Twice Removed... 10

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Xia Phar had a good life for a human on Saer’kah. She didn’t wear a restriction band and the Saer’khi family that had raised her since the Migration treated her like one of their own. Others humans on Saer’kah though had no reason to love the Saer’khi . At least Xia had some semblance of freedom. So when the humans decide to rebel against the Saer’khi and she discovers the real reason for the presence of humans and other aliens on Saer’kah Xia decides to take action. Enlisting the help of her family and her friend Tarek she forms a plan to get everyone out of the alien barracks without arousing suspicion and get them off Saer’kah on one of the newly built colony ships. Sounds pretty easy right? Now Tarek’s crush on her is the least of her problems and leaving Saer’kah is just the beginning.

 
 

Twice Removed
Chapter 10
Noteworthy

By
Amethyst
“That’s a good plan,” she replied with a nod of approval. “I’m glad you’re back Xia, I wanted to talk to you about the birds and the bees.”

 


 
Author's Note: Thanks as usual to my readers and of course the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a great place to post and read TG fiction. ~Amethyst.
 


 
Chapter 10: Noteworthy

Pallu’s father was named Seddar and he looked a lot like his daughter. He was a little taller and bulkier and his fur was dark brown to her gold, but the family resemblance in the face and eyes would have been obvious even if they weren’t from the only Yazuik family in the colony. I issued both of them comm units, and I would have had them wear two of our environmental suits as well, but they insisted that they would only get in the way. The suits would impede their movements and their own evolutionary adaptations would protect them from the pressure of the deeper waters anyway.

I did insist on other precautions though. First, Tarek and I would go with them and follow as best we could above the water in case they couldn’t get away from something fast enough and needed to be rescued. I also insisted that the pair both wear particle beam cylinders attached to their belts and drilled them in their use before we left for the water. I had hoped to bring Kit along as well, hoping that she would warn us if the creature decided to make an appearance, but it would have been impractical.

After I left Kit with Amy and gathered a few things that I wanted to take with me, Tarek and I left to meet the pair at the river. The Yazuik were waiting there for us, wearing only some sort of loincloths and waterproof pouches, though Pallu was also wearing a tank top type shirt for modesty. They entered the water and began to move downstream toward the ocean itself. Tarek and I were able to keep track of them whenever they came up for air, though Yazuik can hold their breath for a pretty long time, but they weren’t moving very fast so they could explore as thoroughly as possible. The sun was high in the sky when Pallu’s voice came over the comm. “Commander we’re not far downriver from our last location and there’s something you should see.”

“We’ll be right there,” I replied as Tarek and I flew toward where the two Yazuik were treading water.

The elder of the two Yazuik pointed to a grassy hill on the shore about a hundred yards further downriver. “There’s something very large and alive in that hill. I think it may be a burrow for your crocosaur. The bio-electric field we’re sensing is steady and slow, so I believe it’s sleeping.”

I nodded as I used my goggles to zoom in on the hill in question. “So they live in large burrows along the river and they’re almost definitely nocturnal, that should make them easier to avoid. I don’t remember seeing anything like that when we scouted the shore along the ocean, so it may be safer to do any fishing and water gathering there. Good work, let’s keep an eye out for more of these burrows so we can tell the other colonists what signs to look for.”

We found two more of the burrows along the river before we reached the ocean and they began to do more exploration while Tarek and I carefully watched the surface of the water for anything unusual. They found an abundance of seussfish as well as two types of smaller fish. The first was a type of tiny white fish that only grew to about three inches long and seemed to feed on algae. I called them scumsuckers. They were plentiful enough, but at their size not much good for human consumption. The second type fed on the scumsuckers and Pallu suggested that we call them featherfish. They were roughly a foot long and two inch wide fish covered with white hair-like tendrils that give them a feather-like appearance.

