Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
I sat down on the stone floor. The anchor chamber was right in front of me with the dial hanging there in the empty air like some bone spider. The gress was nowhere to be seen. He was biding his time. Sooner or later, we would have to leave the tunnel.
If I ever hoped to see my children again, I had to be smart. I had to find out as much about the gress as I could.
“Jovo.”
The lees turned to me, his eyes hot.
“Gress.” I imitated him squeezing the marble.
Jovo pulled the marble out, put it in front of me, and squeezed it. The image of the gress pair spilled out. I focused on it and tried to relax.
I was never successful with meditation. As soon as I closed my eyes and let my mind off its leash, my thoughts ran in all directions, floating from one topic to another. I would start with something mundane like Noah needing a new pair of glasses, and move on to the car needing gas, then the oil change, then the calendar, then the upcoming meetings, and so it usually devolved into a mess that left me more stressed than when I started it.
This time had to be different. I sensed the power hidden deep inside me. So far it showed me flashes of visions, little fragments, and hints, but it contained so much more. I hadn’t even scratched the surface. It knew about the gress. I felt it when it showed me how to open the dial. I had to convince it to let me in. There had to be something there, some information about their weakness. Something that we could use.
Jovo lowered himself onto the floor to the left of me. He leaned forward and placed his hands in front of him, like a cat sitting. The lees took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Bear padded over and lowered herself, curling around me, her big body bracing mine.
I closed my eyes and flexed. This time I wasn’t focused on anything. I wasn’t measuring distance or trying to determine the properties of an object. I simply entered the state of flexing. My talent splayed out of me like the flames of a bonfire. I let it flail.
My time was almost never my own. I loved my children with all my heart, but they made constant demands on me. They required attention, especially when they wanted to be ignored. Work generated cycles of mind-numbing reports, physical fitness tests, and short, intense bursts of pressure when entering the breaches. The carousel of household bills went round and round, from the expected utilities to the inconvenient emergencies of broken appliances and annual repairs. Everything had to be done. Everything had to be taken care of. My life was so busy, at times it felt like I dissolved into it. I was getting older and older, time was flying by, and I was powerless to stop it. Millions of moments and all of them taken.
But now my life was empty. There were no children in this breach, no tasks, no bills. There were no stalkers, dragons, or gress in this tunnel. There was only my dog, the alien creature I rescued, and me. My body. My senses. My thoughts. This moment was mine. I owned it.
Slowly, carefully, the invisible glow of my talent subsided, until it radiated from within me like soft heat from a low fire. My power stabilized and I let myself sink into it.
The air was hot and smelled of soot.
I stood on an alien planet. Above me a blue sky stretched, but unlike Earth’s crystalline blue, this color was a moody, subdued shade, hazy, almost smoky. The sky in perpetual twilight.
The ground was dark stone, triangular hills rising up, ridged with spires of jagged rock. Between the hills, lava flowed in dense currents, a river of it, miles wide, its surface cooled to a grey and purple crust. Here and there, the currents collided, and brilliant red shone in the cracks.
Farther off, at the foot of a hill on the left, where the ground came in contact with the superheated flow, flames rose in a curtain, licking at the hill that had become an island. The fire burned, reflecting in the long stratus clouds and turning them orange and red. Two massive moons hung above it all, translucent grey ghosts sprinkled with glitter.
I’d travelled to someone else’s reality. I was still me. When I looked at myself, I saw my hands and my coveralls. But these were not my memories. Fear squirmed down my back. What if I were trapped here?
A faint presence slipped across my consciousness. It touched me and I recognized it. The alien woman who called me her daughter. The ghost of her memories enveloped me, welcoming and warm, the way my biological mother never was. My breach mother embraced me.