Ilphated
The Martian soil was stubborn. Even under the hum of hydro-tech and the watchful gaze of floating drones, it resisted change. But Seamus O’Donnell had never been one to back down from a challenge. Kneeling in the red dust, his fingers worked the soil with practiced patience, coaxing life where life had no business being.
“Easy there, love,” his wife, Aoife, said, her voice carrying the lilt of old Earth, though softened by years spent under alien skies. “You’ll scare the poor things.”
She knelt beside him, her blonde hair glowing beneath the flickering blue holograms of her cowboy hat. In her hands, she cradled a Martian blue bonnet, its delicate petals quivering under the artificial breeze. Seamus chuckled, wiping sweat from his brow. “Didn’t know flowers could get spooked.”
“They’re not just flowers,” Aoife whispered, her green eyes shimmering with an unearthly glow. “They’re proof we belong here.”
Mars had been their home for nearly a decade, a land both harsh and beautiful, where neon lights carved paths through the eternal dusk. They weren’t farmers by trade—Seamus had once wrangled transport haulers through asteroid fields, and Aoife had coded security grids for floating megacities—but out here, away from the sprawl of human ambition, they had found something worth fighting for.
A sudden gust sent a swirl of red dust around them. Seamus instinctively reached for his holographic lasso, but the threat was nothing more than the sigh of an old planet settling into its bones.
“Storm’s brewing,” Aoife murmured, watching the distant horizon shift.
“Aye,” Seamus agreed, standing. He looked at the blue bonnets, their color defiant against the Martian red. “We best get these inside before the wind takes ’em.”
Together, they gathered the fragile blooms, their hands working in quiet harmony. In a world where metal and code ruled, they had carved out a patch of something real.
As the first streaks of electric storm clouds rolled overhead, Seamus took one last look at their little farm. A surreal contrast of past and future. A dream planted in dust.
And, against all odds, it was growing.