5.3

In the shadow of the obelisk outside the Alecsee Library, young Prahla waited. Crowds of florally adorned bons, their richly coloured garments glinting in the sunlight, traversed uniform pavestones around her –their nonchalant faces irksome.

While noticing runners delivering pearlescent, ceremonial hammer stones, a familiar face caught her eye; he was a diffident light in a sea of vainglorious mirrors. She jumped up, for it was her neighbour Jade. By some means he noticed her too and ran over at once, beaming, ‘Prahla! Where have you been!?’

She stood unspeaking, wondering how to explain, while Jade looked curiously over the fine blue dress she was wearing.

They sat down together.

‘What happened?’ he asked carefully, sensing much.

When she couldn’t reply straightaway, he held the space.

As shadows lengthened, her appreciation for his patient presence deepened into gratitude.

On the ground, she noticed something had sprouted between the stone pavers. She admired the brilliant green of its tiny twin leaves for some time. Looking up again, she suddenly realised how stark the public square and its buildings were; how void of life the site was, with the exception of the humans contained therein. Someone passing by, ignorantly marched on the new growth before she could stop them.

~

Phae pulled herself up onto her favourite branch inside the fir tree, deftly turning at the last moment to end up sitting beside Lela.

So strong, Lela often teased, and Phae would cringe at the thought of the compliment, embarrassed because she wished to be daintier like Lela –but not today. Today, Lela was quiet and Phae was grateful of her body.

Reaching into her pocket and accidentally dropping some small black gemstones kept for gifting, Phae retrieved some of Mayani’s sweets to share, and they ate together in silence. Expecting food, chickens rushed to the stones at the base of the tree below. Lela grinned at the sight of the creatures.

Earlier they had been exploring, unaccompanied by a male guardian.

Phae had reacted, when most days she let things slide as it was deemed unbecoming to react.

You were butch for showing strength, a tough bitch for asserting yourself against harm, and an old Grandma for talking about appropriate behaviour. For every action there was a demeaning interpretation.

Toughen up had been another girls advice. But if we all just keep toughening up, until everyone is toughened up… then what? We’re all just tough, mean and rude –where does it end!? Toughen up… what an aimless suggestion!

The manoeuvre, among others Mayani had taught Phae, had been simple to do, and negated the need for her to speak. Profanities had streamed from his dented ego; swearing was his favourite tool of intimidation and aggression, as he lacked the intelligence to express himself as eloquently and concisely as her twin brother.

Something had enveloped Phae, like a noise cancelling tone, making her feel focused and energised –charged. He tried to stare her down, but she returned his gaze fiercely –he’d already lost the real battle, he’d exposed his feeble spirit.

When the words if I start, I won’t stop formed in her mind, she knew suddenly she was not herself, but someone other –someone she did not want to be. Deep down, she hoped somewhere in the back of his mind, acknowledgement of his accumulated wrongs would draw caution, because today she wasn’t afraid. Today she had wanted an excuse to strike out, even if she would later be punished sevenfold with perverse pleasure. Gratefully, he retreated.

Again, Phae cursed that damn old man’s book that incited these young boys to such games that struck fear into their own Mothers hearts.

Now calmly curled against the bark inside the fir tree with Lela, chickens grazing on the ground below, Phae pondered how some sentient creatures came to be perceived lesser than others in intelligence, feeling, and value; and even if they were –she wondered more alarmingly – how could this possibly justify their torture?

Phae ruefully recalled being upset at the sight of a little blood flowing from the throat of her sheep, accidentally nicked while being sheared of its wool. She thought of how physically easy it would be to befriend and slaughter all the horses, no more difficult for her than to kill one chicken –but inflicting pain on them would bring her no pleasure.

She resolved, that if humans were sentient animals attuned to novelty, it was inevitable that tastes for fruitful and destructive novelties must exist.

Lela finished eating her sweets, bit her wrist, and started hammering her own head again. Young Phae soothed her, held her reassuringly and hummed a familiar melody, while gently kissing her ungrazed cheek with sympathy. From their perch within the tree, they could see horses grazing in a junkyard nearby, while a bull smoothly shook little birds from his back.

~

A dragonfly darts haphazardly against the deep blue late afternoon sky, navigating clouds of midges and mosquitoes. A tiny beetle crosses Sunni’s field of vision, where she lay sweltering in the sun on the sandy river bank. She lifts it from the sand into the sky with her hand, and it circles unto her fingertips and takes flight –delicate, translucent wings, shimmer as they burst out of the dark hard shell.

Sunni contented to muse about life before and after her time, through what she noticed now –every thing a key to unlocking another. Singing a melody in unison with the rise and fall of the breeze and its volume through the trees, she ponders them all –living, eating, growing, exploring, playing, and being content. Of those with brains so tiny in size, an insignificant fraction of a mammal’s brain, she too wondered. She gently pinched the skin on her arm, the beetle was no more than the size of a grain of sand, or one of her skin cells –yet here it wandered, seeking, finding… seeming distressed if hindered or injured.

