Banished To Earth Book One (40)

    Of course, the bed was a cozy nest of silky material spread over a cloud of comfort and warmth.

   After slipping into a pair of fur-lined sandals that had been hidden beneath her cream-colored robe, she saw Davin hunched over the balcony railing.

   “You are not cold?” Pry heard her first self-ask. “Come to me and close the window. You know the night air chills me.”  

   He turned and faced her.

    Davin was Chase. That is, Chase was Davin. Identical, but different people. It was good that their first selves could never know their latter selves. The future can so easily corrupt the past, creating paradoxes that cannot be resolved. That is why they could only tolerate fleeting glimpses of their ancient, forgotten past, and were barred from any direct access and influence.

    Pry struggled to run to him, but First Pry was, for the moment, content to stand by the bed and watch him walk toward her. His chest was bare; a pair of loose-fitting white pants flapped against his legs as he approached.

   “You are troubled.” She said.

  “I am a seer,” He drew near and gathered her up in his arms. “We are always troubled.”

 She lay her head against his bare chest, letting his heartbeat against her ear. “Your heart is racing.” She lifted her head and looked up at him and found herself staring into his deep brown eyes. They floated in tears.

   “You are more than troubled.”

  He lifted her tiny body and kissed her mouth. New Pry felt it, rejoiced in it. ‘Chase’, she thought.

    ‘Yes. I am here.’ His words rang in her mind like a sweet melody.

  The kiss broke, ending their psychic link, at least for the moment. But he was there with her. He was safe. That’s what mattered…

   “What is it, Davin?”

 

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 “I dreamt last night,” he paused, “a horrid dream, that was no dream.” He loosened his embrace and let her small frame slip from his arms.

   First Pry shrank away. “What are you saying?” Her voice was heavy with apprehension.

   “Come.” He took her hand and led her out to the balcony. “You must see this.”

   “Your dream?” She asked as they neared the railing and looked out over the moonlit valley.

   “Yes.” His handsome features sagged with dread.

     The valley. It was a dream all its own. Far below, a silver haze had settled over the dense forest which blanketed the distant mountains with lush vegetation. Jagged snow-capped peaks glistened on the ragged horizon far away. Alisar was a paradise of peace and beauty, unlike the rest of the galaxy.

   Pry and Davin had hoped to grow old there, but hope alone cannot change the future…

    She took his arm and pulled him to her, “But a shared dream is not possible.” She bowed her head, fearing what she was about to say. “Unless...”

    He dabbed his left eye with his right index finger, lifted a tear from it and held it up to the string of pearls that were Alisar’s seven moons.

   The tiny ‘glass’ teardrop gathered the moonlight. They watched it grow into a melon-sized, crystal sphere. A moment passed, then it rose from his fingertip and hovered two feet from their faces.

   White clouds began to swirl within the sphere. They churned and twisted until they tore themselves apart, finally dissipating and revealing a tiny, blue-white, flecked planet. Earth.

   “I am young Pry, far too young. It is not my time. I am not dying. We have no children. I…”

  “The summons.” She exhaled the word as though it were poison gas.

  “This world does not even exist yet.”

  “But time is incidental.” She quoted the Seers' Creed.

  “And the summons.”

  “Irrevocable.” She sighed.

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   “And impatient.”

  “What?”

  “I can feel the pull even now.”

  “But time is …”

  “Incidental,” he finished her sentence, “but not merciful to seers. I must go very soon, mere moments from now. A beast will be born there.” He said, pointing at Earth, as the sphere depicted in gross detail everything he shared, “Foolish false gods will unleash it on the universe. Billions of worlds will suffer and die. My dream showed me children ripped apart, worlds consumed with white fire that will not be quenched. Galaxies, stilled against the black, cold and lifeless as stone. This is my fate, the only reason I was born, seer.”

   “Then you must stop a birth?” Davin saw more disgust than pity in her face.

   “Yes, kill an unborn and more, but the dream faded. No. I fled from it. I could not bear to see more. I am weak. How can I kill an unborn child, but how can I not?” He confessed.

  “You can refuse. Run.” She pleaded.

   “Pry, we all must sleep. With sleep, dreams, mine will be nightmares. Night terrors every night. Would you wish that on me, but so much more than that, would you wish brutal tyranny and death on them?” I must go and do this terrible thing. It is time. I can sense the passageway closing. Remember, we are bound. A love that binds is a love that finds.”

    “Yes. That is why I will not say goodbye.”

   With that, he stepped back, relinquished his will and let his body fall back into a strange ovoid of distorted air, where lay the future. She leapt into his arms. Arms that were already falling away from her. She caught him. They clung, melted into one another. Clenching together tighter and tighter until their fused bodies became a ball of white, blinding light, that shrank smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter until the light blinked out and became a speck of black, exploded and vanished…

 

   Their journey through time and space ended abruptly. Each collapsed away from the other. Their exhausted bodies panting against the window seal as they let the cool, sweet air of Earth gently ease them back into their own reality.

  “Davin?” She whispered.

  He grunted, “No. Think I’ll stick with Chase.”

   “I told you. You are not a monster.”

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    “And how do you figure that? Chase kills a child and saves the universe. Mission accomplished,” He glared into the darkness. “I’m done.” He said with grim finality.

   She slid up to him. He draped his right arm over her shoulders as they peered into the pregnant night. “We both know better than that…” She said as she pressed her fingertip against a tiny spot of blood staining Trudy’s white pillow and promptly absorbed it.

        A new, unnoticed, shadow quivered into view just above their bed….

            

 

                                                         The End Of Book One

                                                            Banished To Earth