A/N: Hello! This is Haro! I would like to thank everyone in the Bedwarmers squad for their very kind welcome, and I hope that I can measure up to my peers! I’ll continue to work hard and I hope everyone enjoys my contribution! <3

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Tides

In a way, they were extremophiles too - so passionate about their work that they had been willing to give up every other aspect of their lives in order to come on this mission. 

A one-way trip to Saturn’s ice moon, Enceladus. 

Irene reached down and impetuously dragged her fingers along an ancient shelf of frozen ejecta from the nearby geyser. How many archaea had the material of her gloves picked up, she wondered, as she absently rubbed the ice crystals between her fingers. 

Maybe none. 

It was entirely possible that they could be here for the rest of their lives and never find any evidence of the life that this multi-billion dollar mission had sent them to this radiation-battered, hostile satellite for.

“Hey, ‘Elsa’, a little help over here?” That joke was going to get old real quick.

Irene, the mission leader, dropped her hand, but didn’t bother turning to the first mate. “Sorry I didn’t catch that. It almost sounded like someone was whining for my help and trying to insult me at the same time.”

“It wasn’t an insult, I liked that movie...” Seulgi mumbled as she straightened up from a control panel that was already starting to frost over.

Irene rolled her eyes and carefully climbed over the ridges of ice to her crewmate. Seulgi was standing at the edge of the geyser they were trying to survey, squinting at some readings from a small probe. Irene grumbled, smacking Seulgi’s hand away from the panel so she could see, but Seulgi instead allowed her hand to rest on Irene’s shoulder - a storied touch that never failed to comfort the mission leader.

That small gesture - and so much more - had begun during one of their training missions: a five-hour deep sea dive meant to test their mental endurance. They were cut off from all communication with the surface for the duration of the test, and had only the light from their helmets to guide them through the umbra. Their objective had been to collect readings from a probe they had previously dropped near an oceanic vent, and for the first three hours of the mission, things had proceeded smoothly.

But Irene noticed a biofilm beginning to encrust the sensitive instruments of their probe, and she leaned around to clear it away. Rubbing the debris away with her bulky, gloved hands uncovered a new smaller vent in the ocean floor, however, and the sudden upsurge of superheated water blasted her up and back several feet.

As she fell down to the ground again in slow motion, she realized her helmet must have been damaged in the blast because everything was dark, and all was quiet, save for the constant dull roar of the other vents in the field. But that couldn’t be right, she should at least be able to see her teammate’s headlamp - Seulgi’s light.

It was a tense, and disturbingly silent moment as Irene tried not to panic until she felt a hand rest firmly on her shoulder. She relaxed almost immediately, and was a little embarrassed to realize that the reason she hadn’t been able to see anything before was because of a smear of blackened sulfides covering her helmet. Streak by streak, Seulgi gently cleared it away, until Irene was squinting up at her partner’s silhouetted form. Seulgi touched her finger and thumb together in an O.K. symbol, asking if Irene was alright, and Irene confirmed she was by returning the gesture.

Seulgi’s hand never left Irene’s shoulder as they began to make their way back to the cage that would slowly lift them up to the surface, and though Irene couldn’t hear anything or see without the guiding light from Seulgi’s helmet, she felt strangely at ease. It was then she realized that whether it was to the bottom of the ocean, or out past the asteroid belt - wherever the government and scientific collective decided to send her - Irene wouldn’t be afraid, as long as Seulgi was at her side.

And indeed, months later after batteries of tests and more simulations, when Irene had been handed the docket containing her final mission briefing from the selection committee, she had been relieved to see the younger girl’s name listed beneath hers in the crew details. They had made it. They were finally going to achieve their dream, together.

The three-year flight to Enceladus had given them plenty of time to celebrate their success and explore the more nuanced intimacies of their bond, much to the disgust of their fellow crewmates, and Irene had been pleased to learn that Seulgi returned every measure of her feelings. 

Seulgi silently held up her hand as Irene turned back to face her in the harsh light as it reflected off of the white icescape of Enceladus’s scarred glacial surface. She touched her forefinger and thumb together in an O.K. symbol, and Irene giggled as she returned the gesture.  

“Hey, lovebirds, any little green men over there?” Joy called lazily through the com from their home base several kilometers away. 

Irene laughed again, as she looked up at Seulgi’s protective golden faceplate, knowing there was probably a familiar grin behind that opaque shield. “Not yet,” she answered. She began walking back to their rover, more than ready to get back to the station and get out of the heavy spacesuit she was wearing, but she suddenly felt something hit her back.

She turned to see Seulgi scooping up another handful of millennia-old ice crystals, before compacting it into a ball to hurl at her as if it were snow off the lawn of a fictitious home they might have shared back on earth. But perhaps that’s what this place was, now; the sixth-largest satellite of Saturn was their laboratory, and their home.  

Maybe Irene could safely conclude that there was life on Enceladus, because no one else in the cosmos made her feel the thrill of anima in quite the same way as Seulgi.   

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