Drome Chronicles Volume I, Story 2: Dromite Warriors

The Return

Inside her, a baby was growing. She had never felt such joy. From the moment Saran Moorlander died, Yanieyl Starwell had felt mostly emptiness and sadness. Nothing was the same after Saran left except her relationship with Eryck Brown. He became her world. They never fought again; they never looked at other people. They never had to make-up because they never broke up again. Everything was about them because they were all each other had. Saran had always been the glue that held them together; her death merely strengthened that bond. Their senior year of high school had started off crazy with the arrival of Pherron Black and it never got better. Only a few months after school started, Saran had disappeared and so did Pherron Black. Eryck had blamed himself. Naomi and Roderick Moorlander, Saran's grandparents, had moved away suspiciously from Benaly Island. And Yanieyl, she had tried to keep it together as best as possible.

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After high school, Eryck and Yanieyl moved on to college together in Charleston, SC only a few miles from Benaly so that they could check on their family as well as keep up the Moorlander cottage. Eryck kept in touch with Naomi and Roderick, but Yanieyl had found it difficult to maintain the relationship with the couple she had known as Nana and Papi. She thought that the elderly couple knew more about Saran's disappearance than they had said and she couldn't bring herself to forgive them. Sometimes, she even doubted Eryck's honesty about the matter, but she wouldn't say anything to him about it: she couldn't afford to lose him too.

Following their college graduation ceremony, they checked on the cottage as they had done every year for 5 years, afterwards they decided to return to the Massive Tree. There was no longer a beach there, all of the water had depleted going out 60 miles beyond the original shoreline. In fact, Benaly was no longer considered an island at all. It was simply a rundown town. People had moved outward as the water depleted, attempting to chase the ocean. The land was expensive going towards the water, so only the wealthy lived near the new beach. Those without money had to stay in Benaly or move even further inland.

It had been 5 years to the day since they had last come to the Massive Tree; the last time they saw Saran Moorlander alive. There was a heavy pain on Yanieyl's heart as they drove up to what used to be a beautiful beach. When they arrived at the tree, Eryck had arranged a candlelit dinner. There was a table there with beautiful linen and china plates; Yanieyl knew they had belonged to his mother. As the sun set, Eryck took Yanieyl's hand in his and pledged his life to Yanieyl asking her to marry him. That was the first day that Yanieyl felt joy in her life again. Eryck spent every day since then making sure Yanieyl had a reason to smile.

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Now, several years after being married, Yanieyl and Eryck were leaving the doctor's office where they had seen their baby move on the ultrasound monitor for the first time. They were so excited, but Yanieyl had been having strange dreams throughout her first trimester and they had begun to increase; so her excitement was clouded by the dreams: Dreams of her baby...dreams of Saran...dreams of Naomi and a hooded man at the Massive Tree. She didn't want to alarm Eryck, but in the past few days she'd even started to have an intense longing to go back to Benaly.

"Bae, I think we should go check on the cottage. We haven't been in a while." Yanieyl told Eryck as they drove back to their townhouse in downtown Charleston. Like most urban cities, families lived in townhouses and apartments that sat above needed businesses and restaurants. No longer were there suburban areas where homes sat on acres of land or single-family homes in neighborhoods. Everyone was pushed into the cities as the water depleted. Mass dehydration had wiped out entire cities. Trees, grass, and majority of the land on the planet was dying at a rapid pace and people were flocking to the areas that had at one time bordered oceans, lakes, and rivers.