Let Me Be Your Garden (en)

Chapter 1

This is an extra for the series "Rising from the Ashes of Herbay".

The author is @Redlilith000, a reader who has followed my work since its inception and has witnessed its changes and evolutions over time, supporting me with her constant feedback, helping me improve it, and ultimately enriching it by creating a new original female character along with a wonderful story to introduce her.

This extra takes place after the first book of the series, a couple of months after the signing of the reforms that freed the planet from Jupiter's tyranny, and focuses on three main characters: Mimea, Nigella, and Enif, but over the course of the narrative many other characters we are familiar with will also appear.

It is a wonderful story by a talented writer that I hope you will be excited and passionate about.

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NIGELLA

Day X, of the month X, of the year XXXX

Nigella held the pen in mid-air. The first page stared back at her, smooth and pristine, waiting to be filled with words she couldn't write.

She had been lying in bed for hours, sleep refusing to come, and with every minute marked by the clock, her frustration grew.

She needed rest, or she would be completely exhausted for her first lesson on Basic Computing for Pets.

Outside her window, barely obscured by cream-colored curtains, the lights of Midas pulsed and vibrated without rest, as if inviting her to go out.

That's what Midas was like, a seductive siren living to draw attention to itself; a labyrinth of bars, nightclubs, and brothels (fewer than there were before the war, but still too many) wrapped in a heavy veil of cigarette smoke, alcohol vapors, and perfume.

And at any hour of the night, it was always awake, waiting for her.

For months, more precisely since she had moved into that tiny apartment in New Ceres, Nigella had not been able to sleep uninterrupted.

Her brain and body were still struggling to adapt to the new living conditions, and her rest suffered because of it.

It took her an eternity to fall asleep, and she would wake up suddenly at odd hours, her heart pounding as if someone had pushed her out of bed.

Whether she suffered from nightmares or not, she couldn't say, because once awake, all that remained was the pounding in her chest and a vague feeling of dread she couldn't link to anything in particular.

So, she would throw the window wide open, letting the night breeze caress her sweaty skin, and every time, Midas would still be there, winking at her, no matter if it was midnight or five in the morning.

Too bad its allure had no effect on her.

She had dared to visit the city at night only once, in the weeks following Ceres' liberation from the rule of Jupiter, and after less than an hour, she had called an air taxi to go home.

She couldn't understand what everyone else saw in it. That place was awful.

A mass of soulless glass and metal buildings, flashing billboards showing half-naked men and women, so fake and perfect they disturbed her, streets so crowded it was impossible to walk without brushing against strangers, who often took the opportunity to touch her where they shouldn't, and apart from drinking until sick or going into a brothel, there wasn't much else to do.

Maybe, if she had gone with friends, she might have had more fun, though she doubted it, but she wasn't close enough with anyone to ask them to join her.