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“What happens when an Eridian dies?”
It was late, but Grace couldn’t find the courage to go to sleep.
Over the years, the artificial light of the small habitat had stopped feeling… Well, artificial: it had become something alive, something believable. At times, he even forgot he was millions of light-years away from Earth. For a species that perceived the world through echolocation, vibrations, and biological sonar, Rocky and his people had done a nearly miraculous job of recreating the soft illusion of Earth’s atmosphere.
The slow lapping of artificial waves filled the silence. The sand crunched beneath Grace’s cane with a sharp, familiar sound, like a well-known smile, while a warm mist brushed his face, relaxing his tired eyes. Everything was fake. And yet, in that moment, it felt more real than many memories.
Rocky tilted his body slightly toward him, not particularly surprised. Lately, those questions had become a habit between them—nighttime confessions suspended between two worlds and two species unable to truly understand each other, and yet stubbornly close.
“The heat leaves the body. Vibrations slow down. The mind stops constructing.” The Eridian’s musical voice resonated calmly in the humid air. “For an Eridian, death is not ‘disappearing’. It is ceasing to be useful to the chorus of minds. Statement.”
Grace gave a faint smile. Rocky always gave him the same answer.
Rocky continued: “Every engineer adds a beam to the bridge of the species. When one beam fails, the others continue to carry the weight.” A pause. Only the sound of water. “Sadness exists. Sad, sad, sad. Much sadness. But fear of death… less. Universe breaks everything, always. Task of intelligent being is to build well before silence arrives.”
The waves slowly broke on the artificial shore. “And if a friend remembers your works, your solutions… your music… then part of you continues to vibrate.”
Grace stayed silent for a few moments, as if Rocky’s words had settled at the bottom of his mind without immediately finding anything to cling to. Then he lowered his gaze to his cane, tracing a small groove in the damp sand.
“So it’s not an end,” he said softly, almost afraid of breaking something in the air. “It’s… a transformation of presence.”
He inhaled, letting the mist brush his face. “We on Earth always needed death to be a closed door. A clear boundary. Something that separates what is from what is no longer.” A brief pause, the sound of waves filling the space between sentences. “Maybe because we’re afraid of the idea that something might continue without us… without being controllable anymore. Predictable.”
He finally looked up at Rocky. Even though time had damaged his body, Grace still managed to tower over his friend, even now relying on a cane for support. “But your people don’t preserve individuals. They redistribute them.” A half-smile, more thoughtful than ironic. “You turn them into function, into active memory, into impact.”
The artificial wind shifted direction, carrying a recreated scent of salt. A familiar breeze, like the beginning of a storm. Or a sudden summer rain.
“And yet…” he added more slowly, “I wonder whether being remembered is truly continuing to vibrate, or just the way the living learn to endure silence.” He paused, not seeking an answer this time. “If one day I stopped building anything… would you say I was already dead before my last breath?”
Rocky remained still.
His body did not betray emotion in the way humans expected: no visible tension, no hesitation. And yet, beneath that calm surface, something shifted—a slight change in the rhythm of the vibrations that composed his internal language. A faint puff of air from his carapace. An unexpected tremor in his body. Something unfamiliar… unpleasant. New. Too real. Too sharp. Alien. Almost human. Perhaps, all those years with Grace had changed him in ways even he did not expect.
“…I do not understand,” he finally said. It was not hostility. It was a clear, almost disarmed observation. “Why has time become a fixed point in Grace’s mind, question?”
The question hung between them like a misplaced particle. Rocky tilted slightly toward his friend, as if observing Grace through multiple layers of reality at once. To him, the human had not changed in the way aging things change. There had been no sudden collapse, no visible rupture. And yet, somewhere along their shared years on Erid, something had tilted.
Grace had become… slower.
Not only in body. In pauses. In the silences between sentences. In the way questions lingered a moment too long before being spoken. In his steps. In the extra time it took him to stand.
“Grace did not ask these questions before,” Rocky continued. “Or asked them less… heavy.” The word was imprecise. He lacked the exact nuance, as if he could not find the correct inclination in either human language or his own. A concept that could describe how introspective Grace had become over time. Almost melancholic.
But he let it fall anyway.
