The Games for Gaiathal (Part 3 of 'A Tale of People and Apples Trilogy')

Chapter 9: To the Fortress

"Get her up, quickly," A girl said to her friends, as two others sprinted to Eeva's side and put their hands on her shoulders and legs, lifting her into the air.

Eeva knew after several painful gulps of air who had arrived, profoundly grateful it was not Outlanders.

From the beach, a great vehicle unlike any Eeva had ever seen backed it's way to the tree-line, it's great tires pressing and crunching into the sand and snapping branches as it approached them, jagged steel shining in the sunlight.

A woman with a tight white lab coat which matched the clouds and dark hair tied back in a bun, a cast upon a broken arm, configured the back of the vehicle with swift fingers upon a panel after she was close enough and exited. The great machine unfurled, metal gears groaning as a bed snapped into place and medical equipment sprang to the side and beneath.

The girls helped Eeva onto the now tiny hospital bed, the vehicle erecting thin metal walls around her as curtains while her pain gripped tighter.

"Girls, stand guard," The woman said as the tiny chamber sealed itself shut, the woman helping Eeva undress and dressing her into a green thin gown, informing her to take deep breaths.

Eeva could barely make out the familiar shapes of the people she once knew outside as her contractions continued and her eyes winced in discomfort. Rosaya with her vision restored, Signey with bandages upon her bloodied sections of bare skin, and Talia rejuvenated from her exhaustion.

"I know you," Eeva said through grit teeth to the woman that now cared for her. "You're Maeve."

"And you're Eeva," Maeve said back as she fiddled with more settings in her vehicle. "Pleasure."

"Have you delivered a baby before?" Eeva asked with both genuine fear and hope evident in her voice.

Maeve shrugged, and said, "How hard can it be?"

On the outside of the vehicle, as the cries of pain from Eeva along with Maeve's commands to 'push!' commenced and continued, and as Maeve adjusted medical settings of her makeshift medical chamber for seeming hours, the girls stood guard.

"Maeve was right. Eeva set sail barely a day ago, yet now she's nine months pregnant here," Talia said to them, with hope in her voice. "Our people back home are safe... for now. Standing still through the grains of time."

"Who do you think the father is?" Signey asked them both, referring to Eeva and her baby.

Rosaya and Talia scoffed at the ditzy remark, unsure if Signey was joking.

"Luka, Signey. Obviously," Rosaya said with her rifle shouldered, watching inland. "Poor Calysa. No doubt they've finally admitted their feelings to each other by now. Can't imagine what will go through her mind when she finds out."

"Poor Luka," Talia corrected her friend slightly. "Happiest with Calysa, I bet he goes back to Eeva, back to the golden girl who treats him like trash. Loyal to a fault, that boy."

Signey scowled and asked Talia, "What is it Luka truly wants? What is his desire? Other than saving us all, of course."

"Now that's a complicated question, but..." Talia pondered a moment, searching for an appropriate analogy. "If the sea was the happiness of everyone, Luka is the tide, concerned with raising it for everyone who is decent, everywhere at his own expense... not just pockets or sections of the vast blue blanket. One day, I hope he understands he deserves it himself. That joy is a mountain range. That people like him and Calysa deserve the peaks, while people like Solan deserve the valleys. And that sometimes he can climb and summit and worry about his own mountain... Not move others."