* * * * *
Eiron was lying on a sleep panel, gazing up blankly at the ceiling. Only a few days ago, the small confines of the featureless room had reminded him of a bird cage. When he was left alone like this, intense claustrophobia drove him into depression.
His fingers played absently with the frayed fringe of a polished silvery medal he’d been wearing. He tossed the metal high, watching it spin, weighted unevenly, a kaleidoscope of colors in the light, and caught it with a slight effort. His wounds didn’t bother him at all as he crunched forward to catch the medal again and again.
Boy, he was out of practice, he thought, as the medal fell with a loud clink out of reach onto the floor beside him.
He got up as if to retrieve it and continued out the door, leaving it where it had fallen.
Alessia found him wandering around several hours later.
He had been trying to avoid her, but surrendered himself to an afternoon of volunteer work unloading food supplies into one of the storage rooms. If he felt a little intimidated by how unnaturally strong Alessia was, he didn’t let it show. He wasn’t accustomed to many people being stronger than he was. Anyway, she wasn’t an ordinary human; he knew that, and so did everyone else aboard Selesta.
As the work ended, he began to wish he were somewhere else. It wasn’t that he disliked Alessia or anything, but in her company, he found to his displeasure that he remembered how little he’d been accepted in the outside world. As much as he craved freedom and the opportunity to return to his home, it had begun to dawn on him that going home would mean permanent exile in a world that criticized and scorned his heritage.
He couldn’t seem to shake her because she always knew exactly where to find him. And he was afraid that after a while he wouldn’t want to. He didn’t want to allow himself to become dependent on her companionship if it was something he was going to have to give up.
“That’s the last,” he said, tossing in a small sack of seeds into the storage room near the cantina they all used. He wiped his hair back, letting the cool air work its magic on him. His muscles felt pleasantly fatigued but not stiff. He’d worked up a thin layer of sweat, but it was a long way back to his room for a shower.
“Why don’t you go for a swim?” Alessia suggested, as though reading his mind. Eiron agreed reluctantly, with a pang of regret for the silver pool he had left behind in the cliff side reconnaisance chamber. Swimming there had helped him to regain his strength as he recuperated, but it was nothing to the vast river that ran through the Seynorynaelian forest in Selesta.
He wasn’t about to admit that he didn’t remember the way to the forest, though. Alessia spared him any excuses by not asking any questions. She threaded their path down countless corridors and past security gates to the enormous hold, where trees no Tiasennian had ever seen grew as large as in any terrestrial forest.
Cool, emerald green leaves with shimmering silver-gold veins and undersides that helped to deflect some of the radiation formed a bright, multi-colored canopy over their heads; the smooth, light grey trunks of the trees called lyra were in fact strong, sturdy, and deep-rooted, providing a comfortable resting place to while away immeasurable hours. There were other trees, too, interspersed among them—pink-blossomed sedwi trees and smaller white sherin and blue sherin trees, whose petals cascaded to the forest floor like snow. Many artificial streams ran through the forest, but the largest, which cut through the heart of the retreat, could have been called a small river. Its slow current and cool, shallow basin created the perfect place for swimming.
At the water’s edge, small slate blue and purplish-grey stones tickled Eiron’s feet as he waded knee-deep, his pushed-up leggings brushing the surface of the rippling water.
There was a perfect breeze blowing, smelling of the sweet, golden flower blossoms growing along the banks. How could he be inside a spaceship far beneath the earth? He felt as though he had discovered some secret lost world, far from the evils of his society, immortal and beautiful, a paradise which belonged only to the two of them.
Here, while tendays passed uncounted, he drew strength from this strange, alien soil, filling an unconscious need in his soul.
His only fear now was that he would never want to leave this place.
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 43