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Amazing. Willow hadn’t even felt the cruiser start moving, but it obviously was. She was in space now. She was a real, legitimate intergalactic traveler.
Somehow, the idea didn’t make her as nervous as it should have. Oh, she’d been dreaming of visiting space for years, but so had many of her friends. In fact, Willow was the last among them to finally take a voyage.
Maybe if things with her parents hadn’t gotten so messed up, she would have come sooner. Maybe she would have gone with her folks on the cruise they took over the summer, but Willow knew what she was doing when she refused to marry Anthony.
She knew perfectly well she was severing ties with her family.
That was fine, though. She’d be okay on her own.
Honestly, it was losing her relationship with her sister that pained her most. Ashley was friends with both Willow and Wilma, so Willow heard secondhand how her sister was doing and how Wilma’s new job was going perfectly.
Still, she wished that refusing to marry Anthony hadn’t meant she would lose her best friend. Humans may have colonized Mars, but they still held tight to some of their oldest traditions. Marrying into positions of wealth and prosperity was the tradition Willow hated most.
Whether it was logical or not, Wilma really had been her best friend. They were sisters, after all. Wilma hadn’t cared who Willow married or didn’t marry. Willow had no doubt her sister had been forced to stop talking to her. Mother could be fierce when she wanted to be. Chances were that she had somehow convinced Wilma she’d be kicked out of Colony 12 or forced to live in a poorer colony if she spoke with Willow again or if she refused the match Mother chose for Wilma.
Willow and Wilma had been life partners, or at least, they were supposed to have been. There was a hole in Willow’s heart where her sister’s love had once been and part of her thought it would hurt forever. No man, no love, and no space travel could ever replace what she had lost.
Finally, her heart heavy, she reached the end of the hall. It opened into a large, open area with the most beautiful park she had ever seen. There were trees – real trees – growing in the center of the park and there was soft, green grass beneath her feet.
Willow hadn’t seen grass in years. Earth had been the site of an intergalactic battle. When it began to die, to slowly perish, the grass had turned brown and died right along with it. She remembered grass from when she was a kid, before they immigrated to Mars. Willow remembered running through it with her sister before they stopped speaking. They would spin in circles until they got dizzy, then they would collapse together on the soft, wonderful greens.
Even that was nothing compared to what she was seeing now.
Willow stared at the open park. People from all levels of the ship were walking around. A couple sat beneath a tree with their backs against the trunk. They were whispering softly. The woman was feeding the man pieces of food. He looked happy, sated. They both did.
She pulled her eyes from what was obviously a private moment and looked around the rest of the park. There were children playing in the grass and laughing loudly. Vendors were pushing carts full of food around the area, so she could get a snack when she was ready. A bar was in one corner of the park and Willow could see the crowd already gathered there, ready to get drunk on their cruise. Trees and flowers filled the open space, but more than that, there were huge, open windows.
She could see space.
All of it.
Willow found herself drawn to the windows. She walked slowly, staring, not caring if she looked silly. She’d never seen anything like this before. Hell, maybe she had been wrong in not springing for the deluxe suite. This was amazing.
Before she could stop herself, she continued moving until she pressed her hand to the window. It would leave a print, of course, and someone would have to come clean it, but she didn’t quite care. From here, she could see Mars in the distance. Obviously, they were moving away from it.
Far, far away from it.
Willow’s family was on that little planet. It wasn’t little, not really, but it looked so small from here. She had spent her entire life trying to please people on that planet, and for what? What did she have to show for any of it?
Willow was 25-years-old and she had nothing.
Nothing.
She had no family anymore, no husband, no boyfriend, and no children. She had very few friends and a very ordinary job and a very ordinary, normal, boring life. This trip was her gift to herself. This journey was a present to herself for working so hard for all of those years.
Willow stared out of the window and looked at her home planet.
She felt like she should miss it. She ought to miss it. She ought to feel sad or upset or anything at all, really, but she didn’t.
The only thing Willow felt as she looked at Mars was relief.
And she realized that she really never wanted to go back.
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Honeypot Darlings
