Season of Growth, Third Sun, Mirror
I felt tired. Never before had I been so damn tired. I wouldn't have thought that a person could be this tired and keep living.
"Carrut?" Shimi called.
I looked up to see her waving at me from the edge of the field. I thought, for just a second, that I might have the necessary energy to smile at her, but the effort required for the thought used it all up. She came to stand in front of me.
"You're here again," she said and waited. Obviously, she wanted an explanation.
I looked at the sack by my side. She put her hands on her hips and stuck out her lower lip. When my reactions was less that what she wanted, though not likely less than she expected, she huffed out a sigh and sat next to me.
"You don't have to do this for us." Her voice was firm, but I could practically hear her salivating.
I would have laughed if it hadn't required more breath than I thought I could spare. "It's just potatoes."
"And a long walk from Chelsi. You look beat. Stay the night."
When I didn't protest, per our usual ritual, Shimi frowned. "Are you hurt?"
I shook my head a little.
"Well, something is wrong."
That, I wasn't going to deny.
"Is it that stone?" She looked pointedly at the amulet I wore around my neck. She had, of course, hit the nail on the head. The amulet made it impossible to sleep. Oh, I could close my eyes and take a break from this reality if I wanted to, but then there was Earthly reality to deal with. Naturally, Shimi would know nothing about that and I intended to keep it that way.
She might have stared at me long enough to make me reconsider- maybe- but her stomach growled loud enough to wake the dead. I grinned as she ground her teeth. "Eat, Shimi."
"Stay the night," she said again.
March 4th, Earth
Mama was gone when I awoke. Work, of course. Today, she'd be home only after I returned to Mirror. It wasn't frightening here in the way Chelsi and Zetona were. I didn't fear being robbed of all my potatoes- and perhaps my life- when I left my home. If I went hungry some days, I never feared that this body would expire from starvation. On the other hand, if I didn't feel like I was staring down death every day here, illness, nonetheless made this reality unpleasant. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. While, technically, I was in remission, the maintenance medication frequently left me feeling rather ill.
It wasn't better to stay in Mirror. I'd tried that, but the seventy hours of wakefulness there had left me sitting in the middle of the field outside Zetona with barely enough energy to breath. I had to sleep, which meant I couldn't pick my poison. I had to drink both.
I rolled off my bed and flopped onto the floor, looking for the pill container that I'd tossed somewhere last night. When I found it, I groaned. Empty.
The trip to Alana would take a half hour by bus, a bus that arrived in less than ten minutes. Grunting, I pushed myself off the ground and shrugged on a fresh T-shirt. The insurance card and my ID were on the kitchen counter. I grabbed them on my way out the door.
