It has been quite some time since I left home.

One night, I was walking alone through barren suburban streets. The cold breeze bit my cheeks as streetlights illuminated long, thin shadows across the cracked sidewalks. Isolation brought feelings of tranquility, and the quiet felt almost sacred. It was a rare peace I had learned to crave amidst the mundanity of the working day. Then, without a warning, the lights flickered out, swallowed by a brilliance that seared my vision. My legs went weak as the familiar street dissolved, replaced by the impossibly sterile corridor of a spacecraft. The walls gleamed with a smooth metallic perfection, and I froze as creatures stepped into my view; beings utterly unlike anything I had ever imagined. My heart hammered, and I could barely draw a breath, yet I could not tear my eyes away.

It was not hard to realize what had happened: I had been taken. The beings did not speak in any language I had ever known, even for Earth. Though, small devices attached to their outfits translated their words into something I could understand. They told me, simply without preamble, that they wished to study the creatures of the planet I know as Earth. My role, they explained, was straightforward: answer their questions honestly while they observed and recorded my responses. How long this would take, they did not say; it was enough that I was free to move about the craft as we travelled. And so, I began to exist in that quiet, strange routine as the alien craft sailed through the black ether of deep space.

I have journeyed across the oceans of stars that stretched past the pale blue dot’s atmosphere. I have seen countless stars and even more planets. Some were faintly familiar, not unlike the world I came from, while othere were so exotic I could barely comprehend them. I have seen entire galaxies from the most perfect distances to view them in whole, and I saw various beautifully shaped clusters of stardust called nebulae that filled me with feelings of euphoria. I may as well be the one who has come closest to a black hole in all of human existance! The beings I travelled with were patient, attentive, and courteous, and I did my best to show equal respect and dilligence in return. It became clear to all of us at some point that our experiement has long been completed, but it was hard to deny the camraderie we shared along with my own wonderlust. Every moment looking out a window was astonishing, a marvel beyond anything I could have imagined. And yet, as breathtaking as it all was, it did little to ease the growing ache within me that was my longing for home.

After so long, I began to understand the scale of what I had seen… and the depth of what I had left behind. I had floated plast places of unimaginable beauty, sailed thorugh seas of twinkling lights, and witnessed planets with skies that burned with colors no human eye should ever hope to see. And in the quiet of my thoughts, I realized it was not the cosmos that I longed for. The little things: the sunlight slanted through my window, the laughter of a peer, the comfort of a familar street, the way life moved quietly and insistently without prejudice. I had travelled father than I could have dreamed, yet nothing I encountered could match the texture, the warmth, utterly replaceable meaning of life I had known on Earth.

It has been quite some time since I left home. So after my companions returned me and I bid them a heartfelt farewell, I was met with horror when I found the green-and-blue world I remembered gone, replaced by a brown, barren wasteland.