The artificial waves broke with perfect regularity against the shore, as if the world had no intention of participating in their exchange.
“Adrian says humans change when they name change too often,” he added, as if retrieving a fragment of previous conversation. “Maybe now you call ‘time’ something that used to just be… passing through.”
He paused.
Then, with a sincerity almost cutting in its simplicity: “Grace says ‘death’ more than before. But you are still alive.” Rocky paused briefly, as if trying to realign his thoughts with the human perspective and failing slightly. “Is Grace more fragile?” he finally asked, without judgment, with that familiar tapping of his legs on the ground. “Or becoming more aware of vital time, question?”
The concept of ‘aging’ did not have a stable form within his species. It did not exist as an individual experience, but as a statistical variation of systems. And yet, watching Grace, something was beginning to distort that certainty.
Because he could see it.
Not in numbers. Not in data.
He saw it in the way Grace lingered one second longer before answering, as if every word had to cross a greater distance before reaching the surface. His hands struggled more when he worked, his breathing had grown heavier and louder, his limbs trembled from the slightest draft—even adjusting the biome’s temperature no longer helped.
Grace was fragile.
Fragile like a young Eridian.
But he did not have the supports of youth anymore. No. He looked like… sand slipping away from the shoreline.
Small, finely complex, but mutable alongside the rising tide. Destined to change, to evolve, to wear away.
To end.
Grace let out a low, tired laugh, barely more than a breath, and Rocky snapped back from his thoughts into the present. It wasn’t a real Grace-laugh—not really. More the automatic reflex of someone trying to lighten the weight of his own words.
He shook his head slowly. “You know what the problem is?” he murmured. “For you, everything seems… more linear.” The tip of his cane drew absent circles in the damp sand, erasing them moments later. “An Eridian dies, and continues through the work of others. End of process. Ordered. Rational.” He lifted one shoulder slightly. “Humans, meanwhile, have spent thousands of years arguing over what happens afterward. We’re incredibly stupid whenever we start asking questions, and we love pretending we’re right. With every mistake, we must surely be learning…” He huffed softly. “Yeah. I seriously doubt it.”
Rocky listened motionlessly.
“Some people believe there’s something beyond. A place. Another form.” Grace narrowed his eyes toward the artificial sea, one hand vaguely gesturing toward the sky. “Others think everything simply ends. Total darkness. Chemistry shutting down.” He paused. “And then there are those who swing constantly between both ideas depending on the day they’re having. Like a variable in an equation whose solution we were never meant to understand. Honestly, I’m not about to start praying to some god just because my bones are starting to give up on me—”
The sound of waves filled the silence.
“Anyway— We’re a strange species, Rocky. We need to give meaning to endings even when we know there may not be one. Like an unnecessary sequel everyone expects because they can’t accept the finale.” A faint grin crossed his face. “Kind of like the newer Star Trek movies. I mean, you’ve got a ship full of geniuses making decisions like they’re trapped in a teen drama. Come on." For a moment, Earth returned to him—not a precise memory, but scattered sensations. Rooms too empty. Music left playing just to avoid silence. Hands resting motionless on instruments abandoned too long ago.
Were humans really that pathetic? Searching for meaning in the end of life without realizing they were supposed to live it first instead of endlessly dissecting it?
“Maybe that’s why we grow melancholic with age,” he continued more quietly. “You pile enough years onto your shoulders and eventually you start seeing…” He searched for the word. “The cracks.”
Rocky tilted slightly.
Grace smiled sideways. “See? That’s exactly the point. You hear ‘cracks’ and think of something that needs repairing.” Another amused breath escaped him. “Humans, meanwhile, sometimes sit in front of the cracks and write poetry about the fact they exist.”
This time even Rocky emitted a faint interrogative vibration.
“Yeah, I know. Sounds stupid to me too.”
The artificial wind stirred the mist around their feet. Somewhere in the habitat, an old defective speaker produced an intermittent metallic hum, almost like a poorly brushed string. Grace listened to it for a few seconds. For a moment, it sounded like rain striking the streets of San Francisco. Or the murmur of a busy afternoon at Sally’s Dinner while the weather outside promised something else.
