Stagnant

Amazed

Jackson Ryder was a strange phenomenon. I had never, in my entire life, met anyone as remarkable yet unusual as him.

I had thought that after Northampton and the bathroom situation that he would tread carefully around me, he would regret this whole thing and treat me differently. He would treat me like a piece of glass, fragile, delicate and thoroughly breakable.

This deduction, however, was wholly wrong.

Jackson Ryder acted like nothing had happened, and our dynamic went straight back to the way it was. He joked, grinned, made sarcastic remarks and told me to 'move my pretty little ass because we had to get on the road' after we spent the afternoon falling to our deaths.

I had been dreading the moment he woke up, staring at me with cautious eyes, waiting for me to breakdown again but that never happened.

And I couldn't be more grateful.

I didn't need him treating me as someone who was damaged, broken and delicate. I don't think I could handle him going around as if I would shatter if he said one wrong word.

The car ride to Leicester consisted of me watching the blurred world pass us by and Jackson singing at the top of his lungs to all kinds of music. I think he was trying to make me laugh, make me forget about why I self harmed in the first place even though my state of vulnerability had passed by. I tried telling him that I didn't need forgetting and that I didn't need him to be around twenty-four-seven, even going as far as us sharing a bed and cuddling in the night so he could be by my side if I ever needed him. I tried to block out all the thoughts and butterflies that swarmed in my stomach, erupting like a volcano, as we spooned harmlessly, his arms winding around my like vines and holding me against his steel chest.

He had been doing that alot though, trying to make me forget; bungee jumping; buying me more books; telling jokes; singing atrociously. If he did it on purpose, he didn't let on. I don't know if I imagined his sapphire eyes gleaming brighter whenever I laughed at his ridiculous and deafening high pitched singing voice.

Jackson Ryder was, to put it simply, remarkable.

"Am I good singer?" He glances at me, his gorgeous smile present on his face.

"About as good as a pig being slaughtered."

Them pesky butterflies appeared again as he laughs.

This entire museum Jackson had booked us to visit was dedicated to the research and exploration of space. We, as a species, know more about space than we do our own oceans.

But the curiosity of what's around us is huge. We're on this rock, on the Earth, that's orbiting a sun that is one of hundreds of billions in the entire universe, with seven other planets orbiting the same star and out of those eight planets it just so happened that on the one in the exact place we called 'the goldilock zone' life began. So with those odds, with the science of what happened here, how can we not want to find out what's happening on other planets? How can we resist the urge to find out the one question we've been asking for decades:

Are we alone in the universe?

We have this need to find out whether we are the only intelligent lifeform in this universe. Are we the only planet in the universe that has managed to harbour life? Is Earth the only planet with suitable conditions for organisms to live, grow, develop and evolve? Of course the answer has to be no.

How can we be the only planet with life on? There has to be thousands of other planets orbiting a star at the exact same distance and growth conditions where it is possible for life to begin but because of our technology, and the fact that that it took Voyager 1 thirty-five years to pass in to interstellar space, we will probably never find out in our life time -and for quite a few life times- but that doesn't mean we have to stop exploring and learning about our solar system and universe.