A dozen alarms echoed through the small vessel, and the console lights were blinking at an alarming rate. Avari scrambled to keep up, but there was nothing to be done. Her pod was going down, and, in the darkness of deep space, Avari would go with it.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
She could see a planetoid in the distance and prayed to the universe that it was habitable. Steam began pouring into the cabin as Avari donned her spacesuit and pressed a button on her arm.
“Personal log; I’m abandoning the pod and heading to the silver planet located at 13247.5 on the star map. Someone find me. Avari out.”
She pressed the button a second time, braced herself, and left the pod for the vacuum of space.
Avari used the propulsion system on her suit to clear the pod before it exploded, but the aftershocks knocked out her monitoring systems. She was flying blind.
“Great. I’m in deep space with no ship, a planet that still hundreds of lightyears away, and no way of knowing how much fuel or oxygen I have left.” She let out an ironic sigh. “I really should have listened to my mother and gone to medical school instead.”
The aftershocks had put the planetoid on her left, so Avari gently used the propulsion system to center herself and press forward, the silvery light her only beacon of hope in the vast emptiness of space.
*
After several hours, Avari felt herself growing sleepy. Her monitoring systems were still fried, which meant that she had no idea if the drowsiness came from low oxygen or boredom. The planetoid seemed closer, but, without her equipment, it was impossible to say for sure. A small red “O” began blinking in the corner of her face shield, and Avari let out a bitter laugh.
“Well, at least you’re still working. Good to know.”
She yawned and sucked in the last of the oxygen without realizing it. As she began to fall asleep, Avari saw something glowing just outside her field of view. She turned to look at it, and her eyes opened wide in astonishment.
The creature looked like a mermaid; it had a humanoid torso, a long, glossy tail, and wide fins attached to its arms. It seemed to be swimming through space; the silver aura around it acted like water and helped propel it forward, and Avari was doing her best to commit everything to memory. It swam up to her and regarded her with shimmering eyes the size of dinner plates. Avari smiled.
“I’m low on oxygen. Can you help me?”
She didn’t know if the creature understood her, but it was worth a shot. Darkness was creeping into her vision, and Avari knew that time was short.
“Please. Help me.”
Something in her voice must have registered with the creature because it wrapped an arm around Avari and pulled her into its silver aura. Avari felt energized, but she still couldn’t breathe, and the lack of oxygen was making her weak and dizzy.
More mermaid-creatures appeared in a rainbow of lights and surrounded Avari, bathing her in an ethereal glow. Their eyes were kind and sorrowful, and Avari knew that her time was up.
“Thank…you…for…not…letting…me…die…alone.” She gasped as her vision began to fade. The creatures embraced her as she died, their auras a comforting warmth in the cold vacuum of space.
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The prompt for this story was to “take a mythological creature and place them in a different environment.”
This is my interpretation.
What’s yours?
