Space... I have to say that it is less magical than I thought it would be! And euh... a bit more dangerous! As child I always looked up to the sky, wishing I was there (and not on that god forsaken piece of rock we called home). Not that there was anything more to look at. I had been in space once before! I remember it like it was yesterday... Sefa must have been not much older than 3 years and I not much older. I cannot remember exactly why but one day we had to go! Father came back home shouting to mother that we did not had any time to pack, we just had to leave and that he had arranged a way to get away. Both Sefa and me were squashed inside a suitcase and there we went. I was afraid, Sefa was afraid, but we weren't allowed to make any sound at all. It didn't take long before we heard screaming and shouting, swiftly followed by gunshots and more shouting. We didn't know what had happened but we waited... I don't know how long it took, maybe hours, maybe days, but at some moment the suitcase was opened. And there he was, uncle Drumbr. We had to leave with him. We couldn't stay at Old Mother so we had to go with him.

Uncle Drumbr worked at some customs office above a planet somewhere in the Huvilma constellation (which later I found out was Alakgur IV, but we knew it as Steinbolti) and we got to stay with him in his room there. I think we were up there for maybe a month before hell broke loose again: someone had taken over the station and we were forced down to the surface, all of us. I had never seen the surface of Steinbolti and I was NOT happy with that being changed. They say it was livable, but I think that is a bit of an overstatement. The atmosphere is very thin so everybody has to wear rebreathers outside, it is always very hot outside and it looks like rock is the only thing on the surface, except for large oceans... They say we were the only settlement, just a few thousand humans living, no... surviving, on the surface forced to extract a bit of rock.

In the mines my uncle told me stories about father, stories I never heard. He was a big and innovative miner, he was kind, he was rich, and most importantly, he was loved by everybody. He never really understood why he was killed by the enforcers, why we had to leave... After hearing these stories I knew my destiny, I knew what I had to do!!

And here I am, alone and simple space miner, flying by Steinbolti once in a while in a hope Sefa sees a small bright dot in the sky...