She thought of Maine, who’d disparaged her, stolen from her, put her in harm’s way, and even refused to help her after she’d fallen from the cliff –missing the opportunity to apologise for his harms. She wondered of the reasons some people found it more difficult to make their way harmoniously in this world. If more matter meant the possibility of more mind, then how much unused space for intelligence is there in the human body? And just how intelligent were the giants the Tekah Ahn slain? Did they have families… memories… love? Sunni suddenly realised how horrific the scenes she harboured in her own memories might be to the Amacites. Too quickly, unwanted thoughts of the Makundei returned as a slew of bewildering questions –though one always dominated, why had they been there? As her thoughts darkened, and there was no one she felt right to divulge to about it, a separating feeling made her chest tighten and her stomach ache –she started sinking inside herself.

Diverting her attention, a fish broke the surface of the river water at great speed. Having leapt into the air, for a moment it hung suspended above the water, shimmering, glistening, and snap frozen in time as Sunni held her breath. Then it was gone, drawn back into its realm by invisible bonds. She wondered about the barriers between worlds, and how the fish came to be so brave as to throw itself out of its own dimension, into another. What forces push some up and pull others down? She wondered. What force would it take to push me… up beyond the clouds into the realm of stars and moons? And how would crossing the barrier between worlds feel? Suddenly she was outside herself again, expanding in every direction with rapture.

As night falls and the sky darkens, Sunni remains on the river bank lying close by her own little fire, gazing at the countless stars emerging. Turning the carefully chosen piece of wood, alone throwing out enough heat to stave off the evening chill, she contemplates the glowing pattern of its embers –reminiscent of a reptile’s skin seen in the desert of her early childhood. As she tempts the heat with her own hand, she wonders if there was a time when the world was so hot the reptiles changed into what they are now… their skin growing into a hardened flexible armour to protect them from the heat, and their blood turning cool as water so they wouldn’t boil to death. She wondered What time is needed for a human to change their form?

While watching sparks rise up out of the fire into the night sky, she again longs for wings, beautiful like a bird and carried discreetly as a beetle –tucked away for times of need. She imagines how much farther she could fly away.

Reaching through the trees closest, to search for the Mother tree of this forest, Sunni implored the Great Spirit. ‘I’m sure I chose to experience this form for a time… but I long for a benevolent soul who tempers and gives courage to my own, enough that it may fly more often than flutter inside my chest for fear.’

Laughter drifts from the Long Hut and Sunni remembers she’s not alone. It is to this place I would return, she promised herself, thinking of her love for the Amacites.

From the other bank, an otherworldly yet familiar presence that is directly comforting, carries across the slow running river water. Sunni looks into the darkness, and glimpses the great wild black cat that had witnessed her capture by the Amacite hunters –those who were invisible when painted as the forest.

Yes, replied Sunni, naïve as a beetle upon the sand, so many rivers to run… but in time I will live here forever, she ordained whilst saving the space.

~

Lela appealed that it was time to treat the horses with apples, so Phae helped her descend the winding staircase within their favourite giant; its organic steps made of steadily distributed branches like a ladder.

When young Phae’s bare feet hit the earth, she thought of her own guardians; their branches always twisted and varied, no two of their kin ever alike. She wished to scale their branches, if only they would pick her up. She could only marvel at their grand repose from distances, or sit at their feet, imagining the quantity of creatures hidden in the entirety of their bark.

Though Lela ran ahead much faster, Phae followed effortlessly up the hill, through a junkyard of rusting machines, and over unfamiliar leaves –suddenly her foot hurt. She doubled-back to better read the flower and map the veins of the plant that wounded her.

Her thoughts were broken by a sudden unfamiliar sound, a distant boom, a faint rumbling in the earth –young Phae lifted her head to the breeze, alert.

‘Phae!’ called a distant voice. Lela cooed again from the shelter of her family’s porch, ‘It’s time to go home!’

Dismissing the oddity, her heart sank and her skin stung as she ran on with sore feet, stamping out the pain.

~

Young Joan quickly finished colouring in the earth on her drawing of Dieman’s Land, careful not to cover the legs of the indigenous Inani she had added, but not minding if their feet seemed a little buried –like tree roots into the ground –after all, they belonged to the land; even more so now they were all extinct.

She smoothed the fabric of her school jumper tenderly, assured no one could see where she was sore, before standing up for show and tell. Today was her last day at this school, and this morning she would announce she had learned how to tie her own shoe laces, and that distant family had been affected by a recent volcanic eruption. Her classmates were spellbound by that last part of her news. She was related to the drowned island nations peoples –yet didn’t look like them, she was the wrong colour juvenile classmates teased.

