Planetoid Volume 1: Forest

Chapter 1: A Thousand Planetoids

A planetoid of lush green and the purest blue slowly twirled in the dark vastness of space. It was tiny but very beautiful. Fresh water rushed through the rivers, filling the lakes and the ground brimmed with trees as white and smooth as porcelain. Their leaves were rainbow palms and from them hung fruits in the shape of blue and white tear drops. The boars of the forest lived on them--headbutting the trees with a loud crash to reach the morsels—and wolfhounds, purple canines with dragon-like snouts and wings lived on the fruit. The cycle of life was never interrupted or altered, and even with the advent of a small village of humans there remained a compromised existence with nature.

From wooden cabins by the lakeside, the villagers emerged every morning. The Men wore silk tunics and patchwork pants and the women were clad in dresses of simple patterns, stitched by the village's seamstress. They were eager to begin their harvest of soul fruits and their caretaking of the fertile spirit trees that came with it, but none were more eager than eighteen year old Aya Tintel.

Greeting the villagers, the young woman stood apart from them. She was considerably taller with tanned skin intertwined with numerous dark inked tattoos poking themselves out of the exposed parts of her body. They were dark symbols, most prominently a dark symbol of fish with air bubbles. Its body was shaped like a diamond with an incomplete triangle for a tail fin. They marked her skin in schools and looked like they could swim across her muscular midriff. Her large round eyes, as blue as an ocean in the sun, brimmed with a large amount of empathy for someone her age, and her hair was cut in a multicolored bob- brown with the tips dyed the color of the white berries found in the forest. Sticking out of her hair were two long pointy ears, ears that differed from the denizens of the rest of the planet. In her hand, she clutched a staff cut from a spirit tree, its wispy white wood possessing a commanding presence from the one who wielded it.

"What's the consensus for the harvest?" she inquired to an unshaven forty year old man wearing a hat woven from golden straw. "Do you think we'll have covered all the trees with star dust and picked before the season ends?"

The man laughed. "Lookit you, Aya. I'm surprised how invested you are in our work when you just guard us from those beasties."

Aya gave a warm smile that betrayed her warrior garb. "Allons, you know how much I love this planetoid and everyone on it. We're all brothers and sisters in the big dream."

The man, Allons, twirled a stem of a soul fruit between his teeth with his tongue, and spoke with his drawn out accent, "Relax Aya. You make it so I always take an extra helping of stardust with me when we go out to the forests. If anything, they'll be overdusted."

"Better overdusted than withering over the wintertime and not coming back," Aya said, clutching her staff. "But you already knew that."

"I did. I knew it the first two hundred times ya said it," Allons snapped, before he was interrupted by a very feminine "Aieeeee! Get this monster away from me!"

Aya leapt to attention with her staff held defensively and her bare feet standing firm on the ground. "Well, duty calls. Don't be late," Aya said, her hand in the air signaling an affirmative before dashing off. Leaving Allons and a few other farmers to talk without a precocious Aya to hear, Allons muttered, "That Aya, she's so spirited. I think she does nothing but get tipsy on the juice from them trees. I'd probably be just as hopped up if I was on her diet."

Allons' middle aged wife stood next to him and growled, "It's better than all the alcohol you suck down."

Aya dashed across the dirt road, kicking up dust before stopping where she heard the woman's shriek. Standing and shaking was a girl about Aya's age, but not only did her pale skin and naturally ginger hair differ from her elven friend, the clothes she wore were different as well. She sported a light green sundress dress with a matching floppy hat filled with bright spring flowers. Her hazel eyes were even wider than Aya's, and not just because of how terrified she was. "My stars, Aya," she cried in a high voice that was heightened further in fear, "Please get this monster away from me."