Whispers of the Dark

“Sarah, when you grow up and have your own spaceship, you'll understand why we keep traveling to the other stations at Proxima Centauri or Barnard’s Star. One day, you’ll go too.”

Every time my parents left for their space journeys, they repeated these words. And every time, I was left alone at home, counting the days until their return. Days stretched into weeks, and when I could no longer keep track of the time that had passed, they would finally come back.

It was always the same.

Until I was five.

When I was four, I had already become accustomed to my parents’ frequent travels across the stars. It was just part of our life. But this time was different. It was the first time my birthday fell during one of their absences, and I felt a sadness that I didn’t quite understand. I knew I would have to spend my special day alone, but there was nothing I could do about it. I resigned myself to treating it like any other day.

But that wasn’t the only thing that changed.

I waited for them as I always did, but the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. I was so used to being alone that I hardly noticed the passage of time. It wasn’t until my next birthday came around that I realized how long they had been gone.

I was six years old. A lonely, orphaned six-year-old who had never met another human being besides my parents. A child who had grown up mostly alone, and now would have to grow up entirely alone. A child who worried about her parents but had no one to reassure her. But even at that young age, I had learned to survive on my own, a skill that proved to be my most important asset.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t have things to do. Our home was filled with all sorts of gadgets and educational tools, the kind my parents would bring back from their journeys. I would spend hours tinkering with them, trying to figure out how they worked. There was one device: a small, cube-shaped object with glowing edges. That fascinated me the most out of all of them. My parents once told me it was a data cube, something that stored vast amounts of information. But no matter how much I studied it, I could never get it to open. I imagined it held secrets of the universe, or maybe even messages from other worlds. It became my closest companion, a puzzle I would return to whenever I felt the weight of loneliness pressing down on me.

And then there were the nights. I would lie in bed, staring out the window at the stars. I had memorized every constellation visible from our home. The stars were my friends, the only ones who stayed with me through every night. I would make up stories about them, imagining there were other children there, alone on their planets, looking up at the same stars and wondering if there was anyone out there like them.

Sometimes, I would pretend that my parents were just on the other side of one of those stars, that if I could just build a ship fast enough, I could reach them and bring them back. But as the months passed and I got older, even those stories became harder to believe.

Probably every other kid my age was out there, playing with friends and going to school.

But not me.

Friends? I didn’t have any. I had been born into solitude, and in a few short years, that solitude became absolute. School? I’d heard of it—a place where you learn things and meet friends. But I didn’t need friends, and I didn’t see the point in learning things that had no use to me. Yet, the word “school” fascinated me. Maybe, someday, I’d give it a try.

In truth, I spent my days studying and honing my skills, teaching myself everything I needed to know. I realized that attending school might have only slowed me down, given the dedication I had to my own education.

If I had stopped training, I would have been nothing more than a useless six-year-old girl. Survival would have become a much different challenge. So I chose a different path—the path of becoming someone whose name would be known across planets. And the only tools I had at my disposal were my own abilities, sharpened by solitude and determination.

My days fell into a routine, the kind of routine that can drive most people mad, but in my case it just kept me focused. In the mornings, I would wake up early, just as the light from our distant star started to filter through the window. My first task was always the same: study.

My parents had left behind a library of knowledge, stored in holographic data pads and interactive simulations. I devoured it all: everything starting from basic engineering and up to advanced astrophysics, from alien languages to the history of Earth, the planet I lived on and yet knew nothing about.

But I wasn’t just a passive learner, I practiced what I learned. In our home, I found tools and components that I could use to build things, or to fix the machines that had started to wear down over time. The satisfaction of seeing something I had put together with my own hands work, it was a reward in itself. It made me feel capable in a universe that had taken so much from me.

In the afternoons, I would go outside. Our home was nestled in a small valley that was once an outpost but had long since been abandoned by everyone except my family and a few more. The air was thin, the landscape barren, but I knew every spot in it, it was mine. I would walk for miles, exploring every inch; every now and then, I would come across old ruins, remnants of structures from the true humans that had once lived here. I would sift through the debris, sometimes finding old tools, pieces of technology, or forgotten data chips. It felt like searching for ghosts in the shadows, records of lives that had long since faded away.

The nights were always the hardest. No matter how much I kept myself occupied during the day, when darkness fell, the house felt too quiet, too empty. I would lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, and wait for any sound that could have been a sign of someone coming back. But there was nothing. Only silence.

One night, after I had finished studying and the stars were twinkling through my window, I made a decision. I was now 12 years old and I certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for something that I realized would have never happened. I didn’t want to be the girl left behind on a now lonely planet. If no one was coming for me, I would go searching for them.

I started small. I began tinkering with the equipment in our garage. The garage was filled with parts of an old starship, the one my parents had used when for their first space travels. It hadn’t flown for years, and it was in pieces, scattered across the floor. But as I sifted through the parts, I felt a thrill of excitement.

