Time Is A Curtain

• Lilijanna Sogiannis, Grade 9, Murrumba State Secondary College
• Short Story
• 2019

Finalist in the 'Inspired 2019' competition

The insides of the enormous building must have once been a garden; grainy feculent sand crunched under my space boots. The large circular room had a ceiling of jagged crisscrossed metal that arched up into a dome, and provided no relief from the harsh terrain. The sun blazed enormously in the sky, brighter and hotter than anything I’d ever felt on my own planet. My skin-tight cooling suit must’ve been working overtime to compensate for E0001’s lack of an atmosphere.
The muffled crunch of weight being applied to sand sent a frightened zap of nerves through my body. A little girl was walking through the domed building. My heart racing, I stared at her incredulously. This planet had been uninhabitable for over five million years.
She looked no older than eight or nine. Her wispy hair was a faded, washed out blonde, almost the same shade as her simple white dress. There was something foreign about the child, and the air around her quivered more insistently then any heat wave could muster.
She starred at me with wide scared eyes, and I knew a moment before she did it, that she was going to bolt. Hastily I grabbed her thin arm; I couldn’t leave her to die on this dead planet. But the moment I made contact, the air rippled around us like silky curtains drifting in a non-existent breeze. And then everything melted upwards.
Colour leaked back into the landscape starting from the ground, and trickling up the walls like tiny rivulets of water, smoothing over and repairing the razed landscape. Plants blossomed to life in seconds. Birds flitted between the big living trees. A soft breeze encompassed me in cool sweet smelling air. The little girl stood next to me, but she looked completely different. Her skin was now a healthy pink and her hair a light brown. Somehow she seemed more solid, more real. She was trembling; her eyes not seeing the haven I was.
I released my grip on the little girl’s arm and staggered back. Instantly everything crumbled and disappeared into dust. I stared at her intently, my thoughts whirling faster than the speed of light. The little girl’s shaky breathing was the only sound for light-years. Gently I encased her small white hand in my large dark blue one. The moment our skin touched the invisible curtains fluttered and lifted. The landscape exploded with life, colour, and sound. I was standing on Earth as it was millenniums ago, vibrant and alive, and she was standing in the extinct wasteland that was planet E0001. We were glimpsing each other’s worlds.
We sat in companionable silence, the weight of what we had both just seen sitting between us as tangibly as the dust. To the little girl I appeared as a slightly faded, transparent version of myself sitting in a lush garden. To me she was a ghost girl, sitting on a planet that had been devoid of life for millions of years.