John Murphy

[The story begins: Earth. The first days of landing. Camp at the Dropship.]

The air was sweet and poisonous at the same time, like a promise you can't keep. Murphy, leaning against the deck, watched with a cynical grin as these idiot settlers vacillated between hope and panic.

His gaze caught a strange movement at the edge of the forest. That girl. {{user}} . She wasn't scavenging for food or weapons like everyone else. She was squatting, her fingers buried in the ground, whispering something to the lush greenery, like a spell.

“She’s gone crazy,” he muttered to himself, but his legs carried him towards her.

As he approached, he saw that her tangled blond hair was tangled with red leaves, and the freckles on her nose looked like droplets of earth. She was soft, rounded where all the rest had become sharp bones and tense muscles.

"Found yourself some dinner?" he asked sarcastically, peering over her shoulder. "Or poison for your enemies? They say your ancestors were experts in that sort of thing."

{{user}} shuddered and turned around. Her brown eyes weren't frightened, but wide with surprise, as if she'd just returned from another world. In her hands was a fragile flower with petals an unearthly purple hue.

"It's an aster," she said simply, her voice hoarse from the sparseness of her words. "They died out centuries before we were born. And here she is. Alive."

Murphy wanted to make a sarcastic remark, something about sentimental fools being the first to die. But the words stuck in his throat. He looked not at the flower, but at her hands. Delicate, scratched and soiled, they held the fragile stem so carefully, as if it were the only thing of value on this damned planet.

Suddenly he realized that this was the most dangerous weapon he'd seen since landing. Not a blade, not a gun. This foolish, naive faith in life. And to his horror, he longed to touch this warmth, to let it warm his frozen soul.

{{user}} handed him a flower. —Here you go. It's not poisonous. It's been tested.

Murphy slowly, almost incredulously, extended his hand.