In the afternoon she wouldn’t show or tell her wardens what she had learned during the day, instead she would play by the waterfall –it was far more interesting than watching the coloured lightbox in the square room play scenes of men running the streets throwing stones. Where were all the women? Would it be different if they were there? Men were always doing things –as lone heroes, buddies or teams; women were always seen watching or waiting to be won. Little Joan had asked herself, if men can do everything, then what are we goods for? She wondered what women were lacking that disabled them from experiencing the land, sea, and skies the way boys did, especially with their machines. She wondered why her keeper watched news of woe religiously –do you enjoy it, or is it an obligation as an adult to watch such things? Young Joan wondered when all the bad people the adults were talking about were going to die –how long, and what would it take, for them to become extinct too?

~

At the top of the hill, young Phaeona stopped when Lela’s family home came into view. Lela had been standing with her Mother on the porch, when Phae first glanced a stooped figure creeping between shrubberies –it made the hairs stand on the back of her neck. Suddenly, five strangers were running up the side of the house towards them.

‘Daugn!’ screamed Phae in warning, stumbling backwards as her mind raced.

Lela and her Mother looked confused as they remained where they were.

‘Death Daugn! Draunken!’ quaked young Phae at the sight of a painted white face with a forbidding red eye drawn upon their forehead. She recoiled, knowing their body paint was prepared with the ash of humans, and their hair augmented similarly by conquests. ‘Raken!’ she managed to stutter urgently in terror.

Lela was swiftly dragged back into the house by her Mother, and although one of the Draunken forced their way through the door behind them, only a moment later Lela’s Mother stepped back onto the porch clutching a bloody hand knife ferociously.

Phae’s vision had tunnelled, and she barely realised she was about to be grabbed from either side as she watched Lela’s Mother leap off the porch onto the ground.

Phae found herself in the field again, standing over her own Mother. They had been walking home from her school and taken a shortcut between two paths through the grass. The owner of the field had marched over and beaten her Mother until she would not rouse again.

‘Phaeona!’ bellowed Lela’s Mother, as she seized a garden machete from a pile of cuttings.

While Phae had gone to pieces, Lela’s Mother had already swiftly slit the throat of one Daugn dissenter and knifed the other in the head from some distance.

Lela’s Mother sprinted, retrieved the machete she had thrown from their skull, and charged at the man now turning to face her. A second before confronting him in close combat with the machete, she threw the hand knife across the yard to land at Phae’s feet.

Phae grabbed the knife and, fearing for her life, watched Lela’s Mother in tense horror.

He struck her twice with his staff –upon her legs as she threw the knife to Phae, then the side of her head as she turned back to him – and she fell to the ground. After the third strike, she lay unmoving.

Spinning the bo staff in his hand, he slowly turned his pale face and bleary eyes to young Phae. Shuddering into action, she began sprinting for home to her brother.

She wondered how these militants had encroached on the city without warning. The Marahn Daugn of the South usually preceded and protected civilians, but they were nowhere to be seen. She had heard of why Daugn dissenters swept through towns, and decided once she found her brother, they would head for Mayani’s home in the mountains.

Running into yet another street, young Phae saw the smiling faces of people buying milk and grains at a souq stand, unaware of her own distress. The laughter of shopper’s children playing here was broken by an explosion – Phae lost her feet as glass shattered, wood splintered and bricks cracked. A building heaved and gushed its tremendous mass out onto the street, young Phae floundered on the ground and lost the knife. She cowered from the rubble grating against her flesh, like a sandstone wave it buried her alive.

Her ears were ringing over the distorted cries of distraught people all around her. Coughing and clawing her way up and out of the rubble –that could have been her shallow grave – young Phae regains enough sense to be able to clamber slowly away from the collapsed building. She wandered lost through the junk and stone rubble of back alley ways for some time, evading marauding gangs, until she regained her bearings. She set out to find her brother. As the unfamiliar shouting of irate fighters was sounding somewhere in the distance, she realised she was moving away from some cross fire breaking out between sides.

Panicking, Phae thought for a time she may have gone the wrong way because she couldn’t see the trees near her home –then she realised they had been cut down. She clambered into the crown of her much loved tree and stifled her sobs, safely hidden as a group of Draunken passed close by.

Wriggling through a gap under the back step of their large timber home, she crawled fearfully under the concrete floor of the house until she found her brother huddled in the dirt of their hideout.

Phae hugged him and rocked him, waiting for a response.

When darkness started falling, Phae led him out from under the house with much coercion.

Making their way into the house to find it ransacked, Phae started hastily shoving food stuffs from the kitchen into a sling bag. When she darted towards the lounge room to look for supplies, her brother reacted, moving to block her path and stop her entering –but she pushed past him. He stood in the doorway expectantly, but there was only silence.

They left their home under cover of darkness by the back door, climbing the back stone wall and pausing a moment in their neighbours garden as a violent commotion broke out somewhere close.

They spent the next few hours navigating their way out of the City, but to their dismay they had been driven to the opposite side of town from the mountains. It was clear that Marahn Daugn were now largely patrolling these areas, including the Aaryan Road which led to the coast of the Jaymar Sea.

