A headcanon that I might turn into a fic. It's honestly pretty close to a fic rn. Please read, lmao.
Do you think that they sent Grace up with a seed vault? A secret little room cooled to -18° Celsius filled with sealed moisture-proof packets of carefully labeled seeds of every variety. Trees, fruits, vegetables, flowers, every plant ever. As a spare, in case of emergency if their seed vaults on Earth failed. But they never mentioned it, never even left it in the instructions. Luckily the vaults on Earth never failed, but that room was still there, cold and patiently waiting for someone to open it.
Grace didn't find it, not until he had to sit and wait for the Eridians to build him a biodome and synthesize food for him. Rocky stayed with him between watching over each field of the work the Eridians were working on. Grace had been tired and bored, so, he decided to start... just... poking around, opening and taking stuff apart. Rocky had asked Grace what he was doing a lot, and Grace didn't really have an answer.
Rocky wasn't there that day, the day Grace found the room tucked so carefully and secretly into the Hail Mary. He was meant to be moving, they had finished his... habitat, and were synthesizing food for him now. He didn't know why but he still felt the need to take panels off. There wasn't much payoff until he took off a paticularly large panel and found a door behind it.
Not just any kind of door, one of those industrial kitchen freezer doors. Grace was in lighter clothes because he was meant to be moving back and forth a lot, but he had thicker clothes, ones that repelled cold decently and kept him warm. He felt he should change into those before opening that door because whatever was on the other side had to be in a temperature controlled room based on that door. And also based on that door, it probably had to be insanely cold in there.
He stared at the door after he got ready to open it. "Well... no more putting it off." He said to himself quietly, reaching for the handle. He was right, a blast of super cooled air hit his face as soon as he opened it. He looked around this room, that was covered in what looked like highly advanced filing cabinets, and settled on going for the one at the back of the room, the largest and labeled 1. If you've found this. In Stratt's writing.
There was a box you often used to store files in, and Grace grabbed it and almost tripped. Jesus, this was heavy, he hauled the box out before turning around and closing the drawer and door. Alright, Stratt, what did you leave for me? Grace thought to himself.
Rocky found Grace sitting on his bed on the Hail Mary, staring out at nowhere. Rocky tried to get through to Grace but Grace isn't responding. Rocky, in a panic leaves and gets Adrian before coming back to Grace. "Grace! Grace please! Talk!" They both trill to him. They're concerned, the only Eridian that had spent decent time with Grace was Rocky, and Rocky had never seen Grace like this.
Grace shook his head then looked at Rocky and Adrian. "Sorry, I'm sorry for scaring you." He told them. "What is wrong. Question." Rocky asked, and Grace ran his hand through his hair. How is he supposed to tell his friend that there's Earth plant and fungus life in stasis in that cold room on the ship?
"I can make Earth food, bud." Is all Grace says.
Rocky let out a confused trill, before asking, "What Grace mean?" Grace gave a small laugh, right, Rocky didn't really know how plants worked outside of what he had told the Eridian. "I found a room. Which is called a seed vault back on Earth, full of seeds for pretty much every plant back on Earth. Which includes food bearing plants and trees." Grace explained to the pair of Eridians.
"Which now that I'm considering it, can you guys fabricate Earth soil?" Grace asked Adrian. Adrian affirmed that they could, just that they would need information about Earth soil to make more. Grace nodded and told the Eridian that he would have the information ready by the end of the day for them to start work on immediately. Grace also asked if he could make a couple other requests for modifications by the end of the day.
Adrian confirmed that Grace could and to have everything prepared by tonight. Adrian left to go back to work on putting in the orders for biodome modifications. "Is Grace sure he is okay?" Rocky asked, and Grace stood up to begin compiling the data for Adrian. "Yeah, I'm okay buddy. Just had to silently freak out for a bit. And a little disassociation. But I'm fine now." Grace told Rocky, excited at the prospect of being able to grow Earth plants.
Several weeks later, Grace was working on his small, for now, garden. He liked the work, not more than teaching his pebbles but it felt good to be working on something like this. It was almost like a small scale science test, and a test of him. Can he keep the seedlings alive? The answer so far is yes! He had started the seeds indoors and had started some pretty easy plants to grow, things like strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes, and a couple other smaller plants.
He was transferring them outside today after he had finished with his classes, he knew better than to plant the strawberries in the ground though, so, he had some pots made to put them into. He was content, if a little lonely. He missed physical contact of another human, but it was fine! He was on Erid with Rocky, Adrian and was teaching pebbles! He was growing plants, teaching, helping the Eridians with science. But still... lonely, longing for human touch that wasn't ever going to happen.
He was the only human this side of the galaxy. Or so he thought.
Simon noticed when the sounds changed almost immediately. The bubbling of blood, the groaning of the sub under pressure, the feeling of being hunted and stalked, the ripples that rattled the ship that were caused by the monster. All of it was gone. He checked the oxygen meter, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Two lights. It had been reading two lights for a while now.
Then he heard it, the scuttling really close to the sub. It didn't sound like there was one thing out there, more like multiple things. Simon then heard musical tones coming from outside the sub, he got up from his chair and neared the button. His hand hovered over the button for a second before dropping to his side, they didn't seem hostile and it would be rude to blast them with lethal amounts of radiation, no matter his title of The Butcher. It sounded like whatever was outside was having conversations amongst themselves.
Then he heard one scuttle off, musical tones in what Simon could only assume were of excitement. That probably wasn't good, but there wasn't much he could do. OH! The porthole! It didn't seem like he was under pressure and his depth gauge read zero, he lunged at the control panel and opened the porthole to see what was outside of what is meant to be his coffin on a one way suicide trip.
Ooookay. That was not what he was expecting at all. There were these little creatures of sorts, aliens definitely, but they seemed cute. Which was odd for him to say considering his track record with aliens thus far. They didn't have faces, just one big blob and five little jointed legs, all appearing to be stone of some sort. They were in these clear coverings and he looked around the room he was in, all he could see was a sort of arid style place.
Because it couldn't be a planet, could it? They were gone, taken by the Quiet Rapture. One of them noticed the porthole and chirped to its friends, and they crowded close to the opening. They seemed like they wanted to talk but he couldn't understand them, so he just waved pathetically. Simon heard footsteps in his direction, out of view from the porthole, and the scuttling of the one that ran off, he was pretty sure.
Wait. Footsteps. Like from a human. He heard the musical trills and chirps of the little rock creatures as they turned to the newcomer, then a male voice, definitely human, sung back to them. They shuffled out of the way for the newcomer, and Simon's breath hitched when he saw him come into view.
Blond hair at a short, but scruffy length, pale complexion quite like the inner bark of the Last Tree, tall he assumed, scruffy facial hair, glasses, kind blue eyes that seemed to stare into his soul. Simon should've probably tried to look presentable, but that would've been nigh impossible with the amount of blood that he was in and covered with. "Hi, my name is Grace."
Grace, how fitting. Simon thought, staring at him through the bloody porthole. "How can I help?" Grace asked, kind and patient.
This wasn't meant to be super long, and was meant to initially be a headcanon but it took a life of it's own and morphed into a fic, sorta. Lemme know if y'all would be interested in your local Dragonfruit making this into a full blown fic, and whether or not to go with first person or third person. I'm going back and forth on it, because I typically write in first person, with hopping pov's, but for some reason on this hellsite I call home I like writing in third person more than first.
