Dimensions

Chapter 2: Just like the stars

Written by pen-to-the-paper

Carina

Dying, polluted, distorted and destroyed by human touch. This is the planet I live in. Earth used to be beautiful, as the stories say, but now this planet is desolate and dead.

I am Carina Starlae, and. As my name may suggest, I love the stars.

I lay outside now, carefully watching the stars that seem a part of me now.

I have always dreamed of a much better planet far away, just for myself. If anyone else came, they would destroy it once more. That's the problem with most humans: they don't learn from their mistakes.

There is a single plant left in this planet: a single rose standing in dirt that contains no nutrients and surviving off chemically engineered liquids.

I know that humanity will die out for good; it is only a matter of months, maybe even weeks, until we are all dead.

Here I have run out of food and now it is only days until I die; I may even not survive the night.

I observe the horizons and just see a flat expanse of land; the only remains of human settlement over two hundred miles away.

I never really valued life, and I don't have enough supplies to last a day. I decide to make it easy.

I wouldn't classify it as suicide, more a controlled death.

I reach up with my obsidian knife, my most prized possession, the last remains of the Deviann, and hold it in front on my chest. I take a deep breath, and clench my hand around the handle.

And I stab myself in the heart.

-~-

But suddenly I am in another world, and me knife has fallen to the ground. I bend down to pick it up and I realise that the ground isn't the dark, black ash that is the floor of our world, it is a reddish-grey. Strange. There is a a small flow of a thin red liquid.

I look up and I see an odd creature with mysterious red skin. It looks oddly familiar, but I don't know where I've seen it before. The colour red is not common, it's only in books - books!

My brain flickers through blurry memories, trying to focus on what it is. It clicks. But I can't believe it.

It's a Deviann.

-~-

Thousands of years ago, maybe millions - the time is unclear - the Deviann, a separate race to the humans, disappeared. No one knows why, or how, but the now-extinct creatures just disappeared.

Looking into the face of the creature, I realise that this isn't my world. This isn't Earth.

I don't know where I am.

The Deviann comes up to me and gargles in an odd language that I don't understand.

The red creature reaches out with its hand and touches my arm. It flinches, jumping back.

A small, electric spark crackles through me, like a tiny strike of lightning.

It says the strange word again, but this time I understand.

I retreat, the foreign language rolling off my tongue as if I was a native.

It smiles - or the closest to smiling - and repeats with more confidence a three-word phrase. I know precisely what it said.

"You are human."

I speak back.

I confirm the Deviann's statement by speaking again in the language.

The Deviann turns, and for some reason I follow. I presume it's my curiosity getting the better of me, but it could be that the remote area I'm in looks so lonely that I don't want to be alone.

It guides me through tunnels to a cave, a home.

It confirms my assumptions. It definitely is a Deviann, as it lives in a cave.

The halls outside are crowded with hustling Deviann, but without a child in sight. This raises another mental question that I could add to my extensive list.

The stone wall is solely decorated with wall art. I recognise from books engravings of Hell line the walls, the devil with its forked tail surrounded with fire. Whilst the humans of our world aspire to be in heaven, the Deviann evidently want to go to Hell.

I try to get more friendly. I hold out my hand and it looks at it curiously.

I give up and drop my hand.

"I am Carina," I say in the tongue of my new acquaintance.

"Like the stars," the Deviann says.

"Just like the stars," I repeat.

She gazed up at the dark clear sky dotted in tiny stars.

Whilst I'm so far from my home, and my comfort zone, I'm still under the same stars, that connect me to my world and the Deviann world. When everything else is foreign, the stars will always be there to remind me that I belong.