Shore Leave

I. Landing

Reed stood on the porch and stared out at the view like it was behind glass.

The cabin was perched high enough above the fjord to see its whole serpentine length stretching out into the distant horizon. Water like hammered silver. Pine trees lining both banks like a sea of dark velvet. Sunlight poured in low from the west, gold-plating the hills in a way that would have made a photographer weep with joy. A gull cawed overhead. Something rustled through the grass. Somewhere, distant, a dog barked twice and then fell silent.

Perfect. This green earth, fresh, beautiful, and perfect.

Reed didn’t feel a thing.

He set his bag down, military issue, still crusted in a fine red dust that burrowed its way in every zipper, and let the porch’s wooden chair groan under his weight. He leaned back, exhaled slowly. Tried to count how many times he’d dreamed of this: fresh air, warm wood beneath his feet, the smell of salt and pine and soil. No hiss of CO₂ scrubbers. No metal tang from the airlock seal. No endless silence broken only by your own heartbeat.

He’d wanted this. All of them had.

He rested a hand on the railing and stared down at his fingers. They looked too long. Too clean. The nails had grown back wrong. Or maybe it was the gravity, still a little too heavy, like everything was soaked in water.

A gnat landed on his forearm. He didn’t swat it. Just watched as it walked in slow spirals before flying off again. A few weeks ago, he’d have killed for that kind of company.

The chair creaked as he shifted. The back of his neck itched from the sun, already reddening after just an hour outside. He wasn’t used to the weather. Wasn’t used to anything. Reed closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was darker. The sun had dipped behind the ridge and the water had gone still, catching the orange clouds in perfect mirrored lines. The kind of scene you’d see in a postcard, probably posted on a fridge somewhere.

His heart jumped. Not from beauty. From confusion. For one brief second, he didn’t know where he was. There was a flicker, an image, of that orange sky turning rust red. The water disappearing entirely, replaced with dust dunes and jagged basalt. His breath caught. The color was wrong. The light was wrong. He stood too fast and his vision blurred at the edges.

“Stop it,” he muttered, squeezing his temples. “It’s just sunset. It’s just Norway.”

Inside, the kettle screamed. He didn't remember turning it on. Reed moved slowly, like the floor might tilt. The cabin smelled like lemon soap and pine cleaner. It was all too neat. Too quiet. Like a display model.

He poured the water into the mug and stared as the tea bag bloomed brown. His hands didn’t shake. They felt distant, like they belonged to someone else. Out the window, the first stars were coming in. The fjord reflected them so clearly, it looked like he was on the edge of space again. Orbiting, maybe. Or dreaming. He touched the glass.

Cold. Real. Somewhere inside him, something shifted. He wasn’t sure if it was waking up or falling asleep. Then a shadow passed across the porch. Just a flicker. A shape, like someone walking past the cabin, but when he opened the door, there was nothing there.

Only the view. Perfect.

II. Redlight

The tea had gone cold in his hands.

Reed hadn’t moved since the shadow passed the porch. If it had passed. Maybe it was the clouds. Maybe he was imagining things. The wind had picked up, soft and unthreatening, making the grass hiss like the static before a signal cleared.

He set the mug down. The cabin’s interior was dim now, lit only by the stovetop bulb and the leftover burn of the sunset outside. He hadn’t turned on any lights. Didn’t want to. The shadows were cleaner. Somewhere behind his eyes, the red began to rise again.

Red as sand. Red as the sky at noon. Red as the blood someone coughed up into their suit but didn’t tell anyone. Just radio silence for two hours, then “Copy that,” like nothing had happened. He blinked.

The silence was thick out there. Not quiet: a vacuum. Not even your own thoughts echoed properly in that place. They got swallowed. Flattened. The only noise was your own breath and the tin-can crackle of comms. And that wasn’t noise. That had been survival.

There’d been five of them. Reed, Sanchez, Ilya, Baines…

He remembered the way Sanchez hummed under her breath while cataloging soil samples, off key, but familiar. How Baines always tapped the same pattern on the oxygen gauge when they were in the crawler. And Ilya…Ilya had cried.

Someone had, anyway.

It was on Sol 186, during a whiteout. They were stuck in the rover for 18 hours, no visual, no signal. One of them had turned off their mic and cried. He remembered the breathing hitch over the backup channel, the way it stuttered and dropped. He never asked. No one ever mentioned it.

Earth’s sounds were different. Too wet. Frogs. Wind. Birds with throats and lungs. Nothing like it had been there. Tight. Nothing wasted. Nothing alive long enough to get complicated.

His knees popped as he stood, still unused to the extra weight. Every step felt like it might punch his spine through his skull. His hips ached. His ankles rolled too easily. The body adjusts, they told him. They didn’t say how slowly.

He opened the drawer near the sink. Inside: two forks, one spoon, a wine key and a child’s drawing. It was old. Crinkled. Crayon on yellow paper. A stick figure in a red suit, holding hands with a bigger stick figure wearing a crown. The sun was smiling in the corner. The caption, written in wobbly block letters: FOR DAD. COME BACK SOON.

