All Kindreds

1: Fluke

Awareness forced its way into Liz's mind. She longed to sink back into the warm nest of oblivion, but someone kept shaking her shoulder. Her ears woke to the racket of a voice close at hand. A voice that wasn't human.

Liz groaned. She didn't want to wake to this reality again. Let me fall back into dreams of Earth, she prayed, knowing full well this prayer would not be granted. How long had it been now? she wondered. How do you measure days, months, or years when stranded on an alien world?

Her wristwatch had not survived the transit. She herself had come through without a scratch, terrified but unharmed.

They had warned her at the ranger station. Don't climb Deviltop during a solar flare, they said. People disappear. She had scoffed at them, and scoffed at the local legend, a crazy blend of science and superstition.

Don't you believe in the devil? one old codger had asked.

Oh, I know he exists, she had answered. But he doesn't reign supreme. When you're on God's side you don't need to fear the devil.

But when the phenomenon is purely a fluke of nature, there's no escape to be found in taking the right moral side.

The grip on her shoulder tightened and shook again. Liz tried to open her eyes, but the light was too blinding.

Light had blazed brighter than the sun that day on Deviltop, a burst of brilliance wheeling through the sky, tracing an arc towards the highest pinnacle of the mountain. She had fallen to her knees, bracing for an earth-shaking impact, casting a wordless prayer for protection toward the heavens.

But the blazing orb only glanced off the peak and hung suspended for a moment, like a fiery lamp. No tremor shook the ground. Wildflowers nodded in the breeze. From a nearby tree a redwing blackbird piped a musical note. And then the wheel of light plummeted once more.