offer advice. She didn’t feel the spike of adrenaline. She simply side-stepped the sparks and kept walking. It wasn’t indifference; it was the peace of knowing where her edges ended and the rest of the world began.
When she keyed the door to her apartment, the silence that greeted her wasn’t empty anymore. It was full.
The room had changed over the last few months. The walls were no longer bare metal. They were pinned with her charcoal sketches—dozens of them. Some were of engines, heavy and dark. Some were of leaves, light and chaotic. They were the maps of her transition.
In the corner, the terrarium sat on a small stand. The plant inside—the one she had watered with presence instead of pressure—had pushed a new shoot up against the glass. It was pressing against the boundary of its world, healthy and green.
Elara went to the small kitchenette. She brewed a cup of tea, the steam rising in the quiet air.
She sat in the chair by the viewport, the same chair where she had once felt like a ghost haunting her own life. She looked out at the stars.
For twenty years, she had looked at space and seen a battlefield, a navigation hazard, a void to be conquered. She had defined herself by how much of it she could control.
Now, she took a sip of the tea. It was hot. It tasted of jasmine and earth.
She looked at her hands holding the cup. They were clean, but the cuticles were stained with chlorophyll. They were not the hands of a Vanguard. They were not the hands of a Savior.
They were just her hands.
She realized she wasn’t waiting for the next mission. She wasn’t waiting to be recruited. She wasn’t waiting to “become” someone else.
She was simply Elara. She was a woman who watered plants. She was a woman who drew smudged pictures. She was a woman who could let the station fall apart or hold together without her permission.
She leaned back, feeling the solid support of the chair. The boundaries of her life were small now—Phase Two, Plant Level, just this room, just this tea, just this moment.
But for the first time in her life, the space didn’t feel small. It felt infinite.
She closed her eyes, and she didn’t scan for threats. She just listened to her own heartbeat, steady and slow, beating in time with nothing but itself.
She was home.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co
Travel in Life 