Dusk Chronicles: Among the Stars

Chapter 1: Papillon Venin du Crépuscule (1/5)

A soft hand brushing across my forehead brought me back to consciousness. I tried not to stir, my whole body ached, my breathing was labored and shallow so I tried to focus on the faint sound of a melody being hummed nearby. I felt her unwrap something from my arm then touch my skin, her hands were as cold as ice. As cold as death. Grimm! I bolted upright not wanting a reaper to be tending to me, but I was instantly met with a hard thunk. My head began spinning as stars exploded across my vision, all I could manage was a weak groan as I fell back onto a pillow.

"Oh burning fireflies! What in the world would you startle me like that for?" Her voice was gentle and sweet, but sounded nothing like Grimm's had. She put a rag up to my nose as I felt the blood begin to drip down my lip. "You can't just jump like that." I tried to mutter a question to her as I took over holding the rag against my lip. I blinked slowly but the little stars in my vision weren't going away, whoever they were they had a tough punch. "Who I am? Like my name? I don't remember my name, but the world gave me a memorable one." I shook my head, trying to focus on something, anything.

"Papillon Venin au Crépuscule"

"Hm?" I removed the rag from my lip and tried to sit up slower this time, "Doesn't sound familiar to me." My vision was beginning to clear, I rubbed my face like a sleepy child. When I opened my eyes I found myself in a small, dimly lit room, curtains closed shut with light struggling to shine underneath them. The couch I found myself on was covered with bloody gauze, one strand was slightly wrapped around my wrist. I watched as her hands unwrapped the last bits of the gauze, my arm looked normal to me, no cuts or marks that would cause so much blood.

"Dusk Venom Butterfly." My eyes darted to hers, she had a piercing yellow reptile looking eye staring back at me. The rest of her face was covered by a smooth looking porcelain mask and a few loose brown strands of her hair. "Does the English translation sound more relevant to you?" I nodded slowly as I studied her face. From what I could tell she had light skin, and her face had a few noticeable scars across it.

Being on Mars there weren't many of them around, but they looked like sets of bites from a snake. She had two long scars over her yellow eye that started above her brow and trailed down her cheek, ending somewhere beneath the mask. The marks brought back a wave of memories, I felt my eyes start to sting as tears began trailing down my face. "Don't be a baby, I didn't hit you that hard.." she scoffed at me as she gathered up the bandages. "I've got some things to check. Don't try to leave unless you want to die," she began to walk out of the room, popping her head back through the doorway to give a sly smile, "again." then she was gone, leaving me to my jumbled thoughts.

All I could picture were the scars on her face, I could almost hear the sound of snakes hissing as I swung my feet off the edge of the bed and sat up. Snakes. The last time I saw one of those creatures of evil was over 20 years ago, on my first Safari trip to Earth. The place where our ancestors came from, a place full of wild animals, breathtaking landscapes, and awe inspiring occurrences such as sand storms or thunder strikes. From the stories in the old books, to the documentaries about our past, Earth was a very different place than it is today. The main difference about Earth is that now it is only home to all the wide variety of animal species with no human inhabitants. Animals here on Mars aren't as abundant or varied. Many species that had been on Earth have long since become extinct, and of those very few live on Mars, and as far as I know, snakes are not one of them.

In the beginning of the 3000s, on Earth, there was a mass awakening, the realization that the Earth was deteriorating, and humans along with it. A large collaboration of scientists began research, extensive studies, and providing options to save the human race. Only one came into the light that made sense to those that remained; to move off of Earth. This was the birth of what became the Utopia Project. When the planet's natural resources had deteriorated, at an exponential rate, 94% of the human race died in a matter of months. The Utopians, or scientists who worked on the project, opted to claim Earth as a wildlife sanctuary and move whatever humans they could to Mars. There are years of news collections, recordings, and research journals that claim Mars was being terraformed in an attempt to create a place for humans to live separate from most of the animal species. Space stations now orbit the once red planet to maintain a round-the-clock surveillance and maintenance of the artificial atmosphere. Decades passed as Mars' surface was remodeled for the arrival of the human race. On April 22, 3212 the remaining humans of Earth moved to their new home on Mars, and have been living here for 266 years. Earth has been left to heal its resources naturally and without their presence for the past 266 years, or 502 Earth years. To adapt to living on a new planet, the remaining human population, or most of them, underwent experimental gene therapies and DNA splicing.

If you look at pictures of Humans from the Earth Era, they all look the same compared to the people that live on Mars. If you look at some common species on Earth and mix them with humans, then you get people on Mars today. Leo, the Zodiac, was the world's first human to live through any DNA splicing. After finding out that the Z8-3 made her immune to the effects of aging, she went through more experimental DNA splicing. They had a lion from Earth who they used to splice with her DNA, and, from what I know, it worked pretty well. I've seen her image on news postings, her hair is like a lion's mane, eyes a pale green with slits for pupils, her fingers and toes have large black claws, and her nose resembles that of her personal pet lions more than it does mine. Not all blood lines show their Earth animal genes though, such as me, or those Gemini twins, I remember watching about when they became the next Zodiacs to stand at Leo's side.

I fell back onto the bed as my head swam with random tidbits of information. I laid there gazing up at the ceiling, losing myself deeper into my thoughts. Maybe that's why Dusk looks like that, her family line could be spliced with snake DNA. "I wonder if she has fangs." I chuckled as I heard my own question, picturing the gentle looking woman hissing and barring fangs at someone. I shook the thought from my head, I'd never ask and I surely wasn't going to make her mad to see if she hisses. As I sunk blissfully into the mattress, my thoughts began to spiral out and run free for a while, eventually drifting back into a restful sleep just as I started to remember the first, and only, time I saw Earth with my own eyes.