---Fire---

---Victor’s perspective---

Artemas is sitting across the fire from me, less than four metres away, and constantly glancing in my direction as the meat cooks, like he’s still frightened I’m going to vanish!

When I told him where we need to go for collection, he confirmed Twila’s calculation that we won’t make it before nightfall. But, he let me in on the fact that he reckons the moons are gonna be bright enough to navigate by, tonight, which was not something Twila realised! He says a third of the way through the night should be moonrise. He’s unsure of how many hours, exactly, but thinks we should be able to make it to the plateau by sunrise.

“If you don’t mind my askin’, Artemas…?” I start.

He locks eyes with me in a way that makes very plain that he’s out of practice with how to interact with people!

“…how long have you been alone?… Not countin’ Horme, of course(!)”

He looks away, clearly doing some mental maths, before saying “What word for year part?”

“Month?”

He shakes his head “No. Like; grow time, heat time, die time, cold time?”

“Oh, season!”

“Yeah! Last friend die… twenting five season before.” he says, gesturing behind himself to indicate the past.

“And… how long is a season, on this planet?” I ask.

More mental maths before he answers “From smash on Melinoë…” he mimes a crash landing with his hands “…to Atlantiades die… Fourting season.”

“Fourty, four zero? Or fourteen, one four?” I ask, using my fingers as counting aids, to clarify.

“The second! One four!”

So, that makes a season a little less than a year and twenty five would be… twenty years? Nineteen? I hate maths!

“After smash, Djamila first die… then, five seasons die Kostantina… Then Atlantiades die… Dimitris… he died in snow… Ilir… what this…?”

He mimics coughing, violently.

“Sickness?” I suggest.

“Sickness… yes… Ilir have sickness… Dimitris and Atlantiades not there for telled us how helped… he died… Bulut… so strong… then hot season… no food, no water… so weak… My Thaleia… she stay life most long… then she go in river… hit head… not know word…” he says, miserably.

“Drowned?” I offer, trying not to be insensitive… and failing.

“Maybe…” he says “…She was… so heavy, when I lift her up mountain, for making her… sleep… Alone from then…”

I give a sympathetic nod… but I don’t really have any words to offer.

We sit in silence until he judges the hadrosaur skewers to be ready.

He takes his and gestures me to take mine.

I take it and bite into it.

It’s not good! It’s bitter, stringy and, somehow, also slimy!

Instead of lying and telling him it’s nice I choose to just say “Thanks for sharin’ with me.”

He gives a single nod in response.

After we’ve eaten the disgusting meat, there’s a long pause before he asks “What happen… with the Fight?”

“The fight?” I ask.

“Yes… the Fight we fight, with xeno!”

“Oh, the War!” I say, understanding.

“Yes!… Still War?”

I smile and shake my head “Nope… over! Since I was this tall!” gesturing my guess at the height of a 2 year old.

His eyes widen in disbelief “Xeno all dead?!”

I shake my head “No. We made Peace.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He frowns “How made peace? They think we monster! They think we evil!”

I shrug “We showed ’em we weren’t… when they realised, they surrendered…”

He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me.

“You’ll see tomorrow! When we go up to the ship!”

Puzzled, he asks “What means?”

“You’ll meet gardenworlders… you’ll see!”

His eyes widen, disbelieving, as he yells “They on ship?! You come here with them!?”

“Yes.” I say, simply, watching for how he responds.

He says nothing for a long time, clearly deep in thought.

I imagine it would be quite difficult to hear that the War you’ve heard nothing about for three decades is over and everyone’s friends now!

---Artemas’s perspective---

I’m aboard the UTCS Leonidas.

An emerald eyed, fire headed, moustachioed Commander (whose face I’m, somehow, able to see through his helmet) is barking orders at me.

“Enemy with us! Do the braving now! Fight! Fight! Fight! War! War!! WAR!!!” he screams in English.

I latch my helmet, pick up my gun an begin sprinting through the boulders, multicoloured trees and bushes that have definitely always lined the Leonidas’s hallways.

I come out at the end of the fighter hanger and see a crowd of thousands of xenos, being lead by a four armed, purple furred tyrannosaurus, running towards me and all looking at me with the hate of those who don’t believe I have the right to exist!

I look behind me and, instead of living, armed soldiers I see hundreds of dead people.

They all point at me, accusingly, as they demand “SAVE US!”

I know I can’t but… I know that not trying won’t save me either!

I turn and level my gun at the tyrannosaur.

