Date: 5/30/2440 Time: 1:00 PM
They stood at the edge of the western tract, where the wheat ran long and still, silvering at the tips under early summer light. The crop wasn’t quite ready, but Matt had already decided not to wait.
“I am putting together a harvest crew as we speak,” he said, his boot scuffing dry earth. “It is a little earlier than ideal, but there’s no point in waiting another week. This field is going to be in shade most of the day forevermore, so we might as well get what we can from it.”
It wasn’t said with regret. It was matter-of-fact, part of the rhythm of working land, of making decisions that balance yield with meaning. T’mari stepped forward slowly, her translator clicking softly as she spoke.
“It feels… untouched,” she said. “Not abandoned. Just… held in waiting.”
Matt nodded. “That’s exactly it. We’ve farmed this land for generations. Same ground, same crop rotation. But it’s always felt like it was waiting for something else. Maybe this is it.”
K’rem’s gaze stretched over the field, eyes narrowing at the far-off line where wheat met sky. “You’re offering it?” he asked, not quite disbelieving, but careful.
“I don’t want to build on it,” Matt replied. “And I can’t sell it. But I’ll make it sacred, if you want it. I can’t make your people whole again, but I can offer this, three hundred acres of soil that has never known concrete, never been paved, never been anything but quiet.”
T’mari’s hand touched K’rem’s forearm, not to stop him but to show she felt the same thing rising in the silence between words.
“We still carry the dead,” she said. “Not all made it to Earth. Not all were given proper rites. My sister’s apprentice was in a compartment that decompressed. She and many others need a place to remember those we lost.”
Matt nodded, his jaw tight with the weight of it. “We’ll give them a place to remember.”
K’rem’s voice was lower now, heavy with years and losses. “You mean to make this a cemetery.”
“Yes,” Matt said. “But not the way we do it. No polished granite. No white picket fences. Not unless that’s what your people want. If they need soil, they’ll have soil. If they want sky above their dead, they’ll have it. If they want something else entirely, I’ll stand down and let them decide.”
There was a long pause as K’rem surveyed the gentle rises and dips of the field.
“We used to plant night gardens,” he said finally. “Places where only certain flowers would bloom, some that glowed, some that released fragrance in darkness. We walked there in silence, with only memory to guide us.”
Matt didn’t respond with words. His eyes stayed on the land.
K’rem continued, “I would not speak for all of us. But if you are sincere, allow us to design this together. And let those who wish to bury their dead here do so with dignity and in accordance with our rites.”
“Offered, without reservation,” Matt said. “I can’t alienate the land out of my family, but I can keep this section from ever being used for anything else.”
T’mari tilted her head, voice soft but certain. “You know what you’re offering, don’t you?”
“I do,” Matt said. “I’m offering them a place to grieve. And you a reason to stay.”
K’rem’s final words landed like a benediction. “Then you are no longer only host, Matthew. You are kin to the mourning.”
They stood in silence as the winter wheat moved around them, brushing their legs. Light touched the tops of the crop in gentle strokes. For a moment, the shadowed land didn’t look like soil at all, it looked like water, rippling in stillness, carrying grief and memory into something sacred.