There were no signs of crocosaur burrows along the beach or near the ocean in general, there wasn’t even any signs that the huge beasts left the river at all. Once the Yazuik explorers got out in the deeper water they did discover something big though, a large gold colored type of fish almost as big as they were. For lack of a better name we called them sunfish. They didn’t seem dangerous and only appeared to feed on the seussfish and featherfish. The lack of any signs of the crocosaurs in such an obviously food-rich environment was a huge relief for me though it had the Yazuik pair a bit confused.

We had decided to take a short break from the exploration to rest on the beach and when Pallu came out of the water, nibbling on a raw featherfish, she was smiling from ear to ear. “Enjoying yourself?” I asked.

She nodded eagerly, “It has been so long since I had a good swim and the water here is nice and clean. The river water is quite a bit warmer but our kind is pretty used to cold water so it doesn’t bother me so much. I was wondering why those big beasts don’t come out to the ocean to hunt though, there is so much food out here and the sunfish would make a good sized meal for them.”

I gave her a smile as I shrugged. “Evolution most likely. We have similar creatures on Earth, but they’re an endangered species now. The ones in my country preferred warmer shallow waters because they’re cold blooded and get their heat from their environment. These ones are probably the same so they stick to the warmer waters of the rivers and swamps. Also they’ve adapter to hunt creatures that get to close to the water and drown them or swallow them whole. The molehogs are big and stupid and seem to be nocturnal as well so they would be a good primary food source for them. Reptiles with this kind of hunting pattern are opportunists and usually just wait for food to come to them so why go into an environment they’re not as well suited for when they can wait for food to come to them?”

“I guess that makes a lot of sense,” she agreed. “At least we know that the ocean should be fairly safe if they stick to the river. We haven’t sensed anything bigger than the sunfish and nothing that has felt like a predator. There’s lots of food available too. I grabbed some samples of a plant I think we might be able to eat as well.”

“Good thinking, seaweed might be good and fill some holes in our dietary needs until we can start planting crops. I should let Krie know what we’ve found.” I reached out through my mental amplifier to send her a ping before asking, *Krie, are you busy?*

Her cheerful mind voice replied almost immediately. *I’m studying these blue bugs we found on the first foray into the woods. They’re similar to your Earth ants but three times bigger, and the venom in their bites is an anesthetic of sorts. One of the colonists got bitten and she says the area is cold and numb. Is there something I can help you with?*

*That sounds interesting, we could probably find a use for that venom,* I replied before getting to my own matters. *I wanted to let you know that the crocosaurs prefer the river water, there’s no sign of them or any other predators in the ocean so far. Pallu and Seddar found three occupied crocosaur burrows along the river. It’s almost certain they’re nocturnal and between that, Kit, and knowing what the burrows look like we should be able to avoid them in the future. They also found some new types of fish in the ocean that should be a good food source for us and some sort of seaweed.*

She was quiet for a moment then. *That is interesting. Xawin and Sarah may have found something too. They were looking for a large grove of wingnut trees I found when we first explored the forest so they could work out how to process the sap into syrup for us and they found something else as well. There was a meadow of violet colored long grass growing nearby that Sarah thinks is a form of grain. They’re going to bring some back for me to run scans on.*

I nodded thoughtfully as I considered the new information. *Grains usually pollinate by wind so it’s not really too surprising to find some. This could be a big discovery for us though, Sarah could use it to make flour and bread and maybe pasta so we’re not stuck eating the same thing all the time. Could you send Tanna down here with the mag-lev once she’s done bringing in building supplies and whatever the hunters have caught? We’re going to try and bring some fish and seaweed back and I’m going to see if I can find any more samples of those rocks that Mandy is so interested in. Karran and Xawin will want to have a look at those samples too when they can, so let them know to go see her when they can, if they happen to report in with anything else interesting.*

*I’ll pass all of that on. Good luck fishing and rock gathering. Try and have a little fun while you’re doing it,* she suggested.

