Gaia 3

XIII. Ruins

Unsurprisingly, that night Jaleah had another one of her nightmares. This time, the scenery was familiar. She was standing by Julius Lucioni's ship at around dusk. The setting sun had colored the skies a bright shade of red which complemented the darker red of the ground. Despite this exceeding beauty, however, she felt incredibly uneasy. Something was wrong. 

Sure enough, seconds later she found herself surrounded by skeletons. Most of the skeletons were normal, and she presumed that these must be the skeletons of Julius Lucioni's crew. However, one skeleton was different: it was the skeleton of the unknown creature. 

Jaleah caught her breath. The skeletons were lumbering around, forming a circle around her. They danced around her until the unknown skeleton stopped in front of her. Despite having empty eye sockets, it seemed to look her in the eye. Jaleah suddenly felt drawn to it. Was it trying to tell her something? She leaned forward with anticipation and watched as it unhinged its jaw in an attempt to speak. 

For a few seconds, there was absolute silence. Then the skeleton said one word in a rasping voice.

"Run." 

The skeletons all crumbled to dust and Jaleah started running as fast as she could. 

--<<>>--

Jaleah awoke with a start, her heart beating a mile a minute. For a minute she just sat huddle with her forehead resting on her knees. Out of all her nightmares so far, this had been the worst. 

Finally, she looked up. It was still dark out, but she could tell that morning would be breaking any minute now. She sighed. Since she was already up, she might as well go watch the sunrise.

She bundled herself up in her warmest clothes and began hiking to a spot far away from camp, and more importantly, far away from the bones. Finally, she stopped at the top of a small hill and sat down. 

At first, the dawn came slowly. The sun seemed to be shyly peeking out from behind the horizon, sending small flares of pale yellow light through the dark sky. 

Then as it became more confident it rose quicker, lighting the sky up with pale hues of yellow and pink, and chasing away the darkness of the night. 

It made for a pensive, reflective mood. This planet had always been a mystery to her, but she had assumed that she would start finding answers as soon as she stepped foot on it. But the longer she stayed on this planet, the more questions she seemed to dig up. 

--<<>>--

She returned to camp to find her colleagues already eating their breakfast. 

"That's amazing, professor," Liyan smirked, "You woke up before all of us, and yet you're still late for breakfast. That, my friend, takes talent." 

"That shouldn't surprise you so much. I am, after all, very talented," Jaleah replied with a smile, sliding in next to her. 

"Okay, listen up, everybody!" Daviron announced, calling the table to attention. They all turned to look at him, and he continued. 

"Aedard noticed an anomaly in some of the radar data we've been receiving. According to this data, there's a large mass of metal a few hundred miles west of here. Now, it may be nothing, but given Jaleah's find, it may be something significant. So, I've decided that we'll be heading to those coordinates to investigate further." 

The crew nodded in agreement, then continued their breakfast. 

--<<>>--