“Adrian’s right, though,” he said eventually. “Maybe humans start getting worse once they begin naming time.” He lowered his gaze to his hands. “When you’re young, you don’t think about it. You just live. Then one day you begin noticing that some things disappear quietly.” His fingers tightened slowly around the cane. “People. Places. Versions of yourself.”
Rocky remained silent, and Grace—suddenly aware of the direction the conversation had taken—let out an exasperated sigh. “What a mess,” he said with self-deprecating humor. “I’ve become one of those old professors who gives existential monologues in the middle of the night.” He shot Rocky a crooked smile. “In a minute I’ll start talking about the seasons as metaphors for life. At that point, you have permission to throw me out the airlock.”
Rocky produced a short series of confused clicks. “Partial affirmation. Joke not statistically amusing.”
Grace laughed for real this time. And for a moment, the weight inside his chest lightened slightly—like a note still vibrating long after no one has touched the strings.
Rocky remained silent long after Grace’s laughter faded. He had always admired the way those vibrations echoed through ordinary life. New every time. Different every time. Mutable, fragile, similar to the songs of young pebbles in a happy family. Even years after their mission, after all the accumulated time behind them… that sound represented the trust and commitment he had accepted when he welcomed Grace into his life.
His front limbs tightened slightly against the artificial sand, producing tiny rhythmic vibrations—not discomfort, not fear.
Processing.
He was trying to understand.
But the human’s words slipped over him like incomplete equations, lacking a stable center around which meaning could form. Grace spoke of time like a wound, of death like a presence already seated beside them, and yet Rocky still perceived him there: warm, alive, thinking.
Present.
By Eridian standards, that should have been enough. Grace was not slowing critically. He was not losing relevant cognitive ability. He still built things, taught, repaired, explained. He still laughed. He still argued with Adrian over meaningless details. He still became irritated when young Eridians modified his simulations without permission.
He was alive.
So why did he speak as though part of him had already begun drifting away?
Rocky thought back on fragments gathered across the years.
Grace standing before reflective surfaces, staring at pale strands appearing in his hair. Fingers brushing absently near his eyes, complaining about wrinkles as though they were structural fractures. Those strange jokes about becoming ‘old,’ spoken lightly yet accompanied by bodily vibrations that revealed something else.
And especially that smile.
The one that appeared every time the young Eridians left his classroom. A quiet, gentle smile… but distant. Like someone looking at a room while already knowing that one day, he would stop entering it.
Rocky had never truly understood that moment.
Why did Grace seem sad after teaching? Knowledge had been transmitted. Function completed. Positive result. And yet there was always that faint tremor in his voice afterward, that silence that followed.
Now, perhaps, he was beginning to glimpse the connection.
Humans did not live only within the present usefulness of their existence. They also lived projected constantly toward the possibility of their absence. The awareness of ‘no longer being there’ seemed to accompany them even while they still were.
The concept unsettled Rocky more than he wished to admit.
“Does Grace believe he is disappearing, question?” he finally asked.
Grace lifted his gaze slightly.
Rocky hesitated before continuing, searching for words that would not sound offensive within the fragile emotional grammar of humans. “Because Rocky still sees you.”
The artificial mist drifted slowly around them.
“I hear you speak. I hear you walk. I hear you teach.” A pause. “Young Eridians still repeat your formulas while using incorrect human measurement units. Adrian still asks me about you. Habitat still smells like burned Earth beverage every morning.” Another pause, slightly longer this time. “You are… very present, Grace. Statement.” This time Rocky’s voice lowered almost imperceptibly.
“Why is this no longer enough for humans, question?"
Grace remained quiet for a moment. Rocky watched him through the mist of the biome as the sound of the artificial sea continued its endless motion behind them.
Why is that not enough for humans anymore?
There was something almost painful in the way the Eridian had asked it. No irony. No judgment. Rocky was truly trying to understand.
And maybe that was exactly what broke something inside him.
Grace had never expected Rocky to engage so deeply with human philosophy. Years ago, he would have dismissed it as 'non-functional emotional noise.' Now, instead, he listened. He connected details. He stored sentences. He tried to understand him.
Grace lowered his gaze and slowly resumed walking along the artificial shoreline, leaning slightly more on his cane than he would have ten years earlier.
Eighty-nine years.
The number crossed his mind with sudden clarity.
