A Final View

“Here,” Tats puffed, his breath wheezing through his lips as he grappled with the red stone and fought the invisible weight of the atmosphere to get to the top. One foot lost its gripping, unsurprisingly with the age of his leather shoes - but he managed to adjust his weight, and with complaining muscles he heaved himself onto the rough stone. He reached out his arm, palm outstretched, and Zhara’s dry hand clasped his. With a final synchronised grunt of effort, he wrenched her up to the top of the rock. They both collapsed onto their backs, their chests heaving, drinking in any vitality left in the thin air in rapid breaths. Their hearts hammered in their hollow chests, and what water that was left in their body was slowly diminishing in the sweat beads on their copper scaled foreheads.

“We made it!” Zhara exhaled weakly after a few minutes of collecting the strength to speak again. Her throat felt as if somebody had scraped it with razor blades. The air whistled down her windpipe as if it were a deserted alleyway.

Tats painfully rolled to his side, and unzipped his bag to take a deep puff of his hydrogen reserves. In an instant he felt a cool sense of relief wash over his once-screaming muscles. He handed the tank to the girl and she hesitated, considering whether it was absolutely essential or whether she could save it until their next burst of effort. “Hey,” he noticed her hesitation, and his dry lips twitched into a smile, “you may as well use this now - take as much as you want.”

“Oh yeah,” her smile matched his in realisation, and she wiped the dirt off her face, placing the mask over her mouth and nose, feeling her lungs practically sing in response to her first pure, unrestricted breath of hydrogen in years.

“We made it,” Tats echoed.

The view from their spot was unlike anything they had seen before. They could see practically along the whole expanse of tectonic coastline, their town in the near distance looking so very small nestled at the base of the volcanic hillside. In the far distance was Mount Cygnus, belching clouds of sulphur-filled smoke above her mass, where they formed menacingly beautiful turrets in the angry red sky. Dotted amongst the tumultuous horizon were small lone swarms of sky jellies, sadly drifting in the high winds and slowly sinking closer and closer to the ocean under the weight of the heavy atmosphere. Soon sky jellies would be extinct, but likely not before the Keplien population faced its demise. They were far less demanding than the air-guzzling, resource-consuming, all-too-often selfish beings that were the Scaled Ones. 

“I actually can’t believe you made it,” Tats scoffed, looking over at his companion who was smoothing her sweaty black hair onto her scaled scalp. “I thought you were going to peg it halfway up!” The same cheeky smile crept across his mysterious complexion, the colour returning to his cheeks as his body relished in the scarce hydrogen it had just been provided with. 

“Me?” Zhara glanced incredulously at the heavily tattooed Keplien sat next to her. “I survived that trek with one less puff than you so you can shut your mouth,” she retorted, flexed her biceps and punched him on the shoulder.

“That didn’t hurt.”

“It wasn’t supposed to.”

“That’s what you want me to believe.” 

They sat there in silence for another few minutes, watching the ferocious waters batter the cliffs and yet another storm brew in the distance, sucking in the sulphurous surrounding dust clouds into a slowly spinning cyclone, ready to rip out any remaining live Keplien flora in the area.

After a long pause, Zhara spoke. “Do you think they made it?” She took a glance at Tats, who remained motionless and staring off into the distance. She admired his side profile for a few seconds and then he spoke, not taking his eyes off the sky. 

“I doubt it,” he answered blankly, and then with a bit more of his usual humorous self his tone - “pretty sure Kyala would have pegged it almost instantly with just one look of those bloody land leeches, the big baby.”

“Nah,” Zhara began, “you underestimate her - she’s got some hefty martial arts background on her side. Diki, on the other hand, is all talk no show - bet he tried to take down a Mutated and failed miserably and went ungracefully.”

“Alright. But Bo next - all claws no brains.”

“Agree on that one.”

A further silence draped over the two Kepliens and they listened to the wind whistling through the barren rocky landscape and dead twiggy trees. Tats shuffled a little closer to Zhara, considering putting his arm around her shoulders but hesitating for too long so instead he placed them on his thighs and rubbed up and down his muddy scaled legs, tracing the tattoo outlines with his fingertips. He glanced at Zhara, who met his gaze. He hadn’t focussed on her in a while. It came upon him to the realisation of just how thin she had gotten in the past few months alone. Her torn tank-top hung over her bony chest and he could see her jawline and cheekbones far more than he had before. He could see the sinews in her arm as she twitched, her elbows sticking out uncomfortably. Her eyes were sunken into their sockets, dark circles inviting his gaze to her bright green irises, which yet despite years of rationing, remained as prominent as ever. She was still as beautiful, but she was sick and dying, as was he.

