The three of us broke into snorting laughter. It felt good to laugh with friends like this. As if things were almost... Normal.

I could practically taste the burger I’d mentioned. Smoky and cooked to perfection. I’d long since moved south to study and then work at the University of Toronto, but I visited my dad up in Thunder Bay whenever I could. He always got the smoker going for me as soon as I arrived. If it wasn’t burgers, it was steak, pulled pork, brisket...

My mouth watered.

So did my eyes.

The last time I’d gone to Thunder Bay was the first time I’d been there without him. The first time since he’d died. The memory was so fucking painful, a wound that wouldn’t heal, because I never got any real closure. I never got to spend time in my childhood home, his home, to say goodbye to him. I never got that chance because men dressed all in black had knocked me out, drugged me up, and dragged me away as soon as I’d gotten my key in the front door’s lock after the funeral. It had been two months since that day. One month spent travelling on the ship. One month on this planet.

Fuck.

If I didn’t get a handle on my emotions now, I’d start bawling. And crying in temperatures this low with goggles on was a recipe for disaster. The goggles would get all wet and fogged, but if I took them off, the tears would freeze in my eyelashes and on my cheeks, making my skin painful and raw. Plus, my nose would be running even more than it already was, making my neck warmer a snotty mess.

I sniffed hard, refocusing on the task at hand to try to distract myself.  I braced myself against the tree with my left hand and raised my hammer high in my right. I brought the hammer down against the stony tree as hard as I could. I felt good about the movement.

Until the hammer glanced off the tree and smashed into my left wrist.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I cried, dropping the hammer. I bent over at the waist, curling around my wrist and squeezing it with my right hand.

“Shit, you OK?” Min-Ji asked. She and Suvi peeled away from their trees, but they both froze when Major Corey shouted at them.

“Back to your posts!”

“She’s hurt!” Min-Ji said, pointing at me as if Major Corey was too stupid to know who she was talking about. Which, to be fair, he might have been.

“For fuck’s sake,” Major Corey muttered. He stomped over. “If you broke something, Hayes, I swear to fucking God...”

“I didn’t,” I gritted out, straightening up. My wrist hurt like a motherfucker, and I already knew I’d have a vicious bruise there soon, but I could tell it wasn’t broken.

“Fine. Stick your hand in the snow for a bit and get back to it, then,” he said.

“No.”

Major Corey went very still. I could practically feel the shocked, concerned intake of breath coming from Suvi and Min-Ji. I was just as shocked myself. I’d never told Major Corey a flat-out no before.

“What the fuck did you just say?” he asked, deadly quiet.

“I said, ‘No.’ I need a break. Um... A toilet break.”

“Then find a tree to squat behind.”

“I can’t,” I said tightly. “I need to deal with something.”

I rolled my eyes at the confused cocking of Major Corey’s head.

“Menstruation,” I added, a terse word of explanation.

Major Corey physically recoiled.

I bit my tongue, the words almost leaving my mouth. Big bad soldier scared of a little blood.

I wasn’t even on my period. I just knew that was the one thing, other than actually breaking a bone, which would get me a short reprieve from the fieldwork to use the ship’s toilets. Between the pain in my wrist and the agony of thinking of my dad, I had to get out of here. Just for a little while.

“Fucking females,” Major Corey said under his breath. I was pretty sure I was the only one who heard that remark because I knew Min-Ji would have something to say about it if she had.

“I’m not dragging my ass all the way back to the ship for this shit,” Major Corey continued louder this time. “You’re on your own. Don’t take too long.”

“She can’t go alone!” Min-Ji cried. “It’s like a twenty-minute hike through the snow! She could get lost.”

“Let one of us go with her,” Suvi added.

“Not happening. You three have been fucking around way too much today already! Your bin’s at half of what it should be for the day!” Major Corey exploded. The sound of his angry voice sent a couple of pale pink bunny-peckers flying away in dismay. We called them bunny-peckers because, while they were generally bunny-like in shape, with long ears, their trunks furred and fluffy, they had feathered wings. Their rabbity faces ended in hard beaks used for pecking at the crystal trees, creating hollows to live and nest. They had a longer, scientific name that I couldn’t remember. Marta the xenobiologist would know it.

I watched the bunny-peckers’ flight across the pinkish sky that so closely matched their colouring. My heart lurched at the natural beauty of the small forest creatures. The freedom in their flight. It made me want to follow them.

“I won’t get lost,” I said softly.

Both Suvi and Min-Ji were looking at me with what I knew was concern behind their goggles and neck warmers.

“Come on, guys,” I said, simultaneously grateful to have friends looking out for me but also a little annoyed they thought I’d get lost on such a straight path. I may have been an absolute shit show at carving crystal off the trees, but I wasn’t stupid. Not many stupid people could earn a tenured position teaching astrophysics by the age of twenty-nine.

“The snow’s deepest here,” I reminded them. “Once I’m up the hill it’s a straight shot to the ship. I’ll be able to see the ship from the top.”

It was true. The walk was long, but once I got out of the well of this part of the forest, the snow wouldn’t be as deep. Here, the snow drifted around the base of the trees, but it was shallower up the hill behind us and beyond. I was used to snow, to cold winters, from back home. I’d hike and go snowshoeing or cross-country skiing with my dad whenever I visited him in the winter.

“Then get going, Hayes. I’ll radio the ship and let them know you’re coming. They’ll be expecting you, so no stupid shit.” Major Corey stepped closer, leaning in so close to my face that I would have felt his breath crawling over my skin if not for our neck warmers. “Straight to the ship, you hear me? Do not make me come track you down.”

“Roger that,” I replied, my tone more biting than I usually dared. I just barely stopped myself from giving him a sarcastic salute. That, or flipping him the bird. Something told me neither gesture would be appreciated.

“See you guys soon,” I called over my shoulder to Min-Ji and Suvi as I turned away from them. I ploughed forward, slowed by the snow but not letting myself falter. My heart pounded with the exertion, the pulse of it throbbing in my wrist. My neck warmer was hot and wet against my mouth as I panted. I wanted to rip the fabric away from my face, but I knew that meant the moisture on the fabric would freeze and it would be like scraping frozen concrete against my skin.

After a few minutes, I stopped and looked back. The others were out of sight now, blocked by the huge, crystalline cones of this alien forest’s trees. I knew I hadn’t gotten too far yet, but by now I could barely hear the tapping of Min-Ji and Suvi’s hammers. The snow swallowed the sound, making the air into cold, quiet velvet.

I faced forward once more, starting my ascent up the huge, broad hill that led out of the forest. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing or where I was going – I definitely wasn’t going back to the ship. I needed to be alone for a bit, and that did not involve heading straight for the soldiers who’d abducted me in the first place. I swore, the pain in my wrist flaring, as I remembered that night. Barely keeping it together after Dad’s funeral. Stepping up to his door but never getting it open before the pain and the needle and the dark.