DT 2021: Harmony Sleep

Andra pressed the play switch on her holo-puck.
The thin entertainment cylinder warbled and glowed as a small phantasm of a woman floated in the dark space of the starship sleeping quarters locked in artificial night. The light figurine kneeled at a jukebox somewhere long ago and far away. A distant Sigma Octanus memory.
Closer by, the souls of Ferret Team Boson slumbered in a more perfect peace. Young adults with the minds of children, dreamed through soft grunts and snores of worlds beyond theirs formed from war and violence. Soft dreams of whimsical lands populated by wizards and cyborgs, princesses and biopunks.
Literature and games carried them away from their day-existence as living weapons. They were no soldiers. Spartans, but still children at heart.
Andra snuggled into the turned shoulder of her best friend, lost in his incoherent world within mumbling of samurai and glass dragons. While Merlin dozed, the girl found no drifting solace in the dark.
The night was not her foe. Rather her ticket to freedom. A lull in her long day when her tired mind finally wandered.
A soft song came on and the ghost of a woman sang an uncharacteristically slow song.
“Oh, dreaming city on the hill. Surrounded by beauty rain or Insurrection fire. All isn’t lost. All to be found. Fight and remember. Dream and build. This here, always, our finest hour.”
Andra glanced around, shuffling her unruly mane of brown hair scrunched between Merlin’s cheek and their tiny, shared pillow. Her other bunkmates slumbered as they did, capable of awakening at the littlest of sounds but the soft tune carried, and they remain at rest.
Merlin stirred but raised no eyelids. He shifted his uncomfortable arm from beneath Andra, moving his pinned hand from her back to behind her shoulders.
Andra adjusted their disheveled blanket, pulling it back to the duo’s necks and recapturing their shared warmth against the outside artificial winter of starship air conditioning and walls of cold metal. Satisfied she wouldn’t wake her best friends, Andra looked back to the ghostly simulation of her mother and joined in the Blam-derived lullaby.
Viktoria Bradford’s comforting but rough rendition soon retreated as Andra’s superior, choir-trained voice took center stage.
“We make as ready. We fight for our keep. Listen close and understand. Our most cherished purpose we march for. We fight for you. Oh, children blessed after war. Free from tyranny of certain death. Our sacrifice, bring rest.”
Andra harmonized with her lost mother. A Valkyrie of a distant battlefield. Protecting this Spartan team in spirit and song, and carrying her daughter back into the deep, comforting dark. The girl rested in the soft embrace of friends and her mother’s coos.
Category:The Weekly