Thank you for this bitter knowledge – Rufus Wainwright, Go or Go Ahead

River looked down on the world, not at all surprised that she was able to breathe in the vacuum of space. It’s just the way things were.

From up above, she could see every ridge and valley and body of water on the planet laid out before her like a topography map. It was really quite beautiful and reminded her of a hovering globe of Osiris she had in her room as a child. It had been a birthday present from her parents and it had been placed in the corner opposite her bed, so she could see it at night. It worked on a small anti-grav drive, which she had taken apart and reassembled the first chance she had, and it spun in perfect time with Osiris, glowing a warm yellow during the day and a soothing blue at night. It had calmed her on nights when she couldn’t make her mind stop its constant calculating. She would lie in her bed, hold her thumb and index finger out in front of her and, if she squinted just right, it looked like she held the planet in her own hand. A whole world between her child’s finger and thumb. Back when she thought that the whole ‘Verse was hers to own…

She tried it, just then, reached out through the Black and held out her hand and smiled when it was just like she remembered. She gave her fingers an experimental squeeze and was shocked when she could actually feel the planet there, between her digits. An insubstantial weight, like a marble, but still, it was there. She leaned in close to better inspect this novel phenomenon and gasped when the atmosphere of the planet pulled her in like a meteor.

River found herself on the surface of the planet. No longer a topography map, but a vast and barren reality. Bleak plateaus and the empty black of canyons at night. A large red moon cast a deathly pal on everything and it might have been ugly had a smaller moon, pure white, not softened the red glow and made everything look strangely nostalgic. In the distance she could see the glow of a fire. Could be a