Astra

Prologue

I had never heard of Astra until late one night. I am nothing special; please understand that. I am a normal teenager from planet earth. I merely found myself in possession of the histories of the planet system known as Astra. This is my story and theirs because somehow my destiny became intertwined with the fate of their planets. But I am getting ahead of myself...

To start at the beginning my name is Katharina Pauline van Lichtenstein. A mouthful, I know, you can thank my crazy ancestors for the name. I hate being called Katy and most of my pitifully few friends call me Rina. I had just finished writing my final exams for high school when I found myself with nothing to do. I had planned on taking a gap year (a year off from studying while I decided what course I wanted to pursue) and finding a job. I knew I was aimless and goalless but it didn’t seem to matter too much to me I had other life goals besides a university education.

I had been out applying for jobs that day when it started raining... so by the time I go home I was tired from tramping around getting rejected and I was soaking wet. Nothing that day had conspired to make my mood more compliant or amenable. I stomped upstairs, pulled off my wet clothes and grabbed a towel out my bathroom and started drying my hair while I looked for something simple to wear.

I eventually found what I was looking for, a simple pull on dress in a deep maroon shade. I pulled it over my head, wrapped my hair in the towel and collapsed on my bed groaning. I pulled my pillow closer and wrapped myself around it as I fell asleep....

My dreams had never been stranger. My one claim to fame has always been the odd things my mind comes up with between waking and sleeping... I dreamt of people with skins of yellow and red and blue and green and gold and purple. I dreamt of wide fields and open spaces of oceans of clear sweet water. I dreamt of rainbows and of a language of harsh sounds sang across the distances in beautiful sweet voices. But mostly I dreamt of a man as tall as you could ask for with hair as white as the beaches in Zanzibar, eyes of the deepest emerald I have ever seen and skin so golden that I ached to see if it was real. The man in my dreams was worried but still I was at peace. The worries and cares of the day were washed away; and these dreams? They soothed me into a restfulness I have seldom achieved.

When I woke it was close to ten at night. I did the automatic calculation my brain seems programmed to determine. I had slept about 5 hrs. My growling stomach pulled me from my thoughts. I grabbed my iPod as I ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Plugging the buds into my ears I put my iPod on shuffle and started pulling sandwich stuff out of the fridge.

So picture me... dancing around the kitchen, making a sandwich while singing along to Starships by Nicki Minaj. You got that picture in your mind? Good now just as I picked up the mayonnaise jar my song was interrupted by a voice. The voice came from my iPod and it not only caused me to drop the jar I was holding it also nearly made me faint.

The voice certainly wasn’t from one of my playlists... it was deep and rich and sounded like liquid chocolate and it was telling me about the origin of the voice...

“I hope that you, whoever you are that ends up entrusted with this will honour and respect the sacred trust you have been thrust into....”