The Diary of Zartoon

ENTRY 35

ENTRY 35

14.04.63.19.35

I didn't get any sleep last night, and I doubt that Pandorica got much either The city was very spooky. I hate to use the word, but it is the only one that fits. The winds made such unbelievable sounds as if there were ghosts wandering the streets and buildings.

After we had eaten, we went and searched some of the buildings. In one of them, near the palace, we found a stash of weapons. I grabbed two blasters and two pistols. After all, God only knew what we would find once we left. Then we found a supply of food and water. It would have been enough for the city to survive for years if their normal supply disappeared, and it was all still there. A stock list on the door showed that everything that should have been there was there. "Why didn't they take any?" I said, but Pandorica didn't have an answer either. So we just gathered up some of the food and water and made our way down to the city's rear gate.

It was easy to open, but when I did, I saw what I didn't want to see. There had been a windstorm during the night and all of the tracks that we saw the day before were gone, buried under fresh sand. There was some good news, though, both Pandorica and I both remembered which way the tracks went, so we just decided to travel in that direction. Unfortunately, we have not taken our travelers with us since the ones we were using were low on fuel, and there were no others in the city, so it was going to be a very long walk.

Usually, the Zartoon air was cool, maybe fifty to sixty degrees, but today it was hot, and it was very thick. That made the traveling harder than it had been. We only covered about twenty miles when we had to sit down and rest. We were exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. Honestly, though, I didn't care about me, I was worried about Pandorica. Besides everything else, she had the stress of being pregnant, and I had no idea what this was doing to her and our baby.

Then I had a stroke of the purest luck, I have ever had. I smelled something sweet in the air. It was kind of like a cross between caramel and roses, and it was coming from over a dune a couple of miles away. We had rested for about an hour before we walked to where the smell was coming from, it was like something I had never seen before, even here on Zartoon. There was an oasis. It was covered with a thick fog. Inside of the fog, there were trees with large red leaves and purple fruits. I found the flowers that made such an incredible smell, they were small, about the size of the head of a pin, yellow, and so beautiful. I went to pick one to give to Pandorica but the minute I touched it, my finger got burnt, burnt so bad that it immediately developed blisters.

Pandorica was sitting in a field of grass. I ran up and grabbed her by the arm. "Honey, do not touch anything here," I said. "I don't know what is poisonous and what isn't." She promised me that she wouldn't, and then she just rolled over and went to sleep. Despite the pain in my finger, I decided I was going to do exactly the same thing.