I remember that my dad and I used to sail when I was little.
He died when I was really young, but that memory — being out on the water, so far we could barely see land – that memory stuck with me.
‘What can you see?’ he’d asked me once, as I hung off the front of the boat, gaping at the water.
‘Nothing?’ I’d shrugged, childishly even for a child. He’d laughed though, and locked off the sail so he could join me.
‘Nothing?!’ he repeated, with mock shock. ‘How is that possible?’
‘There’s nothing out here!’ I’d said with a smile. ‘It’s just water.’
‘Just water?’ he said, mouth agape. ‘That doesn’t seem possible. What’s that?’ he pointed at the horizon.
‘Just the sun.’
‘Just the sun?!’ he repeated. ‘Do you have any idea how cool the sun is?’
‘Almost as cool as your vinyl boat wrap design?’
‘No, kiddo,’ he shook his head. ‘Nothing is that cool.’
‘How cool then?’ I frowned. He laughed.
‘Up there,’ he said pointing at the setting sun, ‘is a massive great ball of burning gas, so hot and so huge that it’s constantly reigniting itself.’
‘Woah,’ I gasped, staring up at it.
‘Been like that for billions and billions of years,’ he said, smiling as he looked at me. ‘And it’ll keep doing it for billions and billions more.’
‘What happens after that?’ I asked, breathlessly.
‘After that?’ he said. ‘After that it goes boom – and swallows up the Earth.’
‘Woah,’ I said again, quieter this time.
‘Don’t worry about us, though,’ my dad said with a grin. ‘We’ll be long gone, on huge spaceships. They’ll probably have cool designs on the side and everything.’
‘Like the cool designs for a sailboat print?’ I asked.
‘That’s my girl,’ he laughed, ruffling my hair. ‘But no, they’ll be much cooler than that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I have to assume there’ll be hot-rod flames on at least one of them.’