No sound, no air. On and on. I thought it would never end. And then… the slow-moving shift of stars. A distant gleam ahead of me, getting brighter and brighter. A yellow star, with its circling dance of planets. One of them, so beautiful. Glowing like silver, even from so far away. Except that’s wrong. It was… like a beautiful tune. No, that’s wrong too! Take your time. Don’t rush. You’ve seen things I need to understand, just try to explain them clearly. It was… like coming back from a long journey and getting somewhere you recognise, knowing that soon you’ll be back home. That was what Neptune was like for them, they could smell-touch-taste-hear-see-feel-love it. Earth was a kind of shortcut, I think. Like, when you have to cross the road, and you can’t be bothered to go all up the way to the traffic lights so you risk crossing over where you are. The risk went wrong for one of them.