I knew Krie was concerned about how I was pushing myself, but all in all so far today had been pretty relaxing and I could get work done and still have fun with it. Being the leader may be a lot of work, but being on a new planet and discovering new things was beginning to excite me, now that the emergency seemed to be over. I looked over at Pallu nibbling at her feather fish and smiled, “You’re probably the first of any of our species to eat one of those, how does it taste?”

She offered me and Tarek each one of the several she had in her waterproof pouch as she grinned at me. “Try it and find out.”

I looked at the strange fish dubiously. “I really prefer my fish cooked.”

“Come on, try it,” she insisted, placing the slippery thing in my hand. “There’s not much meat on the bodies but the tendrils are really tasty. We’re on a new planet trying new things, just think of this as part of the adventure.”

I closed my eyes and took a tentative bite. It felt weird against my lips but I had tried stranger things on Saer’kah. The texture was actually a lot like chow mein noodles and it had a sort of tangy taste to it. It was surprisingly good. My eyes opened in surprise as I took another bite. “This is actually pretty good. Sarah will definitely want some of these I think.”

“See, I told you Commander,” she said with a grin. “You really should come swimming with us, it’ll be fun and we can gather more food with three or four of us than just two.”

Tarek shook his head after he finished swallowing a bite of his own fish. “Saer’khi and deep water don’t really mix well, our extra arms and shoulders make us top heavy which makes swimming awkward and we have to rely too much on telekinesis so it gets tiring fast. Xia would do okay as long as she keeps her wings close to her body and uses the light amplification on her goggles, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be joining you. Besides, someone should monitor the surface just in case.”

I thought about it as I listened to Tarek’s reply. “I haven’t been swimming in an ocean since I was nine, I would probably slow you down.” I began to work on finishing my snack.

“You’ll be fine Commander,” she tried to assure me, “Before today it’s been years for me too, but swimming is natural, it will all come back. If you have trouble remembering how, I can teach you.”

“Okay, I’ll come with you, but on two conditions. First, stop calling me Commander and call me Xia, and second, help me look for some rock samples before we go into the water. I don’t want to risk getting cramps by going into the water right after eating.”

* * *

We had found seven more pharite samples as we walked along the beach to some cliffs I had noted further north than I had had a chance to go in my original exploration. The cliffs weren’t far off from our current position and it took less than half an hour to make it there. The stone the cliff was composed of was hard, sturdy, worn smooth by erosion, and of a red-gold color, but I couldn’t seem to find any openings or caves. I pulled four cube-shaped devices about the size of a baseball out of my pack, handed one to each of my companions and kept the last for myself. “What are these?” Seddar asked.

“These are core samplers,” I explained. “You stick them on the rock face or on the ground and they send out a straight line of sampler nanites roughly one hundred yards long. Those nanites send the information back along the line to the display to give an idea of the general ore composition of an area. We use them to see if rock or ore contains materials suitable for creating bionics and such, they save time on mining potentially useless areas. Seddar you can place one here on the south face of the cliff, Pallu, swim out and place one somewhere on the west face, and Tarek and I will fly up top and place the last two somewhere to the north and east. We want them at least one to two hundred yards apart so we’re getting a good sampling. We’ll have to wait roughly ten minutes for the results but the screen will flash to let you know. Once we’re all done we’ll meet back here and I can compile the results.”

Pallu headed back into the water as Tarek and I both took to the air and headed for the top of the cliff. We were going to split off north and east, but I told him to land on the plateau at the cliff’s summit. I landed in front of him and took one of his hands in both of mine. *Tarek… I’m an idiot.*

He shook his head and I could feel his confusion. *You’re one of the smartest people I know.*

*Which is exactly why I should have realized how stupid I was being sooner,* I replied sadly. *I’ve always been so concerned with what other’s see me as, that I couldn’t see that who they see me as is so much more important. You, my family, even the colonists see me as someone, a person, and not some mix of human and Saer’khi. I need to relax and do with my life what I want to do.*

*What do you want to do with your life?* he asked nervously.


