Last night, I dreamt we fell from the moon, you and me with fingers intertwined.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Tee asked.
“Without a doubt,” I lied and patted the side of the rocket.
Back when this solar system was new we had become a cosmic … what do they call it… ‘bowling ball’. Our own system gave us up when our star evaporated. We hurtled through the void. We survived in our bunkers shielded from the cold. We couldn’t stop, we were at the mercy of our trajectory, and so we slept for generations.
I remember waking. I remember seeing that great beautiful sun rising on our cold dead planet. Pulled into an orbit, we were saved. A dead planet is not conducive to life, but we’d planned ahead. We’d stored some seed, some water, and some science. All we needed was a spark of solar radiation. And here it came, nurturing us like a … ‘mother bird’ in our nest. Turns out mother was protective of her nest.
“You know we shouldn’t,” Tee said. “You know the effect we have on them. It’ll make them crazy. Crazier at least.”
“Here, hold my drink. Let’s see what this does.”
Something about our eccentric orbit must have displeased our new sun. We sped around her for a few glorious cycles, waking, stretching, and re-forming our dusty dead world. She had other ideas. A blue-green harbinger of doom was coming for us, and after all this time surviving, our far-flung world would not survive the impact.
“Sure,” Tee said. “I’ll sit right here, hold your drink, and watch while you kill yourself, Hari.” He sighed.
“It’s the only way we’re going to get her back. They took her, and after all of this, I can’t let them keep her!”
A fleet was built, and we evacuated our world in time to see the collision and would just wait it out. Our Theia was withered and haggard when the interloper intersected our orbit. The impact was spectacular. Then we waited at a safe distance and slept again.
We expected that after the collision the planets would merge, and the detritus would cool and form a planet that we could create in Theia’s image - lush, green, and warm. We were almost right.

Like divers in a deep ocean, we fell toward the great blue deep with open eyes and expectant hearts.

Someone didn’t quite set the alarm properly. We overslept and when we awoke, the interloper had survived, beautifully covered in water and life. We’d missed the opportunity to seed it with our seeds from Theia. While we overslept, we’d let it get infested. Crawling, flying, and swimming aliens were all over our last hope.
Instead, there was a blue-green marble with a sidekick. An afterthought that was ugly, grey and beaten by debris.
"I am not frightened of dying. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime."
"But why this way?"

"I never said I was frightened of dying." I closed my fingers around the bracelet she had given me.
Our only chance was the afterthought, the moon. So we settled in. Our tough, thick skin was useful on this pile of debris, but  we couldn’t plant or re-form.  Once we discovered the humans we sent probes, and eventually a few of us explored. Some even made contact. That was a mess.
They thought we were amazing, and while we are pretty amazing it was just weird. They expected us to save them from their pains, ease their worries, and make their lives easier. We who had endured, survived, and come up short were not saviors, we were survivors. So we left and blamed budget cuts on never returning. 
Sadly, we had inspired them, and they looked to the stars for us. They multiplied and adapted really well.  Our home made them wish, hope, and create. I’m no expert on xeno-biology, but I’m told that they were sensitive to our speech even at great distances. It twisted them up inside, and they lost reason. It was ‘lunacy”.  There was no sense in inciting bunch of these things, and there were so many now. They had a similar phrase… what was it? No stirring the hornet's’ nest. So we hid.
“It seems kind of small.” Tee finished his drink and put our cups on my workbench.
“Tee, it’s made for two people.” My frustration was showing.
History says we decided to stay in our homes under Invisishields. We all wanted to avoid was the ‘humans’ knowing we were on ‘their moon’. But they wouldn’t stop hunting us down and had eventually come. We’d finally retreated to the dark, but they were drawn to us. That’s when Venja had been taken. They landed in their frail craft, stomped around, stuck a wavy thing in the ground, and had found her. Tee had said that she went with them willingly. No, they took her, and I was going to get her back. 

Bones become ash. Flesh becomes ember. We floated down like snow.

“I can’t stop you.” Tee closed the door to my workshop.
“I have to do this!” I shouted, but no one seemed to hear.
We were among the last of a dying species that had survived two apocalypses. There are only three hundred of us left. Extinction is enough to make anyone vitriolic.  Even one was worth saving, especially her. The cold metal of the bracelet was comforting as I loaded myself into the craft.
As I took off, the sun rose over the horizon and filled me with hope.They would be in awe and write stories of one of their gods returned to recover his beloved who had been lost. I would be back within a day. Venja and I would return, fingers intertwined.

And the moon smiled at her children.