Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
“I am sorry,” the Lizard King says, wrapping the chain that connects to my neck around his wrist. “We’re going to have to sacrifice you as bait. The good news is that you may find your father in the afterlife.”
“Please don’t kill me,” I whimper. “I think, if you kill me, very bad things will happen and nobody will be able to stop them.”
His jaws open wide. I see down the maw of the evil king, and I know that these are the last moments of my life…
* * *
“Mara! Mara!”
I blink, and someone is calling my name. Someone with a deep, warm voice. Someone I recognize, and yet have not had time to miss, somehow.
One moment ago I was talking to a very large lizard who is about to bite my head off, and now I am standing on the colony world I came from. The air tastes like copper and magnesium and something else I am not used to tasting here.
I shake my head to try to clear it. What’s going on? My brain feels as though it is full of fuzz, like an old TV playing static. I could have sworn I was with aliens just seconds ago, but the memory of what just happened is fading even faster than dreams do.
Something drips on me. For a moment, I am confused. Then I look up.
Another drop follows and another. I have to squint and cover my eyes with my hand. I haven’t seen rain here in years. I’ve seen mist. There’s been some dew from time to time. But not rain. Not like this, big fat drops falling at great velocity out of the sky and drilling themselves into dusty dry ground, making puffs of dirt spring up where they land.
I let out a shout of absolute glee as the rain intensifies. This is it. This is what we needed. Real rain. Intense downpours. The clouds above are roiling gray and even black in places, releasing long overdue gluts of water onto the parched ground below.
The riverbeds are starting to fill up. In the distance, I can hear cheers of relief. I know those cheers will turn to screams if we are not careful, because very dry ground cannot absorb water and will instead only flood. But we are so desperate and so parched that even flooding will be greeted with happiness.
I look down at my hands and body. I am still in my pink space suit.
My brain tries to fight its way back to the last events that happened in this suit, but I can’t seem to retrieve them. It is as though they come from times and places that never happened at all. I feel a sense of unease and relief at the same time.
The rain starts to ease to a light shower. It is pleasant now, less torrential and more nourishing. That’s fortunate. There’s a thin sheen of water on the ground that is going to need hours to sink in properly.
“Mara! Are you gone deaf, girl?”
The voice comes from behind me. This time I recognize it, because it’s the voice of the man I’ve been searching for, for years.
I turn around to see my father coming out of our house. It’s him. It really is. I genuinely never thought I would see him doing that again. But he’s strolling out with a faintly annoyed expression on his face. It’s all so normal. It’s all so perfect.
He puts out his hand, and I watch the water from the heavens splash down into it. In a matter of seconds, there’s a little pool on his palm, and bits of metal swarth are floating in it. He’s been working on something that needed maintaining, I can tell.
“It’s good, isn’t it, girl,” he says. “Rain. What we’ve needed for so long. If not for this downpour, I’d have to go sell my soul to something off world.”
Those words trigger something deep inside me. I burst into tears of relief, run to him, and hug him so tight he complains about not being able to breathe.
“Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t go away again. Please. Stay here.”
He grins at me with that devil-may-care expression that I inherited, but still find unsettling to see on his face. I have a very strange feeling, almost as if I am straddling two worlds. It doesn’t make sense.
“I haven’t gone anywhere, girl,” he says. “And I’m not going to.”
“I was having a dream,” I say, because that’s the easiest way to explain having dual memories of something that didn’t exist and something that clearly does in my mind at the exact same time. “That you’d gone, and you didn’t come back, and I got flung into the sun, but I didn’t die, and then I almost drowned and there were aliens. Like, a lot of aliens…”