Yaro Station
by Daphne Garrido
Inis was never going to stop.
Every few little projects she’d complete, she’d pretend it had been the last. That she’d find some other way to live. Some other obsession.
Yet here, alone on Yaro Station, there wasn’t much to do. All she had was this work she’d made for herself. This task she’d felt herself so called to. Building this castle from the cut-up containers of her meal-packs. Coloring it with the touch up paints left for her in the galley’s storage closet.
It was getting quite giant.
This construction she’d made was proving to be something beautiful, beyond all she’d created before, even if it was made from the shredded pieces of something else.
It felt inspired, like real art.
Even if that inspiration was her own loneliness.
How could she let it go, when it’s all she was made of inside?
The ghosts here were getting to her.
Their whispers had gotten louder and louder, the longer she’d stayed. A hope in her gut had grown for some time, praying she was wrong.
That these voices weren’t real.
Somehow, to be going mad, here alone on this station, would have made more sense. It would have been a comfort to at least have that.
She’d gone to the auto-doc and had scans done. Nothing was wrong.
There were just ghosts in this station.
She hated it.
The whispers had woken her in the middle of the night.
“It’s coming.” They’d said.
Inis could feel it too.
Some pressure had been building while she slept, some latent electricity was within her. Her heart and mind were buzzing.
Someone, or something, had been with her in energy while she’d slept.
There was some change.
It was unclear what, as always, but her heart spoke clearly all the same — this had been important.
Something ‘big’ had happened.
Heart would always speak in riddles, making false promises, telling her the things she’d need to hear just to get her off her ass, even if they were lies.
She’d always forgive it. It had taken her where she needed to go.
In retrospect, there were only the faintest remnants of bitterness — and they were pointed at her own mind, rather than those messages from the heart — frustration pointed inward, at her own inflexibility, such attempts to steer the direction of her life beyond where it was meant to go.
No idea what was speaking so loudly to her tonight, she’d still gotten out of bed, unable to fall back asleep in the face of such currents.
Inis had taken seat upon a chair in the station’s control room.
Moldov was a large planet, almost entirely engulfed in water. Its great sea was that of such unknowable ways.
The currents here were driven by many moons, pulling this way and that.
Yaro Station was on such a moon.
Meera — she would be known as — this barren rock.
Below, on the planet’s surface, was a great city. One which rose high upon Moldov’s largest land-mass, a volcanic island risen from the very deepest parts of the planet’s ocean.
It was there that her great love lived, Lia.
Inis and her had been apart for so long now, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to hold her. She’d almost forgotten the smell of her hair, that beauty she so found in Lia’s eyes, smile, and laugh.
She’d chosen to come here. It had been a rash decision.
One she made in her sadness from their falling out. Knowing, that even if she wasn’t the same thing back to Lia, they were something awfully special to her.
Now, so isolated, so unable to change what she had bargained for in coming. She felt trapped. She felt like she was going to die up here, or lose her mind.
Though her regret was not what plagued her now, it was something else.
She’d been scanning the planet, pulling its news-feeds, checking in on her favorite static cameras. It was August on Moldov. The sun would be shining, the tides would be turning.
Inis missed being there.
She was always breathing in such steady ways — her life up here having become a living meditation. When she’d let go of the practice, falling back into mind, she’d find herself feeling mad. Unable to handle the weight of being all alone on this station, of hearing these ghosts speak.
It was here, absorbed not only in her practice of combing through Moldov’s feeds, but holding this steady rhythm in her breath which kept her at peace.
When her whole left leg went numb.
It was the weirdest feeling she’d ever had.
So strange — so out of nowhere.
What could that have been? What could have happened?
Please let it not be Lia, she’d thought. Whatever it is, not that.
Having found herself expanded in ways she’d not been before, up here alone on Yaro Station, Inis was receiving things she didn’t understand.
The ghosts kept whispering.
There was a part of her lost in it all, making guesses, feeling like she knew what these new sensations of body and spirit were saying.
But she didn’t know for sure.
Inis had no way to prove it, here, all alone.
So she scanned the feeds. She scanned them deep.
Searching for her love, for Lia.
There was nothing.
Six months had passed since that strangest happening. That time Inis had felt her body screaming something unknown.
In it she’d spent such countless hours searching for signs of Lia.
They’d left Inis, she knew that. They weren’t even really a couple to begin with.
It was sad, but this was her heart.
She knew to trust it.
The things it told were too much to ignore — that there was more to come between her and Lia, that they would need her someday.
Unknowing if these whispers of ghosts were anything more than her own projection, Inis had decided to trust them anyway.
What other choice did she have?
Yaro Station’s messaging service had been overloaded with incoming requests that Inis had been ignoring for months.
Now getting closer to a year since she’d felt that mysterious surge. Still, never hearing back from Lia, despite her many messages.
There was a feeling that more had happened than she knew.
That Inis was missing something. Something bad.
She’d see sights of these things and would ignore them.
Inis wanted no part in it.
If this was some sick place of her mind, just grasping for answers that might make sense of Lia’s silence, that was okay to her.
For those things to actually be true — was too much for her to consider.
One of Inis’ first messages attempting to break down walls, back when she’d sworn Lia was trying to open the door back-up for to some kind of communication — she’d mentioned Lucy.
Lucy was Lia’s dog.
Inis missed her a lot. So, it made sense for her to mention them.
It was in their silence, where she’d thought back to some of those things the ghosts had said, which she’d ignored. Which she did not want to be true.
That something could have happened.
Something Lia wouldn’t know how to say.
There were three weeks to go until her stint on Yaro Station was over.
This was the day. It came at last.
A message Inis had been waiting on for so long.
One from Lia.
She’d prayed so hard those things she’d seen had not been true, but some were.
There had been an accident. It was an incredibly hard thing for Lia.
Lucy was gone.
Inis had heard this inside many times but refused to believe it. Refused to let herself think such dark thoughts.
If there was a chance she was just going crazy up here, she’d never allow herself to project those ideas into the universe, they would not be something she’d have any part of.
Still, even with the sadness of it all. To hear Lia’s voice, to see her face — it was a revelation to Inis’ heart.
She’d healed so much in that single moment, she would never be the same.
Sadness and fear burned straight out of her, forever.
The only thing left was her determination to do right by her love. To make up for such lost time. To hold her as closely and as tightly as she could.
Inis would always regret not being there.
But she was coming home at last.