Desperate to make safe haven in the mountains, they waited in makeshift camps on the outskirts of the city for the dissenters to leave, hopeful they would be driven back by the Marahn Daugn; but it was not to be. On the third night, caught in the middle, Phae and her brother watched flaming projectiles flying back and forth overhead between the two factions. As explosions neared them on the East side in the morning, they were forced west. Phae went willingly; they could have the land, but they would not have its people.

Phae and her brother travelled South-West towards the coast where they fell into crowds of other people seeking refuge. Terrified by the violence behind them, they crawled through barbed wire fences and even swam across a water moat of mutilated bodies. In the middle of the night they reached a half destroyed port where several ships were moored. In the chilling night air, they piled onto small, wooden boats, beside Mothers clutching their dead babies. At dawn they saw the ocean for the first time, and it was calm. After several days, from their little boat in the vastness of that blue desert, soothed out of their numb detachment by the tender waves, Phae and her brother felt a spark of hope that they would find peace on some unknown shore.

Uncounted days later, they were intercepted by an enormous patchwork metal ship. When red coated men jumped aboard –Armin –they realised they’d left the Jaymar Sea and were crossing the infamous Kariah Sea. Kariah’s waters had become contentious territory, after the Ashen state failed to conquer Hadarach from the east –the mountains and their tribes proving too challenging for the Armin forces.

Impressed with their stature and amused by their uncanny likeness, the Armin now took Phae and her twin brother onto their ship. Along with another twenty odd young men and fewer women, they were washed, clothed, fed, and trained in combat and crossbow. At night Phae wondered, what will it take to escape our new Masters?

One evening, several weeks later, Phae was cleaning the top deck around a dilapidated ballista when she saw a shoreline on fire –a jolt of nauseous anxiety coursed through her body. As their vessel passed over the course of a few hours, she saw several shipwrecks; and also watched their own ship attack and destroy a boat matching the one she had come from with her brother.

While she was straining to see people dotting the water in the distance, a wooden button on her shirt she’d been absently twisting finally broke off. Looking at the button in her hand, it was whisked away by the wind and disappeared into the water like the people she couldn’t quite see in the distance.

A confused general found her standing alone not working and walked over to reprimand her. A minute later he had slipped over the rail and into the sea.

The next morning was time to disembark. Phae didn’t hear any talk of the missing general, and so was occupied with concern for her brother from whom she’d been separated. Shepherded through a well-built sea port, all detained refugees were fed cornmeal mush spiked with a substance that staved off sleep, enabling them to be marched towards the City of Asher.

Once inside in the city limits, as she stood in a que being stripped and searched, she agonized.

As they stripped, Phae threw her shirt onto a pile of the gebars clothes.

‘Hey! Keep your things separate!’ barked the guard.

Phae quickly threw her hands up apologetically, then inconspicuously grabbed the other girl’s shirt.

As she was being patted down by a burly guard, Phae saw the girl hesitate and for a moment thought someone innocent would be punished in her stead. But the girl eventually moved on to dress awkwardly amidst others already searched, and once dressed she meandered, waiting for Phae –but they were separated.

That night Phae was given a bunk with a blanket, amidst several rows five high, within an emptied granary. When night fell she slowly climbed down and, keeping low, she pissed in the cold at the foot of her bed. When she heard someone being yelled at somewhere inside the building, she jumped back up into her sleeping place, heart thumping.

After a shallow sleep, to her astonishment and relief, amidst the morning chaos Phae found the girl from the que.

‘I thought you might need this back,’ she smiled as she tugged the collar of her shirt and passed a hand over the slight bulge from a concealed pocket. ‘I’m Judy.’

It was the first smile Phae had seen in forever –relieved, she returned it. Her face ached and lip stung as it cracked, but after that moment, the smell and taste of iron would always arouse feelings of gladness in her.

~

Now a hard-edged young woman, Phaeona gave her sign in nature. Dipping a feather quill into the cracked skull, she signs a name with pungent blood from the head of the bull. Knowing it’s the only way to get in, she takes comfort in the thought of this action as artifice, and hides her disdain for the vast man countersigning the scroll and stamping it with his large, gold, wax seal ring. Finally, she could pass port.

~

Her comfortable khaki clothing was hanging some distance away from where she stood awkwardly still on a platform, waiting for the absent dressmaker to finish fine-tuning her formal shell.

She kept her hands to herself and stood with divided attention; disinterest in the wanton tweeting of adults had made her impatient when obliged to speak.

‘How are your studies going?’ asked Joan’s Aunty Melanie, an esteemed socialite.

Young Joan’s focus flitted around the brightly glowing room and across its neo-baroque decorations –more like neo-g-a-rosse she remembered hearing her older brother, who already worked for NASA, comment acidly.

Joan eventually looked over the elder woman; there was love behind the indifferent expression of her timeworn skin –it was in her eyes, the corner of her smile. Joan reminded herself of the blood they shared under their contrasting skins –how does this happen? she wondered, why was I born this way? Would my marks be less noticeable? Joan longed for another skin. One in which she knew some adults held no value, yet in which she could not help but see only beauty.