Everything else is something I can fight with my bare hands but that tyrannosaur I need my gun for!

I empty clip after clip toward the monster but the bullets just ricochet off it as the throng tear towards me.

I’m still trying to kill the purple beast, right up until the moment I’m buried under dozens of enemies who are able to use their weight to pull me to the ground.

The crowd parts, allowing their monstrous Commander access to me.

It steps on me, its clawed toes clinking against my armour.

It takes a moment to look down on me, its face coloured by both hate and contempt.

It opens its mouth and lunges down, toward me.

I wake up, my breaths fast and shallow, my body tingling with pins and needles, covered in sweat and my heart thundering so hard I can hear it!

I reach to stroke Horme, curled up, contentedly, next to me.

I look across the glowing embers of the fire and see the man who says he’s here to save me, lying asleep on the ground.

The first moon is already shining through the trees and it’s almost time for the second to come up, when we’ll have enough light to navigate by.

Then, from the far side of the fire haired man, I see her.

Stepping into the glow of the embers I see a woman, her chestnut hair soaking wet, her skin grey and blood pouring from a gash, just above her left temple.

She points to my firemate and gurgles “He’s lying, you know…”

I sigh “Hello to you too, Thaleia(!)”

“Don’t give me that attitude! I’m trying to save you!”

My mouth twists, wryly “‘Save me’ from being rescued(?)”

“This guy says there’s peace now? I don’t buy it! I think he must have cut some sort of deal with the xenos! Yeah, that’s it! He’s got a deal with them, where they let him live for as long as he brings them surviving Humans!… If you go with him, you’re going to your death!” she says, water running from her mouth and down her chin.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take… and, if you were actually the woman I loved, Thaleia, it’s a chance you would take too!”

“You’ll die!” screams the hallucinated personification of all my doubt.

“Then perhaps it’s time to die! Perhaps it’s time to die the way it wasn’t, when I threw myself at those tyrannosaurs, the day after I buried you!”

“If you had wanted to die then, then you’d have found another way after it turned out that they find prey running at them screaming at them to ‘Just eat me, already!’ unnerving!” she accuses.

“Yes, them running away gave me time to reconsider… I don’t want to die… but I’m also tired of just surviving!… If I go with him, there’s a chance I get to live again! If he stabs me in the back and hands me over to be killed, then it’s just my time to die!”

“You’re a fool, Artemas!” spits the twisted version of the woman I loved, a third of a lifetime ago.

---Victor’s perspective---

I wake up to hear one side of a heated argument in whispered Greek.

I open my eyes, just a crack, to see an agitated Artemas, pacing and talking to someone across me from him, though I can’t hear anyone.

Horme is awake and looking at her master in a way that suggests this isn’t unusual behaviour for him.

I guess this must be one of his ‘fantasmas’…

“Γαμήσου, Θάλεια! Γαμήσου!!!” he hisses.

I hear the name of the woman he implied he had a relationship with, earlier.

There’s a long period of silence before he starts approaching me.

I’m considering whether I should start defending myself in some way when he announces “Not sleep, Victor!”

I stir, pretending to just be waking up now.

I open my eyes and say “Hey, what’s…?”

“Time go.” he interrupts “Moons up. Light.”

---Brunhilda’s perspective---

The bones, with their associated grave goods, have all gone back to the Bright Plume, along with Dormouse and the hardware she took from the lifeboat.

It’s been more than forty hours since I last saw Cuddles and I’m beginning to worry!

I watch as Twila flies the Swift Claw slowly across my field of vision, the light of the dawn behind her.

It’s hard not to be a little jealous of everyone who’s resting aboard, while I’m stuck here keeping watch!

My holo buzzes, startling the life out of me.

I answer it and, before I can even say ‘hello’, Twila says “Heads up, you’ve got company.”

Immediately, I reach for my gun, pull it onto my lap and throw the strap over my shoulders as I switch my holo to my right hand, stand up and ask “What kind of company?” hand on the grip but finger off the trigger as I look around for any kind of monster that might be approaching.

“Relax! Friendly company!” she laughs “Coming up from your east.”

I swivel to the horizon where the sun is breaking over the distant mountains.

I see him.

Cresting the hill, hair burning like fire in the dawn light, face adorned with a stupid looking moustache, strides my CSS, Victor ‘Cuddles’ Taylor, and… beside him… walks an ancient looking, bearded man with a spear in one hand and his body covered in fur.

“You found him!? You unbelievable bastard(!)” I shout, laughing.

“That’s me!” he shouts back, smugly.