*I want to be myself, free to be Saer’khi, free to have my human quirks, I want to help these people survive and make something great of this colony, but most of all, I want to do something that I should have done when I first looked into your mind…*
I opened my inner thoughts to him so he could see everything I was thinking, everything I was feeling as I kissed him and thought, *Tarek… I love you too, and I would be proud to have you as my first Tess’hir.*

No more words, no more thoughts were necessary, as I could feel the love and euphoria in his mind and we just stood there for a moment kissing and holding one another before I finally broke the kiss. *We should go get these samples done, I just wanted to take a moment and let you to know how I feel so we could both stop dwelling on it.*

Fifteen minutes later we had all gathered back where Seddar was waiting and I compiled the sample readings as we walked to the stretch of beach where we would do our fishing while waiting for Tanna to show up with the mag-lev transport. The results looked interesting, but I wasn’t a geologist so I figured that Mandy would have a better idea of what was useful and what the numbers meant than I would. It was looking like there was a lot of iron and mandium in that area though and that was very promising.

Once we arrived at our fishing location I placed the cubes in my bag with the pharite samples and my medical kit. Then I took off my sneakers and jeans and folded my wings as close to my back as I could before joining the two Yazuik in the water. Swimming was like riding a bike, it all came back to me quickly, although I couldn’t keep up with the others or go very deep, and for safety’s sake I was using my telekinesis to hold my wings against my body. So while they were catching fish and piling them on the shore I was gathering fistfuls of the blue colored seaweed and spreading it out on the sand to dry out in the afternoon sun.

*Having fun?* Tarek sent me after roughly an hour of this activity.

*It’s been a long time since I’ve been swimming.* I replied with a happy sigh. *My parents used to take me all the time before my problems started and the quake hit. I forgot how fun it is, it’s a lot of work though keeping my wings from moving. I’ll need to start a work rotation now that we know there are lots of fish here and no crocosaurs. People get bored doing the same work every day and a day of swimming, even if it’s for work, might help lift their spirits a bit until we can build a water pipeline and bathhouse. I could put Seddar in charge of ocean gathering groups.*

*And that Tess’rha is why you make such a good leader,* he replied with a warm mental smile. *You’re always thinking of what’s best for everyone and how to keep them happy despite our situation. I think Seddar would be a good choice for that.*

After two hours Tanna showed up with the mag-lev and we loaded it up with the four sunfish Seddar and Pallu had caught, a plethora of suessfish and featherfish, and all the seaweed I had gathered. Then I got back into my clothes and we all headed back to camp to deliver the foodstuffs to Sarah. The chef seemed very excited by the prospect of the seaweed and the new types of fish. “We really need more greens in our diet and hopefully the seaweed will help, those big gold colored fish, we can make steaks out of and give people good portion sizes, I can smoke the seussfish so they keep longer, and I have a great idea for those tendrils too.”

I laughed at her excitement. “So I hear you and Xawin made a discovery of your own.”

She nodded happily in response. “Xawin thinks he can work out some spigots to harvest the sap of those trees for us to make into syrup and we found some light purple grain and it seems to be mature enough to harvest soon. I’m guessing it must be late summer on this part of the planet.”

“Closer to early summer actually,” I replied. “We’re in a fairly temperate zone here. We probably won’t see much snow during winter, except maybe on those mountains to the east, and with proper care we could probably get two growing seasons for some types of crops. It’s one of the reasons I decided on this landing site.”

“Good thinking there Xia,” she said with a nod of approval. “That should help the food situation quite a bit. The lumber teams even have enough land cleared on the southern edge of the camp that we can start digging fields for growing. Krie even mentioned something about planting when she was looking over the grain earlier.”

“I better go see her next then; I need to lake some samples and core readings to the lab anyway. Have fun with all your new goodies,” I said with a smile as I headed back to the medical ship.

* * *

When I arrived inside the medical ship Krie was hard at work in front of the four cloning chambers while Amy watched everything she was doing. Kit sniffed the air and jumped off Amy’s lap to nuzzle my legs and start buzzing, causing the pair to turn around. “Oh, you’re back. Did you have fun?” Krie inquired in her electronic voice with a smile.