Zhara snorted and shrugged her shoulders, breaking the silence again. “Damn, we clearly believed in our friends a lot.”

“Nah,” Tats scoffed. “Clowns. The lot of ‘em. See how much I care about their stupid ideologies.”

Unsure of what to say, the girl Keplien glared at her grazed scaly knuckles, clenching and unclenching them, watching the tendons move in her skinny wrists. “I wonder if they did make it to borders. I mean - it’s been a couple months, travelling across the country by foot - and if they did what they said they were gonna do - avoiding breached hydrozone layers and residing on the foothills of the various volcanoes on the way - with some proper planning at least some of them may have made it in one piece - surely?”

Tats scoffed again. “Yeah, highly unlikely they would have made it past the first stop.” He spat onto the ground, brushing sooty volcanic dust off the rock. “This place is a damn tectonic wasteland. If they didn’t accidentally go off course due to the fact we have all got so used to using those stupid mobile towers before all this shit happened, then they likely would have succumbed to a. exhaustion - starvation and dehydration included in that, b. those bloody land leeches, c. the Mutated from the breached areas going on a wander to fuck shit up, d. an eruption whilst they resided in the volcanic forests, e. - may I go on? Oh yeah, and if they did somehow miraculously make it to borders they would have been shot point blank, mistaken for a Mutated or because there’s no more fucking room in quarantine zones for anybody else on this planet!” Zhara could hear the bitterness behind his words. Their friends betrayed them, they promised to stay and stay to the end but they fled the town just like everybody else, in dire hopes they would somehow be accepted into the quarantine zones with no qualifications, a pending application that had likely been rejected or skimmed over because there was nothing really worth giving in the way of skills needed for scientific mastery, and all labour jobs likely had been taken the instant the quarantines zones were formed. People from the town of Cygnus-2 were low-paid, uneducated labourers, not scientists. Anybody who thinks they stood a chance in this town was proving the point of being under-educated; either that or some idiotic hopefulness. There was a reason quarantine zones were so far away from here. That, and the fact the town was based a few kilometres from a highly active volcano, just waiting to erupt. Again.

“Well,” Zhara shrugged, and stared into Tats' ruddy heated complexion. “Fuck ‘em. Fuck ‘em all.”

“Yeah,” Tats let out an exasperated sigh. “No point in wasting precious hydrogen, eh?” He nudged her playfully, his anger diminishing in an instant as if a candle were being blown out.

“Well, technically it doesn’t matter now.” Zhara smiled back at her companion. “At least we got each other.” She tentatively reached out her bony fingers and interlocked hands with Tats, feeling the dryness of his scaly hands meet hers.

They watched the storm gather in the distance, the copper sea raging in the Gulf, and the great orb that was Kepler-452 hanging menacingly across the length of the sky, dull-red and gently pulsing, its strength weakening and its gravity increasing with each day that went by, each meal that was missed, each Keplien that succumbed to the natural disasters it brought with its slow death and their own selfish desires. 

“You know what,” Tats began, his teeth glinting in the copper light. “I guarantee there are no world leaders on this planet anymore. Bet they all took off months ago on their under-cover space programmes.” His eyes met hers, glinting mischievously. “Bet there’s fucking anarchy happening in those quarantine zones.”

“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”

“Well,” he began, shifting his weight painfully, “you know all those years ago they were talking about that other planet they found that looked like it could sustain life?”

“Oh yeah - the one you had a hunch they were actually talking to, y’know, because they detected the flying objects and that.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the one. K2 or whatever they named it, because it looks similar to how ours looked - with something like our hydrozone -”

“Ozone? The one with oxygen atmosphere, right. The Oxygen-Breathers?”

“Right,” he agreed, and continued, leaning in slightly as if there was anybody actually still alive nearby and were listening in. “Well, I think they’ve been working on getting important leaders over to there, and whoever they deem of the ‘highest intellect’ too - in a sort of staggered system.” He whispered, and then reached into his bag and pulled out a couple of sachets and a black locked box, placing it on the dry dusty rocks next to them. 

Zhara laughed, her sweet voice piercing the heavy polluted air like a songbird would have done before they became extinct. “What, ya think they really could travel a whole one thousand four-hundred light years or something ridiculous like that? Didn’t they say it would take at least twenty-six million K2 years for them to reach us?” Her smile was like a cool breeze on a hot summers day - days when skies used to be pale and unthreatening and cosmic grasses and Cygnusflowers used to scatter the rocky landscape.

“Dude, I think you underestimate how much we know as a species,” Tats went on. “Like, we are so damn clever we have ultimately caused our own apocalypse, or at least brought it forward a few damn years in the timeline of our existence.”