He hadn’t brought this. Had he? He’d meant to leave it. Had, in fact. Left it taped inside his locker on the station, right next to a photo of the coast in winter. One of those disposable things you keep to feel human.

But it was here. He reached out and touched it. The crayon was faded but real. The little red spacesuit was exactly as he remembered. It felt like part of him was still 225 million kilometers away, orbiting the sun on that cold, dead rock, taped inside a locker he would never see again.

His chest ached. Like he was looking at his own face in a mirror and realizing the reflection was blinking out of sync. Outside, the wind caught the edge of the porch swing. It creaked once. Then again.

The sound wasn’t right. Too rhythmic. Too…measured. He turned toward the window. There was a figure standing by the tree line. Watching.

Too still.

Too tall.

The view, as ever, remained perfect.

III. Visitor

Reed didn’t hear the car.

He only noticed when the knock came, not on the door, but the porch railing. Three quick taps, casual. He opened the door and squinted into the last gold of the evening.

“Sanchez,” he said.

She was sitting on the swing, legs folded beneath her, a steaming thermos between her hands. Same old Sanchez. Her short, blunt bangs under a knit cap, jacket too big for her frame. She hadn’t aged. Or maybe he’d just gotten older without her.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, smiling. “I let myself in.”

“I didn’t hear your car.”

“Didn’t bring one. Took the ferry. Hitched the last mile in.”

Reed stared at her. “Why?”

“You didn’t answer my messages. Or Baines’s. Or anyone’s.”

He stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind him with more force than needed. “I’m not in the mood for a visit.”

“Sure you are.” She patted the swing. “Sit. Drink. Pretend we’re normal.”

He didn’t move. Sanchez sighed, unscrewed the thermos lid, and poured two mugs. The scent hit him, cinnamon and orange. Her go-to blend.

“You still drink this stuff?” he asked.

“Only when I need to feel like myself.”

Reed sat reluctantly. The swing creaked under their weight. She handed him the mug without looking at him.

“How long’ve you been here?” she asked.

“Three days, I think.”

“You talk to anyone?”

He sipped. It burned, in a good way. “The barista in town.”

“Still allergic to people, then.”

He didn’t smile. They sat in silence, broken only by the soft rattle of wind in the trees. A pair of gulls screamed somewhere out over the fjord. The water shimmered, pale blue laced with pink.

“Earth’s too loud,” Reed muttered. “Too warm. Too real.”

Sanchez leaned back. “You were always the one who said you’d kiss the ground first.”

“Guess I lied.”

She glanced at him. “You remember Sol 186?” He froze.

“Yeah.”

“Someone cried. In the rover.”

Reed stared straight ahead. “Wasn’t me.”

“Wasn’t me either.” More silence.

“Ilya’s in a facility,” Sanchez said quietly. “Checked herself in. She stopped sleeping. Started dreaming with her eyes open. Talking to people who weren’t there.”

Reed’s throat tightened. “Is she…okay?”

“They say she will be. But the things she said…Baines is scared. He hasn’t left home in weeks.”

“What things?”

“She talked about it. About the red. About something underneath it. Said we brought it back.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

He stood too quickly. The mug sloshed. “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“No, but someone had to.”

He turned his back to her, fists clenched. The air was suddenly too thick. The sky too bright.

“There’s guilt,” she said, standing now too. “You think it’s yours. We all do. That’s how it works. Something went wrong and no one talks about it.”

“Don’t.”

“Something followed us, Reed. Maybe not a thing. Maybe just a crack. But I think we left the door open.”

His voice was thin. “Why are you really here?”

She held out something small. A photo. A selfie. Reed, Ilya, Sanchez and Baines. Taken the night before launch. On the back, someone had written. Do not forget where you started.

“It’s happening to all of us,” Sanchez said. “But it starts different for each. A dream. A shadow. Something left behind.”

Reed didn’t take the photo. But he didn’t walk away, either.

The view was still perfect.

But his hands were shaking.

IV. Pressure

They didn’t go inside.

Sanchez sat on the porch step now, hugging her knees like a kid waiting for a ride home. Reed paced the length of the deck, mug forgotten on the railing, cooling in the dusk air.

“So you’re saying we’re haunted?” he finally said.

“Not haunted,” Sanchez replied. “Just…leaking.”

“Leaking?”

“Memories. Places. Gravity. It’s all supposed to reintegrate. But maybe the seal never took.”

Reed stopped. “You think it’s…” he gestured upwards.

“I think it’s what happened,” she said with emphasis.

He looked at her. The silence stretched. He’d never said it out loud.

“You mean when Ralston…”

“Died,” she finished, quiet.

“He didn’t just die. We left him.” The words landed heavy between them. They’d told the committee it was a systems failure during EVA. Which was true. Up to a point. But the oxygen leak could have been managed. If they’d carried him. If they’d risked the mission. If they’d chosen differently.

“He made us promise,” Reed said. “You remember that, don’t you? ‘Finish the mission. Don’t come back for me.’”

