juno

But when Hana put her hand, carefully, on the small of her back, her perspective shifted.

It wasn’t made for her. It was made for everything. Everything that breathed and blinked on this planet deserved this. They deserved this hill, the relief of the cool waters, the shade the giant trees provided. Hana probed Juno for her thoughts, quietly, squeezing her waist gently as they both stood there, soaking in the sights. All Juno could do was turn to her girlfriend, tears brimming, threatening to spill, and nod. Hana understood. She’d been to this reservoir tons of times and it still never failed to take her breath away. Everything felt right when she was there. She could forget about cities, money, jobs, deadlines, worries. All she had to focus on was the way the breeze smelt sweet and how her girlfriend’s sweaty back felt against her arm. How the birds sang overhead, and bugs buzzed around them with endless curiosity. Up there, the pair of them felt endless. Locked together until they stopped breathing, and forever afterwards.

The pair of them decided to sit down; they’d been hiking for a while. They moved just off of the path, near a patch of bushes, and Juno rooted around in her backpack for their water bottles and snacks. Hana rolled her eyes, an unmoving grin plastered on her face as Juno fussed about her. About a mile back, Hana had been stung by nettles- completely her fault, she was trying to get a photo of a frog for Lucio and got startled when it, as frogs do, hopped away- and Juno was cleaning and applying aloe vera gel to the small area, a stern look on her soft features.

Hana hooked her finger around Juno’s chin and gently urged her to look at her. “You fret too much.”

Juno hummed, bringing her face closer to kiss Hana’s chapped lips. “Not enough. Never enough.”

Once Juno was satisfied with Hana’s care, they fell into a comfortable silence, sitting together, Juno’s legs over Hana’s lap, sipping water and munching on granola bars. Hana grimaced on every bite. This felt a little too healthy for what she usually reached for, but Juno insisted. Who was she to deny her girlfriend’s expertise on the human body? The breeze had picked up a little more, and the pair of them welcomed the small relief from the sun’s consistent brilliance. Juno sat with her eyes closed, her head tipped back, lips slightly parted as she allowed herself the feeling of the wind. Hana watched her closely, feeling her heart swell. Something she’d never experienced before coming to Earth was the feeling of wind. Every time she could, she liked to appreciate it, and Hana forever had time for her to do that. Hana forever had time for her.

As she watched Juno soak in the sun and the breeze, something caught her eye. Her gaze followed it, and she gasped softly when she realised what she was seeing. Juno, drawn by Hana’s shock, opened her eyes and searched her girlfriend’s face.

“What is it, Hana?”

Hana took Juno’s hand, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and pointed skyward. “Look!”

Juno followed Hana’s directions and let out her own breath of shock. Two bald eagles soared through the sky, almost as one, carefully circling each other before falling back and letting the wind catch their giant wings. They were close enough to pick out the soft yellow of their hooked beaks, and the smallest hint of the patterns on their brown feathers. In excitement, Juno stood, rushing over to the edge of the hill, her eyes fixed intently on the birds. Hana followed after her, winding an arm around her waist and hushing her, not unkindly, but enough to reassure her that quietness was acceptable. Her eyes narrowed as the eagles circled each other in tighter, more purposeful movements.

“Are they..?” Hana’s sentence trailed off, lost in her own thoughts, and Juno glanced between her and the eagles, her fists clenched in excitement.

“Are they what? What? What will they do, Hana? When-”

Juno was cut off by Hana’s hand pointing at them again.

Both of the eagles’ claws reached out at the same time. They soared closer to one another, claws outstretched as if they were in an airborne imitation of the Creation of Adam. Both of their claws brushed against one another, and missed. Instantly, with flaps of the wings so synchronised you’d believe they’d rehearsed and prepared for this their entire lives, they circled back on one another, claws outstretched, desperate for one another’s touch.

“What are they doing?” Juno probed in an awestruck whisper, not able to look away. She didn’t see the smile of amazement playing on Hana’s face, or the way she was brimming with her own tears of amazement this time.

“It’s a death spiral,” Hana replied softly, her hand coming up to cover her mouth in shock as the eagles finally locked claws. Once they were interlocked, their powerful wings each beat once and they grabbed each other with both feet, beginning their whipping spiral down to the floor in a flurry of circular aviary.

