To Dream of Sunsets

“Tomorrow, there will be elevated solar winds. It is advised that everyone remain inside their units…” There’s a light buzz as the station changes.

“Canada appears to be the next country from which citizens will be joining Project Lune…”

“The search continues for accessible water…while none has been found, the Mare Divers have reported that progress is steady…” 

It’s the same things they’ve said every night for the past ten years. The voice buzzes and dissolves as I turn the knob with a decisive click. 

I end the day the same way I always do: by the window, watching the sun set through the black with my radio beside me. The familiar voices are a bittersweet salve for this isolation as well as a temporary escape…until their reports start to bring me back to reality. There’s nothing else to listen to all the way out here, though. One can only hope that we start receiving audio dramas or podcasts from Earth soon. Anything is preferable to the news that remains repetitive and hopeless.

 The sun sears a blinding white through a lifeless void of a sky that only finds brief interruptions in a meager scattering of stars. The only difference between sunrise, sunset, and the rest of the day is the position of the sun. That is all. Watching it is like watching a launch failure: although the emptiness of it crushes my soul, it’s impossible to look away. I so often dream of seeing a sunset on Earth with my very own eyes. The countless videos and photos I’ve seen just cannot compensate. Neither can even the most vivid descriptions in literature. Even without seeing one, I know this is true. This does not stop me from taking out my paint set in yet another attempt to recreate that earthly beauty. 

Beginning is the hardest part. I’ve never seen something anywhere near as colorful as a sunset in real life, so choosing a color scheme is a difficult task. After some deliberation, I begin layering long streaks of yellow, orange, and pink across the canvas. I then blend the layers to create a cohesive expanse. I soon find a steady rhythm in the echoing swipe, swipe, swipe. 

I remember the evening a few years ago. In a flurry of sobs, anger and desperation, I asked my parents why they would even agree to come here in the first place. More than that, why they would come almost as soon as I was born, shackling me with the burden of becoming the youngest Permanent Resident of the Moon. Both were in such shock. I’m typically the stable one. The calm one. The anchor. They never expected to see me crack like glass, sudden and sharp and violent. 

All I got were a handful of sheepish excuses about how they thought “it would be good for us”. Neither could provide a genuine answer. I didn’t expect one.

I snap out of the trance the paintbrush’s soft lullaby put me in. I’d been completely lost in my thoughts, as was evident by the painting sitting in front of me. I had absentmindedly dipped my brush into the wrong container. The canvas in front of me was not the candy swirl of pastels and fluffy, warm clouds I had imagined at all. Instead, it was nothing but cold expanse of black littered with white flecks of stars. 

It happens every time.

Every

 single

 time.

I glance out of my window again with a sigh, knowing exactly what I will find. 

Just before I tire of looking at this patch of barren landscape, something catches my eye. An unfamiliar shadow among the ones I know better than my own.

No. 

It cannot be. 

Nothing changes here. 

Nothing truly lives here, though we pretend to. That’s what I tell myself as I click the button to close the motorized window blinds and get ready for bed. 

Yet, I cannot stay asleep for long. The figure reappears over and over again in my dreams. Only, its surroundings are distorted: the sky is inste A real one.

 In resignation after several hours of enduring the intrusive images, I finally slip out of bed, go to the suit holding room, and begin the arduous process of putting my moonwalking suit on as quietly as possible–as if there were a quiet way to do so. After spending almost twenty minutes putting on heavy layer by suffocating layer of equipment, I insert an oxygen tank into my life-support backpack and hook it to my suit. After a moment’s hesitation, I also strap on a headlamp to see through the infinite black. My insulated boots muffle my steps greatly as I enter the passcode and undo the countless locks on the inner door of the airlock. It opens with a pained screech.

 I hold my breath for a moment. 

Surprisingly, no one stirs. After closing it tightly behind me and repeating the process with the outer door, I am outside.

Cursing the moon’s low gravity, I circle our unit slowly and safely in the low gravity. If I were injured, the lack of atmosphere would kill my screams right where I stand. After reaching the area outside of my room’s window, I immediately begin to survey the area. 

A figure clearly stood out from the otherwise uniform landscape of white and glass units on a barren gray ground. Sitting on my knees to get a closer look, I wonder if space madness has finally hit me. This has to be a hallucination. It defies everything. Physics, biology, all of it. 

Not believing my eyes, I gently touch a silken petal, fully expecting it to melt away as I awaken from yet another dream. But it doesn’t.

Here, without water or carbon dioxide or an atmosphere,  growing from a crack in the dry gray soil, was a white lily. A sprightly, delicate white bloom with a ruby-red stamen and firm, deep green leaves.

And, for the first time in my life, I felt alive.