Starpainter

Chapter 1

Miko Jōre stared at the canvas and wondered what the hell she’d just painted? She knew what she’d intended to paint, a portrait of her beloved husband and best friend Prog, but somehow a starscape had flowed from her brushes. This was not unusual. Much of Miko’s art had stellar themes, after all her daughter was a famous astronaut, but rarely did she deviate from her intended subject.

‘What is my unconscious trying to tell me’, she thought. Perhaps it was concern for Sandra and her husband William, 4.2 light years from Earth, and busy establishing a base on a moon of Proxima Centauri B. The planet itself was too dangerous to semi-permanently occupy, but the moon, recently named Gagarin, was like a giant honeycomb and with some effort habitation could be established in its voluminous caverns. A red dwarf star, Proxima was erratic, and likely to unpredictably emit deadly solar flares. The mission had to be continuously on high alert.

The propensity for extreme solar flares was what rendered Proxima B, nicknamed ‘Smoky’, uninhabitable. Although it was only slightly more massive than Earth, whatever breathable atmosphere it may have once possessed had long been blasted away. It was extremely volcanic, so acrid clouds of smoke drifted from countless locations on the planet, the result of an intensely hot iron core and thin rocky crust. Despite the vulcanism, and proximity to its sun, Smoky was still extremely cold.

Miko’s painting depicted a scene of Smoky viewed from Gagarin, with a blaze of Milky Way stars forming a halo around the turbulent planet. She’d beatified Smoky, though once again, she had no conscious clue why. It was like she was viewing the scene through Sandra’s eyes, which was utterly ridiculous. Countless images and films had been transmitted to Earth from the mission, but none to her knowledge resembled this.

She mentally shrugged and turned from the canvas, leaving her studio to make a cup of tea. She was alone in the house, her husband Prog visiting his old friend Wayne down the street. At their age, a home visit is quite the expedition. Once you’re over a hundred a short walk is a little like running a half marathon. A few years younger than Prog, Miko was approaching her centenary, and although painting was more difficult and slower than in her youth, it was still intensely fulfilling. She made a pot of her favourite strong black tea, brought it back to the studio, and settled into a comfortable armchair overlooking the stunning Lake Geneva.