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She drifts.
You'd imagine that being in space would be cold - and it is. The atoms have come to a near standstill, there's no energy here.
But she is stiflingly hot.
It's humid inside the helmet, the vapour from her exhalation making the air thick and uncomfortable. In approximately twenty-three minutes and thirty seconds, she will run out of oxygen.
She looks out to the stars. How close she came. How far she is.
She always thought she would die in space. It's not a safe place to be, by anyone's standard, and dying on earth seemed an unfit way to go considering how she wasn't bound by such a mortal place anymore.
She can see the vague shape of the Milky Way, a loose slash in the dark fabric of the sky. She can see the ribbon of rope that once secured her to safety. She can see a light speck in the distance, just bigger than the biggest star on her horizon - that's her ship, crewed by five other helpless men and women, no doubt contacting mission control. As if they could help. As if she could be saved.
It's nice to be free. It's nice to finally, finally, leave everything behind in the best way possible.
She didn't mean to die right now, but she is meant to die here. This was her birthright, her final chapter as it was always planned. This was her fate, her finale, her end.
She was okay with that.
She opens her eyes again. Twenty minuets and fifteen seconds left. Her limbs are feel weightless. Her fingers tips are cold despite the heat in her helmet.
The seconds tick away. She thinks about her sister, who is on earth, who is normal and so terrifyingly at peace with her earthbound state. She doesn't know that her sister is dying, dead, her time left being dictated by the tank bound to her back.
She doesn't know what it's like to get so close to the stars only to be denied because of something as simple as a beating heart and needy lungs.
Nineteen. Eighteen. She lifts her gloved hand to her face, and turns it, looking at how the light dances and slips like liquid over it. Seventeen. Sixteen.
She blinks and looks up to a directionless expanse. She is drifting. She is drifting. She is drifting. She is drifting and she is going to die here, alone, surrounded by the stars and the black sky and an unforgiving, apathetic universe.
She smiles to herself and repeats the mantra. She is drifting. She is okay with that.
Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
She could look at the stars forever. She hopes that, if there is an afterlife, she can see the same stars. She would miss them worse than a starving man misses food if she couldn't.
Twelve. Eleven. Ten.
She waits for the darkness to come, for it to seep through the fabric of her suit and into her heart, into her being, her soul. She waits for the darkness to consume her.
She waits, she waits, she waits.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
She is going to die here. And she is okay with that.