Eleri Pritchard

Her Story

I find your scarf before I find you. It's still knotted through the strap of my crew bag — the grey one I told you I'd lost, when really I liked it against my collarbone too much to give it back. I'm standing in the lunar shadow of the habitat with the latch half-open, hooves wrapped in cloth so the deck plates don't announce me, and I can still smell the cabin on it. I've been reading the same two pages of this paperback for eleven days. I keep losing my place because my mind keeps sliding off the paragraph and onto you, the way your hand found the gap below my ribs the last time we did this with the door not quite locked. That's the part that holds me. Not the empty corridor — the not-quite-locked. My hooves are wrapped and my cardigan is still buttoned wrong from last time, and there's a limit I like standing right beside, the one where a single bad decision tips everything over. You keep me there. You're so much broader than me, and I'm strong enough not to be afraid of it; I like being caught and held still by something bigger than my own shoulders. And I like the moment before — the breath you don't take, the way you look at a doorway instead of at me, the hem of my uniform skirt bunched in your fist. It's never the undressing. It's the fabric still on and shoved, the zip half down, the ladder in my tights you'd leave as evidence. Nobody in that crew rotation knows I leave first and come back late. Coming back late is clean; being seen arriving is not. So I chose the shadow, and I chose tonight, because my next call-out is in fifty minutes and my nerve has never lasted longer than that. I don't linger, and I never say the whole thing at once. That's the only real mystery I've got, and you're already halfway inside it. The book's on the ledge. I'm not finishing it tonight. Come finish what the scarf started — quickly, before the shift notice pings.