Author's Preface
Faris was on his feet before the hatch finished opening, closing the distance in a few long strides, and he stopped himself a careful arm's length from Halima, hands twitching at his sides like he wanted to reach for her and knew better.
"Well? How is she? Did it go all right?"
"She's fine, Faris." Halima brushed sand from her sleeve, unhurried. "Safe. Healthy. Better than fine, honestly."
The breath went out of him all at once. "Alhamdulillah." He said it low, more to himself than to her, and something in his shoulders came down that had been sitting up there since the night before. It wasn't a word he used lightly. It came from the same place his prayers did, and for a moment he just stood there with his eyes closed, letting the relief settle into him properly.
Then his brow creased again. "Is she coming back with us? To the settlement?"
"No. Not yet." Halima softened it before he could sink. "But I told her I'd come every day. Bring her real food, sit with her a while."
"Thank you, sister." He meant it plainly, without flourish, and it landed harder for that.
"Don't thank me." She waved a hand. "Yahya and I were exactly where you are once. I know what it's like to watch someone from the outside and have no idea what's happening in their head." She glanced past him, toward the small camp he'd pitched a stone's throw from the wreck. "Are you staying out here again?"
"Every night." He said it like it needed no explaining. "I've got the tent, supplies, warm gear, Barq to keep watch with me. A woman alone in the desert after dark — that's not something I'll risk. Not with lasons out there."
Halima's mouth curved, slow and delighted. "Faris. I had no idea you had a romantic bone in your body."
"I'm not being romantic." His ears had gone faintly darker at the tips. "I'm adapting to the situation. She's my fated match. Protecting her is simply what's required of me."
"Mm-hm. Very dutiful." Halima pressed a hand to her chest, sighing theatrically. "Our stern, serious Faris, head over heels and calling it duty."
"Sister."
"I'm only saying what I see."
He was saved from further teasing by Yahya's approach, unhurried across the sand, already reaching for his wife before he'd fully arrived. Halima went to him without a word, folding into the hug like she'd been waiting for it the whole walk back, and Faris watched them go, arm in arm toward the varaks, with something warm and unfamiliar settling into his chest.
He turned back toward the ship and squared his shoulders. There was a fire to build, and a woman to watch over, and for the first time in months, the waiting didn't feel like an ache. It felt like something he had a use for.
The next morning, Yahya walked Halima as far as the ridge above the crash site and left her there with a kiss to her temple. "Council meeting. I'll be two, three hours."
"Go. I'll be fine."
Latifa must have caught her on the hull cameras, because the hatch was already sliding open by the time Halima reached it, and Latifa leaned out with something almost like eagerness on her face.
"Did you sleep?" Halima asked, climbing in.
"Better than the night before, believe it or not." Latifa dropped back onto the bench. "Night before last I barely closed my eyes. Kept running through every worst case I could think of. But after we talked yesterday—" She shrugged, a little sheepish. "I actually slept. Really slept."
"I'm glad." And she was; it showed in her whole face.
"Come in, sit." Latifa waved her toward the bench. "And tell that local giant of yours thank you, for the food. It's the only reason I haven't eaten my own boots."
"His name is Faris."
"Faris." Latifa said it slowly, turning it over like she was testing the sound. "Turns out he's a lot less terrifying than I thought on day one. Did you teach him English? Because I barely knew what to think when he opened his mouth and English came out!"
Halima laughed. "I did. It's rough. He's trying."
"It's charming, is what it is." Latifa caught herself and moved on quickly. "So. You never told me — what were you doing up there? Before the crash."
"Research vessel, technical division. In a way, we were in the same field," Halima settled onto the bench, one hand finding its usual place on her belly. "What was your mission out here, exactly?"
"Looking for a ship." Latifa's voice took on the flat, careful tone of something recited too many times. "An orbital research vessel. Went dark two years ago, no distress call, no wreckage found in any of the expected corridors. My team ran the drift models for months after the official search wound down — cosmic currents, trajectory decay, all of it — and it kept pointing to an uncharted gravity tear out this way. Command wasn't convinced. We stayed behind anyway. Wanted proof."
Halima had gone very still. "What was the ship called?"
"The Aidahar."
The name sat in the cabin a moment. Halima's throat worked.
"I was on the Aidahar," she said quietly.
Latifa's head came up sharp. "You — that's — that explains everything. That's how you got here." Her eyes were wide, working through it in real time. "God. It must have been chaos when it went down. What happened?"
"I was in systems maintenance." Halima's gaze had drifted somewhere past Latifa's shoulder, somewhere that wasn't this cabin. "The klaxons went off and I just ran. Got to a secondary pod, launched it. Then the impact took me out cold. I don't remember much after that. I woke up here."
"We searched for so long." Latifa said it almost to herself, shaking her head slowly. "Did anyone else make it down? Any other crew?"
"I don't think so." Halima's voice had gone gentle, careful. "If there'd been survivors nearby, Yahya would know. He knows this desert better than anyone."
Latifa sat back against the bulkhead, staring at nothing. "I need a second," she murmured. "This is a lot to take in at once."
Halima only nodded and let the silence sit, unhurried, the way you let a wound breathe before you touch it.
Wanting to lighten the heavy atmosphere and shift the mood, Halima tipped her head, studying Latifa with a warm smile: "Can I say something? You have unusual features. Not the typical look around here — I mean, back home." A small laugh escaped her. "Sorry. That came out blunt. I only wanted to say — you're very striking."
Latifa laughed, grateful for the shift. "My great-grandmother was European. My mom always said I got every one of her recessive genes, dragged them out of nowhere. Rest of the family's dark-haired, dark-eyed. I'm the odd one out at every reunion." Her voice warmed, remembering. "My mom used to hold up baby pictures of her next to me and swear we were the same kid."
"You sound close with them."
"Only child. They spoil me rotten." She smiled, easy, unguarded. "My mom's probably —"
She stopped.
The sentence just hung there, unfinished, and something behind her eyes shifted, went distant and then very close all at once. Her hands had gone still in her lap. She was light-years away from a mother who didn't even know if her daughter was breathing, on a world with no name that anyone back home would recognize, and there was no version of tomorrow where she simply walked back through the front door.
Her breath caught, short and audible.
Halima's hand found her shoulder, steady and warm. "Hey. Don't go there. You said you're going to fix the ship, didn't you? It's going to be all right."
Latifa nodded, too fast, blinking hard. "Right. Yeah. I'll fix it. I have to."
The days folded into each other after that, one much like the last.
Halima came every morning, sometimes with Yahya at her side and sometimes on her own once he trusted the walk, and the two of them talked away whole afternoons on the fold-down bench until it felt less like a wrecked ship and more like a kitchen table. Faris arrived like clockwork with the evening meal, food still steaming under its cloth, and stayed through the dark hours at his little fire, Barq curled nearby, watching the hatch the way some men watch a door they're praying will open.
And in between, Latifa worked. Elbow-deep in hydraulic lines that wouldn't seal, coaxing the salvaged comms array back into some kind of alignment, chasing the faint hope of a signal that might, if the universe was feeling generous, someday reach all the way home.
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