The Moonstone Studios

@the _ moonstone _ studios
Artist, Character Designer, Writer

The street was long and winding. The houses lining the edges were all the same, dull beige with two stories and scraggly bushes out front. Slight variations of the same white minivan lined the street, each one old and grimy.Dirty snow clung to everything. It was the typical New York Spring. Winter had its claws rooted and didn’t seem like it was going to leave for a while longer.Ara walked down the street, scanning the houses for signs of life. There were none to be found, no children, no pets, no television, not even any lights. Ara was alone as she continued her walk.As Ara blinked, the season changed into summer. Half the cars had left, and people were playing in their yards. Yet these people didn’t seem like real people. Their faces were blurred, and their voices seemed distant and scrambled. She hated the summer, yet the memory of why was hazy, as many of her memories were.Ara was eight again, her dark brown pigtails flying behind her as she ran to her house. Her mother and little brother were walking behind her. She was eager to get home to her father. She hadn’t seen him in days because he had been so busy working.As little Ara opened the door, she saw her dad sitting slumped in a chair. She squealed in delight and ran up to wrap her arms around him, squeezing him in a tight hug. As soon as her hands made contact with her father’s chest, Ara knew something was wrong. There was a warm, sticky liquid that coated her hands and filled her with dread, a sense young Ara was unfamiliar with. She instantly flinched her small hands back, only to see them covered in blood. Her father’s blood.Little Ara couldn’t quite connect the blood to her father’s death until she looked over to his body and the knife sticking out of his chest. She just stood there, staring at her father’s corpse, until her mother walked in. Her scream echoed in Ara’s memories. They never found his killer. Ara never recovered from that, explaining some of the negative emotions she felt towards summer.The scene changed again, and now Ara was twelve. She had lost her pigtails in favor of leaving her long brown hair down and was wearing a simple black dress. She was sitting in a hospital waiting room with her seven-year-old brother. Ara was far too worried to play with any of the toys or even her phone, which was resting on her lap. Her foot was tapping up and down nervously as her eyes darted around the bleak room.Her mother’s doctor entered the room and Ara stood up, barely catching her phone as it fell from her lap. The look on the doctor’s face told her all she needed to know. Her mother had the plague. Her mother was dying.The scene changed again. It was Ara’s high school graduation. She was fifteen, the youngest senior in the entire state. The only family member that had come was her brother, who looked bored, as expected. She was sad her mother couldn’t make it, but her quarantine wasn’t mobile, and they didn’t have enough money to afford a suit that would shield others from the high infectivity of the plague. Not if Ara wanted to go to college. Her mother had shut down any notion of Ara giving up that money as soon as Ara had brought it up.As they called Ara’s name, she saw a woman in a plague suit walking toward the ceremony. It was her mom! Ara, who had just received her diploma, jumped off the stage and flew towards her. Ara felt the tears flowing down her cheeks, and she could see the tears flowing down her mother’s.“How?” asked Ara, choking on her tears.“You got a complete scholarship! We don’t have to pay for your education!” said her mom, smiling ear to ear. That was the last time Mrs. Zapata was well enough to leave her bed.Ara graduated with her bachelor's degree in Geology just after she turned eighteen, then she put her education on hold so she could try to make enough money to keep her mom alive. Mrs. Zapata went into the fifth and final stage of the plague fifteen hours after her daughter graduated.Ara was on the street again, the same street she was on ten years ago the day her father died. The houses were a little worse for wear, as was the road if that was possible. The cars were run down, and there weren’t any more kids playing in the summer heat. It was a depressing scene.As Ara rounded the corner, she saw a new house, her house. She started running. It felt like she hadn’t been home in decades. The burn of anticipation ran up her legs, down to the ends of her fingers. She felt it pushing her harder, a strong feeling of home tingling on her fingertips. Why did it feel like it had been so long?As Ara opened the door, the warm feeling of home vanished and dread settled in the pit of her stomach. This wasn’t her home. There was no smell of dinner cooking on the stove, no warm fuzzy feelings, no chatter of Ara’s family members. They were gone. It was all gone, and it was never coming back.Ara was in a hospital, with its cold sterile walls and the soul-crushing weight of sickness and loss. She walked up to a window. Her brother was standing in front of it, tears pouring down his face. Her mother was inside, lying in a sterile white bed. In a sterile white room. Her mom was in the final stage. She was going to die.Ara was scared, and the feeling wasn’t fresh. It was an old, old, old feeling. She hated it. She would not let her mother die. Ara started running. There was a door into the quarantine around the corner. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew she had to do something. For goodness’ sake, her mother was dying.Ara hurtled around the corner, tears flying past her face as she reached the door. Her hand was about to touch the handle when a nurse grabbed her other one, pulling her back. She pulled it out of his grasp and yanked the door open simultaneously. She fell through headfirst.Ara was in a graveyard, curled up in front of a small, nondescript gravestone. Her father’s gravestone. He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. He could never come back, and her mother was going to join him within the week if Ara couldn’t pull the money together. Curse the plague, curse money, curse her mother. Curse everything. Ara’s tears flowed down her face as she looked up. She heard voices, voices she knew. They were saying words, words she had heard before.“You’ll do.”“Launch in five…”“Adara, don’t you dare leave us!”“Ara? When will you come home?”“Four…”“I’m sorry Mom.”“We’ll take care of them.”“Three…”“Jake, she’s not coming back.”“She’ll only survive two weeks in that pod. Call the mission off!”“Two…”“You did it, Ara… I’m proud of you.”“We welcome you here to remember the life of Mr. Jacob Zapata, loving husband, friend, and father.”“One…”“Adara! Don’t throw your life away for me!”“I’ll not call anything off, Professor.”“Commencing launch.”“Maybe I want to throw my life away! Ever think about that, Mom?”“Adara, you are the light of my life. Without you, all is pointless.”That last one. Ara didn’t recognize it, it was new. The words before that were the last words she should have ever heard. It was impossible. Ara should be dead. Despite the impossibility, Ara’s eyes opened.It was cold. Ara was still submerged in the CryoGel, so something was wrong. You weren’t supposed to wake up while still submerged in the gel. There was foggy glass above her, and a breathing apparatus covering her nose and mouth. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t struggle, and she could barely see anything other than vague shapes and colors.There was a woman, or maybe a girl, above her. The only part of her that was in focus was her right hand. She had it resting on the glass cover of Ara’s pod. Even though Ara was straining to see the rest of the woman, she could barely make out that she was wearing an unflattering gray jumpsuit. It almost seemed like a uniform of some sort, but Ara couldn’t be sure.The woman turned so that her face was in Ara’s view. Covered by a gray blindfold, her face was contorted into a judgemental sneer.She had pure white skin like a porcelain doll. An albino. She must be on the Mars colony, which was still farther away than her pod should have made it. Ara tried to call out and get the girl’s attention, but she couldn’t move. She was conscious, yet still frozen.Ara felt herself drifting back to her memory-filled sleep. She tried to fight it, but the weariness settled on her eyes, dragging them down. Eventually, the unfamiliar voice lulled her into a sense of calm, and Ara was back in CryoSleep.