“It was a nice change of pace,” I admitted. “Now that we know the ocean is fairly safe we’ll need to start a work rotation so people aren’t doing the same thing every day and can enjoy the water for a bit.”

“That’s a good plan,” she replied with a nod of approval. “I’m glad you’re back Xia, I wanted to talk to you about the birds and the bees.”

I grinned at her. “Didn’t Mom already have that talk with me when I bonded with Tarek?”

It took my sister a full minute to get the joke. “You do realize that humans have some very strange sayings right?”

“Yes I do,” I replied with a chuckle as she shook her head. “I assume you’re talking about the hummingbirds and honey bees we’ve been cloning?”

She nodded, “We have eight hummingbird eggs out of growth acceleration and in the incubator now and close to a thousand bee larvae ready to go. including twenty queens to start off with. Should we leave it at that and try to start cloning some of the other animals we were talking about? They were small with relatively short gestational cycles that were compatible with growth acceleration but the others are larger and will take some time to mature even with growth acceleration.”

I thought about that for a moment before nodding. “That should be a good start, we won’t have a lot for them to pollinate at first anyway. So let’s give what we have a chance to mature and breed on their own once they’re incubated and start on four dozen chicken eggs next. They won’t take near as long to mature as the cows and durla and they’ll provide more eggs and young chickens fairly quickly.”

“I was thinking the same,” Krie replied. “Amy you’ve been watching these ones grow, how would you like to help me start cloning some chickens? Bringing new life into the world is one of the best things about being a doctor. Once I’ve shown you how it’s done on one of the cloning chambers you can help by starting a batch in the second chamber while I use the third.”

Amy’s eyes lit up. “Really?!”

The young girl looked to me as if to ask permission and I had to hold back a laugh as I nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. And until they’re mature all these baby hummingbirds will need someone to care for them, someone to synthesize nutrients for them and feed them with a syringe. The baby chickens will need care when they first hatch too. It will be a huge help to the colony and be a good start for your medical training. Do you think you can manage that?”

Amy had the biggest smile I had seen on her since we landed as she nodded eagerly. “I’ll do my best!”

“I know you will,” I said as I reached over to ruffle her hair. “Consider yourself the mama bird of Unity.”

I left the pair to get to work and headed into the lab with Kit following behind. Mandy, Xawin, and Dr. Kwan were discussing the samples and their potential. Dr. Kwan was saying,” …suppose that faster than light travel would be possible with that method and a fixed source of dark matter to channel the energy. That would only satisfy the negative energy portion of the equation though; zero mass would still be required.”

“I believe that we could attain zero mass by using subspace field emitters to create something similar to a subspace bubble using the energy created by the dark matter reactor instead of the electromagnetic energy and photons of a normal particle accelerator,” Xawin insisted via his voice box.

A lot of what they were saying wasn’t really in my field off expertise, but even I could figure out the basics of what they were discussing. “So I guess you found a use for these after all,” I said with a grin displaying one of the larger pharite samples I had found earlier.

“You found more?” Mandy asked eagerly. “What about mandium? The potential for these two substances is astounding!”

I placed all the samples on the table and then added the core samplers as well. “I used these to get an idea of the minerals and metals present in that large cliff to the north of the beach and compiled the results on my data pad.” I passed the pad over to Mandy, “You’ll probably be able to make more sense out of the results than I could.”

The geologist looked over the data pad and her eyes lit up briefly followed by a look of confusion. “Forty-seven percent iron, thirty-one percent mandium, and then there’s titanium, copper, gold, silver, traces of platinum and some other metals and various minerals, and traces of pharite. But there’s no nickel and not even a trace of aluminum? Is the whole planet like this?”

I shrugged, “I have no idea, but I tried to spread out the testing for that area and make it as random as possible. So it’s good that there’s plenty of iron and mandium, is the lack of those other elements a bad thing?”