‘Your studies?’ pressed Melanie.

Young Joan impulsively touched the cuffs of her long sleeves –her sleeves were down. Good, she thought. ‘Good,’ she answered flatly.

‘I’ve seen what they wear in the Grange Sector, compared to Daintree. You’ll come to be glad you’re wearing this to your interview at the Guild… it denotes affluence,’ stated Melanie with quiet empathy.

An affluent aberration am I now? Thought young Joan.

The dressmaker returned to continue adjusting Joan’s dark outfit at the cuffs, and accidentally pricked Joan’s finger.

‘Sorry Miss,’ apologised the android with simulated earnest.

Melanie was amused by young Joan’s scowl.

‘I’m not wearing this to Rechk Point,’ stated Joan as she tugged the plunging neckline of the dress suit upwards, though it wouldn’t move. Irritated, she smoothed her hair and tightened her ponytail. Blood from her fingers visibly streaked a length of her fair hair. ‘I wanna change.’

‘To change,’ corrected Melanie. ‘I would like to change, thank you. Sure, but first things first.’

~

‘I need medicine,’ coughed young Nelesia’s Father as he slumped deeper into an armchair. Young Nel finished adding honey to a mug of hot water and gently stirred it before sitting it on a white doily beside him. She took the money he gave her and left their little white house.

The driveway was long and lined with huge flowers, ferns and lavender, rocking in the breeze. After picking a few flowers, she admired a few yellow bees tending the purple lavender, and carefully stepped over the ants’ super-highway as she eyed the inchmens grasslands from the safety of the bluestone path –for the season of Queens was near.

Along the way Nel passed the entrance to her school, an old, grandiose establishment. Some students playing on a basketball court inside recognised her, and waved through the spiked, metal bars, as she passed.

The breeze turned into a strong wind and Nel watched a shop signboard advertising ice cream topple with a harsh clatter. The wind gusts made her own frame feel small. She willed herself to be heavier as traumatic scenes from natural disasters for breakfast on television flickered through her mind. Afraid of being blown over she clutched the green fingers of a pine tree beside her. Instinctively, she slipped deeper into the trees branches. From the shelter of the trees interior; she contemplated the grey clouds overhead, extending across the valley and over its surrounding mountains.

The lights were on in the colourful shop of food, trinkets, and sweets across the road. She pictured the medicine for her Father, sitting in there on a shelf somewhere in a little box. The thought of the shop –with its stale air, and silent, unmoving merchandise prompted no wonder.

As branches effortlessly flexed and rocked around her in the gusting wind, she wondered of the flowers in her hand and lavender in the driveway, and whether the bees had made it home in time or been swept away someplace –and if so, where to?

Young Nelesia noticed the shopkeeper looking out the window her direction, as a group of senior school boys entered the shop. She was suddenly conscious of her invisibility inside the mass of trees; as if she were in the belly of a great, green beast.

~

Ataur jolted awake, something had piqued his suits active defence. Against protocol, he removed his helmet, drank in the atmosphere and absorbed the sound of lifeforms surrounding him. For an unknown time, he slipped in and out of consciousness, resting until his muscles felt capable. Aching, he sat up slowly. Dazed, he struggled to focus on the incredulous forest scene surrounding him; a sea of green, seething with creatures crawling and fluttering, leaping and skittering.

He couldn’t believe he was still alive. Looking up into the canopy he could see a parachute in tatters and remembered unclipping himself before falling and passing out. He now gaped at the sheer size of the trees around him like mountains, and felt like an insect in their presence.

He remembered wind gusting him out of the cargo bay through the open hatch, and the terror in falling towards a landscape with a winding river like a silver snake.

Carefully, he stood up and looked around –light glinted off the metallic surface of a broken geoprobe nearby. He picked his way through the undergrowth towards the machine.

Realising how thirsty he was, he licked his lip as he determined to find water and food before fatigue set in.

A dissimilar sound attracted Ataur’s attention, he turned and peered into the forest warily. In search of equipment that might help him survive, if not get him out of here, he again began wending his way through the old growth.

Ataur soon found a stream and was glad for it. While drinking, he spied some orange fruit on the opposite bank –hungry, he waded over and picked one up. As he smelled it, he noticed another had been bitten by an animal. In looking for the animal, he saw the fruit had come from some small trees nearby.

A foreign object hanging in one of those trees caught his eye, curious, he wandered closer while holding the fruit.

He found a piece of coarse unfamiliar fabric, manmade? Taking the threads in his unfeeling, gloved hand, he quickly looked around for other signs of human life. Drawing him further away from his crash site, he found an artful little cross of twigs hanging from another branch, and then a purple flower resting aberrantly on the limb of another tree.

Soon Ataur was standing on an animal track, worn into the side of a cliff facing a ravine and waterfall. The beauty of the scene made him quite forget his predicament of being stranded, and he followed the animal track toward the centre of the waterfall with mounting joy.