Eighty-nine human years. Half his life spent on an alien planet teaching physics to shell-and-sound creatures. He had seen things no other human could ever imagine. He had saved his own sun. He had crossed interstellar darkness. He had built a home forty light-years from Earth. He had probably lived the most absurd and extraordinary life a human could ever hope to live.
And yet the body still wore down.
Always.
Slowly.
Inevitably.
Rocky moved beside him almost silently.
“Grace does not appear critically damaged,” he observed. “Walk is slower. But mind functions well. Teaching capacity still efficient. Less good at chess. Rocky wins faster.”
Grace snorted a laugh. “Thanks, Rocky. Very reassuring.”
“Affirmation.”
They continued walking toward the small dwelling embedded in the biome. Warm lights filtered through translucent surfaces, flickering slightly in the mist.
But Rocky did not let the topic go. He never did. “When we were on Hail Mary,” he said, “Grace surprised by Rocky's age.”
Grace smiled weakly. He remembered it well. Both of them exhausted, terrified, desperate for any form of intelligent contact in the universe.
'Why are you so surprised? Humans do not live that long.' At the time, Rocky had not fully grasped the weight of that answer. For him, biological decay was a distant, almost technical process. Eridians did not experience time the way humans did: not with that constant awareness of loss.
Now, however, he was beginning to see it happening in front of his senses.
To Grace.
“Grace was young then,” Rocky continued. “Now says he is old. But change has been very very small. Very very slow.”
Grace paused at the threshold of the house.
For Rocky it was true.
Eridians perceived the world through different scales. Function. Continuity. Presence. A being existed as long as it produced echoes in the world. But humans… humans lived by counting what remained. Remaining energy. Remaining years. Lost people.
“For you, time is horizontal,” Grace said softly. “For us, it is… a descent.” Rocky emitted a low, focused series of clicks. Grace sighed. “Forget it, buddy,” he murmured with a tired smile. “I’m getting philosophical because it’s late and I’m almost ninety. It happens.”
He stepped inside the house, but Rocky followed immediately.
Naturally.
Grace glanced over his shoulder, exasperated. “Rocky, I need to sleep.”
“Rocky remains silent, affirmation.”
“You are never silent.”
“False. Rocky can be silent for seven minutes.”
Grace laughed despite himself, slowly removing his jacket. Rocky watched him carefully. Attentive. Almost uneasy. As if afraid that, if he stopped watching even for a moment, he might finally understand what humans truly meant when they spoke about disappearing.
Grace felt it almost immediately.
It wasn’t agitation—Eridians did not experience anxiety like humans—but a kind of internal misalignment, as if Rocky was trying to reshape something he had never truly considered before.
Time.
Not as measurement. Not as orbital calculation. As an ending.
Grace felt a quiet tightness in his chest. So he deliberately shifted the conversation.
“Tomorrow I have an early class. Regina finally isn’t afraid of the 'space blob alien'…” he said as they moved slowly through the amber-lit room. “…and Larry has almost certainly sabotaged the gravity simulator again.”
Rocky tilted slightly. “The small Eridian with creative destructive behavior.”
“Exactly. That one. I told him at least six times that altering simulation density to ‘see what happens’ is not valid scientific method.”
“But what happened, question?"
Grace looked at him sideways. “Rocky.”
“Legitimate question.”
“…Half the lab exploded.”
“Ah." A pause, "So experiment produced useful data.”
Grace laughed softly. Even exhausted, talking about the small Eridians still eased something in him. “Then there’s Abby,” he continued. “She spent forty minutes arguing that human math would be easier if we used base twelve instead of base ten.”
“She is correct.”
“Do not help me, please.”
Rocky emitted a satisfied vibration as he moved closer, steadying Grace when he slightly stumbled removing a shoe.
The gesture was so natural it surprised them both.
A solid limb gently circled his wrist, another supported his torso. The advantage of having a friend with five limbs.
Grace looked down at the alien grip and smiled with something almost painfully tender. “Look at that,” he murmured. “First human in history to need extraterrestrial geriatric care.”
Rocky helped him to the bed without letting go. “Grace makes many jokes about deterioration.”
“It’s a survival strategy,” Grace said. “Humans joke about what scares them. Makes us feel less small.” Rocky processed this as Grace slowly sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh.
