Ethereal Amalgamations

We landed yesterday. If you can call it a 'landing.' Our life support was offline for a full 30 minutes before the crash; 16 dead colonists, none had reached even seven years old. None had ever seen land. When it happened, we honestly thought it was for the best. As our generation-craft plummeted down in increased gravity, the fires around every screen showing the external of the ship looked like the home of Ra himself. So much fire we didn't think the atmosphere would be anything but oxygen. Now that we're here, after our ship slid into what can only be visualized as a sponge of jello the size of a mountain — a landing softer than any colonist could have achieved. My cup, brimming with coffee didn't spill a drop. Comfortable landing or not, we were not about to sit around in what, for all we knew, was a porous alien slowly digesting us. Just 788 of us left, slowly climbing out and onto the otherworldly surface. Glossy and iridescent purples and pinks and light blues — it took just 3 minutes until an entire gaggle of frankly geriatric colonists, fell over, stumbling each other, turning a small trip into a — well, how do I say this.... into a flight of 30-some 88 year olds laughing so hard they were crying as they bounced and slid gently down the hundreds of meters of sloping hillside. I looked away. I of course, quite adamantly, incredibly vocally, rejected their boarding the generation ship. "What do we do in 10 years when, 80 years from Naumbe 5's brown dwarf of a sun, we have over 50-some death's on our hands. Space them all? With their belongings? Let the children watch, should we." --flatly-- "Yes." --humming of computation louder now-- "YES?!" I screamed at the apartment complex sized aquarium filled with fungus. Our glorious leader. Sending us into space for near a century while it sits here and...molds? I don't even know. "What in the twin moons do you mean, YES?" --the humming stopped briefly-- "It is important the youngest of our colonists, who will be the first of our--your--species to step food on Naumbe, understand what death is, that it is natural, that these gentle folk wanted nothing less than to be with their fellow colonists even as they aged and eventually passed." THAT was the last conversation I ever had with that pile of fungus and electrical circuitry. So now what do we have? Mere decade into our trip our warp drive dies, we bounce off more space rocks than I could count, and land ... on jello. Just then I glanced up to see one of the geriatrics with their helmet off, encouraging the kids to do the same. I tried to sprint, only to fantastically summersault down the entire 'hill' -- still not sure if that thing is alive or not -- "WHAT THE-- STOP YOU YOU, WASTE OF LIFE SUPPORT! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL EVERYONE. WE HAVEN'T RUN A SINGLE TEST YET." Gelhena, as if I could forget that name, still laughing, takes the deepest breath of, hopefully air, hopefully mostly nitrogen. A little argon and touch of carbon dioxide if we're lucky. Then she falls backwards, still laughing, now so hard tears streamed down her face. I paused, finally taking a moment to take in our surroundings. Everything... looked safe... as if we knew what that might look like here.