It was Zhara’s time to scoff. “Dunno if that makes us clever or pretty fucking stupid if you ask me.”

Tats grinned. “Well, I’m not stupid at least.”

“That’s what stupid people would say. Lack of self-awareness, yeah? Are you sure you haven’t been mutated?” 

The once-burly Keplien playfully shoved Zhara to the ground, dust flying up and into his mouth, to where he coughed explosively in response. 

“Ew, now you’re gonna give me that damn virus I thought they got rid of?”

“Shut up,” he rested his large hands gently on her bony shoulders, pinning her down as she lay uncomfortably on the uneven ground, legs thrashing uselessly.

“Get off me you freak!”

“Make me.” He leant in, watching his coppery reflection in Zhara’s emerald eyes and feeling her legs still. He softened his grip on her shoulders and felt one arm reach up to the back of his neck, her pupils slits dilating, scanning his complexion as he felt her weak heart beat a little faster. His face slowly moved closer to hers, the red star highlighting the tattoos on his jaw and neck and lighting them up, a work of art. She delicately traced her finger down the back of his neck, and his eyes softened.

Until she found the spot she was looking for, that was, and then one claw slowly extended, her pupils constricted and she jabbed him right in the pressure point.

“Ow!” he yelped and his hands slipped from her shoulders and he collapsed next to her, his muscles spasming in response.

Zhara’s laugh filled the empty air once more as she scrabbled up to a seated position. “Do you forget who I am?”

Tats grinned wildly, breathing in the thin air heavily. “Nah, I always knew you were going to do that.”

“Sure.” 

Zhara grabbed the black box and picked the lock with her sharp black extended claw. “So… the whole point of this wacky space-talk then - you wanna build a rocket and show Diki, Bo and them lot why they should have stayed and died with us?” She prized the precious box open, revealing four neatly packed chocolate bars that hadn’t seen daylight in years.

“Of course, I’ll do the work though, we all know who’s got the brains here.”

“Sure.” She picked out one and handed it to Tats, and unwrapped the other.

“Wait wait - no dessert until after dinner!” Tats sat up again, wincing in pain as he did so. He grabbed the pouch and waved it in front of Zhara’s nose. “It’s curry tonight, and not half but a whole one!” He exclaimed gleefully.

“There’s four of these left.” She gestured to the bars in front of her. “Two each, one as a pre-dinner snack, the other as dessert, of course. We aren’t rationing anymore.” And with that she took a bite and let the caramel-filled goodness fill her mouth - Tats could practically feel the relief throughout her whole body. He watched her shoulders relax once more. It must have been years since they had both eaten one of these - saving it until the end.

Tats accepted the other bar and unwrapped it, feeling the heavy air thicken. A low, almost unnoticeable tremor shook the rocks beneath their perch, and the wind began to pick up around them as the dirty sky grew darker. A couple of small copper stones came loose and clattered down the hill they climbed up from. In the distance, he watched another plume of acrid smoke belch from Mount Cygus’ jaws. He brought out the hydrogen reserves and took another deep breath, handing it to her to do the same. “We ain’t rationing this now either so knock yourself out.”

“What about the space-ship?” Zhara’s chocolate-filled mouth broke into a smile as she reached for the mask.

“Eh, after a good night’s sleep I’ll be fine.”

“An eternal sleep?”

“Hell yeah, bring it on baby. I’ll be making spaceships in the grave. In my next life, y’know.”

“You mean we?”

“Nah. As I said you’ll just sit there looking pretty as I do all the work.”

“Don’t make me stab you again.” 

Tats this time did put his arm around her, his big hand gently squeezing her small bony shoulder, and Zhara tentatively rested her head into his much larger shoulder.

The sky rolled again, another tremor this time noticeably shaking the ground as Cygnus increasingly became angrier. Kepler-452 pulsed gently behind the sooty blood-stained clouds, watching its dying planet beneath that once teemed with life. The two Kepliens watched the acid sea breach the barriers to the town and a tidal wave swell and break, beginning to flood what used to be their home.

“How long do you think we got left?” Zhara mumbled sleepily, her belly filled with chocolate bliss and the sound of Tat’s slow heartbeat lulling her into a slumber.

“At best give it a week. We’ll probably go sooner though - this storm will help - all the acid rain and that.”

“Fair enough.”

Tats gipped her waist and pulled Zhara as close as possible, wrapping her small body into his warmth, and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. As the storm and the evening began to descend around them, their bodies became tiny silhouettes on the giant red rock, highlighted by the great setting red star and all of Kepler-452b's moons.