Chromium || A Little Match Girl Retelling

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"ʙᴀᴛᴛᴇʀɪᴇs ʟᴇғᴛ: 1"
...

"Keep talking to me, Alison."

When every laboured breath felt like it was inhaled through a throat pierced by a hundred needles, it was a difficult request. The cryosuit felt heavier by the minute, weighing them down as their legs sank into the snow reaching upto their knees. Ahead of them was a permanent fog.

"It's...cold," Alison managed.

"I know. Keep walking forward," the technokinect said. In the silence between his words, the engineer could make out voices in the background clamouring for attention and issuing orders. "I'm sorry you had to go through this. The Command Centre can be unreasonable at times."

"Hmmm."

They nearly missed the auroral creature crossing their path.

"D-do you see that?" they asked, tapping the camera mounted on their helmet.

The ionic emission resembled a male deer, something they had only seen in museums and old terran nature documentaries. The creature walked towards them, pawed the snow and cried, its sound a limpid melody over the howling storm winds. It shook its branching antlers at Alison. They could see their reflection in its brilliant blue eyes- a chrome-skinned biped with a bowed back and a black visor, more alien than the stag itself.

"A ph...photon aggregate just...vocalised."

Entranced, they extended their hand to feel it. One stray blink and the stag vanished.

"Remain focused," said the technokinect over the sounds of gate shutters rolling. "The aurorae get more aberrant as the temperature drops. Don't stop for anything. Hang in there, I'm coming. The lantern's good right?"

Alison remembered they had a left hand. It was peculiar, they hadn't felt anything in the last few minutes. The numb limb had loyally held the lantern despite it being neglected by the lantern's heat. They tapped their left limb. It felt dead.

"Yeah...should be for...few minutes..."

"Good, that's very good, I'll be there in five minutes. I'll have to switch this line off for a minute. Promise me you won't stop, okay?"

"I won't stop."

The line went dead. Static filled their ears again.

Alison wished that the White Rabbit had left the line open, his steady breathing and the background noises would've been reassuring enough. Earlier that day, the technomancer had smiled at them through a bagel clenched between his teeth in the cafeteria, coffee in one hand and levitating a damaged survey drone with the other. Alison had blushed so furiously that a friend had wondered if they were feverish. Although the two knew each other on a nickname basis, the engineer couldn't control their shyness around him and they were sure that the idiot knew it.

His smile flashed across their mind. Though feeble, their cheeks burned despite the low temperatures.

The winds lashed around them, throwing them off balance and ripping into their bowed back. Their feet stayed rooted to the ground. Whenever their sensations woke from stasis, all they could percieve was pain.

Tomorrow, they promised themselves, I'll ask him out tomorrow.

Something hovered over what they assumed to be the horizon. They peered through the visor of their helmet and blinked slowly. The figure darkened with each step they took.

They suspected the structure towering over them to be the engineer's cabin. Was it another tantalizing mirage, they couldn't tell in the fading light of the lantern.

Alison looked down at the small shining disc they had pulled out from their pocket. They sighed. Five minutes till they were rescued, they had to endure just five more minutes of this hell.

The last battery left their fingers and entered the slot.