“I remember,” she said. “But I also remember the look in his eyes when the hatch closed.” Sanchez rubbed her arms, as if the air had chilled. “I hear him sometimes. In dreams. Or not-dreams. He’s still out there. Not angry. Not sad. Just…waiting.”

Reed leaned against the railing. The fjord had gone glassy, too smooth to be real. And the colors had shifted. He blinked hard. No, not shifted. Tilted.

The sky above the far ridge was no longer gold and pink. It was bruised, red bleeding into purple. Not the way Earth made color. Not the way this world layered light. The water, too, had turned dull. Dusty. Like it was reflecting not the sky but something deeper. A memory. A surface scorched and windless.

“Do you see that?” he asked.

“I’ve been seeing it,” Sanchez whispered.

He stared at the trees. Still. Rigid. Like cardboard props against a painted backdrop. Nothing moved. Not the grass. Not the clouds. Not even the birds.

There were no birds.

“How long has this been happening?” he asked.

“Since I left the debrief. I started seeing corners where there shouldn’t be. Colors that don’t fade. And smells, metallic and sharp. Like ozone. Like air scrubbers."

Reed didn’t respond. He was staring at his hands. They were dusted. Just barely.

Red.

He wiped them on his jeans. It smeared.

“I think I’m the breach,” he muttered. “I think…I didn’t come back whole.”

Sanchez stood. “No. We all brought something. But it’s louder in you. Because you’re not burying it.”

“I’m not exactly processing it, either.”

She gave him a dry smile. “We’re astronauts, Reed. We don’t process. We isolate. Compartmentalize. Survive.”

He looked out at the shifting landscape. The angles, the feel of pressure inside his ears. Sanchez walked to him, pressed something into his palm. A black capsule.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Failsafe.”

Reed stared at it. “You think this is going to fix it?”

“I think if it gets worse, you’ll know what to do.”

“Is that what they gave Ilya?”

Sanchez didn’t answer. The wind picked up then, but it was wrong. A dry hiss, like dust over metal. Reed smelled iron and plastic and something ancient. The cabin behind them flickered. Just once. But enough to know: it wasn’t just memory anymore.

Reality was starting to tilt.

V. Re-entry

The light didn’t fade.

It bled.

By the time they made it down the slope toward the water’s edge, the entire fjord was reflecting that same impossible hue. Like memory made visible. Like regret with a mirror.

Sanchez walked a few steps behind him, careful not to speak until he stopped.

“You don’t have to stay in it,” she said softly.

“I’m not sure I know how to step out.”

“You do. You just don’t think you deserve to.”

Reed crouched by the shoreline. The rocks here were smooth and cool, perfect for skipping. He picked one up. Turned it in his hand. It was lighter than it should be. Like the gravity wasn’t quite right.

“Do you remember what Ralston used to say?” he asked, eyes still fixed on the water.

“Which time?”

“When things went wrong. When the rover fried. When Ilya almost lost her hand to the reactor panel. He always said the same thing.”

She hesitated. Then nodded. “It’s not the end unless you stop walking.”

Reed exhaled through his nose, almost a laugh. “He was full of shit.”

“No,” Sanchez said. “He just knew how scared we all were. He gave us something to carry. Something to echo.”

Reed let the stone drop back to the ground.

“I kept hearing his voice after we left him,” he whispered. “Every time we sealed a hatch, every time we slept. Like he was…beneath the sound. Like he was still in the airlock.”

Sanchez stepped beside him. “We made an impossible choice,” she said. “It was human. Ugly. But not evil.”

Reed finally looked at her. “I still see the airlock open, Sanchez. Every time I close my eyes.”

“Then keep them open.”

He shook his head. “You adjusted. You’re here.”

“I broke down,” she said, looking down. “I sleep with white noise and a nightlight. I cry in grocery stores.”

Reed laughed. Just once. “Yeah?”

She smiled. “Yeah.”

The wind shifted. This time it smelled like salt. Real salt. Reed looked at the sky again. The red haze had thinned. The light was softer. A breeze stirred the pine trees. A gull cried out above them. He stepped to the edge of the water. Took off his glove. Reached out.

The water didn’t ripple. Didn’t yield. Just a glassy surface, dusted faintly red.

He dipped his hands in. When he pulled back, they weren’t wet. Caked instead in rust-colored grit. Martian soil.

His breath hitched. The air didn’t feel right anymore. Too dry. Too still. Too thin.

He looked up. The fjord was gone. So were the gulls, the trees. The sound of waves. The sky had turned the color of old clay. And hanging just above the horizon…

Blue. A tiny dot, distant, small and beautiful.

Earth.

Sanchez stood next to him. But now he could see her suit again, flickering into view. The comms wire trailing behind her, cut clean. She looked younger. Or maybe just further away.

“You left us,” he said. “You all left me.”

Her voice came from inside his helmet. A whisper across static. “We tried to bring you home.”

Reed closed his eyes. The pressure in his chest pulsed. Too much inside. Not enough outside.

He opened them. He was standing on the edge of a crater. The stars above gone. There was no wind. There never was. He looked up at Earth, faintly visible, one last time.

And smiled.