It was worth the eye she had sold. Worth the trek getting there. The three month space journey, fighting weightlessness to stay in shape. The deceleration sores on her back from the crushing entry into the atmosphere. The food on the trip, that stuck in her throat, as her body refused to accept it as edible. They had discovered this planet four months earlier, not only in the goldilocks zone, but so close to ready-made for human inhabitation, they wouldn’t even need breathing masks. It wouldn’t take much to terraform. She hesitated for a day after she saw the news, before she threw caution to the wind, and in a liberating act of defiance, sold her right eye to buy a ticket. To see the verdant glory of another planet, before it joined the ranks of ‘earthed’ planets. To visit another world, while it was still another world. Here she was, and it was all worth it. The jungle below, a swaying ocean of purples and blues, rippling alive in the colour of bruises. Dark black, deep purple, yellowed cream, a dry faded red. It was beyond words. In less than two weeks, this world would be snipped, slashed, pinched and poked in the face-lift of terraforming. The plant life would be hacked back, the animals driven from the hemisphere. The ecosystem would be forever changed. Her binoculars fell from her eye as a brightly coloured feathered creature rose from the trees beneath the ridge. It spiraled upwards, it’s wings span dwarfing her as it climbed the currents up the cliff. It did not know people, it did not yet know to fear the smell, the sound, the sight of man. The great bird-like beast rose up, it’s rippling plumage feet away from her face, the beat of its spectacular wings like breath on her face. It was glorious to behold. A sunset spilled down its breast, the meandering orange and reds, slipping into the dark blue and purple of coming night as the colours bled down the tail feathers and around its back. As it swept past her, the air gushed through the hairs on her skin. A feeling they could never capture in VR, in that moment, she could almost see the long lost birds of her home world.
This is my final entry to #foxtales - this is my favorite of my entries - I couldn't resist going a little bit scifi for one of them! A shout-out & thank you to @antimetica as the casual reference to VR wetlands made me think of what someone might give to see the real thing.
This is an entry to @vermillionfox 's One Paragraph Story Contest - where you can write up to three stories inspired by her amazing artwork. The piece she has given in the prompt this week is so full of potential!
If you haven't seen this contest before, I would strongly recommend it, you can enter up to three times, you can post your entries separately, or as one post. There is something I am finding really useful about trying to take some thing three different ways, I am not always the most inventive plot creator, and this is definitely helping me work on that.
Artwork by @vermillionfox - Image Credit