Forget Me Not

by Karissa Kinword

I think I know the man in front of me, but I don’t. I think I might be dreaming, but I’m not. I think I must be in love with Silas—but my partner is passed out on our bed just beyond the door behind him.

Trees as tall as mountains, thick grasses and brush, an atmosphere heavy with yellowish hues from the endless pollen—a mother planet that wades on the horizon day and night regardless of the climate.

Centuries ago, when humans began migrating from the Ghost Earth in the solar system to the newly discovered Alzaec system to inhabit the Otera—everyone got greedy.

“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. I nod as if I agree, imagining the sparkling blue geode inside its fluorescent bubble. Like seeing the night sky captured in clear quartz. When I look up, Silas is still watching me, basking in his own staggeringly obvious innuendo. My cheeks run hot when I realize.

But having this conversation here in a shared reality, captivating me with his work, is better than any dream.

Gone. I don’t want him to be gone. The thought of this freighter docking at the Otera in a cycle or so and having to say goodbye to Silas already feels wrong. It already hurts. I’ve just found you.

Now as I’m sitting next to Silas, in a beaming hallway, on one of the thousands of transports floating through the endless black of space, it’s evident there’s several forces at work that brought the two of us together.

I want so badly to tell him that I see him in my sleep. That I can’t stop thinking about him.

“Why do you stare at me like that?” I ask.

“Just trying to remember where I’ve seen you before.”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Have you?” he deals back.

“It’s starting to come back to me,” I say.

“You know what, I do remember now,” he confesses, opening his eyes again to find me.

“You were laying in a field of green, on a big old blanket.” He watches my expression change completely to confusion. “Yeah—in a little yellow sundress and hat made from straw. The sun was beating down on you, and you were reading a book.”

If he’s reciting a dream to me, there’s a thousand I can declaim to him too. “I—I think I know where I’ve seen you too, actually,” I say, voice so low it might as well be a whisper.

Silas drops his head back against the wall again, still holding my gaze. He wants so badly to reach out and touch me, or hold me, because this is more emotion than a body alone can endure. A feeling of fate barreling in like some insane, extraterrestrial being that was impressively late for the party.

“My evocation may be a bit divergent from yours,” he tests me. “You see, after our rendezvous—I woke up. It proved to be just a dream.”

After all this time in my life, feeling that I was experiencing a one-sided pleasure with a man that didn’t exist and never would, he does. I grip his hand where it’s resting on his knee and squeeze it. “I knew it,” I whisper. “You see me, too.”

Silas squeezes my hand back and nods in haste. “Every single night when I go to sleep, Eliza.”

“We’re bonded,” Silas answers, and that feels undoubtedly true.

I hear him leave from the other side of the door, pressing my ear against it with a palm over my mouth to hush my erratic breathing. I knew he was still standing there, probably just as aghast as I was. Trying to understand this intense attraction that leaves us both airless and clueless.

Silas sucks his teeth and shakes his head back and forth like he doesn’t know what else to say. He knows his mind is taunting him with the image of me, telling him all the things he won’t allow himself to believe in his waking hours.

“So make me beg then.”

I wait with bated breath for him to lick into me, and when he doesn’t I whine again, pressing up onto my elbows so I can see his face. Silas awaits my eye contact before spitting down onto the throbbing bundle of nerves at my peak. My spine arches when he does it.

“Beg.” “Please, Silas,” I sigh. “Please.”

I take my time, close my eyes, and think about this whole fucked up trip. How I felt so irrevocably in love with my boyfriend mere spins ago and now my mind is entirely occupied by Silas. It’s more than a clouding of him. He’s a thick fog in my brain that’s stubborn to lift, leaving me blind as to what will come next.

I’m having more and more trouble denying that I want to spend time with Silas, especially after last night—finding out we both dream about each other, that we share a bond that I’m implicit to explore further.

“You know why I had to,” he said. “There’s no use playing second fiddle to another man.” “Like I didn’t end up in this position by just living my fucking life. You didn’t exist to me, Silas. Does that somehow make me the bad guy?” “You tell me.”

“You have to tell Logan,”

“That it’s always been me,” he growled into my shoulder. “That it will always be me.”

Outside the windshield the Continental horizon makes its first appearance as the pod begins to drop into the moon’s gravitational field. The surface is cerulean, deep greens thrown over it in patches like a blanket, swirling sands throughout.

I’ve read about the Continental moon before, its sprawling mountain ranges that give way to greener pastures, valley’s and winding rivers in-land, and an abundance of farmable animals throughout. On the outskirts of the port city there’s an ocean as far as the eye can see.

I nod happily, but it quickly falls flat when I remember that that can never happen between Silas and I. That there’s no viable timeline or setting back on the transport where a domestic encounter between the two of us exists.

Silas basks in the fluidity of our conversation, at how easy it is to talk with me and be around me.

“You do indeed follow me wherever I go, Birdie,”

“This might sound weird, but I’m less scared to do new things sometimes,” I confess, “because I know you’re there.” “I don’t find it weird at all.” He smiles. “I feel the same way.”

“It’s just you,” he avows. “The little bird that follows me around and sings me to sleep at night.”

“Undeniably my favorite part of every day.”

This was a near perfect day, the only hang up was that it had to end.

Having me this close to him, the thing he’s hungered for all his life but can’t yet devour, must be a punishment for every sin he’s ever committed.

This day on the Continental was everything for Silas. A delighted cameo of what his life is meant to be, could be, with me. So many times on this trip he felt like he was simply living out a very vivid dream.

Nothing compares to him.

“Fuck.” Silas sighs deeply, the word comes out coarse with dryness from the way his jaw has been entirely agape.

We both have been keeping the true essence of our dreams to ourselves for different reasons, but now that Silas knows this about me, he wants to confess for himself. He wants me to know there’s a dangerous satisfaction to explore, that he wants me in all the ways this journal says I want him.

He wants me to know there’s a dangerous satisfaction to explore, that he wants me in all the ways this journal says I want him.

If I’ve learned anything from this day, it’s that I need to tell Logan about my bond with Silas, and there’s external forces at work that tether the two of us together in a way that breaches platonic.

“These things that you write about me...” He moves his head with mine as I try to avoid his eyesight. “They’re kindred sentiments. I know them all too well in my own mind’s eye.”

He’s careful with his acquiescence, drumming his thumb against my skin comfortingly as I wipe a small tear off my lashes before it has a chance to drop. The emotion in itself is overwhelming and terrifying.

So, thirty seconds. And not because I’m sad or even embarrassed at this point, I got over that the second I stepped out of his pod, but because I’m angry. Angry at Silas, angry at myself for having feelings for Silas, angry that I wrote them in that Maker forsaken journal and that he read them—and I deserve the release.