Chapter : 5
Tittle : A sky full of wonders
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A few hours into their journey away from Earth, Elara, now resting more comfortably, was sitting up on the bio-bed, leaning against a soft pillow. Her fever had subsided slightly, and she was more alert, though still quiet and watchful.
Maya, noticing her gaze drifting towards the main viewport, gently guided her to a secure observation seat. The vast expanse of space unfolded before them – a breathtaking panorama of inky blackness punctuated by the brilliant, unwavering light of distant stars.
Elara's eyes widened in awe. "What... what are those?" she whispered, her small voice filled with wonder.
Maya knelt beside her, pointing towards a particularly bright cluster of stars. "Those are stars, Elara. They're like our sun, but they're very, very far away. Each one is a giant ball of light."
Elara tilted her head, her brow furrowed in innocent curiosity. "Are they... hot?"
"Very hot," Maya confirmed with a soft smile. "But they're so far away that they just look like tiny, twinkling lights to us."
In-Guk, who had been monitoring the ship's systems nearby, also turned his attention to Elara. He pointed towards a faint, hazy band stretching across the sky. "And that, little one, is our galaxy. It's called the Milky Way. It's like a giant island made up of billions and billions of stars, and our sun is just one of them."
Elara stared at the Milky Way, her eyes wide with fascination. It was a stark contrast to the polluted skies she had known on Earth, a canvas of unimaginable beauty and scale.
"It's... so big," she breathed, her voice barely audible.
"It is," Maya agreed, putting a comforting arm around her. "The universe is a very big place, full of amazing things."
Eunwoo, who had joined them, pointed towards a faint, reddish glow in the distance. "And that, Elara, is a nebula. It's like a giant cloud of gas and dust where new stars are sometimes born."
Elara's small hand reached out towards the viewport, as if she could touch the distant wonders. For the first time since they had found her, a genuine spark of wonder flickered in her eyes, momentarily eclipsing the sadness of her loss.
"Did my mommy... can she see this too?" she asked softly, her voice tinged with a poignant innocence.
Maya's heart ached. She exchanged a look with In-Guk and Eunwoo. "Maybe, little one," she said gently. "Maybe she's looking down on us from somewhere beautiful, among all those stars."
Elara was silent for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the distant cosmos. The vastness of space, while perhaps incomprehensible to her young mind, offered a sense of something beyond the immediate pain, a hint of the infinite possibilities that lay ahead.
For Maya, In-Guk, and Eunwoo, witnessing this moment of innocent wonder in the face of such profound loss reinforced the importance of their mission – to carry the hope of a future, not just for themselves, but for this small child who now looked to them for everything.