Banished To Earth Book One (10)

turned and walked away…

  Blinding white light suddenly streamed through every window completely washing out the scene.

  When it faded the white hallway was replaced by a beautiful cloud-flecked sky. Below it, a barren rock formation punched up toward the heavens, a stone fist threatening the sky for no good reason at all.-

    Phyilmorphet stood wavering on the highest most crumbling part of the cliff. She was looking down, picking a good spot to land, a good spot to die.

    Several years had passed since Priathamel’s birth, and not much longer than that since she wiped her blood plastered eyes open and saw Gyles’ pitiful red tattered remains piled up at her feet like worthless refuse.

    The image was tattooed to the back of her mind. It never left. It never faded. However, it always accused and convicted, and now that her little girl was big enough to fend for herself and had Lostereal, the warrel and the mahrah for protection and comfort it finally condemned.

   It was time to go. The burden of guilt had only grown heavier with the passage of time. Lostereals’ constant assurance Gyles’ death was not her fault, and Priathamels’ loving affection only intensified her guilt. How dare she enjoy one moment of happiness, one second of relief much less comfort and joy. No, this was just and right. What a rare, good man like him would demand. She would please him one last time…

   She teetered for a moment as a sudden gust of wind blew against her face. She tumbled back from the edge, turned and took one last look down toward the wood and saw Priathamel climbing up.

   She had not expected to see her and was certainly not about to commit suicide right in front of her little girl. She spun around quickly, a little too quickly, hoping her daughter would not realize what she was about to do, started to pick her way down, when a lose bit      of rock slid under her left foot, stole her footing and sent her falling over the edge robbing her of any chance to change her mind.

Chapter 9

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   Priathamel screamed and scrambled up the rock face, arriving at its’ summit just in time to look down and see her mother shrinking away through her clutching useless fingers. She somehow managed to cover her eyes just before her mother’s body slammed into an anvil of rock protruding from the merciless ground far below, and break into, like a dry twig.

   The blue sky dropped like a curtain. The rock was gone. Little Priathamel was gone, just like the warrel and the mahrah and her past, lost forever, irretrievable.

   Chase the man opened his eyes and saw Priathamel the woman looking back at him.

  “She reached out and stroked his face. “You live. That is good. That is what matters.”            

 “No, we live Priathamel. That’s what matters.”

   “Esal mah tez, I mean, too late anyway.” She paused and smiled, “Good. Morning.”  Her words sank into a whisper as she turned her face toward the sliding glass door. Her features lifting in the morning glow as she looked out at the vast glittering sea shining brightly beneath the rising sun, “that is what you say here, is it not.” She spoke with the anxious pleasure of a child trying out a new bicycle, for the first time.

   Chase grinned from ear to ear, “Good morning to you too.”

 “My, haaair.” It sprang up to her face long and white as ever. She twisted into it playfully.

  “You still have it,” he teased. “But you have changed. We can speak now. Understand now.”

    He gathered her up in his arms when they rose together. “My husband. I know that you are from before, but I do not feel the past, not yet. I just know that it was, that it happened, and that it happened far from Earth. My change, you, caused it? Am I still Cry’chi? No. Not Cry’chi only. But that is good. I do feel you inside of me. You are a part of me. Not lost, anymore and that is good.”

   She laid her cheek against his neck, then kissed it. He bent down, kissed her head and pulled her up, kissed her forehead then her face and did not stop until he was kissing her lips.

   Locked in a tight embrace they clung together. His hands gently clasped her bare shoulders just before he slid them down her satiny back looking for the blanket. Nothing but smooth bare skin slid beneath his searching fingers until they curved down and joined at the small of her back. His fingertips had just begun to curve up and over when they       

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bumped into the blanket, barely hanging and ready to fall to the floor with the slightest pressure.

     Heat rolled through Priathamels’ body, as she whispered into his right ear, “This is sex?”

   He drew her up even closer as his fingertips hovered and hesitated over the crumpled blanket, barely clinging to her body.

   “Yes, this is sex.” He said, grabbing the blanket and pulling it up and over her naked shoulders. “And if you have to ask, married or not. We should wait. Cry ‘chi, don’t, ah, ugh, they just mingle blood. But, like you said. You’re not quite Cry’chi anymore, are you?”

   Crestfallen, she drooped away from him and gathered her blanket around her body like a robe. “My drape is gone, blown away like smoke. But I am still Cry’chi as much as I ever was anyway. There is still so much I do not know.”

   “Me too, Pry, can I just call you Pry, so much easier than.”

