You hear them repeated often, those certain phrases and metaphors humans use. One of them is that hope is some actual thing that is coming from and part of an organ inside the humans - the heart. And, that hope is the last thing to die in the face of despair.

It’s strange, isn’t it? Hope, an emotion that has nothing to do with the function or properties of the human heart, getting anthropomorphized to be a thing that resides inside of humans and is apparently alive.

Thing is, I didn’t pay much attention to human culture at first. Though I did hear the many tales and rumours like everyone else did.

As far as I can see, you are now where I was back then. It took three big moments for me to finally understand - truly understand - that saying, which in turn helped me to better understand the humans.

I will tell you about them. Just listen.

In the first few cycles after first contact with the human civilisation, they immediately began to settle wherever they were allowed to, aggressively mingling with any species they encountered.

The first human I got to know was actually one of that first adventurous wave and he hired onto the ship I was chartering for a short-term trade contract. From him I learned many of those human idioms, like the one about hope.

It was also him that gave me the first glimpse at how fervently humans hold on to hope in situations that are all but certain to end catastrophicly. It was a day like any other and a supply run like any other - we brought a hold full of goods and machinery out to a young frontier world.

Now the tricky thing with those frontier worlds are those newly established gate routes, those can sometimes collapse due to a host of issues plaguing such a new set-up. It’s the reason frontier world trade ships, such as the one I had chartered, carry emergency gate nodes.

But that day had been a very unlucky day. Such a collapse happened, but it wasn’t some random energy issue or gate malfunction. It was a misalignment, a tiny overlooked mistake in the calculations of the stellar movement or gravitational influence - a pure fluke.

Such a thing is ridiculously rare, it’s the type of event that is usually plastered all across the news to further reinforce the idea of the danger of the frontier worlds. If a ship had travelled through those gates during such an event, it’s an absolute field day for reporters. Because normally, such ships are either lost forever or only ever found as drifting husks.

You see, when there is a misalignment of the gates, a ship will have a travel interruption but it will also be dropped from the tunnel and - just for the tiniest moment - moves unprotected through space where it then collides with whatever piece of space-dust that drifts in its path.

The only thing that had saved us from being outright obliterated was the uncommon ship design with the bridge and living sections in the very back. All the stuff the ship had been carrying, all its machinery and those reinforced structures in the foresection had absorbed the brunt of the impact of the near-lightspeed particles that collided with it in that microsecond that passed between the ship leaving the safety of the tunnel and the breakdown of the superluminal travel.

We went from an ordinary and boring inter-system flight into a situation of catastrophic failure without warning. More than half the hull, all external, and most of the ship’s internal systems were riddled with microscopic holes. Pretty much every gas and liquid on board leaked out through uncountable breaches and the tertiary backup power supply - which was the only one not immediately destroyed - was on the brink of failure.

I was absolutely certain I was about to die and the rest of the crew thought the same. The only one to oppose was Phi - the human. I told him that the ship is barely alive. And his words were: “Barely alive is still alive, we have a chance.”

Mind you, that was an astronomically small chance and it was only through his fierce encouragement that he succeeded in pulling all of us along.

Within the next hour we had managed to completely seal off part of the living section and cobble together the comm system from the shredded remnants of ship parts and cargo. Some slapdash fixes to the power system stabilized it long enough to send out a single emergency broadcast before it then broke down to barely supply life support.

Okay, you can see that I’m fine now, but I was still thinking I was about to die back then. All of us sat in the cold darkness, not knowing if we had even reached anyone. And Phi - well, he just kept on talking about not losing hope.

He kept all of us sane for that excruciatingly long day until we were literally shaken out of our apathy by the grapplers that banged up against the ship’s hull. From what I know, I am still among a very tiny number of survivors of such an event and part of the only complete crew to come out alive.

The next moment where I saw the steadfastness of human hope was on my own homeworld. I had returned to finish my fourth and final citizenship validation duty and surprisingly found humans having joined the corps to gain citizenship as well.

Back then I had no idea why anyone outside my own species would be so crazy as to use this extremely difficult route to become naturalized - apparently they only cared about that it was the quickest way to do it.

In one training exercise I was then grouped with humans because of my prior contact with them and had to do a timed low-tech cross-country hike with two males named Clay and Safah and a female called Estelle. I managed to befriend them quickly due to their good nature and my knowledge of some human culture, so the multi-day trip actually began quite pleasantly.

