Yawning, I stepped in. It was going to be a bad night, but I’d promised.
The “sky” was tinged orange, though I knew she’d tried to make it black. The stars were sloppy too – I caught one going supernova. The moon was alright though.
From the corner of my eye, I saw something whizz past. It was a comet.
The door opened.
“I heard a noise.” Orla called. “Did something happen?”
I stood up. My trousers were slightly singed, but otherwise, the damage was minimal. “Comet.”
Orla sighed. “Meteor” she corrected. “I always get those wrong. They’re hopeless.”
Orla’s into space engineering. After years of work, she’s fast achieving her goal: creating practice environments for astronauts-in-training. I like adventures, so I’m her guinea pig, “planet” after “planet”.
We have nothing in common. I’m quiet. I mess about and watch movies. Orla? She’s talkative, pushy, and infuriatingly smart. Whenever we talked, we argued. At some point… we stopped.
Until a few months ago, when she’d approached me, asking for help.
After every experiment, we went for ice cream.
She liked thunderstorms; she hated raspberries. Piece by piece, I got to know this stranger of a sister.
Took a while, didn’t it?