Juno was horrified.

“No!” she cried out, wrenching herself from Hana’s grasp and almost falling over herself to kick her Martian Overboots into gear. One of them hummed and propelled her upwards, but she was in such a rush that the other kept slipping. She was wonky, off-kilter, dangerously close to tipping backwards. “We… We have to stop them, Hana! It’s our duty to save them!”

It was hard for Hana to wrench her eyes away from the birds, but she had to stop Juno. Lunging, she caught Juno’s ankle and tugged her away from where she was desperately trying to get to the birds as they spiralled closer to the ground. A noise of anguish left Juno’s mouth as she watched, horrified.

“We can’t stop them, June-bug,” Hana called, trying to tug her girlfriend back to the ground, but now both of her boots were working, there wasn’t much Hana could do. She felt her own feet begin to lift from the floor. “Just keep watching, baby, please.”

The eagles spiralled closer and closer to the ground, their claws never leaving the other, and Juno couldn’t help the tears. She had never seen anything die before. Why was Hana doing this to her? Why was the world so cruel that this was just something acceptable that happened? What were humans there for if not to stop this nonsense? Juno was close to kicking Hana away: something she never thought she’d do before. But just as she lifted her leg to propel herself away, the birds spiralled down to not even a foot from the floor, and with a magnificent crack of their wings, pushed themselves away from each other and back up towards the sky. Crying out in relief, Juno propelled herself to Hana, who had let go of her ankle the second the birds let go of one another, and hugged her tightly, burying her face into her chest. Why couldn’t she stop crying? Sobs wracked her chest as she pulled Hana closer, so deeply shaken by the display that it kept replaying in her mind over and over again. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, willing the image away. They were okay, the birds were okay. When she looked up, despite being terrified that if she looked again they’d be encapsulated in another spiral, she breathed a shaky sigh of relief to see they were soaring across the reservoir.

“Why, Hana? Why would they do that?”

Hana had a very serious look on her face as she took her girlfriend’s wet face into her hands and stared at her, searching her dark eyes, pushing tears away with her thumbs.

“Juno, we are not here to mess with nature. We look after the sick ones, just like you did when you fixed my nettle sting.”

Hana presented her arm to Juno to look at before continuing on: “But that was a mating ritual, June-bug. I think you and I would be pretty upset if somebody interrupted me and you hanging out together, don’t you think? It’s the same thing.”

A frown pressed down on Juno’s brows as she ran her fingers carefully along Hana’s healing sting. “A mating ritual? But they could have died.”

“That’s the point. They show complete trust in one another as they spiral down to what could be their death. Letting go at the very last minute to prove to one another they’re worthy of mating.”

Hana watched as Juno thought about it, practically hearing her cogs turning. All Hana could think was God, I’d do it. I’d spiral to the ground with you and trust you the entire way down.

Imagine if it was me and Hana, Juno thought to herself as she surveyed her girlfriend’s face. I would trust her. If we were those eagles, I would choose Hana to be my mate.

Never looking away from her, Juno took Hana’s hands and positioned them around her shoulders. Hana tightened her grip, pressing her forehead against Juno’s as she kicked off from the ground, boosting them up into the air. Taking in a shaky breath, Hana let herself look down. They weren’t as high as the eagles were, but humans dropped a lot quicker and were a lot heavier than eagles. It wasn’t that she was nervous. She’d never seen Juno look so serious in her life. There was a soft edge to the glimmer in her lover’s eyes that she’d never seen before. It tightened the skin around her eyes, heavied her eyelids, drew her eyebrows upwards as Juno looked at her. Hana felt like she was the only thing in the entire world. Hovering above the hill with her Martian girlfriend, clinging to her bony shoulders, legs locked with hers, trusting her more than she ever thought it was possible to trust someone. It felt as if, in that moment, they were a whole. Not two bodies, but one entirety, one whole, one unity. Unity made Hana think of the word universe. How they’d come to one another from across the universe and somehow became something so whole, so right. Everything seemed to quiet around them. Hana felt like the eagle then, her claws digging into Juno’s shoulders, feeling as if their skin was one breathing organ shared between them.