The room lights were dim. Somewhere outside, the artificial sea continued its steady breathing.
Grace allowed himself to lie down, too tired even to pretend otherwise. “You know,” he said, voice thick with sleep, “I’m starting to understand those old depressing Earth songs.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I look at the floor, And I see it needs sweeping…”
Rocky tilted his body. “Cultural reference not understood.”
“Yes, I figured.” A faint smile. “It’s about change. About how at some point you still hear the music inside you… but the world around you changes rhythm.” Even though the lyrics were actually more about George Harrison’s isolation within the Beatles, and a wider sense of disillusionment with humanity. But humans had always been remarkably good at filtering the world through their own emotions.
Rocky remained still for a few seconds.
Then, carefully, almost reverently, he pulled the covers over Grace’s shoulders, adjusting them with clumsy but incredibly gentle movements. “Rocky still hears your music,” he said simply. “Affirmation.”
Grace slowly reopened his eyes, and for a moment he could not speak.
Rocky seemed perfectly satisfied with that conclusion. He had helped his friend walk. He had guided him to rest. Function complete. But as he stepped slightly away from the bed, his vibrations betrayed that same subtle irregularity.
As if part of him remained stuck on a new and unsettling thought: that even the brightest things in the universe can slowly fade without ever truly stopping.
And Rocky knew that very well.
Grace was fading just as his sun had once done years ago. But now there were no astrophage to understand. No predator on Adrian to retrieve and return to its planet. The damage was… internal. Grace was fading internally. Day by day, until that light, his melody, would be consumed.
And on Erid, there was no solution for saving his best friend.
“Rocky is afraid,” the confession stayed trapped in the space between them. “Rocky is afraid of losing Grace. Not ready to lose Grace. No, no no. Does not want to lose Grace." Rocky did not move away from the bed. He stayed there, in the warm shadow of the room, while Grace tried unsuccessfully to convince himself the conversation had ended.
Then, slowly, Rocky lowered himself. He knew Grace’s body wasn't able to adjust under his pressure anymore.
Carefully—almost fearfully. The massive alien body settled beside Grace without fully collapsing, distributing its weight with instinctive precision refined over years of coexistence. A portion of his warm carapace rested against the human’s lap, close enough to transmit heat through the xenonite fabric, light enough not to hurt him.
A protective gesture. Involuntary. Ancient. Deeply Eridian. Like forming a shield around something fragile.
Grace felt the warmth slowly spread through his tired legs.
And then came the sounds.
Low vibrations, continuous, almost like broken purring. Not words. Not even truly music. Like the sound of a structure desperately trying not to crack under pressure.
Sad.
Grace looked down at him. “Oh no, Rocky…” One of his hands slowly moved over the shell, finding those small spaces between the plates that Eridians seemed to like. His fingers began to scratch gently, slow and familiar.
The vibrations changed frequency. Rocky curled in closer.
“Hey…” Grace murmured softly. “Don’t do that.”
He tried to smile. “Eighty-nine years isn’t nothing, you know? For a human that’s… that’s already a good run. If I’m lucky, I might make it to a hundred.”
Rocky immediately emitted a series of sharp negative clicks.
Grace let out a tired laugh. “Yes, I know. For you that’s basically late adolescence.”
Another vibration. Stronger this time.
For an Eridian, dying that early was not natural. Not emotional tragedy. Statistical catastrophe. A structure collapsing before its intended time. Lost potential. Interrupted knowledge.
A disaster.
Rocky lifted his head and spoke in his own language. "♬♪♩♪♫♪♩♬♬" It was not the simplified version they used together. Not the slow, adapted Eridian Grace had learned.
This was the real one. Fast. Layered. Vibrationally dense. The words poured out in deep, fractured waves too complex for a human mind to follow.
Grace did not understand the literal meaning. But he felt the weight.
Loss.
Pain.
The blind fear of something being taken from the universe with no way to stop it.
Rocky lowered his head again against him. The sad vibrations filled the room.
Grace closed his eyes for a moment, still scratching his shell gently. “Hey,” he whispered again. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”
The vibrations did not stop.
And then Grace understood.
