The last one of the 1000

Part III

"Part III?" I hear you, dear reader, exclaim in exasperation. "I have read a single chapter, and now we are already in part three? Utterly impossible! Preposterous! A sham! I want my money back."

"No," I, the fraudulent author, answer calmly and unruffled, "that money will remain where it is." And, with a grin and a wave, I disappear into the crowd, never to be seen again...

No, seriously, if you have read the intro to this book, and I am sure you did, then you already know that Chapter 1 is in fact a "Part II". It is kind of a sequel to jinnis' wonderful story '1000+1', which can be found in her book 'Free Me'. 

Now, just like any decent universe worth writing about, the one where these two stories came from harbours many more. In fact, the story-density in that universe seems to be exceedingly high because another one of them spontaneously permeated the boundaries to our own paltry reality without anyone needing to coax it here. It materialised in the course of a thread of comments between jinnis and me, at the end of the previous chapter.

I think it is precious, and since it is hard to find there, hiding in the comments, here is a complete, unredacted transcript, starting with a note that jinnis made, whereupon the comments went back and forth between us:

@jinnis

... The next episode would have to play on planet, one of the descendants of the thousand watching the decaying Night loosing orbit and entering atmosphere as a shooting star ...

@RainerSalt

... decaying into a thousand shooting stars ...

@jinnis

... Falling towards the planet. Most of them end up as a fiery streak in the night sky. But one piece of debris hits the surface ...

@RainerSalt

... with a loud boom, followed by an eery hush. The continuous "whoop-whoop" of the caloops and the "tick tock" of the windporkers that usually greet the dawn replaced by an expectant silence.

Gina, who has watched the spectacle, grins. Her grandmother Claudia has always told her to stay out of trouble. So Gina, being a teenager, quickly picks up her hunting gear and and starts trudging towards the source of the noise ...

@jinnis

... She crosses the dense scrubs by the river on her usual, well trodden path and expertly hops from stone to stone to avoid getting her thick hi-aka-leather boots wet. Quickly she climbs the steep slope on the other side and confidently strolls across the plain. Gina has a lot of experience avoiding the treacherous sand traps of the gravediggers. Their poisonous sting might even pass through the soles of her boots. But today, her mind is not on the dangers of the territory. When she reaches the spot where the burnt soil still radiates heat, she kneels down to check out the fallen piece of star. ...

@RainerSalt

... The object has the shape of marpfruit, but it is about twice as large. She sees a tiny, strangely regular crack extending from its top downwards, on both sides. The thing has nearly split in half. She tries to touch it, but it seems to be as hot as the kettle hanging over the clan fire during evenmeal. She hefts her small bicklaw chopping axe, intending to drive it into the crack, when she hears an "nnk" behind her. Turning her head, she looks into the large green eyes of a wimot. It is a big one, its head nearly reaching her shoulders. She likes these playful, curious creatures, even though they are much stronger and faster than a human and have been known to occasionally show aggression when being threatened. But this one looks peaceful enough, so she is not about to let it sidetrack her from her purpose. She slowly walks around the fallen star, bringing it between herself and the wimot. Then she raises her axe again ...

@jinnis

... Gingerly at first and then a bit harder she taps the the black object still imbedded in the burnt soil. The crack seems to open a fraction. Encouraged by her tiny success, Gina repeats the tapping. Now the crack is big enough to wedge the axe blade into it. Nnk-ing curiously the wimot steps nearer, its green pair of primary eyes fixed on the fallen star while the secondary eyestalks on its forehead never cease to scan the surroundings.

At least there won't be any surprise visitors, Gina thinks while she kneels down on the still hot soil to get a better angle to place her axe. With a final shift she manages to pry open the strange object. Neatly the two halves of the blackened shell split apart, revealing their content to three pairs of amazed eyes - two of them wimot, one human. ...

@RainerSalt

... Like the tasty core of a trap-flower, a fluffy, white ball of something sits between the two opened shells. With her fingertips, Gina starts to carefully pull the soft strands of the ball apart, expecting to find something embedded within it. Indeed, her efforts start to expose a shiny, intricately shaped metal object, obviously artificial, and utterly incomparable to anything she has ever seen. She is reluctant to touch it, afraid of marring its outlandish beauty.

"Nnk." Faster than her eyes are able to follow, one of the wimot's tongue tentacles whips outwards towards the thing, coils itself around it and pulls it back to hold it before the green primary eyes for scrutiny.

"Hey!" Gina says, and the wimot's four eyes all swivel towards her, giving her a double-quizzical stare.

"Nnk. Nnk!" With this quick goodbye, the wimot turns on its single hind leg and bounds away across the plain, still holding its prize. Gina considers giving chase, but she knows that it is hopeless. The animal has already disappeared in a copse of meshrooms.

Gina knows that wimots are migratory, crisscrossing the lands in inscrutable paths. She will never see it or the trinket from the stars again.

Disappointed she gets up, assembling her gear. Then she remembers what her grandmother once said:

"The stars are in humanity's past. And they may also be in humanity's future. But for now, we are stuck here, on this planet, and we have to accept what it gives us, and to give it what is its due."

@jinnis

and thus ends part 3 of the series