We had a mishap on the third day when I suffered a fall in mountainous terrain, pulling Clay down into a dried riverbed with me as he tried to catch me. It wasn’t a long fall, but both of us tumbled hard and he somehow hooked his foot and badly broke the bone in his lower leg.

Now I don’t know how much human terminology you know, but he had what they call an open fracture. It’s nasty, dangerous and can’t be properly treated in the field due to the extensive soft tissue damage.

Besides bruises I was fine, so together with Estelle and Safah we treated his wounds as best as the situation allowed, having to actually clamp down the blood flow to his leg in the process to stem its loss.

On these exercises, tech isn’t allowed, but of course we carry a communication device and two transponders for emergencies. The former had been in my backpack and unfortunately smashed to bits, so we just switched the transponders into danger retrieval mode which makes them change to signal for help.

There were two things we did not know in that moment; the first was the fact that the primary transponder, which had been carried by Clay, had become unnoticably damaged - making it emit only an incomprehensibly garbled mess and drowning out the retrieval signal from the other unit. The second was the impending weather change that we should have been warned about via the now broken communicator.

We just knew that it very rapidly got colder while we were waiting for help that would not come. Clay’s condition also worsened quickly, as we barely kept him from fully going into shock - another human term for a life-threatening involuntary bodily response to trauma.

When it had gotten dangerously cold for the only light protective gear we had packed, we decided to seek out cover. Due to my size, I had taken on the gear, while Estelle and Safah carried Clay who could only move with pain and difficulties at that point.

There is a name for the type of weather that breaks over the mountains in that region - it’s called frozen reaper, due to the many hikers and travellers that had died in it in the distant past. It’s a rare, but dangerous combination of air currents that produce the rapid temperature drop on one mountain side and it happens only during the warm season.

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I had only recognized it while we were on the lookout for shelter and knew that our only chance to evade freezing to death lay in crossing over the ridge before nightfall. I told them as much and saw how all three took to the seriousness of the situation.

We left everything but the transponders behind us and pushed on hard, but our pace was bad. After a couple hours and the worsening condition of Clay, it became clear to me that we would not make it like that.

To take a short rest and plan the oncoming ascent up the mountain path we took a break in a rock crevasse that offered some protection from the now harsh wind. Clay’s leg had become completely white and cold as ice, while the rest of him seemed to be on fire.

That’s when I saw it in his eyes - his hope had died. I tell you, he was a changed person then. He simultaneously seemed to have resigned and become furiously determined towards something new.

And through gritted teeth, he told - no, he yelled at us to go on without him. All four of us knew that the closest place to get help was the base at our destination, and no matter how quickly we would reach it, it would be too late for him then.

Of course I kept it to myself, but I was sure that even if we took him along and somehow managed to escape the frozen reaper, he would still not make it. So I was about to thank him, when Safah just flatly told him no. Estelle had immediately chimed in as well and used words I’d rather not repeat right now.

Then followed more curses, slaps and tears - emotional minutes between those humans that are still etched into my memories - and suddenly Clay changed again; he changed back to himself.

That’s not something you will see with most other species - Clay had felled his noble decision and he was met with such adamant resistance because of the unyielding hope still burning in the people he wanted to save, that he actually came back around.

Then they told me to go on without all three of them. As if I could do that after having shared this moment with them.

I used Estelle’s words of refusal there. And we set out again into the wind that pelted us with ice crystals and the fading light of the evening sun.

We pushed, carried and ultimately dragged each other up the mountain until we reached the ridge in total darkness. I have no idea where I had been pulling my strength from when we finally crossed it to descend into the mild summer air on the other side.

Just this much was nothing short of a miracle, in my opinion. We had escaped freezing to death by such a short margin, I am sure there momentarily was a grave with my name on it.

Though Clay was now dropping in and out of consciousness randomly and in really bad shape. I was certain that we would not leave the mountain together. When Estelle pushed us to go on with the barest rest, I voiced my concern that Clay was barely alive and would not make it much further.

She told me that as long as we were moving him towards the base he would have a chance and she would consider him as alive as all of us.

While we headed down, carrying Clay between us, we got close enough towards the nearest signal station to pick up and pinpoint even the garbled transponder signals. The first search party reached us fifteen minutes later.

Oh yeah, Clay came out mostly fine. He does have an artificial leg and a strong aversion to hiking now.

So, I will tell you about the third moment now. It happened on the human’s homeworld, on Earth.

You see, I became friends with a number of humans through my interactions, and got invitations to visit many places on Earth. I did finally make the trip some cycles ago - the rumours about the dangers of that planet are not baseless after all.