She shook her head, “They would be useful but we can do without them. It’s not so much a bad thing as very unusual. Nickel is pretty common on earth, but aluminum is one of the most common elements in the known universe, though we find it in various forms. For an area to have absolutely no trace is really strange.”

“Well you did say this planet has a different elemental composition than earth,” I reminded her. “And just because it’s one of the most common elements in our neck of the woods doesn’t mean there’s not an area where it’s not, or small pockets that are empty of it.”

“You’re right of course, but it surprises me a bit,” she said with a shrug. “At least we know of a large source of iron and mandium nearby. Tomorrow I’d like your permission to take a small team to do some prospecting. I want to see if we can find a large enough sample to run those tests on and see how durable they are when processed into bionics or other things.”

I thought about what we could spare from the other tasks we needed done. “You can have a team of six but we can’t spare any more than that from gathering food and building shelters. Ask Captain White who he would recommend. I can make the bionics for your test using the medical nanite programmer, but I’m not sure how we can make anything else.”

Xawin suggested, “There’s a nano-repair module on the personnel drop ship. It’s usually used to repair damaged components in case of situations like this where a ship is stranded. It can’t do anything terribly complex but I think I can program it to create simple things like pipes for the pipeline or smaller components for more complex items. It will not work as quickly as a regular nanite programmer would, but it will allow us to create things we need like plas-steel pipes and the simple devices Sarah needs to extract the sap from those trees.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. I had almost forgotten about the nano-repair module since everything was working fine and it was usually only used for very basic repairs. “Okay Xawin, get right on that, that’s your number one priority.”

* * *

That night before dinner, I had Karran activate the shield generator, gave the colonists a progress report, and had the various team leaders do the same. They seemed pleased with our progress. The ideas of building a water pipeline and bath house, and implementing work rotations that would allow colonists to spend their mornings and afternoons at different tasks, was received very well. People were enthusiastic and even excited about our future here and it was a huge relief to see that.

Dinner only added to the good mood. Sarah and her staff had cooked enough sunfish steaks for everyone to have a large portion, with some lemonberries, wingnuts, and a bowl of featherfish tendrils mixed with seaweed and chunks of molehog meat sautéed in a sweet sauce, made from some wingnut sap she had managed to gather while out with Xawin. She and her staff were also working on smoking the seussfish and making jerky from extra molehog meat and some of the supply of salt that came with the kitchen supplies in order to supplement our long term food supply.

I smiled at the chef as she sat down with Tarek, Krie, Tanna, Amy, and me. ”You’ve outdone yourself Sarah.”

“Just wait until we have grain and I can make flour, I’ll be able to do a lot more then,” she replied with a grin.

I nodded, “Hopefully we’ll have eggs for you soon too now that Krie and Amy have moved on to cloning chickens.” I looked out at all the people smiling and laughing as they talked around the fires and let out a happy sigh. “You know what would make this night perfect?”

“Music?” Tarek asked with a grin picking up on my stray surface thoughts.

“Cheater” I said as I leaned over and kissed him. “You could have at least let the non-telepaths guess.”

*I play the nizu rings, and Karran has a viyat. We played together a few times on the ship when we were off duty and we keep them with us. It might sound strange to the other species though,* Tanna sent me privately.

*Oh yeah, you both mentioned that when we first met and were getting to know one another,* I replied as the memory hit me. *I’d love to hear you both play. And if nothing else it will be a new experience for the other species. We all need to learn to coexist anyway; this might make an interesting start. Ask Karran if he’d be interested.*

A moment later her warm and cheerful mind voice slipped back into my thoughts. *He says he would be willing, we’ll need a moment to get set up.*

*Okay, you both get ready and I’ll let everyone know what’s going to happen.* I stood up and raised my hands in the air. “Attention everyone!” Once I had their attention I continued on. “We have a lot to celebrate and I was thinking it would be nice to have some music to make this evening complete. Tanna just informed me that she plays the nizu rings, and that Karran has a viyat and that they would be willing to play for us. I don’t know about any of the other species, but I know humans will have never heard anything quite like this before. So let’s have a warm round of applause for Tanna and Karran!”