Rocky was not afraid of death as a concept. He was afraid of absence. Of walking into that room one day and not hearing his voice. Not seeing books scattered everywhere. Not smelling burnt coffee in the morning. Not finding him sitting in front of the small Eridians trying to explain gravity through terrible metaphors or jokes.
For the first time since the conversation began, Grace truly felt how deeply his friend loved him.
Grace remained silent for a few moments, his hand still resting on Rocky’s warm carapace. The Eridian’s vibrations had not lessened. If anything, they had deepened, as if every sound had shifted from language into something more primitive: a protest against the very idea of loss.
Grace inhaled slowly, but the air of the room did nothing to ease the knot in his chest.
“Rocky…” he finally said, his voice lower than usual.
He pushed himself up slightly on the bed, just enough to look at him better. The movement cost more effort than he wanted to admit, and for a brief moment he felt almost absurd for noticing it at all.
Then he said it. Without emphasis. Without poetry.
“I won’t be here much longer.”
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full. Full of the artificial sea outside, full of the soft light of the biome, full of everything that continued to exist as if that sentence had not been spoken.
Rocky stiffened.
His vibrations shifted abruptly, like a system losing coherence.
Grace lowered his gaze for a moment. “I know,” he added more quietly. “It’s not… a surprise to me. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.” A tired, almost gentle smile. “Erid gave me more time than I ever had the right to have. I was supposed to die on that ship, years ago.”
The word ship seemed to linger differently in the air.
Rocky responded immediately—fast, fragmented, urgent. His language carried no anger. Only correction. Pressure.
“No. Grace saved Erid and Rocky.”
Grace lifted his eyebrows slightly. “Yes, yes… I know what you’re going to say.” he murmured. The smile widened a little. “And you saved me when I had no hope of ever getting home.”
Rocky went still for a moment, as if that statement was not negotiable in either direction.
Grace exhaled, then shook his head slightly. “Honestly?” he added, a trace of irony trying and failing to lighten the room. “I don’t care anymore about who saved who.” He settled back into the pillows. “You gave me a life I could never have imagined. End of discussion.”
Rocky emitted a low, uneasy sound.
Grace felt him tremble against him and, for a moment, closed his eyes, as if that contact alone was the only thing holding his thoughts together.
Then, almost lightly, he added: “And honestly, I was supposed to retire years ago.” A faint smile. “Instead I ended up teaching physics to alien creatures who think in vibrations and build cosmological theories before breakfast. Not a bad second career, I’d say.”
Rocky didn’t answer immediately. But he was still there, pressed against him, as if unwilling to accept the distance those words were trying to introduce into the world.
Grace looked down at him. “I don’t regret it,” he said more softly. And this time there was no irony. “None of it. Not Erid. Not you. Not the disasters in the labs. Not my students’ ridiculous questions." A small, real smile. “If I could start over… I would do it all exactly the same.”
Silence returned to the room.
But it was no longer the same silence as before. Now it was made of something more fragile. Something that sounded too much like a goodbye, even if neither of them was willing to name it yet.
Rocky had no simple words left to offer. Not because he didn’t know them, but because none of them seemed precise enough anymore to contain what was happening.
His body stayed close to Grace’s, still carefully settled on the bed, as if even the smallest movement might change something irreparable. And yet, in the silence, one of his limbs slowly rose. A familiar gesture. Almost intimate.
He stroked Grace’s hair with a tenderness that contrasted with his mass and alien structure, repeating a motion he had learned years ago and never stopped repeating. Not anymore out of imitation. Out of memory. Out of habit shaped into affection. Out of necessity, not only for Grace, but for himself as well.
Grace immediately leaned into the touch.
As always.
As if that gesture had become a fundamental part of his ability to remain in the world.
For a moment, everything was suspended. Then Grace spoke, his voice calm in a way that felt almost practiced. “I’ve made peace with myself.”
Rocky didn’t stop stroking his hair. “Liar,” he replied immediately. No hesitation. No doubt.
Grace opened one eye, surprised, then let out a small, tired smile. “Oh? So now you’re an expert in human psychology?”
“Empirical observation,” Rocky said. His voice was flat, but the vibrations beneath it betrayed something else.
Memory.
Catalogued years.
Nights like this one.
Other conversations where Grace had said the same thing, in the same tone, and then gone quiet for too long afterward.