The path took him behind the falling water and into a cave of mossy boulders where light was falling on purple flowers. Nearing, and looking up, he found a dimly sunlit, narrow, rough tunnel, leading –he guessed – to the top of the waterfalls cliff. After putting his helmet back on in case he fell, he instinctively lifted himself up into the tunnel, and started climbing upwards.

Ataur was amusingly shocked to discover the vintage flight machine they had been travelling in within sight, seemingly intact. It was landed on the exposed, rocky bed, of the wide, shallow creek creating the waterfall. With disbelief he stumbled towards it and found the two Aleksi he’d been travelling with conversing by the open cargo door. They didn’t notice him until he hesitantly called out to them. ‘Hey!’

Jumping to their feet and looking around, he realised he was invisible to them. Ataur was hastily trying to deactivate his no’skin as they pulled out their weapons –it wasn’t working.

‘No, wait it’s me!’ he insisted.

One of them holstered their weapon, the other kept his up and called back, ‘Master Poltauramy?’

‘It’s him,’ assured the other Aleksi with a hand to his head as his suit located Ataur.

‘Yes,’ sighed Ataur with relief.

Suddenly the armed Aleksi shot Ataur square in the chest, Ataur collapsed on the ground.

The other Aleksi shouted, ‘stop!’ grabbed his firearm and aimed in Ataur’s defence –but the armed Aleksi shot him too.

Ataur’s suit had absorbed the fire damage and he was now visible to the rogue Aleksi; they took aim again.

A strange low growl distracted them, and before either could comprehend what was happening, a great dark wild cat pounced on the Aleksi and knocked him to the ground.

Ataur feared the magnificent creature would be easily shot and killed, but it quickly savaged the Aleksi by the neck. Ataur watched in horror as the creature retreated back into the forest with the Aleksi hanging limply in its jaws.

Ataur removed his helmet and staggered towards the cockpit of the vintage shuttle, reminding himself he could fly solo now. He found the pilot still alive, listening to music with headphones on, and playing an electronic game of basketball.

Unsure who to trust now, Ataur doubled back to retrieve the weapon from the lifeless Aleksi who’d tried to protect him, before holding it at the pilots head and saying, ‘Take me home.’

‘One moment,’ smiled the pilot readily, completely focused on his game. ‘Where’s Bill? Oh Master Tauramy, I didn’t realise,’ he laughed after glancing him. ‘Lordo we thought we’d lost you! Please don’t think poorly of me… it’s just, I was told to wait here,’ he apologised, removing his headphones and overtly placing his gaming console on the dash.

It was only then the pilot glanced the gun in Ataurs hand. There was a moment of pause, before Ataur hastily dropped his arm as if he’d been holding the gun unintentionally.

‘Somethings happened,’ trailed Ataur as he regarded the pilot’s innocent face and sudden thrilled reaction to the sight of rain droplets beginning to fall on the cockpit window.

~

Rain had begun tapping on the glass ceiling of the hothouse, as young Nelesia packed up her sketchbook of native flora, and crawled out of her leafy resting place.

Back in her room, young Nel carefully finished a botanical sketch of a daffodil –softly shading and deepening the shadows of a curling petal, while honouring the fine lines of its edges.

Moving to stick it onto a wall, she noticed a picture was missing.

‘Dad! Have you seen my picture of Mum?’ she yelled while checking the floor under her bedhead.

It was the only other drawing she’d attempted to make of a human so far, other than the one drawn of herself falling down a checkered tunnel, her hand outstretched.

‘Where’s Mum?’ repeated Nel as she stood up.

Her Father suddenly marched into the room holding a suitcase. ‘Pack some things, you’re leaving tomorrow,’ he choked. ‘You’re going to your Mothers.’

He stood at a distance to regard her momentarily, before placing the empty suitcase open on the bed and walking off.

Nel had sensed this moment might come, when she too might have to leave Father behind. Her Mother had been approached repeatedly by the government to work for them… but her Father hadn’t wanted it –so she left him. It had been two years since she saw her Mother in person, but they spent face time with video calls often.

Nel sat her daffodil drawing gently on her desk and looked at the suitcase as lightning flashed through the windows, and thunder later followed.

She opened her laptop computer on the desk and tried video calling her Mother a few times, while retrieving a toothed, cylindrical, metal key with a flat ornate handle of three leaves from an otherwise empty jewellery box. Her Mother wasn’t answering her calls.

Nel knew she should be thinking about what clothes to take with her, but her stomach was turning. She’d never flown before, she’d never been higher than their mountains, and yet now she was about to see Raintree from above the clouds, she was going higher than the storm to what felt like another world. She wondered what they would expect of her, as she opened her antique wardrobe to inspect her threads.

~

As young Prahla watched, the fanciful designer shoe of an unwitting bon was lifted to reveal the young shoot sprouting between the stone pavers had survived being marched upon.

