Sable's Experiences

[Toaster]

January 17, 828 A.S.

Olivia sat on the couch in her Stanton apartment, looking out through a wall of glass at the city's expansive skyline as the sun slowly set behind a long row of enormous skyscrapers, casting kilometer-long shadows across the surface. The clouds hanging lazily over the distant horizon were cast in brilliant orange light and purple shade, pockmarked by hundreds, if not thousands of air speeders returning to the city from the surrounding commercial districts. Beyond the city limits, in the dimming light of New York's sun, the greenery of Manhattan's nature reserves could be made out; enormous groves swaying gently in the low wind.

She would never tire of the view. Three decades spent almost entirely in space left her feeling robbed of the incredible experience of dwelling upon a planet's surface. No doubt, the void beyond possessed its fair share of beauty, be it vast, colorful nebulae, pulsating neutron stars, or glistening expanses of ice. But none of it truly compared to the beauty of an Earth-like world, its nature, its vibrant life.

Life. Olivia sighed as she thought about it, reclining further into the sofa's soft cushions.

Life had taken some odd, unexpected turns for Olivia of late. Returning to Liberty from her mercenary expedition into the Taus she had - unsurprisingly - found the house mostly unchanged. Ridden with crime and incompetent law enforcement; brimming with pilots and captains whose intelligence quotients left them with no business flying spaceships in heavily trafficked areas; alien incursions that went nearly unchecked by Liberty's grand military forces. But, most importantly, Isla was still there, as ever.

And she had been as in love with Olivia as ever. Which, following the numerous near-death experiences she had had fighting the Outcast alongside the Miners Guild and the Crayterians, had led Olivia to... to what? Confess? Not exactly.

It had been everything short of confessing to the young police captain. Olivia had found herself unable to utter the words, unable to make up her mind on what exactly it was that she felt for the woman. A decade of guilt and emotional seclusion had rendered her both incapable of and unwilling to admit to any kind of close emotional ties to another person. Yet, somehow, Isla had made it seem almost within her grasp.

And so began a few weeks of what should have been bliss. The first more or less committed relationship Olivia had been in since her teens. And, at first, it truly was blissful. Having only recently moved into her first planetside apartment, sharing it with Isla made it truly feel like home; a home she hadn't had since originally leaving the Taus many years ago.

But things had quickly soured. Olivia quickly began to question the feelings she thought she had for her partner, doubting that it was truly love - romantic love, at any rate. Nor could she get over the fear that letting herself get so close to the other woman would somehow ultimately only result in pain; whether through loss of life or love, she didn't know.

Ironically, in the end, her fear turned out to be warranted and the cause of the pain at the same time. Olivia broke things off with Isla, trying to let her down gently but sincerely doubting that she had succeeded. They had, of course, agreed to remain friends. Isla was still the person closest to Olivia, regardless of their relationship status and the cop's feelings for the mercenary remained unchanged, if now unrequited. Nonetheless, Olivia had noticed a distancing taking place between them. She hoped that it was just temporary, a matter of Isla getting over the blow of their relationship ending as abruptly as it had begun, but she could not help but worry that the damage caused by her words and deeds might have gone deeper.

The coming days and weeks would reveal how things would turn out between them. In the meantime, Olivia would continue to do what she did best: hang around Liberty, bother the locals, and hope to make a few credits while she's at it.

With another sigh, Olivia rose from the couch and looked around the apartment. It felt empty and lifeless without any company around. It lacked decoration and most of the furniture remained unused as the sole occupant only very gradually got acclimated to life in a flat on a planet. As much as she enjoyed the experience of natural gravity and a non-processed atmosphere, her job kept her spacebound most of the time.

I'll make something of this eventually, Olivia thought to herself, more hoping than stating fact. Suddenly tired, she strode into the small bedroom, closing the door behind her. Maybe things would return to normal for her tomorrow.

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Olivia Sable