Tanna was just finishing putting on her rings as the applause started. The nizu rings are made up of twenty hollow golden rings worn on the fingers and thumbs of all four hands and interconnected with the rings on other hands through a series of three hundred metallic strings. Various notes are made by moving all of the fingers and hands to stretch or lessen the pull on the strings and plucking the strings telekinetically. Plucking the strings harder can cause a cascade of notes through any strings that are touching so it requires a lot of skill to play.

Karran’s viyat was somewhat simpler. It’s a sort of tiny amplifier worn near the base of the wings that broadcasts the buzzing sound made when the wings are moving rapidly and by speeding up or slowing the speed of the wings it provides a sort of buzzing drum like rhythm. You would think that sounds easy to play but I tried to learn once and it takes very precise wing control not to sound horrible. The good players have amazing control and can vibrate each of the four individual wings at a different frequency to make different sounds.

They were both very good and the melody was beautiful, but would sound strange to anyone not from Saer’kah. It had taken me some time to get used to the intricacies of Saer’khi music, but hearing it again now made me smile and sigh happily. The audience was transfixed, staring in wonder at the pair of musicians, though Kit wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, and I was so focused on them that I was a little surprised when Tarek took my hand in his. *Would you like to dance Tess’rha?*

I had always been content to watch during celebrations when Ji’turi would dance with their chosen partners. I had never actually tried it myself before. *You know I’ve never…*

*Then this will be the first time for both of us. We’ll take it slow,* he assured me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, took his two upper hands in mine and began to beat my wings, lifting myself into the air. Tarek did his best to match my speed and follow me through each turn as we spun through the air above the other colonists. As we got comfortable we got more daring, reading one another’s thoughts and using telekinesis to pull off more complex moves, never letting go of each other as we bobbed and weaved through the air in one another’s arms. Krie and Xawin flew up and joined us in the air in a dance of their own and soon others began to dance on the ground around the fire. We celebrated late into the night.

 © 2013-2014 Amethyst Gibbs
All rights reserved
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Comments

I love this story ...

I love this story, I love this story. :)

Perhaps they should move the whole settlement out to the beach? I am hoping that it takes the Earthers a long time to get there.

Gwen

I'm with Gwen!

This is great stuff! :)
hugs
Grover

Thanks

Amethyst's picture

to both of you. I've been trying to keep this story entertaining and make it a good read. I'm glad to know I'm succeeding.

*big hugs to both of you*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

It does take trust

Amethyst's picture

to love and to let yourself be loved, especially as intimate as relationships are amongst the Saer'khi. Xia is starting to get more comfortable being who and what she is though and that is helping a lot, as does the fact that Tarek obviously loves her deeply.

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

That must have been...

A truly wonderful sight to behold! Amethyst dear, our merry band of castaways is becoming a happy community! Lovely story sweetie! Loving Hugs Talia

It was

Amethyst's picture

at least in my mind it was. My imagination was going into overdrive near the end of the chapter lol.

Happy you're enjoying it Talia dear

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

GREAT!

Love this story!!! *****

alissa

Awesome

Amethyst's picture

I do love it when people enjoy what I put out there, I'm close to half-way finished on a new chapter, and I'm trying to push to finish it soonish as long as my muse decides to cooperate. She's had plenty of time off while I was away, but now she needs to earn her keep again ;)

*big hugs*

Amethyst

ChibiMaker1.jpg

Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3

Why does it sound too good?

Jamie Lee's picture

They have made a good beginning, given what happened and the number of lives lost.

They found a variety of food sources, material for building shelters, and possible elements they could use for bionics and power.

However, there has to be another shoe that's getting ready to drop, aside from the night time teeth walkers.

Others have feelings too.