Across the Galaxy
By Nori Elan
Tingling. Tingling and cold. Lex had been asleep for hours. She rarely slept anymore.
Since Bouvetøya, Lex hardly allowed herself to rest. Fatigue was an understatement. She often felt herself drift off only to snap back into consciousness. Some nights she was plagued with nightmares. She would wake screaming. Alert, heart racing and perspiring. She hardly ever perspired.
Today had been a long day. She'd cleaned out the shed to store supplies, chopped wood until her hands burned, driven into town to purchase gasoline for the back up generators and her pickup truck and she’d adjusted the solar panels on the roof and side of the cabin. She also stocked up on groceries, water, lean meats, soup and other non perishables to last her through the winter and impending snow storm. She wanted to be prepared. Here in the mountains of Reykjavik snow hardly ever disappeared. She preferred it this way. No one had ever bothered her here.
Lex was to escort a molecular anthropologist and his business associates inside the ruins of the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán in Central Mexico in the coming weeks, most of the expedition was to be traveled by land. Lex wanted to challenge herself. She needed a distraction. The expedition was the perfect opportunity. The scientist had been granted special permission to visit the sites with no tourist interference. She wanted to enjoy her time here at home before she left for Mexico and dealt with the heat. The area had a rumor of guides and their travel companions disappearing. She thought it just a rumor.
All of the hard work had finally exhausted her! She dozed shortly after her hot bath and turmeric tea. She'd been asleep now for 6 hours. More than she'd slept since leaving Antarctica.
Lex dreamed of him every time she closed her eyes. She saw him, she could smell him. She often thought of him touching her. She often felt phantom hands embrace her while she slept. She wondered what it would be like to spend time with him in a less dangerous situation.
Scar
Imposing and formidable....
Lex felt sadness that always turned to devastation at the thought of him dying. He'd fought so bravely. He'd protected her. He'd fashioned her with her own weapons and educated her without words about the black serpents. Demonstrated the toxicity and lethal effects of their acid blood. Had even mocked her; or to her, more like playing around when he cut the skull from the black serpent and released its second mouth from the outer mouth. Causing her to jump and stare at him with a brief look of annoyance. Through his trilling she deduced Scar was laughing at her. Finding humour in her reaction. She didn't understand what the black serpents were or what Scar was. It was all utterly confusing.
She had questions and she knew she would never learn the answers.