I lift my eyes and shrink back as far as I can, as a beautiful, elegant, far too comfortable Psyon female glides into the room. I recognize her as the leader of Freak’s society. Alana? Alma? Alara. I remember now.
The memory of my master’s world is faint, even more shadowy than the dreams I have been subject to of late. I have a distant impression of sand and buildings that turn in on themselves and creatures who are psychic and animal at once, and…
“I got you a present,” the Lizard King says, snapping my chain, then dragging me forward in front of his throne. He pushes me over with his foot so I go sprawling in front of her.
She looks down at me with an expression that just barely avoids being disgust, and I am pretty sure only does that because she doesn’t want to insult the lizard dude she’s apparently boning.
“Oh, yes,” she sighs. “That Freak has been whining to me about her.”
“You couldn’t catch him again?”
“I tried,” she says. “But he refused to consume the sedative and instead stormed off into god knows where. Do not worry abouthim. He is isolated and heretic. He has no allies among our kind, and you have this thing of his, too. He presents no further danger.”
“Ah, then perhaps we should keep this little human as a sort of trophy?” The Lizard King is a great and powerful beast of an alien monarch, but in the moment he asks the question, he sounds more like a little boy asking his mommy if he can keep the insect he found outside.
“Kill that thing,” Alara says to him, her eyes locked on me. “She’s filthy time debris. She’s a sticky little thing, collapsing reality fields around her wherever she goes. It’s not hygienic.”
The Lizard King does not look as though he understands that accusation, but he understands that she does not want me to live, and that is enough for him to kill me.
He yanks on the chain again, pulling me back toward him. His jaws snap in an unsettling way, and I face the end of my existence yet again.
“I am sorry,” the Lizard King says, wrapping the chain that connects to my neck around his wrist. “We’re going to have to sacrifice you as bait. The good news is that you may find your father in the afterlife.”
“Please don’t kill me,” I whimper. “I think, if you kill me, very bad things will happen and nobody will be able to stop them.”
His jaws open wide. I see down the maw of the evil king, and I know that these are the last moments of my life…
* * *
“Mara! Mara!”
I blink, and someone is calling my name. Someone with a deep, warm voice. Someone I recognize, and yet have not had time to miss, somehow.
One moment ago I was talking to a very large lizard who is about to bite my head off, and now I am standing on the colony world I came from. The air tastes like copper and magnesium and something else I am not used to tasting here.
I shake my head to try to clear it. What’s going on? My brain feels as though it is full of fuzz, like an old TV playing static. I could have sworn I was with aliens just seconds ago, but the memory of what just happened is fading even faster than dreams do.
Something drips on me. For a moment, I am confused. Then I look up.
Another drop follows and another. I have to squint and cover my eyes with my hand. I haven’t seen rain here in years. I’ve seen mist. There’s been some dew from time to time. But not rain. Not like this, big fat drops falling at great velocity out of the sky and drilling themselves into dusty dry ground, making puffs of dirt spring up where they land.
I let out a shout of absolute glee as the rain intensifies. This is it. This is what we needed. Real rain. Intense downpours. The clouds above are roiling gray and even black in places, releasing long overdue gluts of water onto the parched ground below.
The riverbeds are starting to fill up. In the distance, I can hear cheers of relief. I know those cheers will turn to screams if we are not careful, because very dry ground cannot absorb water and will instead only flood. But we are so desperate and so parched that even flooding will be greeted with happiness.
I look down at my hands and body. I am still in my pink space suit.
My brain tries to fight its way back to the last events that happened in this suit, but I can’t seem to retrieve them. It is as though they come from times and places that never happened at all. I feel a sense of unease and relief at the same time.
The rain starts to ease to a light shower. It is pleasant now, less torrential and more nourishing. That’s fortunate. There’s a thin sheen of water on the ground that is going to need hours to sink in properly.
“Mara! Are you gone deaf, girl?”
The voice comes from behind me. This time I recognize it, because it’s the voice of the man I’ve been searching for, for years.
I turn around to see my father coming out of our house. It’s him. It really is. I genuinely never thought I would see him doing that again. But he’s strolling out with a faintly annoyed expression on his face. It’s all so normal. It’s all so perfect.
He puts out his hand, and I watch the water from the heavens splash down into it. In a matter of seconds, there’s a little pool on his palm, and bits of metal swarth are floating in it. He’s been working on something that needed maintaining, I can tell.
