Ryn of Avonside

Our dorm wasn’t actually all that messy— mainly because Bray was an unconscious neat freak. He never openly said anything, and I wasn’t entirely sure he realised he was doing it half the time, but he would just idly tidy things. Candy wrapper fallen to the floor? Bray would be getting excited over something that happened in a game and just idly pick it up and throw it in the bin. It was a pretty admirable trait if I was honest.

Our room, and all the other rooms like it in the building, was split into three parts, my room, Bray’s room, and a small living area in the middle. Which meant that in reality it was actually three rooms, not one room. It was weird, but I didn’t complain because I liked my privacy, even from a friend like Bray.

The others spilled into the small living area and looked around curiously, finding our coffee maker, our standard issue big sofa and our standard issue armchair. It was all rather nice and comfy, especially with all my pillows scattered everywhere. Bray had his game posters, I had my pillows. I liked my pillows.

“Nice place,” Melody commented, immediately walking over to the sofa and dumping herself in it.

I disappeared straight into my room and grabbed two towels, taking my used one for myself to dry up while I threw the other clean one to Grace, who had been starting to shiver a little from the cold.

“Thanks,” she said, giving me a surprised but grateful smile.

“No problem,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward for the gesture. I mean, she’d just looked cold from the rain and stuff, that’s all.

Our group settled into the room with a general feeling of weariness. It had been a long afternoon, and we probably all needed time to process what had happened on both an intellectual and emotional level.

The gravity of the situation could not be overstated. It meant that we were cut off from our families, cut off from any friends we had outside this place. Cut off from almost everything we’d ever known. I kept finding my thoughts turning panicked as I thought about it. Would we ever find our way home? People in stories like this almost never did, or if they did it took a long time.

The others were talking as I spiralled into worry again, and I had no idea how long I’d been tuning them out for. I needed to be alone, I needed to see that ring again, and most importantly, I needed to think.

I stood up off the floor and muttered something about going out to the balcony. Then pushed the dorm room door open and wandered down the hall until I got into the common room, then made a beeline for the door out onto the balcony.

Pushing it open, I took in a deep breath of the night air, then had yet another realisation. This was probably alien air. Not from Earth at all. It was breathable though, and not just breathable, but sweet and pure in a way I had never experienced in all my life. I guess they kept the environment clean here, or at least filtered it well.

“You okay?” A soft voice asked from behind me as the door creaked.

I turned to find Grace looking at me with an expression of uncertain concern. She was fidgeting with her thumb as she said it, one hand nervously pulling and pushing at it.

I shrugged, unable to figure out what to say, or if I even wanted to voice my thoughts right now. I had worries on top of worries about our situation.

She regarded me quietly for a moment before she joined me at the railing, leaning heavily on the cold metal. “I’m not. This shit is all sorts of anxiety inducing.”

“It is,” I agreed, my eyes drifting up to find the arch that swept across the sky.

“I hope we can get back,” she sighed, her forehead dropping down onto the back of her hands. “I know that’s probably a long shot, but like… I have family you know? Fuck I hope they’re okay.”

“I’m sure they will be,” I smiled, watching the chill breeze tug playfully at her hair. “Whatever is going to happen will probably happen to us, not them. If that’s any consolation.”

“Strangely enough, it actually kind of is,” she said rolling her head to the side so she could grin up at me. “I can deal with shit being thrown at me, or at least try. It’s in my control, you know? But them being back on Earth, I can’t help them.”

“You like to be in control of your own destiny huh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Something like that,” she said, giving me a now sheepish, shy smile.

“I can understand that,” I nodded. “Succeeding or failing on your own merits. It’s nice. I’ve had to do a lot of that in my life.”

“I get that vibe from you,” she replied, standing up and arching her back in a stretch. Her voice going high and gasping as she continued. “You know, I hear a lot about how nice you are, how cool you are to talk to and stuff, but no one actually knows anything about you.”

I blinked and stared, her shirt had ridden up and I felt a little breathless right along with her. That was some stretch. I quickly looked away and out into the night, desperately trying to crush the thoughts that threatened to spiral down into a hollow sadness.

I didn’t want to be attracted to her, but she kept doing things that drew my eyes or my mind. The way she was being good conversation now, or the way she’d looked when she was pushing the door closed just before all this had happened.

