The tea had gone cold, but I didn’t mind. I sat at the kitchen table, the familiar weight of the house feeling different than it had a year ago. Everything was quieter now, a silence that was both a relief and a constant ache.
Ronan sat in the opposite chair, his presence a steady anchor. He hadn’t just been a friend; he had been a pillar. When my husband, his brother was fading from cancer he hadn’t just stood by; he had helped me through my pain. He had moved into the spaces of my life that my own strength couldn’t fill, and for that, I couldn’t find the words. We didn’t need them, though. We had reached a point where the “thank you” was lived, not spoken.
He didn’t look like a man who spent his nights thinking about things that shouldn’t exist. He looked like a man who had seen too much hurt in his own life of what did exist and was looking for a reason why.
“I think it’s a ghost, Ronan,” I said, my voice cracking. I was still haunted by the amber light, by the ticking clocks, and the strange, humming sensation that lived under my skin like a secret. “I don’t know if I’m losing my mind, or if I’m seeing something you can’t.”
Ronan reached out, placing a hand on my arm trying to reassure me “every cloud has a silver lining”. Both him and is wife, seriously ill herself, had helped me through the hardest nights of the last two years.
“Maybe it’s not a ghost,” he said softly. He didn’t look at me; he looked at the photos both of them had been studying the star charts, the geometric patterns. “But I don’t think it’s just ‘aliens’ either. Not the way the movies show them. I don’t think they’re here to invade us.”
He took a breath, and for a moment, he looked like he was searching for the right way to put it, the way a man puts into words a feeling that is too big for language.
“I think… maybe they’re the gardeners, “he said.” And we’re the garden. They seeded us, they watched us grow. They tried to give us empathy, to give us a way to live together. But we… we found ways to turn that intelligence into something destructive. Something they didn’t plan for.”
They both looked at me, there eyes full of a profound, weary kindness.
“I don’t think you were kidnapped to be hurt. I think you were taken for an inspection. They’re looking at the harvest, and they’re wondering if we’re still worth keeping.”
I looked at his hand on my arm. In that moment, the “alien” stuff didn’t feel like a story. It felt like a shared prayer. It was a way, for the three of us, to look at the vast, terrifying unknown and find a thread of logic in the chaos. I had lost my husband to cancer, now I was seeing things It was a way to ask: Was it all for nothing?
“And if they decide we’re a failure?” I whispered.
Ronan didn’t look away. He didn’t have an answer, We sat there the kitchen light seemed so bright it hurt your eyes looking for a reason to believe surely even in a cage, there was still something worth saving.
to be continued The Cage is Shaking: A Warning From Beyond the Stars: (3of3) (Shahd 2026).