Chapter 3
“Please Mister Scoutmaster, must we go?”
“FORWARD HO! FORWARD HO!”
“Please Mister Scoutmaster, do we have to go?”
“FORWARD HO! FORWARD HO!”
She marched on, singing both parts of an old hiking song, using her head voice for the main lines, and booming as deep as she could for the refrains. Occasional movement in the sands or from the top of the almost cacti caught her eye as birds and small mammals either fled the cacophony or investigated it. The green line she was chasing dipped in and out of site as the landscape rolled through tall hills and shallow valleys, reorienting her path on every rise as it came back into view. The line eventually resolved in her vision to exactly what she had hoped, the tops of trees sticking over a canyon ridge, a sure sign of flowing water.
The strange sun had mostly vanished twice, fading out and back in over the space of several minutes, as the the large moons had taken turns passing partially in front of it. Another had risen opposite the star’s path, this one taking up more of the sky than her entire fist held at arm’s length.
She stopped for a breather, staring in wonder at the ball hanging on the horizon, blue, green, and purple, swirling with colors.
“That’s… that’s a gas giant. And as fast as these moons are moving, in the same ecliptic to cause regular eclipses…”
Her mind spun, and she took a slow, deep breath, processing the air around her, mentally directing the reserves to the golden sphere in the mind’s eye of her mind’s eye in a process that seemed as obvious to her as breathing. The orb seemed to shimmer with the attention, a blue glow filtering from her lungs into her body, coalescing in the strange ball. Her thoughts ranged wide, building a mental model to confirm what she already knew.
“Those aren’t moons of the planet I’m on. Those are moons of THAT planet. And so is the ball I’m standing on. I’m on a moon.”
The words left her mouth as the thought crystalized in her mind, a statement of utter truth and understanding.
A cracking sound, like lightning, followed her words, and the wan sphere of gold she imagined to be in her brain blazed up. Before, with the ignition of the sphere in her belly, her muscles had locked up. Now, they did the opposite as she collapsed bonelessly to the sand, limbs twitching in a feeling reminiscent of the time she and her boyfriend had drunkenly decided that playing stun gun chicken was a grand idea.
The spasms faded, and Mathilde slowly pulled herself up to her knees, then shakily stood. A bird call she didn’t recognized sounded out right next to her ear, and she whirled, only to see that there were no birds flying past her, no plants large enough to harbor one. In the distance was a particular large almost cactus, similar in shape to an organ pipe cactus, if one grew to the size of two story house and had limbs of red and blue instead of green. The bird call sounded again, just as loud, and with a blink she found her vision zooming in on a bird sitting on one of the limbs, tweeting away.
CRUNCH CRUNCH
She froze, her sudden telescopic vision forgotten as from behind came the loud crunch of something large walking in the sand towards her. The sound stopped, and she slowly turned, eyes rising to an empty sky.
“Oh gods, is it invisible? Um… Hello?”
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“Hello.”
The voice wasn’t sound, but more of a sensation in her temples. She looked around crazily, her head on a swivel.
“Um, hi! Um… I’m Mathilde… are you invisible?”
“Mathilde. This one is not invisible, no. This one is down here.”
CRUNCH
Zeroing in on the sound, her neck popped as she whipped her gaze to the ground a few feet away. A large mouse sat in the sand, nose twitching. The shape was familiar to her, both as someone familiar with the flora and fauna of the deserts of the US Southwest, and as a fan of old sci fi novels. A large head that seemed to join the body without any apparent neck sported a pair of large fuzzy ears and two large side mounted eyes. Eyes that twinkled and focused on her, a golden glimmer across them. The large oval body rested on a pair of legs and splay toed feet almost as long as the body itself, while tiny front arms were held with paws near the twitching nose and mouth. The long tail wound around the feet, thick and hairless except for the last few inches, which had a tuft of darker hair in four distinct lines. The tail, if splayed out, would have been about twice the length of the rest of the body.
“Well, you would be the very model of a Kangaroo Rat, except I’ve never seen one of you longer than about a foot, including the tail. And just your body is larger than that.”
She could have sworn that the animal cocked its head questioningly, then it lifted one foot, seeming to gaze at it, then turn its body back to keep looking at Mathilde from one side.
“Ummm… shall I call you Paul Muad'dib? Pauline? Bless the maker and his water? May you never thirst? Wait, no, wrong author.”
The rat took a small step forward with the same crunching noise as had alarmed her earlier. Now that her eyes and ears were working together, it came to her that the sound wasn’t actually that loud. She was just… more sensitive to it? Seeing the action with the sound, the volume quickly readjusted, and the normal sounds of the wind and rustling plants that had been absent came back, their loss only noticeable in the return as her senses continued readjusting.
“This one likes you. You’re funny.”
The voice filled her mind, a deep, almost sultry contralto, definitely feminine. Able to focus on her now more sensitive ears, she knew it wasn’t sound, yet it didn’t feel like telepathy or a voice in her head either.
“Thank you? And with that voice, less Paul, more Jessica. Rabbit that is, not Atreides.”
The fuzzy face twitched and a sensation came from it that made Mathilde think of laughter.
“This one is not a rabbit. Hopping, yes, hopping mouse. Not a rat or a kangaroo either. Rats live in trees, and kangaroos have a pouch.”
“Ah, my mistake, a hopping mouse. Well, I am Mathilde, a human. Do you have a name I can call you?”
The face twitched again, the fur spasms reaching nearly to the start of her tail. “So funny. Of course you’re not a human. This one can feel a cultivator.”
The mouse hopped a few times, quickly circling around Mathilde before coming roughly back to where she started. Mathilde found her head swiveling to track, fighting the urge to turn with the mouse to keep her front to it at all times.
“A little short for a cultivator. Mathilde must be newly awakened. This one does not have a name, but Jessica sounds nice. Could this one be known as Jessica?”