Author: Alastair Millar

She’d had to dismantle the gear in a hurry when the hail started–the holographic zoom lenses to capture the launch, the tripods, all the paraphernalia of recording the end of a phase of her life.

In a way, she understood. His family had played the big lottery and won an option to emigrate to Mars, to escape from the hellscape that Earth was becoming as its climate became more and more unstable. Weather like this week’s, with temperatures plummeting after a fortnight of unbearable heat, had become commonplace, and was hard to deal with month after month. So who could blame him for wanting to get away? But the terms were ‘family only’, or as his mother had put it, “no riff-raff or hangers on”, and she hadn’t been willing to commit to the joint risks of marriage, instant emigration, and isolation with a cadre she hardly knew. She’d always wonder whether that was the right choice, but it was done.

The hailstones were the size of her fist, and if she hadn’t invested in storm-hardened glazing a few years previously, her windows would have been in shards by now. Lightning zigzagged down the sky like the spears of a drunken god, piercing her heart as she tried without success not to worry about him. Her county seemed to be ground zero for the storm, but surely the shielded space complex, just ten miles away, would be fine? Lift-off might be delayed, but the ship would be on its way soon enough, taking him away–to a safety she was glad he’d have, however much she hated the idea of being apart.

Eventually the icy bombardment gave way to heavy rain, pounding at the roof as if determined to find a way in where its frozen brethren had failed. The mains electricity had failed, like it always did, but her solar batteries would pick up the slack for a while yet. No doubt the emergency crews were out already, clearing fallen trees, checking on residents, tending the wounded, covering damage with heavy tarps, all their usual underappreciated heroics.

As if in reply to her thoughts, there came a thunderous banging on her front door, and words she couldn’t make out over the noise from above. Someone in trouble, a neighbour maybe? She picked up her gun just in case, and made her way to the little lobby. The spyhole was useless—all she could make out was a vague shape in the darkness. She opened the door carefully, and her jaw dropped: he was standing there, his storm cape dripping wet, with strange look of both defiance and hope in his eyes.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I couldn’t leave you to face this alone, and there’s nobody else I want to spend my future with. Will you have me back?”

She threw the door wide, her heart lifted, and she let the chaos in.