Spoiler
Your story is about an artist on Mars wandering in the highlands
The artist shut his eyes firmly. The rationalist inside him knew that it was futile; that when he opened them once more he would still be in this wasteland, surrounded by red rock under a heavy grey sky, but the dreamer inside him couldn't help wishing that somehow he could be transported light years across the emptiness of space and wake up in his bed with the slim figure of Bethany curling into him. He would have even taken that claustrophobic hell hole of a cabin inside the ship over this desolate landscape. He opened his eyes once more, and sighed. The red planet still stretched before him through the clear plastic of his helmet.
He continued walking, his dizzy stumble somehow translating into an absurd bouncing motion. There was no point going anywhere, he knew. This was Mars, for God's sake; what could he possibly hope to find except more rocks? But it softened the desperate loneliness pressing down on him a little, to pretend that he was heading somewhere. To ignore the fact that with every breath he took the oxygen in his pack was depleting.
The planet was achingly beautiful in its sterile desolation. It was everything he had hoped for and more. If only he had brushes and paints he could capture it, this bleak rubbled desert: red ochre and burnt sienna streaked across a bare canvas, a little piece of alien landscape to take home and hang on the sitting room wall. Or in the bathroom. Beth was so attached to the array of posters she had gathered over the years that his paintings usually ended up hanging on some out of sight patch of wall in the conservatory or the garden shed.
Bethany, whose finger was threaded through a gold band identical to the one underneath the white glove of his spacesuit; Bethany, who had been sure up until the last minute that he wouldn't really go through with the trip. "Four years?" she'd said, frowning at the excitement he'd been unable to disguise.
"But don't you see?" he'd replied. "This is my chance to see the stars! To walk on another planet! I'll be home before you know it."
He had lived and loved for three decades, and he had seen through his own eyes the slow, majestic turn of the Earth as it spun at one thousand miles per hour. He had been given so much, and he had taken even more, grabbing at opportunities with both hands. To want more time was greedy and selfish, but the artist was afraid. He was going to die alone, cut off from the ship, and his flash and bones would stay whole, unmarked, as the millennia passed by. It saddened him to think of his body lying in the dust, a fallen statue for no one to see.
In, out. Slow, even breaths. He wandered aimlessly, gazing forward at the wide panorama of flat, rusty rock. His oxygen was running out.
In, out. Perhaps his story would make the papers. He would be remembered, for a short while at least.
In, out. Had it been worth it? In another life, with a different choice, he could have been sitting at home, reading a book, or sketching the curve of Beth's jawline, safe and secure.
In -- A sudden constriction in his throat, fingers clawing at the white material. Eyes squeezing shut again, white sparks behind his retina. A frantic scramble and then his arms lowered with calm acceptance.
He sank to the floor.
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