From a secret pocket in the fine dress she was wearing, she took out a heavy gold ring and spun it in her little fingers.

No longer in the shadow of the obelisk, Prahla and Jade were exposed to the evening sun.

Jade insisted it was time to go home. When Prahla found the words to explain it wasn’t safe for her to do so yet, he invited her to his home; rather than let her hide and sleep amongst the books of the library again. ‘Don’t worry, my Mother will know what to do,’ he assured as he took a piece of his coverings off to wrap upon her as a jacket. I wish there were more people like you in this world, thought Prahla. As they rose, Prahla hid her gold and kneeled to scoop the tiny green sprout from between the pavers with a piece from her hair comb. She carried it with her to Jades door that it might be replanted somewhere safer to live.

~

Young Nel’s Aunty Kate was driving with the heater turned up to full, making it a quietly suffocating capsule.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Kate.

‘Yeah, I’m just wondering,’ replied young Nel innocently.

‘Oh! Well I was wondering what all that noise was about!’ teased her Aunty.

It was only a two hour drive through the rain to the nearest Telecom Tether, and young Nel was upset she couldn’t see more of the land before leaving.  She began knitting every landscape she knew so far into a quilt, filling a suitcase of memories without knowing it would only increase the homesickness yet to come.

During the trip, Kate called the corporation to let them know they were running late due to the weather, but really it was because they’d over-stopped at a roadside garage to eat veggie burgers and drink almond shakes together. To great amusement, they had lost themselves in stories of Nel’s Fathers’ eccentricities.

Back on the road, the Tether came into view after two hours of driving. It was like stagnant lightning, a power cord from the earth charging the blackened cloudy sky, or a piece of string dangling from the edge of a gods table as they knitted above. It seemed so delicate viewed from a distance against the vast stormy sky, but common sense told her it would be much larger up close, and solider, as most manmade contraptions were wont to be. Nel tried to picture being inside it, and felt queasy.

Trees whisked by in a blur of green, and the road narrowed and wound faster as they entered the forested mountains. From here, Kate allowed the car to navigate of its own accord using GPS, rather than trust herself –but she still held the wheel.

‘Are you ready to go up?’ asked Kate.

Nel didn’t answer, but rested her forehead against the window of cold glass; upon her face, the reflection of her cheek was streaked by rain.

She wondered where the picture of her Mother had gone, and reconsidered the one of herself in a checkered tunnel, asking maybe I’m falling up?

After a moment, Nel opened the car window and stuck her head out into the elements.

‘What are you doing!?’ exclaimed Kate as a channel of cold air and rain water blasted into the car sending papers flying. ‘Your passport!’ yelled Kate more hysterically as her hair whirled and she shivered in the cold.

Lightning flashed, the Tether was seen very near now.

Nel quickly wound the window back up, and leaned back –sheltered and breathless.

~

Young Joan was standing alone at Rechk point, while Melanie went looking for coffee, when the commotion broke out –a rain of comets was hurtling towards the inner solar system. According to Newsthreads, a planet nicknamed Tyche had perturbed the orbits of another two planets already, soon Raintree would be affected –and Netech.

Joan overhears a man greeting an acquaintance beside her.

‘Mon Avshalom,’ he declares exultantly.

Joan glances the man in a fetching white suit with a purple waist coat and sharp grey eyes, as he shakes hands with the Father of a blue eyed boy around her own age, with very ruffled, walnut coloured hair.

‘Is this your son? Hey there, kid,’ continues Reynard. ‘You know we’d all be a lot safer if we weren’t still attached to Raintree,’ he continued in a quieter tone. ‘Off world colonies are the natural way to go from here Albion,’ he pressed.

Anxious, Joan clutched her aching forearms, and pressed through a growing crowd to the vast wall of windows that made Rechk Point a popular world gazing place.

~

A flashing light appeared on the road ahead as Kate and young Nel approached the Telecom Tether Teleport. Crowds of people were surging onto the road in front of them –protestors. They beat furiously on the car and Nel was afraid the windows might break. Armed military drove the protestors back as the car neared a heavily guarded checkpoint signed Southern Gate. Nel’s Aunty was holding up the keycard she always wore around her neck, now glowing blue with foreign symbols. One soldier scanned something on the car window, while the other scrutinized them through the windscreen; squinting in the dark, through rain water dripping from the brim of his hat.

~

While his teenage son stood nearby, Poltauramy II, known as Quilon, listened to the Netech Aeronautical and Space Administrator Ms J. B. Blaire’s report on the unfolding situation. They’d spent millennia anticipating this type of event, but had only weeks to safeguard or prepare estimated strike zones for impact; hours in the case of matter merely diverted from failed intercept attempts –and subsequent post impact debris could not be accounted for at all.

As J B finished her report and stood down, Poltauramy II removed two different Rank Runes from his chest to initiate various Aleksi and Channelled Forces.

