Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid, and I particularly enjoy getting likes and comments at the bottom of posts.
Daily Diary, Day 1483:
Today, I’ve included the fifth scene in Aelwyd: Home, my short story in the Caelestis series set in the Paradisi Chronicles universe. I am publishing a new scene every Tuesday and Thursday. If you haven’t read the first two introductory posts yet, I strongly suggest you do so before you start on the short story itself. To find the first of these two posts, or the earlier scenes, click HERE.
Aelwyd: Home
By Louisa Locke, copyright 2016
Scene 5:
Her legs had fallen asleep hours ago, and every scratch on her hands and face itched. On the upside, this turned out to be one of the nights when both of New Eden’s moons were in the sky at the same time. She judged that it must be about midnight and tiny Acerba was just a sliver, but large blue Caeruleum was nearly full, illuminating the pond in bright relief, revealing that it was a very busy place.
She saw a long-legged and long-necked bird awkwardly pick its way down the bank and into the shallows, standing patiently until, with an efficient thrust of its beak, it caught what she assumed was a New Eden fish, swallowing it whole. She also witnessed a number of the small furry animals she’d dubbed “micekins” creep out of the bushes to drink delicately from the trickle of a stream that fed the pond. The light of the moons showed through their large thin ears, and when they looked up, their round eyes glowed in the reflected light.
She never actually saw the croakers, but every once in a while, there would be a splash that she imagined was one of them jumping off one of the large leaves that floated in the water. She also discovered that there seemed to be numerous small birds who had decided she wasn’t a threat and had settled down on some of the branches in neighboring trees.
She felt like she was in the middle of a children’s nature special, and wondered if she were the first human to have actually seen some of these animals.
At least all the activity kept her awake for the next couple of hours––including flicking away some persistent flying bug that kept trying to bite her. When I get back, Mom is going to go nuts culturing every bit of my body to see what she can discover about New Eden microbes.
Kammie didn’t want to think about how frantic her mother would be by now. She’d witnessed her mother in action numerous times as a trauma nurse, always the epitome of calm, cool, and collected.
But when it came to Kammie, well, it was a different story. Her mother tended to overreact. She never forgave herself for not leaving her husband sooner (as if this would have been easy since they were living with him on Sideris station out near Jupiter), believing exposure to her father’s temper caused Kammie’s extreme shyness. It hadn’t helped matters when some years later her father was recalled to serve on the Nautilus where she and her mother were now stationed, although by then her mother had divorced him and was able to limit his visitation rights. Then of course, there was her mother’s decision to join the Yu’s ship for the long and potentially dangerous trip to a new world… a trip that almost killed Kammie during the cryosleep-wormhole crisis.
Knowing her mother, she would take on the blame for this misadventure as well.
I just hope she doesn’t tell my father I’m missing.
He’d accuse her of being an unfit parent, upbraid the local military commander for letting the fence go down, disparage the search and rescue team for not finding her in seconds, then scream at Kammie when he found her saying she was a stupid, thoughtless, incompetent fool. Then she’d cry, and she hated crying in front of him.
But the person she really didn’t want to think about was Bai, Stewart’s father. How could she face him if anything awful happened to his son? It didn’t matter that Stewart was probably ten times better equipped to handle a night out in the woods than she was. He’d been her responsibility, and he was just a little boy.
A sudden movement across the pond caught her attention. Caeruleum was now riding high, and she could clearly see a large animal emerging from the underbrush in a kind of time-lapse slow motion. A step . . . then frozen stillness. Another step . . . another instant of immobility. The general outlines of a horse—not that she’d ever seen one outside a holographic video. But bigger. Shaggier. And with a single curved horn in the center of its forehead. The long head turned slowly this way and that. Then she saw a second, smaller edition of the animal materialize next to it . . . this one minus the horn. Finally, two much smaller versions stepped out. Hornless and without the shaggy hair, so their long spindly legs were exposed. Fascinated, she watched as all four members of the family sipped from the pond and munched on the grasses along its bank. One of the youngsters moved slowly around the edge of the pond, getting closer and closer to her tree. She held her breath, not wanting to do anything to frighten it.
That was when she caught sight of something in her peripheral vision. A black, sinuous shadow padding silently down the moonlit path towards the youngster. She drew in a deep breath, preparing to scream out a warning, when two shafts—arrows—appeared in the neck of what she could see was a huge cat as it lay twitching below her. She looked back at the pond and saw all four of the other animals had simply disappeared.
A person—there was no arguing that this was a person—walked into view, another arrow cocked at the ready to shoot if the cat was still alive. Beside him was an enormous white dog, or was it a wolf? Whatever it was, it stood and stared up at her with a pair of eyes that glowed in the dark like those of the small micekins.
When the probe discovered the existence of people native to New Eden, the Founders discouraged speculation about their origins. But her mother, as a Gunther, had access to some of the data that the first military scouts collected, indicating that they had almost identical DNA to the settlers from Earth. The mammals, however, like this wolf-dog, appeared to have come down a slightly different evolutionary path. Kammie, who’d been on a biology curriculum track since she was ten, knew enough to understand how weird that was.
What she didn’t know was if this Original’s presence or the animal with him were a threat to her.
As if hearing her thoughts, the man looked up and pointed the arrow at her, saying something incomprehensible.
Kammie was pretty sure he was male, something about the width of the shoulders, slenderness of the hips, the glittering hardness in the eyes. When she didn’t move, the tone of voice sharpened, accompanied by an irritated movement of the bow and arrow, making it clear he was commanding her to get down from the tree.
As she had for every other angry male in her life, Kammie obeyed.
To be continued…
Brief check-in: Frustrating afternoon yesterday trying to straighten out getting the water dispenser. We have been getting water from this company for over 30 years, but the bottom line appears to be that the company no longer provides a basic dispenser, only ones that dispense hot and cold (and one model coffee!) water. This appears to mean that they must be plugged in to work. So, we need to find another alternative. This is what we worked on this morning, will report later how what we came up with. And Fridge repair person canceled this morning, we got a date tomorrow then a text said Friday. At this point don’t have a clue, but none of the rest of the vegies have frozen, so I won’t starve!
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Great continuation of the story! Keeps my mind occupied!