This was my way out. And it wasn’t only my departure from home, leaving the place I was born in and getting lost in random places I could have found crossing the Milky Way. My family, for what I knew, is one of the few left that still lives on Earth, and have been living here through generations since the origins of humanity.

I worked on it, every day, learning it’s functions as I went along, using the knowledge I had accumulated over the years. It was slow progress, frustrating at times, especially when I couldn’t figure out how a certain part fit, or when I lacked the tools or materials to make the repairs. But I kept doing my best with the means that were available.

As the months passed, the starship began to take shape. It was no longer a pile of parts but a vessel. A way to escape, to explore, to find the answers I had been searching for since my parents disappeared.

I wasn’t just building a ship. I was building my own future.

And in the quiet moments, when I wasn’t building or studying, I would sit in the cockpit, imagining what it would be like to finally leave this planet behind. To see the stars up close, to visit the stations at Proxima Centauri and Barnard’s Star, just like my parents had done so many times before.

But more than anything, I imagined finding them. I imagined what it would be like to see their faces again, to ask them all the questions I had kept bottled up inside. Why did they leave? Why didn’t they come back? Were they still out there, somewhere, waiting for me, just as I had waited for them? All of this could be possible only if they weren’t dead as I thought they were, but still alive somewhere in this massive universe. And if they really were, would I recognize them after all these years alone?

As I grew older, these questions drove me forward. They became my purpose.

I wasn’t going to be a victim of circumstance, a forgotten child in a forgotten world. I was going to find my parents, or at least find out what had happened to them. And when I did, the name "Sarah" would be known across the stars: not as the girl who was left behind, but as the one who fought her way through the darkness to find the light.

But for now, I was still just a girl, alone on a small planet, building a starship in a garage. And for every part I connected, every system I brought back online, I felt myself growing stronger, more ready for the journey that lay ahead.

I didn’t know when I would leave, or what I would find when I did. But I knew one thing for certain: I no longer wanted to wait for someone to come for me.

As the months turned into years, I grew; and not just in height, but in knowledge, in skill, and in resolve. The small hands that once struggled to hold a wrench now moved with confidence, tightening bolts, reconnecting circuits, and bringing the starship closer to life with every passing day. My reflection in the cockpit’s polished glass changed, too; the round-faced child with wide eyes and tangled hair gradually transformed into a young woman with sharp features and eyes that burned with purpose.

I long outgrew the clothes I used to wear, and with no new ones to replace them with, I learned to sew and mend what I had, creating garments that were practical for the work I did.

My voice deepened, and the echoes of it bouncing off the empty walls no longer startled me. It became a companion of sorts, a reminder that I’m still here moving forward.

My brain grew too in a different way, I spent hours in the library, devouring more complex subjects, things that would have bewildered me as a child. Advanced physics, star navigation, engineering beyond what I’d thought possible; it all became part of my daily studies. I wasn’t just a survivor anymore; I was becoming an expert, someone who could navigate the stars and repair a ship in deep space without any problem.

I marked the passage of time by the changes in the landscape and the gradual progress on the starship. Each cycle around our sun brought me closer to my goal. I kept a journal, scribbling notes and diagrams, recording everything I learned, everything I planned to do once I left this world. It became a proof of my growth, a record of how far I had come from the lonely, frightened child I once was.

The girl who once stared at the stars with longing had transformed into someone who was ready to claim them. My parents had left me with little more than questions and an aching heart, but they had also given me something priceless, an indomitable will, the kind of determination that only comes from surviving the impossible.

On my fourteenth birthday, I stood before the starship, no longer a child but not yet fully grown. It wasn’t finished, but it was close. I could see the outlines of the vessel it would become, the craft that would carry me away from this planet and into the vast unknown.

The childlike dreams of finding my parents had evolved into something more complex, more urgent. It wasn’t just about them anymore. It was about me, about discovering who I was in a universe that had nearly forgotten me. I wanted to leave this place where I only had sad memories and in my future I wasn’t just going to find answers, I was going to make a name for myself, to carve out a place in the cosmos where I belonged, to explore all my galaxy in its entirety, leaving no more misteries and obtaining a complete knowledge.

By the time I was fifteen, the ship was practically ready. The engines purred under my touch, the navigation systems hummed with data, and the hull gleamed in the faint light of my dark planet. Everything I had learned, everything I had worked for, had led to this moment.

I stood at the threshold, the final frontier no longer a distant dream but a reality within reach. I was no longer the child who waited for her parents to return. I was Sarah, the girl who built her own way out, who refused to be forgotten, who was ready to make the leap into the stars.

I wasn’t just ready to leave. I was determined to find whatever it was that awaited me beyond this world. Whether it was my parents, answers to the questions that had haunted me for years, or something entirely unexpected, I knew one thing for certain: I was no longer alone in the universe.

And with that knowledge, I stepped into the cockpit, my hands steady on the controls, my eyes fixed on the horizon.

The stars were calling.

They were calling for me.