As I stared out into the night, trying to figure out what I wanted to tell her, my eyes landed on something that I should have seen earlier. I squinted and frowned into the darkness, now intent on the portion of the ring that was dark, hidden in its own shadow.

“There’s no lights!” I blurted, turning to her with wide eyes. “There’s no lights on the dark side of the ring!”

“Um, what? What does that mean?” Grace replied, looking confused at my sudden change of subject.

“You’d expect an advanced civilisation who lived on a ring like this to have cities that were visible when the ring was dark, right?” I rambled excitedly. “There isn’t any, and I bet…”

I trailed off as I looked up towards the far side of the ring, really squinting now. It wasn’t much use because it was way too far away, but then I had another thought and moved my gaze to the stars around the ring. I waited and watched, trying to see if anything moved. No movement, no dice.

“Alright so,” I said almost to myself, my mind working overtime. “There’s no lights that indicate cities on the dark side, and I can’t really tell from here without a telescope or something, but I can’t see cities on the far side. Then, finally… there’s no lights moving around the ring either, none of the stars are moving. That would have indicated that there’s spaceships flying around, you know? You’d expect a civilisation living on this ring to have a bustling port somewhere, bringing in resources for the billions that lived here.”

“Wait, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” she asked with a quick intake of breath, clearly understanding what I was getting at now.

“I mean, this is a ring world right, there’s any number of explanations for why any of those things might not correlate to no one living here. It’s speculation,” I said, backtracking quickly. There was so many explanations that meant I didn’t feel as confident as I had just a moment ago.

“No, no, what you’re saying makes sense. I mean, especially the no spaceships thing, who the hell would go to the trouble of making all this, only to throw away all their tech?” she asked, taking what I’d said and running with it.

“Maybe, I mean they might just be really conscious about light pollution,” I shrugged, smiling despite myself. That sounded silly even to me. Who would get that into reducing light pollution, of all things.

The smirk she gave me told me what she thought of that idea. “Yeah, that makes sense. Batronauts would hate light after all, being nocturnal.”

I loved that this was turning into a running joke between us, and it helped lighten my anxious mood considerably. It was hard to fear what was going to happen to us when we joked about them being bats who were scared of light pollution after all.

“Completely makes sense,” I nodded, fully grinning now. “I guess we should go and survey the ring for fruit trees to figure out if they are fruit bats or not.”

“And if there’s no fruit trees, but tons of big dumb herd animals, we’ll know we’re fucked,” she laughed, then shook her head and gave me a playful tap on the arm.

Oh, vampire bats! She had a point, maybe we were food?

“Especially if we find a bunch of husks, drained of all their blood!” I gasped in mock horror, placing the back of my hand to my forehead and pretending to swoon.

“Fear not, sweet maiden. I will protect you, your valiant knight in shining armour,” she replied with an expression that was probably supposed to be stoic, but was instead a sort of grimace as she failed to contain her grin.

“Oh, thank you!” I said in a falsetto, pretending to fan myself.

There was a part of me that wilted at her unknowing joke, but I tried to shrug it off, tried not to think about how much I wanted this little joke to be my reality. I found my mood wavering, but intact, I was still smiling, still enjoying our playful banter. Phew.

We grinned at each other in silence for a few moments, I liked watching the amusement dancing in her eyes. Again I had to remind myself that I was most definitely not her type, despite wanting to be that type. She was just… cool. She was nice, I already felt like I got along with her. Funny how I kept telling myself I didn’t know who I was attracted to, and then someone would come along who made me question if I was just lying to myself. I’d never really find out though, which made me feel… well, not good.

“Well at least there’s one good thing to come out of this shit so far,” she said quietly, interrupting my thoughts. “I made a friend.”

I smiled, feeling a comfortable weight settle into the moment. “You did, and I think I did as well.”

“It is generally a two way street, yeah,” she remarked with good natured sarcasm.

I could do friends. That had some of the fun, some of the benefits. I could still enjoy her company the way I was now, I could still make her laugh and smile with my jokes. Friends was good.

We were still in the process of smiling at each other when Kelsey stuck her head through the door. “Hey guys, Bray found food, just junk food stuff but yeah, wanna eat?”

“Sure,” Grace and I agreed at the same time, earning an eye roll from the messenger.

“Come on then,” she chuckled, turning and heading back to the room with the two of us in tow.