After countless indescribable trajectories, the ship drew near a planet that appeared on no star chart.
It didn’t look black.
More transparent.
As if it had been cast from glass that no one had ever looked into.
Its surface reflected neither the stars nor the ship itself.
It simply stayed silent.
“We’ll stop here for a few days,” Aronas said.
“Why?”
“Some routes can only be seen from here.”
He explained nothing further.
The landing was unusually smooth.
There was no wind.
There was no sound.
Even their footsteps on the grayish ground sounded as if muffled through thick water.
The horizon had no end.
It seemed the planet repeated itself in every direction.
That evening Ieva couldn’t fall asleep for a long time.
She dreamed of home.
But waking, she could no longer remember in which window her favorite plant used to stand.
She waved it off.
A small thing.
On the second morning, preparing the navigation charts, she froze.
A pencil lay on the table.
She turned it over in her fingers for a long time.
It seemed she should know why she always carried a pencil in her pocket.
But she couldn’t remember.
That evening, she asked Aronas:
“Did I ever used to draw?”
He looked at her as if the question were strange.
“Maybe as a child.”
“Everyone draws something as a child.”
Ieva nodded.
The answer sounded logical enough.
On the third morning, she found an old file in her personal archive.
It held dozens of sketches.
Nebulae.
Planets.
Impossible orbits.
Every sheet bore her signature.
She stared at the drawings for a long time.
They were beautiful.
And completely foreign.
That same day, walking across the planet’s surface, she unexpectedly asked:
“Were you never curious to fly alone?”
Aronas smiled.
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know…”
She fell silent.
The thought slipped away as quickly as it had come.
“You won’t get far alone,” he answered calmly.
That evening she tried to remember why she’d become a navigator at all.
She remembered the exams.
The Academy.
Her first flight.
But the feeling that had once driven her forward had faded.
As if someone had cut a few pages out of a book, leaving the rest of the story perfectly tidy.
The next morning, Aronas asked her to recalculate the course.
“What do you think — is it worth bypassing this sector?”
Before, she would have suggested a different route.
This time she only asked:
“What would you do?”
He glanced at her briefly.
Nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Whatever you want.”
She chose the trajectory he’d suggested.
Only much later did she realize he hadn’t suggested any route at all.
When they left the planet’s orbit, Ieva opened her old notes once more.
In one margin was a single phrase, written in her own hand:
“If you ever no longer know where you’re flying, remember that you wanted to learn to travel alone.”
She stared at the sentence for a long time.
The letters were familiar.
Only their meaning — no longer.