Dear Claire,
Remember when we were kids, and we’d sneak out to the peak in the morning to watch the sunrise?
There was a moment, just before the sun came up, where we sat in silence, bathed in purple-gray light.
Here it’s like those mornings. The sky is that of dawn, gray mingled with undertones of purple. Forever promising a sunrise that never comes.
The light is constant, the darkness of night never stealing it away. With no set periods of day and night, time takes on a lazy quality, becoming an irrelevance that belongs back on Earth.
Everything is so beautiful, yet so foreign. It steals your breath away and never fully gives it back. You’re left constantly breathless, in a permanent state of awe.
The plants feel solid as a rock, yet at the same time wobble like jelly as I brush past them. There is no water here, but rather a thick gooey substance whose color cannot be found on Earth. It’s bold as black and pretty as pink, and yet at the same time nothing like them.
It’s cold here. The type of cold where you sit there breathing in and out so you can watch the air escape from you. But at the same time it’s revoltingly humid. I don’t understand it.
The landscape here is untouched and raw. Rocky mountains rise out of the ground like old kings, regal and withered. In other places, the ground seems to split in two, as if a mighty god sliced a giant knife through it. Peering down, all I saw was an unwelcoming darkness, pierced by tiny specs of red light, like the last embers of a dying fire. As guides warned us upon arrival, the cracks are just wide enough for a human to fall through. I tend to avoid them.
Another thing worth avoiding is the insects, whose give you the sensation of being dunked into a freezing ice bath. The worst one leaves you numb for days. It’s the size of a 20-cent coin, with 13 legs. Its pastel yellow back bears no wings, but it darts around the air and sounds like a quiet helicopter. They named it some stupid Latin word I can’t remember.
The planets name itself is still undecided. It should be poetic and lyrical; something that captures this places contrasting beauty and alienation. Let’s face it though; it’ll probably be the boring name of some long dead astronomer.
I have to go now, but we’ll see each other soon. I can already picture you, waiting impatiently on the tarmac, ready to fire questions at me that I can’t wait to answer.
I have always taken comfort in the idea of the unknown and I don’t regret this experience at all. It has been exhilarating, phenomenal and fascinating. The image of Earth, a single bright dot among glittering stars, will be embedded in my mind until the day it stops working. However I now believe comfort is something reserved for the predictable, as I find myself missing the certainty of life back home. I don’t know if this makes me sad, as it seems to go against every cheesy inspirational quote I’ve ever read, but who knows? Maybe we’re all fooling ourselves, and the only comfort we find in the unknown is the comfort of not being called out as a coward?
Lots of love,
Emma
—By Sarah B., 16, Melbourne, Australia