Log 1: PROMISES

There wasn’t a nightmare this time.

Peppered within the confines of the mind, the dreams come again.

Lost to some distant flow of memory does the Pilot feel the cool grass beneath his feet, the ground of solid, unshifting Earth absolute in its creation.

She was here as well, as with any other moment such as this.

Red eyes, snow white hair and pale skin. Her frame pressed against the distant backdrop of grassy hills, something utterly imaginative for the child raised in a universe of steel and concrete.

The promises you’ve made so long ago.

Those that still tie us together even when I’m gone.

What was it?

Do you remember?

“I can’t.” Alek Markov replies to nothing.

Her pale face and ruby eyes blend together, Alek trying to remember the familiar shape against the failing grasps of memory.

Across the wind she murmurs in closed silence. “Tell me.

When you look upon the Earth beneath our feet what do you see?

Do you ever wonder what it's like, to feel solid ground beneath your feet?

To hold unmoving dirt and breathe the air we were meant to breathe?

Tell me, is that something truly worth dying for?"

And for one time, such torment was short lived.