TWO MOONS OF SERA
By
Pavarti K. Tyler
Copyright
www.EvolvedPub.com
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TWO MOONS OF SERA
Copyright © 2015 Pavarti K. Tyler
Cover Art Copyright © 2015 Mallory Rock
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ISBN (EPUB Version): 1622532945
ISBN-13 (EPUB Version): 978-1-62253-294-0
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Edited by Lane Diamond and Philip A. Lee
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eBook License Notes:
You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
Other Books by Pavarti K. Tyler
Shadow on the Wall
White Chalk
Moon Dust (A “Two Moons of Sera” Short Story)
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The Sugar House Novellas
Book 1: Sugar & Salt
Book 2: Protecting Portia
Book 3: Dual Domination
Special Edition: The Sugar House Novellas 1-3 - Omnibus
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Dead Girl
Consumed by Love - A Short Story
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www.PavartiKTyler.com
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What Others Are Saying about Pavarti’s Books:
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Shadow on the Wall:
“...the story lines were well constructed and the dots all amazingly connected. Well done!” – Dr Naif Al-Mutawa of the99.org
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White Chalk:
Pavarti K. Tyler has taken a brave position; this gripping novel breaks every rule and escapes customary boundaries.” – Ann Pearlman, Pulitzer Prize Nominee and Author of “The Christmas Cookie Club”
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The Sugar House Novellas:
“The best written erotica I’ve ever read.” - Tahlia Newland, Editor and Author
Dedication:
For all those who long for a little whimsy in their lives
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Book One: Water
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Book Two: Earth
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Book Three: Fire
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
More from Pavarti K. Tyler
More from Evolved Publishing
Prologue
Nilafay ran, slipping on the unfamiliar terrain, desperate to reach water. The rocks dug into the thin flesh of her webbed feet, cutting the sensitive skin. This place remained foreign despite being only miles from her home. Never had she seen the sun so bright or felt the moisture evaporate off her skin; she felt she would die from the cruelty of the atmosphere.
Navigating her way through the wilderness proved difficult, but finally she breathed in the familiar briny scent of home. She licked her lips, seeking relief from the dryness before stepping out of the tree line and onto the rocky beach. The sun overwhelmed her sensitive eyes, and she slid thin, clear membranes over them. She’d always considered the membranes vestigial, before coming above water to the Erdland.
She moved forward, wincing as the heat of the sun burned her delicate forehead. Her irises retracted and for a moment she was blinded, but she could smell and taste the salt in the air, leading her to the water. The rest of Nilafay’s senses remained on high alert, her eardrums straining to feel the vibrations of distant voices.
Frantic to reach the surf, she slipped and ripped open her shin. She bit down on her lip, refusing to cry out or shed a tear. She was done crying.
Nilafay heard them calling from farther back in the forest; the hunters who had seduced her with offers of friendship and a world unlike any she had seen before. They circled closer, the creatures they commanded following her scent and leading their masters closer. She shivered at the memory of their strange hair-covered bodies. At first she had been intrigued by the animals with the eyes of men, but when she learned they were there not to befriend her, but to guard and cage her, she resented their tracking gaze.
She stood and resumed her pitch toward the coastline, pressing through the throbbing in her leg. The sensitive myomere muscles of her body were unaccustomed to impact injury.
Hunters approached the tree line, making no attempt to hide their arrival.
She dropped to her knees. Her iridescent white flesh shone in the morning sun, its lack of pigment reflecting the bright light beating down on her. The rocky beach offered no asylum.
The men grew louder, closer with each passing moment, speaking their gruff language.
She understood only a few words. But what she did understand terrified her: net, animal, project.
Experiment.
Cage.
Please, just let me get to the water....
BOOK ONE
1
16 Years Later....
The sand softened the impact of my landing after I jumped from the tree I’d used to climb over the rock wall separating my home from the outside world. I released a shaky breath. I’d ventured farther out into the forest today, farther than I would have if my mother had been around. Without her here, I didn’t bother sneaking back in like usual. I spent the day exploring as much as I wanted, and longed to know about everything outside the small cove we lived in.
I’d never been beyond the mountain range overshadowing our home, only through the forest leading south toward the villages. The danger of discovery—or worse, capture—kept me from going too far. What would happen if Erdlanders found us? My mother’s stories about needles and tests and tortures from before I was born were enough to keep me on a tight leash.
The water beyond the cove led north, into the ocean, where the Sualwet people lived—my mother’s people. We were refugees from that world, too. They’d exiled her because of me.
My world held me tightly, like too-small clothing that refused to adjust as I grew. Stifled and frustrated, lately I’d wanted to venture farther, risking capture if only for a glimpse of an Erdlander. Mother said they had hair on their heads like me, and some even had it on their faces. They walked like us a
nd spoke words as we did, although in a different language. Mother taught me a handful of words she’d learned during her imprisonment. The sounds fell easily from my lips and the more I heard, the more I understood.
Erdlanders didn’t have gills and didn’t absorb oxygen through their skin, using their mouths to breathe. I wasn’t like them and I wasn’t like my mother’s people. I was not supposed to exist—an anomaly, an accident of science—but my mother’s escape from her prison before my birth meant I existed on the shore, alone but for Mother.
~Serafay!~ My mother spoke in the musical Sualwet language as she emerged from the water in time to see me walk out from the tree line. Her frown gave away her displeasure. She’d returned from scavenging with treasures to show me.
~Mother!~ I waved, then reached back and pulled my long chestnut hair into a knot.
~Always playing with that hair.~
~Just because you don’t have any doesn’t mean you should be so jealous,~ I teased, and splashed into the water to help carry the bags she dragged behind her.
