I’ve been on Naiad for approximately forty days and forty nights now, enough to see Thalassa looming through the sky twice, and I must admit that more than anything else, I miss my cat. My “office” is adjacent to the greenhouse and atmospherically controlled at a temperature much more to my liking than when I’m strolling among the flora. Humidity has never been my bag, having grown up in a parched wasteland. There are some scabs of youth one can never quite pick away.
We designed the greenhouse here to capture the eerie glow of Neptune and bend its light into something akin to a living metrical pattern. That is to say, it pulses like arrhythmia and the flora, on their alien stalks, sway to the pattern and apparently flourish. I’ll count out its repeating phrase time and again though mostly in my subconscious. I’m fairly sure it will persist in my dreams even after my return to home and to my cat.
That’s still fifteen passes of Thalassa away.
