Solar Sky

Chapter 3

It was Valery.

I was stunned. How was she standing? How was she here? She didn't appear to be in any physical exertion at all. In fact she looked relaxed, leaning against the threshold with her arms crossed, and she watched me with a wry glare.

She looked very strange; I struggled to take it all in. I tried to speak to her, but when I opened my mouth I could feel the pressure reach inside my lungs and steal the air right from my body. "Val..." was all I could manage.

She raised an eyebrow at me, the same bushy, bristling look she gave him earlier in the gardens. "Need some help?" She winked.

Her skin looked ashen and grey, as if she had some kind of paint rubbed all over her body. She was tall, taller than me, and her shoulder-length hair was an unnatural shade of blue, stuck out messily in every direction. It was completely different from the Valery I knew, the stout woman with her olive skin and her short brown hair. But then I saw the oval knobs of her cheekbones, the same curve in her chin, and the same round eyes, as if they sat on the surface of her face instead of set inside and shadowed by her bushy brow. Only Valery's brown irises were gone, and her eyes now were as round and white as I'd ever seen, and they stared right into mine with an intensity I never knew Valery could muster.

She pushed off the wall without waiting for my reply. Valery stepped over Nils' crumpled form and strode to the opposite side of the table where I was bound. She was wearing brightly coloured clothes with breezy streaks of fabric that flowed and swished as she moved, greens and blues and browns. Clothes I'd never seen her wear before, like a dress with sashes of fabric flowing from the sleeves, shoulders, and skirt; clothes unlike any I knew she owned. As she neared, her ashen arm reached out and she used it as a springboard against the tabletop, hopping over and across it to come directly beside me. She had nearly doubled in height. It was surreal to be looking up at her instead of down.

"Help..." I pleaded.

She smirked again, and raised a pointer finger to me. "You stay still, now."

And just like that, she reached over to the restraint on the table and ripped it completely off. With her other hand she tore the shackles from my wrists and I pulled loose. She bent at the waist, grabbing hold of the bindings on my legs and she broke them apart as if they were string stuck to me with tape.

In less time than a mother would tear open as basket of rations for her starving family, Valery had freed me from military-grade fetters with her bare hands. How could she be so strong?

She straightened, looking me square in the face. I stared back, entranced by her eyes. I'd never seen anything like them before. Instead of her brown irises there floated white orbs, completely round and delicately detailed, with an outline of black that made them pop against the white sclera. They each reminded me of Earth's moon, only shrank down to fit inside each eye.

She smiled, her cheekbones rising and squishing her eye sockets, and to my surprise the orbs in her eyes changed shape. They now looked exactly like a crescent moon, as if shadows had covered the top of the orbs and left the rest to glow white in a crescent shape, the thick part illuminated at the bottom and the tips of the crescent on the left and right sides..

I understood it now as I stared into her unreal eyes. This couldn't be Valery. But how did this woman look so much like her?

"Let's get out of here."

Before I could respond--which would've taken some time considering how inept I was under this strange pressure--she turned and started toward the door. I could feel my breathing pick up again. I needed somehow to follow her, to get my body moving. I didn't want to be left behind.