Siren Solus

3

Run!

But where?  There, in the distance:  craggy spears of grey rock rose up through the ice.  Perhaps there was place to hide, a sanctuary.  Part of me thought this a pointless action, how could I possibly hide from her?  But the desperation born of panic prevailed.

I bounded across the frozen plane, leaping across yawing crevices and vaulting jagged ice ridges.  Running in the lower gravity would have been exhilarating had not I feared what was pursuing me.  Twice I tumbled as my foot failed to find traction on bare ice.  The fear induced adrenaline that flowed within me blocked the pain, at least for now.

I dared to look back, but my eyes saw nothing but ice and a broken ship.  I could not shake the feeling that she was watching me, perhaps holding back to savor the hunt.

Only when I reached the rocks did I dare to stop.  By then there was no choice as the thin cold atmosphere took its toll.  Bent over drawing deep raspy breaths, the cold air stung my throat and lungs.  Despite the heat of my exertion, I started to feel the cold seep in through my suit.

There ahead:  tunneled canyons of ice and rock.  It would be so easy to get lost in there, but so it might for her.  I scrambled across boulders and shards of ice between uneven vertical rock walls.  The blue ice and grey rock gave it a surreal look in the filtered light.  Periodically there were scrapes and gashes across the walls.  Something came here before me.

I began to think of my life as memories flashed in my mind: triumphs and defeats, love and loss, community and now isolation.  Was this the prelude to my death dirge?  For some reason an old reoccurring nightmare stuck in my mind, the one where an inky blackness chased and  enveloped me in its darkness.  It terrified me in my childhood, but eventually faded away.  Why do I remember it so vividly now?

I felt her.  She was nearing me again.  I hold still, partly in fear and partly to read her.

Desperation.

Hunger.

Darkness.

Ever closer she came.

The panic gripped me again and I began to rush over the rock and ice obstacles ahead.  But I went too fast and crashed back down to the cold hardness of a stony floor.  My body cried in pain and my mind in fear.

A combination of resignation and resolution came over me.  It was time to face her, once and for all. I stood up and turned to her approach.  There.  She was not seen, rather she was what was not seen:  an amorphous swirling darkness, an unformed oblivion that ripped at my very soul.  The fabric of space itself bent and shimmered around her. 

There before me was my old nightmare.

"This cannot be.  You were never real."