Thousands of miles away, in a station that no longer had a name, Theo Arlen sat beneath the buzzing warmth of emergency lighting and read Mara's letter again.
He found it two weeks ago — or rather, heard it.
The station's old analog receiver, a relic buried in a backup system no one had used in a decade, suddenly picked up a whisper on a dead frequency. He almost missed it, but insomnia has its uses. It came through in fragments: a woman's voice, reading words that sounded too human for a world so broken.
The station's main array was fried after the solar flare. All digital commucations were gone. But the analog emergency receiver, tucked behind the lab's storage room, had survived.
That night, he stayed awake, hoping the voice would return.
It did. Three days later.
The messages weren't live. They were automated broadcasts — like someone had rigged a transmitter to play them on a loop. Letters. Spoken aloud. Personal. Vulnerable. Beautiful. Painful.
He didn't know her name yet. She never signed them with anything more than "Love always" or "Yours."
But he listened to every word. Recorded them. Wrote them down.
He rationed them, one a day, like medicine.
Outside, the cold could snap bones in minutes. The last transport from the mainland never came. He'd watched the last helicopter vanish into a pale orange horizon days before the flare hit. "Just a delay," they said.
They were wrong.
Theo survived on canned food, melted snow, and hope — the last of which came in the form of a stranger's voice echoing through static.
March 14(at least, he thought it was March)
He sat at his tiny steel desk, wearing three layers of thermal gear and drinking tea that tasted like rubber. A printout of one letter sat in front of him. Her words ended with:
"I saw a shooting star tonight. I made a wish. I can't tell you what it was, but I think you already know."
He swallowed. The edges of his vision burned from lack of sleep.
For the first time in weeks, he picked up a pen.
Reply Draft — Not Sent
To the voice in the garden,
I don't know if you meant for someone to hear this. Maybe it was just for him. But it reached me. I'm not the one you're missing, but I'm here, and I'm listening.
I don't have stars where I am. Just ice. But I still make wishes.
He stopped there.
Folded the page. Slid it into his journal.
The next day, he began fixing the emergency transmitter — piece by piece. If he could just get it to bounce a signal, even a short-range one, maybe… just maybe…
He could answer.
Back in the coastal town, Mara woke with a strange feeling in her chest — not hope, exactly, but something like it. She dreamed of snow that night. Of a man standing in it, holding one of her letters.
She didn't know why. She just felt less alone.