   “Pry is good. It is short like me.”

  “Did you just make a joke?”

   “That is also something you do here. Is it not?”

   “Well, we try. In any case, we can’t have you running around barefoot and in a blanket. And yes there’s a lot I don’t know and can’t help but feel there’s something really important, I’ve missed, or just can’t remember.”

   Her features tightened, “Yes, the Transit Authority, not only taught me of my fate, but that my fate, is not mine alone. You were right other Earth people have been changed and more like me are here.” She fell silent, looked down as if she were letting something slide down into her mind. “But why?”

 “Don’t know yet. Maybe other Hunters will know more.”

“Other Hunters should want to kill me.”

 “Yeah, kinda hard to strike up a conversation while you’re fighting for your life. But they are coming. I can feel a change in the air.”

 “You sense them?’

“No, not yet. We still have time, but no time to waste.” He grinned down at her. “Would you like to shower?”

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        “Shower? I, I cannot make it rain.”

  “No,” He chuckled, “I mean bath. I don’t have a tub just shower so…

  “Your house rains?”

   He grinned as she looked around, her eyes bright with childlike innocence and wonder, and saw his house as he had never seen it before…

    His home, a relic from the past. Left to him by his recently deceased uncle, Ned Todd, his mother’s brother. It looked like it dropped right out of the seventies. A small dining room was located on the west side of the cosy pine-panelled house, on the salter path side. A cheap ugly brown chrome and vinyl dinette set stood at the center of the twenty -foot square dining section. Five equally ugly chrome and vinyl chairs sat all around the flimsy ovoid table.  The living room, yet another twenty- foot square, looked out over his twenty feet by twenty feet sun bleached deck, which was suspended on a dozen black sixteen-foot-tall creosote stilts to protect it from storm surge.

   A narrow-paved driveway that curved and cut through a grove of thick wind stunted trees and brush ended at a two-car garage located directly beneath the stilted two- bedroom white house, and a thirty-five-foot square apron of grass. A narrow concrete walkway curved off the black top driveway and led up to a wooden ramp granting easy access to a small, screened porch jutting from the front of the house.  

   Upon entering the house, the first thing one might notice and enjoy was the stunning ocean view, afforded by the living room’s two large sliding glass doors. A tan sun faded leather couch separated the dining room from the seaside of the house. Two large leather recliners book ended the couch. One stood a few feet from the modest cramped kitchen, that also had a door that opened unto the deck. The other chair sat three feet from the bathroom door, separating two fully furnished bedrooms. Each bedroom had a window. One window faced the ocean, the other had a somewhat foliage obscured view of salter path.

   Beige shag carpet covered every floor of the house except for the kitchen and bathroom. Their floors seemed to be in competition for the ugliest linoleum contest. The bathroom winning with its’ baby puke green and yellow circle and square pattern, that defied explanation of what it was trying to depict.

The kitchen floor had simple black and white squares, at least it wasn’t confusing or nauseating.

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  Chase, struck by her adorable ignorance, had not answered her question.

“Your house, does it rain?”

“Oh, sorry, no, but water does shoot out of the wall.”

   She peered at the outdated pine paneling. “I see no water.” Chase grinned. “Come on I’ll show you water,” He took her hand and led her to the bathroom, showed her the shower. Pushed its’ cheap plastic white curtain open and twisted the knobs. After carefully adjusting its temperature he took a towel and washcloth from under the sink.

  “Just step under the warm spray, don’t forget to pull the curtain shut.”

  “Can you help me?”

   He was not sure if she was serious or just teasing. “I saw you bathe in the lake, remember, don’t think you really need me to help you bathe.”

  “But, it would be nice.” She said lightly biting her lower lip.

 “I, I’m just not ready.”

 “Why? You are my husband, are you not? Are, are you afraid of me?”

“I, I am afraid I, I might hurt you. You, you’ve been through enough.”

“You are hurting me now.”

 “You know I don’t mean to. But your body, your body has changed. You’ve never had sex, and ah,” he hesitated turned red, “and ah, neither have I.”

  A smile erased the pain from her eyes. “You waited, all this time. You waited. You never forgot, not really, not deep inside.”

“I guess you could say this is the first date I’ve ever been on. Man, that sounds lame.”

“I am not a man.” Her tone was sharp with insult.

“No, of course you’re not. Which is why we need to get you ready for what’s out there. So, you take your shower, while I find something you can wear. Come to think of it, I need to clean up too. My clothes, what’s left of them, are nothing but rags and I smell like the woods.”

“I like that smell.”