Searching For- Sanak In- Here

She turned The Persistent Star north, toward home. She wasn’t searching anymore.

“Day 1,097. Found Sanak. It looks like everything I’ve ever been afraid of losing, standing still long enough to be seen. I am not going to enter it. I am going to stay right here, in the searching. Because that’s where I’ve been alive the whole time.” Searching for- sanak in-

Eira cut the engine. The sound grew louder. Not a word, exactly, but a shape inside sound. Sa-na-k. Three syllables that felt like memory. Like something she’d known before she was born. She turned The Persistent Star north, toward home

She took a breath. Then another.

Not land. Not fog.

It was in that stillness that she heard it. She turned The Persistent Star north