Galactic Magic

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“Whoop, there she is!”

Your daughter giggles at Ryland as he plays peek-a-boo with her across the room. Eridians have said her laugh is the sweetest sound they’ve ever heard.

She’s almost one now, and she’s a miracle.

Life on Erid wasn’t always this stable, though. There was a long time when you and Ryland never thought you could have this. You both got very sick for a while when you ran out of regular food, suffering from severe nutrient deficiencies and the higher gravity taking physical tolls on your bodies. But Eridian science adapted, and they were able to synthesize vitamins and clone your tissue to make meat. “Me-burgers,” Ryland likes to call them. You can’t think about it too hard that you’re eating your own flesh, you’re just glad it’s keeping you alive.

You can’t do much about the gravity though, so you both just use canes when the pain on your joints gets too much. The hardest it was to deal with was when you were pregnant. Pregnancy is already a nightmare on the body is many ways, and it’s worse with more force pulling down on you all the time. But you did it, and now you have a beautiful little girl.

You and Ryland waited a long time to seriously consider having kids. You wanted to wait until you both were healthy enough to handle it, and when you both had read up enough about the medical side of things.

You had to be very careful about sex until you were ready to risk getting pregnant, so the night you decided to go for it was truly freeing. You’d been basically doing everything except having him inside you for a while, but after years of waiting that’s all you craved. And despite years of being in a coma, Ryland remembered exactly how you liked to be touched, what pace you liked, how you liked to be filled up to the brim.

You didn’t let Rocky watch you that night “for science,” but you’re sure he heard it.

You’re still far from professionals, but you were able to have a fairly healthy pregnancy and birth. Hurt like a motherfucker since you had no access to an epidural or pain meds, though. The Eridians said they have never heard a sound like the screams you made.

Her name is Eva. Regardless of the complexities and trauma from the situation on Earth, you both wanted to honor the woman who organized the mission to save the world. You hope she’s still alive out there, and she knows you forgive her.

There’s banging on the door.

“Come in, Rocky!”

He’s already inside before you finish saying that, as usual.

She’s awake! She’s awake! He dances and patters over to the cradle. Can she go for a crawl?

Rocky’s favorite hobby these days ever since Eva learned to crawl is taking her around the biodome. He’ll walk by her side on the beach as long as she’ll go. She likes to grab at his legs and babble at him.

You’ve gotten a lot more fluent understanding Eridian, and it seems that Eva might end up bilingual as well. At least the understanding part, you doubt human vocal cords can ever make the kind of sounds required for Eridian language, no matter how are you try. But she seems to respond to her name in both languages, and she babbles back to both.

“Sure, let’s go.” Ryland says, picking her up and following you and Rocky outside.

He sets her down gently on the beach and takes your hand in his. She coos happily and starts following Rocky. You can see Adrian entering the biodome on the other side, and Eva squeals excitedly when she sees them.

It really is a nice life you guys have. Ryland has been teaching human science to the Eridian children, you have a sweet baby girl, and you live in an enclosure on an alien planet, enriched however you like it.

But you still miss home sometimes.

You and Ryland will sometimes reminisce about Earth, telling stories to Eva about your home planet. She doesn’t comprehend yet that she’s literally the only human ever born outside of Earth, and if you have anything to say about it no one outside your family ever will. Even if you could figure out how to send a message to Earth, you wouldn’t tell them you successfully had a child. They’d ask too many questions, or turn her into a science experiment. You don’t want that for her.

The day winds down as it usually does. You have your routine eating your dinner separately from Rocky and Adrian (it’s hard for them to eat in their xenonite suits), then they return to the biodome to watch Eva sleep. She’s been a very easy baby, thank goodness, she sleeps through the night pretty well. But Rocky and Adrian insist on watching her every single night without fail. They find her more interesting to watch than you and Ryland, which allows some alone time at night for the two of you.

Ryland holds you close, snuggled up in bed, stroking your hair. He reads out loud a book on the laptop, something about a guy stuck on Mars. You’re very lucky that Stratt ordered the entirety of human media to be downloaded to the ship computers, it’s given you guys access to every book you could ever want to read, every movie you could ever want to watch, every song you could ever want to listen to. And the best part? None of those stupid streaming service subscriptions.

The Eridian response to human media is quite entertaining. Surprisingly Rocky does not like the “rock” music genre, but he has taken quite a liking to jazz. Ryland has been learning Eridian written script and working on translating software, so he can make Earth books accessible to his students. Movies are hit or miss with the Eridians since visual input doesn’t mean much to them unless they translate it into sound texture, but Adrian has been enjoying some comedies. They like to confuse Rocky with human jokes and references.

Ryland finishes the chapter and closes the laptop, setting it on the bedside table and turning back to kiss you senseless. A goodnight kiss that doesn’t take your breath away is a foreign concept to him.

“I love you,” he says, nuzzling his nose against yours.

“I love you, too.”