Grace chuckled softly. “You’re terrible at remembering many things, but you keep all my lies, huh?”
Rocky emitted a sound in his native language "♪♬♪♩" —sharp, layered, emotionally unmistakable: disapproval, concern, and something very close to reprimand.
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Hey. Language.”
“Truth,” Rocky added, switching back to their shared language with visible effort.
Grace sighed, but the smile didn’t fade. “Alright, alright,” he said softly. “Maybe I wasn’t ready… last time.” A pause. “But I am now.”
Rocky stopped stroking for a fraction of a second. Only a fraction. “That is not enough change in time to transform fear into absence of fear,” he said. Not a question. A conclusion.
Grace closed his eyes for a moment, as if searching deeper than the conversation itself allowed. When he opened them again, his voice was quieter.
“I’m not saying I don’t feel fear,” he admitted. Silence.
The artificial sea outside felt further away now.
“It’s just…” he continued slowly, choosing each word carefully, “this time it doesn’t matter as much.”
Rocky tilted slightly. He didn’t understand. Not fully. But he didn’t interrupt.
Grace went on. “When I arrived here… I was convinced I had lost everything.” A faint smile. “Earth. My return. My entire life.” A pause. “But I was with you.” His fingers brushed lightly against the edge of Rocky’s shell. “And I started building something I didn’t think was possible anymore.”
Rocky remained still, listening completely.
“And now…” Grace inhaled slowly. “Now I know it ends. Eventually. That’s part of the deal.” A fragile half-smile. “But it’s not a total loss anymore. Not anymore.”
Rocky emitted a low, broken sound in his language—too complex to translate properly.
But Grace understood it anyway.
Not with his mind.
With years.
With familiarity.
With the way that sound always appeared when something precious was about to be lost.
So Grace lifted a hand and gently touched his carapace in return. “Hey,” he said softly. “You didn’t build something broken, Rocky.” A tired but steady smile. “You built a life with me.”
Rocky remained still. His vibrations did not stop. But they changed. Not less sad. Just… more present. As if, for the first time, he was beginning to understand that some things do not stop being important just because they are ending.
It is said that in space sound disperses, swallowed by the void like a road without end. And yet Grace had found a voice, a sound, a warmth immense enough to fill that silence. The moment he and Rocky met had felt like an orchestra louder than anything else.
It is not true that space is silent, or that everything moves in reverse. Because Grace had found his place on Erid, beside Rocky and all the Eridians who had welcomed him. And so what was supposed to be silence was instead full of life.
Rocky stayed there for a few more moments.
Still.
His vibrations were still irregular, like waves that had not yet reached the shore. But something had shifted: part of the tension had loosened. Not gone. Only suspended. As if Grace’s words had built a temporary dam against something too large to hold.
He was not losing him in that moment. At least, that much his system could still register.
Grace would leave anyway.
But not yet. And perhaps, for an Eridian mind, that was the only kind of comfort that existed.
Rocky lowered his head slowly. Then he spoke.
His language was softer now. Less fractured. Closer to the one he used when he was not analyzing, not correcting, not trying to understand. It was the language he reserved for very few: Adrian, in moments of calm. And Grace… when the world was no longer a problem to solve.
“Thank you.”
A simple word, but the musicality behind it was anything but simple. It carried layers of meaning with no human equivalent: gratitude, connection, anticipated loss, and a form of affection so deep it became almost painful in its clarity.
Grace heard it.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then he smiled. A small, tired, real smile. He lifted his hand and touched Rocky’s limb.
“I do too, ” he whispered.
Silence.
Then Grace settled deeper into the covers, finally allowing his body to surrender to exhaustion. His eyes closed almost on their own. And, in a thread of voice, he said: “I sleep. You watch?” It was not a real question. It never had been between them. It was a ritual. An agreement that had grown over time into shared language between two species that were never supposed to understand each other so well.
Rocky positioned himself beside the bed. Closer. Not pressing, but not withdrawing either.
“Rocky watches Grace sleep,” he said.
The sentence was not simple. It was a promise.
And as Grace slowly drifted into sleep, the room remained filled with soft light, distant artificial sea, and a presence that did not need to be fully understood to be real.
Only present.
Only there.
For as long as possible.