Journey

Elijah: Cambaar

The night sky is beautiful. It seems unreal to go to sleep in the dark and wake up in the dark. But then the sky isn't dark anymore. A bright light unlike the sun enters into our atmosphere. It gets brighter and closer. I scramble into Alaina's tent. I forget to cover my eyes and I see her in her bed clothing. My face gets bright red.

"Do you need something Eli?" She asks.

I look at the ground.

"The ship is landing," I say.

My face is still flushed. We get out of the tent and look at the sky.

"Gorgeous," She breathes.

We sit on the hill. Finally the ship lands. We sit there for a while just gazing at it. It is extremely tall. We go to sleep. As I sleep that night I know that my life will never be the same again. I don't remember what I dreamed about that night. I just remember the general idea of the dream. It was a wonderful dream. Calming. It was like the dream was telling me everything would be ok. I didn't want to wake up when Alaina came in. Her face flushed red when she saw me waking up. I pull on a shirt and come out of the tent. She looked up at me when I joined her near her bonfire. Her eyes lingered on me in a way I have never seen her use with me before.

"Your hair is a mess!" She laughs.

She runs her fingers through my hair to try and tame it.

I smile at her efforts. She finally gave up and went back to cooking breakfast. She set a bowl of noodles in front of me. I ate them in a haste. I can't wait for the hike down to the ship. I wait for her to finish.

"Can we go to the Ship now?" I ask.

"No we need to clean up breakfast." She replied.

We go around cleaning dishes and putting out the fire. She gulps up the last of our water. I glare at her.

"Was this the last of our water?" She says with her innocent eyes.

I nod.

"Well I don't want us to go dehydrated."

We go hike to the nearest spring which was 2.5 miles away. We fill all the canisters with water and hike back to camp and build a bonfire and boil the water. She leaves all her in extra long.

"They are done boiling you know that right?" I ask her.

"Oh," She says.

She pulls them out. We let the water cool. Right when we are ready to leave she says we should pack up our bags. I sigh. We go through everything and pack it up.

"Now can we go?" I ask her.

"We should clean up. We don't want our first impressions of our colony to be gross," She says.

I get what she's saying but I feel like she is trying to postpone the hike down to the Ship. She digs through her bags and gets out soap, a hair brush and a pair of clothes. I pass the time by counting the minutes she is gone. 1...2...3...4 etc. By the time she is back I have counted 127 minutes.

"Your turn," She says.

I eye her suspiciously but grab clothing and soap. I hike towards the spring. I try to keep a good pace and reach the spring in forty-five minutes. I wash my hair and get dressed. I wash my clothes for good measures. When I get back it has been 107 minutes.

"Are we ready to go?" I ask.

I look around but I don't see Alaina. I search with a twinge of panic in me. Finally I find her sleeping on a quilt. I sigh. When Alaina is asleep she sleeps like the dead. I pull out my sketch pad. I start to paint the luminescent flowers I had seen at the Oasis. Finally two hours had past when she started to stirr. I moved over to where she was sleeping. I shook her out of sleep.

"We are going now," I say.

She groans and folds up her blanket. Than she saw my sketch pad.

"You are drawing again!" She exclaims.

"Yeah," I say sheepishly.

She picks up my sketch pad.

"Are these the flowers we passed on our way?" She asked.

I nod.

"Come on Alaina. We are going to the ship now," I prompt.

We slowly walk the path to the ship. I look all around me. I am amazed at how different the world looks. The sun has left us and some plants have closed away for the next hundred years but others are in bloom. Most of the planets have a slight glow that lights up the forest. I don't really remember much of our lessons of Earth but I don't think they have glowing plants. The time ticks by slowly. Each minute the anticipation grows. I can't wait to see the other humans. I wonder what they will look like. Surely they won't look like us. They haven't been exposed to the burning sun for five hundred years. Then Alaina stops.

"Alaina are you ok?" I ask her.

"What if they hurt us?" She asks with panic in her voice.

"Your dad said they had honorable intentions," I say to her.

"What if they were lying?" She panics.

I hug her tight to me.

"Alaina, is your dad a liar?" I ask her

"No," She replies.

"Would your dad ever say anything he wasn't sure about?"

She calms down.

"No," She breathes.

We walk faster now. I can see the tops of the ship through the trees. I break into a run. I can see the trees start to thin out. Alaina chases after me. We dodge tree trunks as we race to the bottom of the hill. We finally break out of the trees and race through the clearing. I stop. There are many things wrong with the picture I see before me. Only one make me stop in my tracks. Her. She is easily the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. With dark wavy her and large green eyes. Then I notice what is wrong with her. Her camo pant leg is torn off and it reveals the metal leg she sports. Her black tank top reveals the metal elbow she has as well. I walk towards her and notice a third thing. Her neck is covered in blood. I freeze. She saw me.