Photo courtesy of Enisa

The room was quiet and dark.  Why hadn’t her alarm gone off?  Something else was wrong.  The sun was up.  Was she still on the Daedalus?  It wasn’t right; she’d never even seen Earth, never set foot upon solid ground.  Yet here she was, in a dimly-lit bedroom facing a sun-soaked alley.  Through smudged glass she gazed out across a solid world, narrow streets bounded by mortar and stone.  Far down the alley, another returned her stare.  A man, clothed in black with a brimmed cap on his head.  He was saying something…what was it?

She was wearing a watch,  Lifting her wrist to inspect it, she could hear its tick.  Then  she could hear nothing else.  Back down the narrow street, the distant man spoke to her.

“Forward.”  It was all he said.

Then she awoke.  She was back in her cabin on the Daedalus as though nothing had happened.  Still in the space between spaces.  Earth might be gone, but the watch tick remained, and man had followed it.

Forward.  

Written for the FFfAW Challenge – Week of May 7, 2018.  Word count: 173.  Read other stories based on this prompt at InLinkz.com.