Image from Pixabay by CDD20

Emilie stared out the window of the space ship, her eyes meeting nothing but the bleak, unrelieved view of the blackness of space. That had been her life since she was born. No one in her generation had seen anything but the ship or the same, unending view out the viewports.

Her grandmother told of a broken world called Earth that they’d once lived on, full of pollution and war, that the people had fled to start a new life. “Some new life,” Emilie muttered. “Trapped aboard a floating coffin.”

Her mother had died two weeks earlier of a disease the doctors had never seen before. Her father had died of a heart attack a week later. Now it was just Emilie, her brother Max, and Grandmother Lucia left. Grandmother Lucia was old and frail and wouldn’t be around much longer either. Soon Emilie and Max would be put into cryo sleep along with the other orphans because there was no one to take care of them. Unless Grandma Lucia held out until Emilie turned eighteen in two years. Then she could take care of Max and the two would be allowed to stay awake.

“And do what?” Max had asked. “Stare into nothingness?”

It wasn’t that there weren’t things to do on the ship. There were many activities to keep the colonists busy and active. It was the fact that it was going to take over ten thousand years to reach their colonization point. Unless Emilie and Max went into cryo sleep, they wouldn’t live to see it. Even with the advanced propulsion system, which cut a trip that should have taken over a hundred thousand years down to a little over ten thousand, it still was going to take a long time.

“Are you staring out the window again, Emilie?” Grandma Lucia asked in her whispery voice.

“Yes, Grandmother,” Emilie said.

“Why don’t you paint with the stars instead of just staring at them?” Grandma Lucia suggested.

“Paint with the stars?” Emilie asked, confused.

Grandma Lucia pulled out an odd looking device from her breast pocket. “It’s a light pen. It won’t damage the window. You have an imagination, Emilie. I made sure of that even if your parents were scientists and didn’t think you needed to exercise your creativity,” she said. “Draw using the stars as your guide.” With that she toddled off.

Using the stars as my guide, Emilie thought. She set the light pen against the window and stared out at the stars for a moment. She thought longingly of flowers, the beautifully fragrant plants her grandmother had seen in specially controlled greenhouses back on Earth. They had the area here where all the plants grew to help produce oxygen, but it was mostly algae.

Slowly, drawing on her memory of Grandma Lucia’s stories, Emilie began to draw. The light pen’s lines remaining on the glass for only a few moments after she pressed its tip against the cold surface. She had to be quick if she wanted to see her completed image. She drew swiftly and a moment later, pulsing gold, was her idea of a flower drawn from point to point against the inky blackness. It faded and she thought again about what her grandmother had told her about Earth. No longer bored, Emilie began to paint with the stars as her guide.