I was meeting with Phi, who was visiting his family himself, and he promptly introduced his wife Claire to me. There was reason for celebration, as they were expecting a child.

It was wonderful, seeing their joy upon talking about their offspring that wasn’t even born yet. Phi’s family pulled me into the ritual celebrations that were customary in his culture and that were symbolic for their hope of the unborn child’s lifelong health and wellbeing.

Now you have to know, childbirth is a precarious thing with humans. It’s an evolutionary thing - their biology is actually not well suited for the process of expelling the matured infant from the internal organ in the female where it grows.

I won’t go into detail there, it’s quite complicated, just know that humans do not give birth unassisted because of the danger to the mother’s and child’s lives. It’s also the reason that their reproductive biology is exceedingly sensitive to outside influence.

Like when there is an accident involving the expecting mother.

Towards the end of my visit I was helping Phi’s family to set up yet another festive event when they had received the bad news of Phi and Claire having been in a vehicle accident. I’m not sure what I expected to happen then, but I certainly did not expect to be swooped up with the rest of the relatives and ferried to the hospital on the quickest possible route.

Humans have the desire to come together in moments of crisis, with which I mean physically coming together in a place to support each other. It was the reason all of us were on the way to the medical facility to which both Phi and Claire had been brought to receive emergency treatment.

I saw many emotions during that short vehicle ride. Sadness, uncertainty, distress, but through it all prevailed hope as everyone was reassuring each other that the situation wasn’t too bad and things would turn out to be alright.

The medical facility we went to, can you imagine what they named it? The place where they brought their gravely injured, their sick, their wounded, it was called hope.

Though that was something I subdued in myself after I learned more about human pregnancy and the complications that could arise due to physical trauma.

That’s the thing.

If the injuries are bad enough, they have to take out the unborn child because the mother’s body will not be able to bring it to maturity. The only chance for it to live is to then support its further development artificially. And to do that, a child needs to have reached a certain point of development.

Their son was barely past it.

But there is a human saying about their doctors and nurses - that death has to fight them for every single life it wants to take prematurely. And let me tell you, sitting with the family in the waiting room, I saw nothing but unyielding trust towards that medical staff.

I told you about these two other serious incidents from my past, but those hours in that waiting room, they had been the longest hours of my life. Phi himself was the one to come down to bring an end to it. Injured as he was, he had been strapped into a mobile seat and he certainly did not look well.

But he was smiling. He told us that everyone was fine and asked who wanted to see his son.

I don’t know how or why, but I was then the first one to step into the medical room where his child was kept alive by dozens of machines. Phi kept talking without pause about how beautiful he was, how much he looked like his mother and many other praises and compliments.

So, human infants are very small, that’s just how it is. They actually have underdeveloped bodies because their size is limited due to those biological constraints of the birthing process. I knew that, and also knew that this one would be even smaller.

I was still shocked.

The tiniest human being lay there under a glass cover. Seeing its miniscule size, I would’ve assumed it to be another species had I not known better. It was barely longer than my hands.

There were many lines and different tubes stuck to it with machines that did something or other, and a large status monitor displayed information about it. Beeps and hums accompanied their functions.

All I could think was that this human child had to be on the verge of life and death, even in this carefully controlled environment. I had put my hands onto the glass without thinking while I could not take my eyes off the tiny chest that moved with quick breaths.

Through the hard surface of the glass I could feel a pulse, which took me a few seconds to even notice. I only understood a moment later that I was feeling a heartbeat as it was much faster than the heartbeat of an adult.

But it was a beating heart nonetheless. Beating so strongly, I could sense it through the cover itself.

Looking at the human child that, for a host of biological reasons, should not even be alive, I finally understood - humans did not have to learn hope. They were born with it. The hope to be alive, the hope of seeing the wellbeing of their friends and family, the hope of a good future.

All of that was already there in that tiny human newborn. His heart hoped with each pulse to do another, a hope I then began to share with fervor.

“I know, he is barely alive”, Phi told me then, breaking the silence and showing a twang of doubt in a moment of honesty between friends.

I used his words when I told him: “Barely alive is still alive, he has a chance.”

You are all caught up in that last story, I see. Well, I had extended my stay after that to make sure I’d see the child grow out of that difficult early phase. And I did. When I left, he had already doubled in size.

Oh, you mean if he is fine right now? Yeah, we’re still in contact, he’s sending me messages regularly. I’m his godmother after all. Currently he is working on a frontier world, standing strong in the face of any crisis as humans are wont to do.