Cerulean Planet (Blue Dust Trilogy #1)

Chapter 7

Jiayun was out cold for a long while.

He dreamed of when he was little.

He was a pure Earthling, born and raised. He had woven through pine forests that stretched on and on, seen red sand dunes without an edge in sight and the vast open sea. Earth's winds were sometimes gentle and sometimes harsh. Where the wind touched, dust would whirl in the air and leaves would scatter the ground.

Giant high-rises sprung from the ground up like trees with roots firmly planted in the soil. Sometimes, the buildings would be rows of low huts that spread along the rivers, and countless rivers travelled meandering paths before they all fed into the ocean as one.

They were exiled because of his father. The day he left Earth with his mother, he saw the land before his eyes becoming blurrier, smaller, fading into a smear of blue. The ship passed through the atmosphere and Jiayun, with his hands pressed against its clear window, watched his home turn into nothing but a symbol on a map, becoming an indigo jewel that he could see himself holding in his palms.

He had left, but it was not going to be forever.

His mother had died a stranger in foreign lands. Once the dust settled, once he made a name for himself, he would go back. There would be no one waiting for his return, but no one was waiting for him anywhere else. Earth was the only place he saw himself returning to. It was his home.

His vision was shrouded in darkness when he came to. He could make out patches of blurry starlight. A sphere of light, the size of a fist, hovered outside the monster's translucent body. He looked more carefully and noticed that it was one of the monster's tentacles. Its tip was shaped into a bulb that glowed with dull blue light.

His wrist watch lit up when he lifted his hand. Thirty-five hours until sunrise. A day had passed.

Jiayun felt sore all over. Not even ten plus hours of sleep could grant him the recovery he needed. He didn't want to get up. Getting up meant having to deal with an overbearing monster and the reality that was this disaster.

But in the end, hunger forced him to act. The moment Jiayun lifted his torso off the floor, he saw four white fish placed beside him. He wasn't sure when the monster had moved to the hole in the ice and caught these fish. Jiayun didn't care to think further. He grabbed the fish and ate them one by one.

The dull blue lamp seemed to glow brighter.

The monster didn't require vision to sense things, which probably meant that they had lit it for his sake.

A face shifted into focus in front of where Jiayun sat.

This time, the face didn't resemble him all that much, but it looked familiar. Jiayun tried hard to dig through his memories. It was probably his father's face.

"I saw," the monster said.

"What," Jiayun responded automatically despite having no real interest in engaging in a conversation with them.

"Your 'dream.' A blue planet. Ambiguous longing. Feelings of belonging."

Jiayun smiled wryly. "'Feelings.' Feelings of belonging. Do you even know what feelings are?"

"It is easy enough to understand if I were to think like a human." The monster's mouth opened and closed as they spoke, "What I do not understand is why humans choose to seal their cognition, to confine them within their brains and display a small portion of fabricated thoughts, only for the truth to leak out from your dreams in the end."

"Are you interested in humans? If the likes of me are so lowly and vulgar to you, then what's the point in trying to trounce me? Why would you attempt to probe my inner mind and try to understand me? What would you even get out of playing with my body? Just for the fun of it? Do you even know what fun is?"