Crystalline Space (Dark Stars Book 1)

1

We had learned the hard way to reset before hitting the bottom. Since we retained all of our memories after each physical reset, the splat at the end kind of put a damper on the thrill of freefall.

"I'm watching," she assured me.

I took a deep breath and raised my arms—my left only making it forty-five degrees from my side due to the permanent effects of a childhood injury. Even though I couldn't put on an aerial show as well as Adrianne, I could still fly.

A gust of wind crested the canyon and I leaned forward.

"Wait!" Jiro shouted.

Adrianne yanked me back by my braid.

"What's wrong?" I asked, regaining my balance. No sooner had I spoken than I saw the reason for his concern.

The crystal that normally exuded pleasant blue light now contained a dark cloud.

Jiro took a step away from the monument. "What's wrong with it?"

Adrianne and I cautiously approached. As I neared, the cloud took on more definition, as though individual black particulates were floating inside the prism.

"I have no idea," I murmured.

Nothing had ever disrupted the crystal before. Its existence was a given—as much as the sun rising and having chores.

"We should go," Adrianne stated as she backed toward the path leading to our town.

"Maybe it needs to recharge or something," Jiro suggested, following her.

"Yeah," I agreed, though I didn't believe it, and followed my longtime friends away from the canyon.

"Should we tell someone?" Adrianne asked. "I've never seen anything like that in one of the crystals."

"That would require explaining why we were out here," Jiro pointed out.

"That's definitely not going to happen." There was no way my mother would approve of me repeatedly jumping off a cliff in the adjacent zone while she prepared dinner back home. Especially after what had happened six years ago, this was the last place I wanted her to know I hung out. What she didn't know wouldn't worry her.

"If we're going to keep this to ourselves, then we should monitor it," Adrianne said.

"We could come back to check on the crystal tonight," I proposed. "If it looks good, maybe we could get in a night jump."

Adrianne beamed. "I do enjoy falling under the stars."

"Well, it's not like I have anywhere to be first thing in the morning," Jiro said with a devious sparkle in his eyes.

"Sneaking out for a night jump... it's like we're fourteen again." I chuckled.

"Only now we're better at not getting caught." Adrianne winked at me.

I smiled back. "22:00?"

"Works for me," Jiro agreed.

Adrianne nodded. "You know I'm in."

We picked our way through a field of boulders along our standard path. The rough terrain would be difficult for the uninitiated to navigate, but vaulting over rocks and sidestepping sticker bushes was second-nature to me.

I kept my gaze straight ahead as we crossed the border from the canyon crystal's zone to the domain of the town's crystal, trying to ignore the rock formation that had changed my life when I was twelve. My fall from the four-meter-tall boulder in the town's zone had dislocated my shoulder and broken my arm—a seemingly minor injury at first—but deeper tissue damage that knitted into scar tissue forever impaired my arm's mobility. By the time the doctors realized what had happened, it was too late to repair and the window for a town reset had long since passed.