In Your Arms \\ Joseph Whetzel Poppies \\ Brint Domangue

In Your Arms

Joseph Whetzel

Agonal breathing. That was the closest Morgan could come to describing what he was experiencing now. Agonal breathing, a horrid gasp inwards that delivered no relief and instead only made his lungs burn. Agonal breathing, the same groan that the disease he and Marlow had caught on Bichichi had given him. The one where he and Marlow had spent weeks stuck on their ship, withering away with each other with raspy breathing and labored coughs and blood and then Morgan got better and Marlow died. This kind of reminded him of that. He had fallen a good forty feet or so, a fall that without the capsule underneath him to cushion the blow, would have probably killed him instantly. The capsule had absorbed the blow pretty well, and instead had left him in a lot of pain and with a cracked visor.. He thought about taking a page from Marlow’s book and just calling it quits, but he had already gotten this far, so he supposed he could just keep going, right? He reached up to the visor of his space suit and sucked in as big of a breath as he could before pulling the visor off. His lungs were on fire. He reached down into his bag to grab a replacement only to find that they too had cracked in the fall. Morgan’s face fell, and he breathed in. And sweet, sweet oxygen flooded into his nose. Thank God.

Poppies \\ Brint Domangue

Getting up off the ground hurt a whole lot, but so did everything else, so he got up anyway. The suit began reading off an injury report to Morgan, and he wiped the screen aside. The capsule. It had just clicked in his head that he had landed right on it. He looked down, and thank God, the capsule was alright. It had nestled itself partway into the ground as a result of the fall, but the outer casing looked fully intact. Morgan hoped he could say the same for the inside, but he didn’t open it. From his pack Morgan pulled a winch, and he began wrapping it around the cable. He gave the cable a tug and it stayed firm in place, and Morgan began to pull the capsule from the ground with the winch. When it was all said and done, he heaved the capsule onto his back and looked around. His fall had landed him halfway down a narrow canyon. Morgan looked up to the surface; the ground had crumbled away as a result of his weight. No chance he was risking climbing back up. His only choice was further down, which, upon examination, would prove to be difficult. Aside from the place he landed, a small patch of ground that jutted out from the cliff face, there was barely any footing. Great. Morgan shoved the winch as far into the ground as he could, and pulled hard on the cable. The winch stayed buried. Morgan took great caution approaching the edge of his little island, and thanked the stars above when the ground didn’t collapse under his feet. He looped the cable around his waist and crawled off the side. The journey to the bottom of the canyon proved arduous and was only made harder by the encumberment of the capsule strapped to his back. By the time he reached the bottom, his fingers were bleeding and his arms and legs had turned to mush. He unstrapped the capsule from himself and promptly passed out. When he woke up, Morgan’s cheeks were wet. He wiped them off and blinked twice as his eyes adjusted to the light. In front of him was a small pool of water, a deep blue that seemed to stretch down as far as he could imagine. Small stones made the edge of the pool, and around them, mosses of the most vivid green blanketed everything. Morgan limped into the cove and slumped onto his knees. This could do. He pulled the capsule off his back and set it at the edge of the pool, just enough for it to touch the water. He pressed down on the surface of the capsule, and it hissed open. For the first time in years, he looked down at Marlow, lying in a bed of white and yellow flowers, her body still perfectly preserved in stasis. Morgan planted one final kiss onto her forehead and pushed the capsule out into the water and then sat. And then suddenly the capsule trembled, and the water trembled, and Marlow’s spirit leaped into the air with an explosion of colors and floated over to Morgan, its lips on his in a majestic display of affection and gratitude. Or maybe Marlow herself rose from her bed and jumped into the pool and swam to Morgan, and Morgan rushed into the water to her and they embraced after such a long time apart. Neither of those happened. Morgan really wanted them to. He waited for a long time, sitting there, just really wanting something to happen, really wanting some sort of goodbye or thank you or “I love you” or just any closure at all. But he didn’t get any. He didn’t get anything. So he sat there, picking at the grass, letting a whole world of grief crush into him.