FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #78

As far as I remembered, here was a sea once.

Now a vast plain of burning sand and gravel with a mixture of sea shells stretched further than the eye could see.

After some time of walking, in the distance a dune field revealed a small hidden valley with a large rocky outcrop and several stone arches shaped by wind, promising a patch of shade.

I hadn't been this thirsty in a long while. Maybe that place had a spring of water. Yet the wind blew from the opposite direction, carrying the smell of water away from me, if there was any. Instead, the smell of scorched land stuffed my nostrils, so I narrowed them to avoid inhaling too much dust and drying myself more in this hot air.

I hadn't seen a sand desert in a long time. Perhaps, since I was born to a nest that dwelled in one.

The rocky patch was getting closer and closer—it wasn't a mirage.

No, perhaps, the last time I'd been to one was when I fought him.

It was a rocky patch just like this one, which had a small cool spring right after the third stony arch, reaching the surface from under that flat stone...

I stared at the verdant patch that surrounded a small stream.

No, there was no doubt this was the place. I looked around, finding familiar things everywhere. Yet the thirst won over curiosity and I ardently gulped the water, collecting it with my palms, washing my face, feeling more and more alive with every moment of contact with the life-saving liquid.

Done, I found a shade to rest in and think about my current situation. My Sangaru node was unresponsive and it bothered me. I was cut off from everyone. Yet this mindscape was mine, at least it looked like mine, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't change it to be anything else but this burning sand pit. If it was as I thought, one of two things had happened: either I was dying, or I was unconscious for whatever reason. I did not remember being hit, however, and I hadn't even entered a fight yet. An assassination attempt? What was the purpose of showing me this memory?

I rested my back against the warm stone wall.

It was then when I heard a noise. A faint rustling that wasn't caused by a wind caressing the barren, deadly land. A sound of careful footsteps so out of place in this calm, solitary realm of heat and sand.

I listened, becoming a tight spring ready for attack. Closer, closer, a shadow appeared on the sand from behind the corner of the stone wall that towered above me.

I brought my body forward the moment the visitor emerged from behind the stone and grabbed him, throwing him onto the sand, jumping on top, my hand gripping his throat.

"Gah—" My prey groaned, giving me a sharp stare of narrowed, pale green eyes.

"Sha-ani?!" I roared in surprise, releasing my hold. "What are you doing sneaking in my head?"

"Ugh, Dorgu, I could ask you the same thing," Shaamta replied from under me.

"I hate to interrupt your lovely reunion, but both of you are in mine." We heard a girl's voice. I turned my head and saw her: the red-haired kid we'd met right before I woke up in this place to all these weird things happening.

She was tiny, but her shanra was fierce.

"Whoever you are, don't expect you will be able to walk out of this alive," I stated in a calm, unimpressed voice, getting off Shaamta and getting up from the ground.

"Oh," she said. "And I even bothered to gather every item on your wish lists, Yajur-i-Sangu. Let's see what you two are made of."

Also back on his feet, Shaamta caught my arm before I made even a step in her direction.

"Don't be hasty, Dorgu-ni," he told me, smiling. "The person in front of you is quite interesting. I've been playing a little game with her for a while. I wasn't expecting her to show up here so quickly, but what can I say—she beat me to it. I think I even know how and when she did it."

Great! Just great! Now this one was getting excited. What could be worse?

"That thing," Shaamta whispered as if he heard my thoughts, looking up into the sky. I looked up as well and saw a black, flat, twelve-vertex star 'shining' instead of a regular star.

"Ah, this," the red-haired girl said. "That's a problem." She smiled. "So I packed a thousand Sangaru years in one second of our real time. There are a lot of things to do, though you two are not the ones I wanted to explore this with, but my people ended up fighting your lot because you just couldn't mind your own business. Thus I do not guarantee you two will survive this journey and I will gladly be your guide to your own place of the dead."

"Ooh?" Shaamta's smile grew wider. "So you got caught up in this as well," he told her. "You are being devoured by a Maok."

"Not quite," she replied. "Though the copy of my mind was less fortunate. I believe you've met."

"Sha-ani, what is she?" She clearly belonged to those things that shouldn't have existed, uncomfortable things that were to be removed as soon as possible.

The girl stared at us, her dark eyes studying us both with interest. "The name's Falaha," she replied in Shaamta's place.

I didn't need her name. I didn't need a name of a thing to be disposed of.

"Your youngest daughter," my Sangu said, pleased. I haven't seen him this pleased in a long time. He had developed a strange interest, maybe even taken a liking to some of these 'people' he had experimented on. And after all this time we'd been together I still couldn't get used to his twisted sense of humor. It both fascinated and annoyed me.

But daughter? This I will never accept.

"She is also a Sangu," Shaamta finished his happy thought. But quickly went to correct himself, "No, perhaps, a Yajur Sangu, since she took on the Maok." His smile faded. "But I wonder how we are going to deal with that." He looked up, then at me and slapped me on the shoulder, saying, "Don't be so sour. You're going to die anyway. Even our females complain to me about you. They may kill you once."

He left me standing and went towards the girl.

Shaamta wasn't afraid of death. He loved death.

I wasn't afraid either. It always followed us, taking strangest shapes. This time, however, I was heading towards it, if I could say this about lying unconscious somewhere on the floor of my own Enclave.

A second. What a strange unit of measurement. Only small people could have ever thought of using such a thing.