Hollow Reminder

I set one foot carefully in front of the other, crouching behind Liara as she leads the way down the tunnel. Pierie hovers behind me, the others close behind her. I swat my hand at her, nudging her back. If I have to turn and run, I’ll trample her.

“What is it?” One of the boys breathes from behind me. I wave my hand in a gesture for silence.

“That cave’s been sealed for thousands of years.” Nolan mutters. “There’s no one alive in there.”

“Some creatures can live thousands of years.” I tell him pointedly, eyeing the sharpened tips of his ears. He doesn’t protest. Liara moves off the side, along a ledge, and I carefully step out after her and slide to the other side.

In the middle of the cave lies a crushed, twisted wreck of metal, with a few smooth–relatively smooth–sheets scattered across the cave floor. My throat constricts as my heart skips a few beats. Lyn slides up beside me, taking my hand. “Are you okay?” he breathes next to my ear. I nod, hesitate, then shake my head. I free my hand from his and tap the back of his glove, telling him to stay put. Then I slide down from the ledge. I hear surprised whispers, but ignore their words.

I stay crouched, scanning the area for any signs of life, but find none…none recent enough to matter. There’s something that might once have been a campfire, and I can’t bring myself to look at the piles surrounding it. I straighten and step carefully over to one of the sheets of metal, running a hand over it as I search desperately for some sign that I’m wrong, that this isn’t…from home.

My hopes are dashed as I recognize the sigil splayed across the sheet beneath my fingertips. Written in Latin. A piece nearby bears a few stripes of red and white, and that’s enough. Hot tears burn my cheeks as I stumble forward. Lyn catches my arm, not understanding, not seeing the ghosts of my past surrounding me. “What’s going on?” He asks, his voice dropping from its normal, cheerful pitch. I shake my head. I see a flask, half-buried in the dirt, a set of three metal canisters strapped together. A piece from many Renaissance Faires and Halloween parties. Anyone could have bought one of those. Anyone from my homeland. But something sick kicks me in the stomach anyway.

I stumble over to what might once have been a table. The middle looks like a complicated projector. I wipe away the years of grime and find faint outlines of labels underneath a row of buttons. I press the one marked power.

It groans and whirs, and the others step back in fear, but I look pleadingly at the air above the table.

“What are you doing?” Arane hisses at me, reaching out to the table. I slap her hand away.

“I can read this.” I say, surprised at how much of the intensity of my desperation seeps into my voice. Arane freezes.

“This is not…a language that has ever existed on this planet.” Nolan says carefully. Lyn takes my hand again, putting himself between me and Arane. My teeth chatter, and he wraps his arm around my shoulders instead. The holo table settles into a steady hum, and lights begin to flicker above it. An image of the planet we stand on appears. I shake my head.

“That’s really cool.” Liara mutters. I shake my head again.

There’s an arrow to the right of the planet. Marked Earth. I reach up and tap it.

“What’s that gonna do?” Arane shakes her head. “She’s lost it. Let’s get her out of here.”

I shake my head again, my vision blurring as my lip trembles. The planet holo slides to the left, stars rushing by for several minutes. Then I start to recognize things. The bright swirl of my own galaxy zooms in closer, then engulfs us. The others stumble back in surprise, but I’m already reaching up, zooming in, searching for my solar system. Reaching for home.

I count the planets as they whiz by and freeze, holding a small holographic projection of my home world in my hands. I spin and tap it, zooming in further and further and further, until my companions behind me realize I’m navigating a planet they’ve never seen or heard of before, beyond the sight of any of their stars, on a street level with more familiarity than I have ever shown with their nations, their cities. A hush falls behind me as I pull up an image of my childhood home. The satellite image had been taken one of my last days at home…tossing a football with my brother in the front yard.

“Is that…you?” Lyn breathes faintly. A holo of my father stands next to our old van, loading up my boxes for college. The football sails over my head as I reach for it, desperate to stop it from hitting the car in the road behind me. “Are those…is that…your family?”

I sink to my knees, reaching out, but a holo isn’t solid. The image rotates before me, taunting me.

“Five years.” I whisper, my brain glitching the first time so I say it in my native tongue first. I switch to the local common tongue for the second. I see realization sinking in on the faces around me. “I haven’t heard or seen writing in my native tongue for five years. Haven’t even spoken the name my mother gave me.”

Lyn has tears running down his face, real ones. Liara’s hand hovers near my shoulder. Pierie has her hands over her face, sparkling eyes wide. Nolan looks both deeply saddened and resigned.

I reach out towards my brother’s face, whispering in my native tongue, “Be well, my brother, wherever you are.” I continue my wishes, knowing full well they are all gone forever, but the act brings me some relief from the overwhelming pain of my grief. The holo hovers before me, an insubstantial reminder of everything I’d been running from, everything I’d been reaching for, for the last five years.