“Do you know what they reminded me of?” Juno asked, breathless.

“What?”

“Planets. Orbiting their suns. Spinning around them dutifully every single day, unknowing of space’s expansion, or that one day their sun will die. Do you think the eagles know the other will die one day?”

Hana couldn’t help herself. She pressed her lips tightly to Juno’s, capturing her mouth in a searing, salty kiss: the two of them were crying, feeling the full brevity of their connection in that one moment. Juno pulled away and kicked one of her boots off.

She kicked herself out and moved Hana’s hands to her own. Hana’s weight began to drag them down, through the air, and Juno swung herself around so they were spinning. It was clumsy, nowhere near as graceful and rehearsed and natural as the eagles, but they gazed at one another with giddy excitement as they span to the ground. Hana glanced behind her, watched as the grassy floor lurched upwards to meet her, dangerously close, and felt complete peace.

Juno cycles to and from her off-campus accommodation

She is terrible at cycling. There were no bikes on Mars.

Cannot afford a car, and hasn’t lived on the Earth for long enough to be allowed a driver’s licence

Also cannot drive. There were no cars on Mars.

Hana notices that her legs are covered in cuts and bruises

She’s always carried around a first-aid kit because she often knicks her hands on tools during Robotics

Juno sits on a table and hisses in pain as Hana cleans a particularly nasty graze

“How did you even do this?”

“Hana… there was a pigeon! It flew right in front of me! I am still startled by the local avifauna.”

Hana makes sure to stay topped up on cute plasters for Juno’s legs and arms. Occasionally her face.

Eventually it becomes cold and rainy. Hana hates the idea of the accidents Juno could have riding her bike in this weather.

“Let me pick you up in Tokki. You can barely ride that thing in sunny weather.”

Hana called her car Tokki. Of course.

They begin carpooling. Hana introduces Juno to her music.

They talk for hours outside of Juno’s house, listening to Hana’s music on the radio.

Hana, of course, begins to invite herself into Juno’s house instead.

She is head over heels for this girl. Watching her potter about her own space, making Hana tea, handing her snacks.

Juno begins buying snacks in her weekly shop that Hana has mentioned liking. She doesn’t even enjoy half this stuff, she just wants it in for Hana.

They plan a study sleepover where they get work done towards their Robotics project.

They sit cross-legged on Hana’s bedroom floor, not needing to sit so close but of course they do. Juno’s legs end up over Hana’s lap as they both tinker with motherboards and hinges and robotics stuff.

Hana can’t stop staring at Juno.

Juno isnt oblivious. She is, however, autistically blunt and asks Hana what she’s staring at.

“You.”

“Why..? Do I have something on my face?”

“No!” Hana giggles softly, and reaches over to tuck a strand of purple hair behind Juno’s ear. Juno doesn’t even flinch. There’s no such thing as personal space between them anymore, and Juno is more than happy with Hana’s hands being near her. Hana’s arm is wrapped loosely around Juno’s legs, and she pulls them in closer to her.

“Then what?” Juno glances down and holds up the hinge she’s screwing. “I know my technique is weird, I’m so used to screwing things in in a much lower gravity so I keep expecting the screws to have a cosmically different mass! Which, funnily enough, makes me drop them more often than not, and, oh moons, just like that! Then I-“

Hana grabs her by the chin, gently, and eases their mouths together. Juno stills, shocked, not quite knowing how to react. Hana’s hand reaches up and cups her cheek and Juno melts into it. Their mouths move together slowly, tenderly. Juno’s eyes flutter shut as she carefully places the robot’s arm down and holds Hana’s face between her hands, smoothing her thumb over the soft expanse of her friend’s cheek.

When they separate, Hana keeps her face close. Juno’s lips, glistening and plump, rub together, as if she’s locking the kiss in place. Hana can’t help but giggle.

“I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.”

Extra:

Hana introduces Juno to Star Wars

Her favourite character is Princess Leia

Juno is part of the college's Astronomy Club

They're lowkey campus celebrities

Juno gets drunk from one (1) single drink at a party and won't stop telling Hana how much she loves her