Mana Pool Snippets - Keystone

Part 6

“What do you mean?” Andrea asked wiping her nose with her arm.

“This.” Scott lifted his shirt showing the little girl his scar. It was healed but pale colored, just like the rest of his scars from years past. Andrea gasped. “I nearly died by a Reaper at Area 51. This slowly healing mana heart saved me. And Katie. And Jaruka. And others. Now I wish I never regret ignoring my gift because I’m useless without it.”

Andrea touched the scar. Surly Jaruka, not saying it out loud, wanted to thank that mana heart for saving him and maiming General Griffon.

“Scary,” Andrea said. “But what if…”

“Forget the what ifs,” Katie interjected. “You did what was right. You saved your parents. We are all terrans now.” Excluding Jaruka. “Magic is part of us now.”

Andrea took a breath and covered her face.

“Don’t worry. When you want to talk, I’ll teach you,” Katie told her and closed the spellbook.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

And before the tender moment could go any further, Jaruka coughed. “So I think I understand where the slepp came from so I think it’s time to go,” he said. “You might not know this but I’m not comfortable with humans or terrans in my space.”

“But I just got here,” Andrea complained.

“Well it’s my place, my rules.”

“That is cold you know,” Katie said.

Jaruka didn’t catch Andrea as she plowed into him, hugging his right leg. “You could at least warn me.” Being taller than the rest, Andrea was no taller than Jaruka’s thigh.

“Again, thank you for that bit of courage,” she said.

“Eh… no problem,” Jaruka said, but scared to touch her.

After she left to join her family along with Dallas inside her, Scott and Katie stayed behind. “We could stay here for a while,” Katie said. “Comb through the spellbook and find more poems.”

“Nah, I’ll manage,” Jaruka said.

“Oh come on,” Scott started. “We can tell you don’t know what our poetry is or where to start.”

“I said I’ll manage, not be schooled. Also this is troubling me.”

“Why is that?”

Jaruka breathed and said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to think on it.”

He promised to share what he found, if any, before the couple and totems left. And what he would find even more was what scared him the most.

*****

Late at night, when all the campers were fast asleep outside the shield, Jaruka was still wide awake. He uncorked his first bottle of brew for the night, made by the kitchen workers onboard the Endeavour. He managed to get several cases from them before he was sent to the planet, but had to ration it until he gets a new shipment, whenever that is.

Filling his glass and taking a long drink, he stared back at the desk, relishing in his work.

His head felt like fire. Jaruka never done this sort of research since his university days. It was enough to discover not only the “rescue” poem/spell, but also five more. He stood from his chair, took a step back, sat on the glassblowing bench, and stared again, taking another drink.

“What is going on here?” he mumbled.

Several rings came from the briefcase. The Slipspace device has been on and transmitting a call signal for the past hour. He was trying to reach a particular person, even though there are only three people he was permitted to communicate. The person answering the call, he did not want to speak to in the first place, but it was a sure fire way of getting the point across.