Remember Atlantis (WIP) – chapter 2

Continued from chapter 1

 

I’m here.

My head swims as I look up at constellations I have never seen. They pierce through the light blue of an early evening sky, beckoning to me, laughing at my distress.

I’m here, but the definition of ‘here’ has changed. Irrevocably and indefinitely.

Something is burning to my left. My pores are clogged with it. It’s seeping into my blood. I turn my head to look, and my neck pulses with a faint pain. Not dangerous pain, just enough to tell me I’m still alive. It will ache for a time, and then subside.

Out of nowhere, a gash of sadness divides me in half. I don’t understand it until this moment: I’m gone. I’ve left. I’ll never see my home again – not the home I left, anyway. If I could weep, I would do so now, but I can’t even sob. The burning inside of me will never be released in the drops of water so praised by our ancestors. That’s only a fairy-tale, a metaphor invented long ago by creatures of legend. Even though we never weep, it’s coded into our language along with the stories of long-dead heroes, foolish tales to take the edge off the pain of being alone in the universe.

I sit up. This is useless. I need to take charge of the situation. Learn of my surroundings. Learn if I’m going to die here or not. Inching cautious fingers along the rough surface of the stone beneath me, I pause to evaluate. Strong, old. But… moving. Yes, it’s moving. Deep, deep down beneath me, something is awake, gathering power. I can’t stay on this rock indefinitely, or it will swallow me up. So where can I go?

I get to my feet, a little wobbly from the crash. Below me, there’s an endless expanse of blue, dotted by the faintest points of flickering light. Again, that disoriented feeling. Is space down there? Or is it above me? Where am I?

Here.

I shrug off my brief dizziness and squint at the blue. There’s something out there – a gleaming metal hull in the gathering twilight. Have I found it already? I creep forward on the cliff, gripping the sharp-edged greenery as I stare down at the long shape with its gaping black doors. It looks nothing like the vehicles I’ve come to search for. Unless the images they showed me were false? Distorted by time and lost in history…

At once, I become aware of my own vehicle, warm and almost glowing behind me: the residual warmth of high speeds, of atmospheric friction. Scrambling over sharp stones, I lay my hands on it, try to piece together a memory-image.

Falling.

That’s all I can remember now, as if the fall itself has wiped my memory. Darkness, darkness and falling. Blue, blue, everywhere, blue calling to me from down below, from the abyss. Danger, cool and still. Not the red-hot rage of my banishers, but the terrifying calm of the thing that knows the power it has over you. The power of the sea, almost banal in its immensity. A power that doesn’t even realize it can drown you.

But I can’t be drowned. That’s just another fairy tale. And I’m not here to wax lyrical about these alien outlines and strangely familiar rocks. I’m here to finish my mission, and maybe save my life.

I start covering up my vehicle with plants – an unnecessary precaution, since the ancient town is evidently uninhabited, but I have learned to be careful the hard way. I rip prickly branches from trees and yank brittle grass from the ground, and my palms sing with the pain of it, but I must conceal my presence. There may still be other species here, and they may have evolved into semi-conscious beings while we were away. After all, we’re not the same people who left.

At once, I feel it again, and I don’t realize until now that it’s a memory: while I was waking up after the crash, I touched something. Freezing in the middle of my work, I grope at the feeling. Yes. There was something – someone – there.

It sucks at my stomach as viscerally as any fall. My mind song touched someone. There’s someone here. How could I forget? Am I so brainwashed by the council that I don’t even register the facts that contradict what they told me? I, who should know the lies they spin to lull us.

But I can’t think of the council. Squeezing my eyes shut, I fumble through recent memory until I grip a strand of truth: a being, like me. But not like me. It fears what I don’t fear, and yet it’s a refuge, like me.

The pieces whirl inside my mind, impossible to interpret. A refuge? Here? I look out over the blue again. Apart from the broken vehicle out there, I can see nothing. No one. On the ground are quickly slithering things, but their minds don’t sway on the same frequency as mine. In the bushes, there is the occasional winged creature, but they gape with sharp little beaks and don’t answer my call.

Where is it? How did I reach it, in the middle of my fall?

And most important of all, how can I find it again?