The fresh air greeted my nose like an old friend, and the ground was my safe haven.

We had made it.

Seven different planets and this was the one. My eyes swept over the landscape as if looking for some difference. Some flaw. Something to remind me that I wasn’t on earth anymore.

Thousands of people stared and gaped as we climbed out of the AstroGalaxy87’s metal body, but I was only looking for a single person.

Her.

I knew her laugh, her face, and yet nothing about her. She was me.

The lecture they told us on the ship was burned into my mind like the branding of a cow. I had something called a twin. She was just like me. She was here.

Thousand of us twins had come to this planet looking for our other half, and others only because there was no more room for us on earth. This foreign place was our last hope for survival.
The wave of people pulled us like an undertow into the swarming crowd. Hands and eyes brushed over us like we were rare objects, but only one caught my attention.
A piece of paper was slipped into petite pale palm. I whipped my head around to see the giver, causing my auburn curls to swing around my head. I only caught sight of an identical pair of sapphire eyes and a swish of curls before I gave into the tugging wave of people.
*****
Blowfish Dock at 10pm


-A

The paper was foreign to me. I hadn’t felt the light, sleek surface of paper since I was a tottling back in 2178. Paper had been outlawed a year later due to the tree endangerment.

I knew that everyone would be sleeping on the Astro tonight, and at this moment people were scurrying like mice to tell each other about their first day on the seventh planet before curfew at ten each night.

I had three minutes until the ship’s doors would be sealed and I would be locked out until six the next day.

I left anyway.

Slinking shadows whispered dangerous temptations as I crept down the deserted alleyway that I was told would bring me to Blowfish dock.

While walking through the city I noticed that most of the buildings were extremely dilapidated. Their city was falling apart.
I reached the end of the alley and the space opened up to a harbor and stopped dead in my tracks. A silhouetted figure stood hauntingly at the end of the pier in a flowing gown of rags gazing up at the endless night sky. My last footstep echoed in the port and caused this mysterious beauty to twirl around.
We stood there in the dark, with only the starlight for us to see by. Two pairs of dazzling blue eyes. Two identical faces. Two sisters who had never met.
The ocean breeze caused her tattered clothes to fly around her beautifully. She was an angel.
*****

Her name was Annah.
Her adopted parents gave her this name when they learned I was named Hanna. She was one of the twins from earth that were taken to this planet when they were born and given to a family here who wanted a child of their own. No one on this planet could have children, so therefore when twins were born one would be brought here because of the law on earth that said each family may only have a single child.

A shiver ran up my spine and I shuddered. I was overwhelmed by this amount of information Annah was giving me. All my life I had been robbed of this information, and now that I had it I was infuriated that I hadn’t been able to grow up with my sister.

My enraged face grabbed her attention and she pulled me into an embrace. My fears. My angers. Everything melted away. I was safe, and I was with my sister.
*****

We stayed perched on the end of the pier with our skinny legs dangling into the crystal water until their sun poked it’s head up out of the ocean’s horizon, causing the sky to turn miraculous shades of iridescent violet, scarlet, and indigo.

We babbled about the different lives we had lived, our families, our hobbies, our worlds. We might have looked the same but it was as if we had come from different universes.

My world was dying because we had too many people, her’s because they didn’t have enough. Their buildings were falling apart, and their people were poor and tired after working long days.

They needed us as much as we needed them. Both needed a plan, and I had one.
*****

A week later Annah and I had scheduled a meeting with Captain Finnick and Annah’s town leader Rose Blewerd. We gathered on the lush iridescent grass in a small park next to the shimmering sea to discuss the future of our two planets.
Both adults looked aged with responsibility, but well composed, sound people. Annah invited them to sit at the table we had set while I wriggled like a totling in my seat.
My words had jumped out of my mouth before I could stop them and suddenly my plan was splattered into their minds. I could see the wheels turning in the leaders heads as the pondered whether the plan would succeed.
Rose needed more people to build a successful economy on this planet, while earth was packed to the max with billions of people. The leaders looked at each other in a knowing way and nodded their shrewd heads at each other.
*****

We got the announcement a month later.

My feet raced me out the door with my sister bolting after me. The ocean breeze that I had learned to love flew playfully around me inviting me dance like the wind, but I couldn’t just now. Not yet.

The town square was packed to the utmost capacity with everyone fidgeting like tottlings before recess.

A deep roar erupted from the sky causing everyone to jump. All eyes flew to the sky as if attracted by a magnet to the immense spacecraft emerging from the clouds.

Annah grabbed my hand and clutched her hand tight as the ship descended.

The spacecraft poured thousands upon thousands of timid people out of it’s metallic frame and into the town.

Many people ran into the throng of people looking for friends and family. I just stood, my lips curling into a smile, because the only person I needed was standing right beside me.