Far From Home

Chapter Ten

The white gravel was small enough that it didn't really hurt when I lay on it. I spread my arms and legs and started making a gravel angel. I got comfortable and finally did what I had been prolonging; looking up. An abundance of stars looked down on me instead and I was at a loss of breath. I remembered something that I had learned of the history of the world. It was somewhere at the start of the 22nd century that humans finally decided that the conservation of Earth might of been slightly more important than they thought. Over 200 species of animals had become extinct and the Earth's core temperature had risen by 10 degrees. There was no more snow in many countries, but the citizens of Earth managed to make a turn around and now even the ozone is restored and there is only 1% of pollution still in the atmosphere. I thought back to the people of the 21st and 22nd century who didn't get to see half the stars I saw now and how sorry I felt for them. At least they got to know about space travel though and they got to travel space as well. I sighed; they would've known why space travel had been banned.

The flashing blues, white and reds started swirling all together, along with all the small galaxies that could be seen, to make huge ones. It came to me that it wasn't a natural thing happening in the sky, but instead I was finally getting tired. I yawned and considered getting up to go back inside, I tried but my body would not give and I fell back knocking some of the wind out of me. Oh well, I thought, I'll...I'll do something? I fell asleep before I could finish my train of thought.

"Ms Zhou! Ms Zhou! Adira, wake up! Oh my god she isn't waking!" "Yes she is, look her eyes are fluttering she's fine." I scrunched my eyes at the sudden penetrating noise which had perforated my ear drums, I could feel the sun's rays beating down on parts of my body but other parts were colder. "Hey get up;" something nudged my shoulder, "this isn't the greatest place to sleep." I finally let out a huge final yawn and stretched my body, a scratchy noise retaliated it and a sudden shock came to me as I realised I was still outside on the gravel where I had been the night before. "Whoa, why am I still out here in my nightie?" I asked nobody in particular, I squinted to see who had disturbed my sleep and saw Culan and Zachariah looking down at me. "Everyone has been up looking for you for four hours Adira, why the hell were you out here?" Zachariah asked in a cold drawl. I smiled at him coyly, mornings were not a time to test me "You know that certain period of time Zachariah?" I asked verging on laughter, "that...you know...extra special time for us girls?" Zachariah looked at me with surprise, his face turning bright red at an amazing rate. "Yes well you might as well know now, but we don't just bleed during that time, we also transform into the dark sides of ourselves, which are huge hairy monstrous beings and we howl at the moon and scoot our butts. See? That's why I'm out here Zachariah. It was a special night for me." His surprise was quickly turning to anger, but I didn't catch the full feel of it as I turned and sauntered back towards the building.

I heard footsteps quickly crunching against the gravel and knew it was Culan before I even saw her, "you have to forgive him for being angry. Your monitor was set off for 2:53 am and it was saying you were dead. We thought you had...done something and we were searching for you since then. But now that you're safe we'll head to the food hall, everyone's there and they're all quite tired." Unfortunately for Culan I still wasn't in the mood and her last words sounded like a dig at me personally, I turned on her sharply stopping the taller woman in her tracks. "Luckily for me I slept great." I turned again on Culan now and walked straight to the elevators. As I walked in and turned, I could just see Zachariah walking up behind Culan, looking at me with a calculating look in his eyes.

Before I wanted anyone to see me I wanted to look so good that people were thrice as mad to see me. I went to my room before I was stopped short by the monitor welcoming me. I marched straight up to the control panel and jabbed my finger right up to it, "listen you, if you don't learn to detect sarcasm soon I'm going to put my whole fist through your entire interface. Affirmed?" I asked, the monitor stayed silent but flashed red once to confirm. I headed to the showers and put the choices on a lavender and chamomile scent, it was obvious I needed to calm down after my last two social mishaps. Then I remembered my incident with Mochrie as well, I banged my head against the shower wall and groaned. Why did I have to be like this? Mochrie was probably doubled more worried than anybody else, especially after our conversation. If there was anybody who would've been sure that I'd killed myself, it would have been Mochrie. I turned off the shower and stood there for some time, listening to the silence in the bathroom. I needed to go out of here and set things right with a lot of people.