Hi all, this is probably my shortest (flashiest?) fiction ever. Enjoy!
There was no mirror in the capsule. She saw a dark blur in the metallic surfaces but relied on memory to know what she looked like. Her hands told her she probably looked older than she thought.
The Terraformer loved to sit in the wakening landscape, and dream of all that would one day grow, but was glad that, for now, it was just her. Was glad it held no message. No faces in the clouds. No metaphor of winter death and spring rebirth.
The first rain was a sign. The second rain was confirmation. The atmosphere was turning. It would be habitable soon. There were several more years—at least—before the transformation was complete, but after this everything speeded up. There was vegetation within a year, animals after another.
They had been bred to be scared of humans, so the first settlers couldn’t hunt them into immediate extinction. She saw their faces in the clouds.
The hole to hide the capsule in was ready when lights flashed across the sky.
She locked herself in and drove into the abyss. The capsule would lie there, in the burning centre of the world, until the surface had been exhausted. Sensors measured surface conditions, and she would wake when the settlers had moved on. Re-birth the planet anew.