At his Father Quillon’s insistence, Poltauramy Jr. was by his Father’s side when they left Elbrihim for private quarters and the company of notable Netechian business and political leaders. It was there they watched live footage of the comets falling over cava and cognac, wordlessly toasting to the reformation of Netech as a constitutional republic no longer entirely answerable to the League of Nations.

As the depth of his Fathers foresight and implications of his involvement dawn, Quilon’s son feigns a bathroom visit in order to leave the room, and from there discreetly leaves the government department block altogether.

~

Nel said goodbye to her Father in a text message, and stepped out into the sally port of the Southern Gate Tether.

‘Don’t forget your Mums flowers hun,’ reminded Kate, quickly handing them over.

‘Thanks Katie,’ smiled Nel as she took the native bouquet to hand.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I get to Mum, and I’ll see you when I get back. Love you!’ They kissed one another goodbye quickly as attendants pressed them about the time.

Thunder from the storm outside shuddered the premises, as the door closed on Katie in a waiting room.

Nel felt alone as she was escorted down a bare corridor of matte white flooring, carrying only her flowers.

~

Young Poltauramy III hurriedly traverses various networks of corridors in Netech on his way to Rechk Point; he overhears voices, excited over the live scenes unfolding on screens everywhere.

~

Young Nelesia was greeted at the Tether door by an attendant, holding her old-fashioned suitcase. It was a last minute addition, as Kate and Nel had arrived considerably later than preferred by the company –GVM Industries. The door opened to a greeting desk which turned out to double as the room’s food and beverage booth.

Within the Tether Lift Room Nel was led around the front desk, through an open room of recliners in rows – already filled with affluent passengers absorbed in screen pursuits – to a stairway. Up the stairs, in another class of room, Nel was given a private suite. It had an ivory palette with bronze and wood grain accents, a vanity table and mirror, and a charcoal leather kit bag containing an eye mask, moisturiser, and fragrance.

Nel ignores the amenities to turn on her screen and watch live footage of the storm outside as they are elevated through the atmosphere. Seated comfortably for the journey that will take just under two hours, it isn’t long before they leave the thunderstorm in the Troposphere and soon enter a clear and calm stratosphere. At around 40km from earth, it’s minus 20˚ outside. They continue climbing into the mesosphere through noctilucent clouds where the temperature further drops to minus 80˚.

Nelesia fills with relief at the screen now showing splendid sunshine filling unblemished cobalt skies, and smiles curiously at a ball of light seen in the distance.

~

It was just before 10am when the first meteor struck Netech, minutes later Raintree was impacted too.

Young Joan was standing pressed against the glass windows at Rechk Point as the crowd thickened behind her. The sky was now filling with brilliant streaks of fiery light, and confirmation the Cebuan Sector had been destroyed was filtering quickly through the crowd, expressed as escalating panic.

Aleksi appeared to begin shepherding people back to their homes, but people here were resisting, to watch the unfolding horror.

Voices clamoured around young Joan, as Poltauramy III now also in the area, kept overhearing the same exclamations.

‘How is this happening!?’

‘Did the Elthred know?’

‘Surely we’d be told if some K T like event was coming.’

‘I’d love to know if they knew!’

‘If only we knew.’

As an Aleksi subdued a hysterical member of the public, Poltauramy III left the crowd.

Everywhere, people were crying to loved ones on devices, or pushing others aside in their own efforts to get home.

~

As Tyche’s presence perturbed the planet’s spin axis beyond 23˚, the devastation of human settlement on Raintree was begun.

Pressed against the glass wall at Rechk Point, Young Joan witnessed Channelled Forces deployed into Outer space, and corps observation ships catching fire. When the International Space Station in low orbit exploded, she knew it wasn’t a natural disaster.

~

With heavy lidded eyes, Mar Poltauramy Quilon Palamedes II impatiently scanned the room again, frowning. When he found his son seating himself quietly in a corner of the room, he perked up and beckoned with a strong hand. Quilon smiled and lifted his glass to his son. Young Poltauramy III nodded dutifully –without lifting his glass in return.

Unsatisfied with his son’s response, Quilon stood up. His powerful figure strode easily across the room, forcing young Polt to stand respectfully.

They now stood together before some forty Thebes, reclining and mingling at the gathering –wary young Polt now committing the capitalists, dynasts, and czars among them to memory.

‘Exceptional we are, dare I say,’ riffed one of the patrons with much self-adulation. ‘If indeed – Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.’

There were dry smiles all round. 

‘To Mother Nature, and to united nations,’ beamed Quilon as he again lifted his glass.

‘And to my son,’ continued Quilon, ‘your inheritance begins with a millennia of peace. Happy Birthday Eddie,’ he added quietly, and ‘To reformation!’ he praised loudly.

‘To reformation!’ they chorused.

Overwhelmed, young Polt’s sinking heart steeled at the sight of a grief stricken young girl with long blue hair amongst the screens they were watching. Pixelated amateur footage showed her being pulled from Tetherport wreckage by Aleksi as she wept into an arrangement of flowers.


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