Kiera's Sun (#2, Anshan Saga)

Chapter Ten

Ten hours. And she'd regrown an area the size of a football field. Kiera's hand fell away. Astonishment filled her as she realized exactly what she'd done.

The trees, short for Earth, with their interconnected leaves, appeared impervious to the winds and dust, providing shelter for the plants to grow beneath them. Vines wrapped around the tree trunks, giving the trees a fuzzy appearance in the dim light.

Was this what Anshan once looked like? The lush jungle was very different than Earth's yet beautiful in its own way. Kiera started towards the rim of the basin to venture back out into the storm, stumbled, and stopped, gripping her hurt knee. She lowered herself to the ground at the base of a tree with a deep sigh.

"Looks like we aren't going anywhere," she murmured. Somewhat relieved, she was also worried about finding a way to escape underground or communicate with the moon, and the Anshan energy seemed to be tugging her to leave the basin. No part of her looked forward to leaving the oasis for the storm despite feeling there was somewhere else she needed to be.

She sat back and sighed. Was this patch of green large enough for those on the moon to see with their radars, as Mansr had once shown her? Or would the magnetic distortions prevent anyone not on the planet's surface from seeing it? She looked up at the leaf canopy, saddened once more by the idea she had no idea how to help the planet or alert her lifemate about her location.

Her stomach growled. She rested a hand on it with a grimace and pushed herself up. She wasn't about to try to catch a fish let alone start a fire. She'd never been a camper.

"I can eat flowers," she said and limped back towards the fields of glowing sunflowers. They were small enough, though, that she quickly assessed she'd need to eat all of them to put a dent in her hunger. She knelt in the middle of the field, left leg extended to relieve the pressure from her aching knee, and began plucking up the moon colored flora and gathering them in a pile. "Thanks for not killing me," she murmured to the planet. "I don't know what to do next, if you have any ideas."

She spent an hour gathering flowers before starting to eat them. The handfuls of blooms held a tiny drop of honey flavor, and barely took the edge off her hunger. Tired and beat up from the fall into the basin, she curled up in the grass shortly after for a nap.

The gray morning roused her, but it was the light, tickling touch of something along her neck that made her eyes open. Kiera stared briefly into the tiny eyes and anteater-like nose of a familiar creature until realizing what it was. She yelped and sprang up and away. Pain radiated through her left knee, and she gripped it, cursing under her breath.

The Anshan and Qatwali versions of cats resembled basketball sized tarantulas with outwardly jointed legs, round bodies and tiny heads. The main difference: the creatures were the cleaners of the alien worlds. They survived off dust, mold and mites sucked up through their tiny trunks. At first scared of the creature that awoke her, she soon straightened.

"Wait a minute." She twisted to look at the rapidly changing world around her. The grasses had spread outside the crater and showed no sign of stopping. The trees in the original section were taller today, their leaves connected to new trees that had sprung up while she slept. More flora was visible in the Anshani jungle, and she counted a second stream forming on the opposite side of the oasis.

And then there was it, the creature she mistook for a shadow at first glance, at least until it blinked its three eyes.

Kiera rose, peering into the darkness between trees, unable to confirm if the shape she saw was real or her imagination. She limped closer and stopped uneasily. The world was coming to life quickly, and she had no idea what kind of creatures to expect of the alien planet.