~These were a lot lighter underwater.~
~Give me one.~ I held out my hand to take some of her burden.
~No, you’ll cheat and look.~ Her mock scowl was playful as she pretended to hold the bags from me in a protective embrace.
~Fine then, carry them yourself!~ I dove under the surface and kicked off, letting the thin webbing between my toes capture the water and propel me forward.
I loved being underwater. The weightlessness of it surrounded and held me. The shallow cove was wide, and I could swim out quite far before the ocean floor dropped off to the open sea. The call of the expanse was hard to deny, but I couldn’t go out today. It made my mother worry, like everything else, and I was anxious to see what she’d brought home.
I could stay underwater for hours, thanks to the Sualwet part of my anatomy, and I longed to lose myself in the sea. Eventually, I needed to resurface and use my lungs, but the time I stole in the darkness of submersion soothed my dry skin and my lonely heart. As I broke the surface, a thin membrane, a gift from my mother’s genetics, closed over my eyes to protect them from the sun’s intense light. I paddled back to the shore in time to help her heave the bags up to the rock-and-cloth enclosure we called home.
The fire in our makeshift hearth had died, so I used the fire stone we’d salvaged in another treasure hunt to light a spark. I tried to be patient while Mother pulled a loose shirt over her head, the thin cloth hanging down to her knees. We found or made most of our clothing, in keeping with the loose-fitting Erdlander style. Underwater people wore very little, and what they did wear clung to their bodies. It looked so uncomfortable, but Mother said it helped her swim faster. I always swam naked because fabric impeded my movement.
The home we’d built on the cove was comfortable. We had sufficient supplies, and hammocks hanging between the sparse trees to sleep in. Recently, I separated the space into rooms, using the taut, weighted cloth the Sualwet used as walls underwater, which Mother had scavenged from an abandoned home. Farther back, a small cave in the rocky incline offered us shelter when we needed it, but we both preferred to stay outside.
A smile brightened her face as she approached where I sat next to the fire. ~There was another attack.~ She eased onto one of the woven chairs we’d made and began pulling things out of the bag. ~The war seems to have gotten worse. There were a lot of bodies. It must have just happened, and the sharks kept the other Sualwets away.~
~Sharks!~ I leaned toward her, terrified and excited by her adventure.
~Yes! Big ones, too. The water was red with gore.~
~You shouldn’t have gone near them!~ My smile betrayed my scolding tone. I longed for anything half as exciting as what my mother described.
~They weren’t interested in me, too busy gorging themselves on Erdlander blubber!~ She laughed again.
In her eyes, the misfortune of others paled to the misery of her life. She couldn’t muster much sympathy for them. Some might call her cruel, but under her hardened exterior existed a gentle heart.
~Besides, if those beasts hadn’t died, this would’ve never been there for me to find.~ Out of the sack she pulled what appeared to be a butterfly made entirely out of stars.
I reached forward, wanting to touch the sparkling thing to make sure it was real.
~It’s a hair piece. They use it to decorate themselves.~
I took the object in my hand and noticed how its sturdy weight made it almost trustworthy. On other side a simple metal mechanism opened and shut on a lever, not much different from the animal traps I made.
~It’s amazing.~ My voice was just a whisper. I turned the gift over and over again before running my fingers along the sparkling decoration.
~Let’s put it in.~ Mother didn’t usually like to touch my hair; she said it irritated her skin. Tonight, she jumped up and walked to the baskets that held my personal things, and grabbed my small comb.
~When you were born, there was no hair on you anywhere, just as it should be,~ she began with a chuckle, pulling the comb through my long locks. ~But you were pink. Nothing like the other hatchlings I’d seen.~
Evening settled around us and the sun peeked from behind the ragged mountaintop in the distance as she told my favorite story.
~But then, you weren’t a hatchling were you?~
~No.~ I smiled, relaxing into her memory.
She laid the comb down and ran her fingers through my hair. It was an unusual moment of intimacy.
~Mom....~
~You scared everyone else, but I knew.... I could see in your silver eyes that you were something worth protecting.~ She pulled my hair back from my temples and fumbled with the strange hair piece for a moment before it clasped with a click. ~Beautiful.~
~Thank you.~ I turned around and saw the wistful expression, the one I’d grown up with, on her face.
We had moments of happiness here in our little oasis, but a shroud of sorrow covered everything she did. Being away from her people caused her pain and I hated being the reason for it.
~What else did you find?~ I said.
Dismissing her musings with a shake of the head, my mother reached into her bag. One after the next, she pulled out treasures and necessities. She had recovered paper for me to dry in the sun, jars full of sea water—one with a crab!—cooking utensils, ropes, clothes, and even music on melodisks.
I sorted her loot into piles of things needing to be dried, repaired, or cleaned, while she inserted one of the new melodisks. The tonifier was old, but its power cells still worked.
Music rose from the box, low and vibrating, thrumming against me with its slow beat.
Mother stepped back from the sound as if it somehow offended her, but didn’t reach for the eject key.
It sounded like nothing I’d heard before, with a rhythm that did not welcome dancing or singing. I could make out no words, and when voices finally joined the cacophony, the impulse to move with the music overwhelmed us.
I took her hand and pulled my mother out of the small enclosure under the evening sky. The two moons above us shone in the dim light, one a little larger and farther away than the other. They gazed down on us as our bodies took in the visceral intonations.
Something flickered at the corner of my vision, as if the fire had somehow followed us and sparked in the night air, but when I turned to look, it was gone.
2
I worked all morning, laying each piece of paper on the rocks along the shoreline, securing them with small stones so nothing would be lost to the trickster wind. Mother found entire books for me written in Erdlander, and while she couldn’t read them, they made sense to me; the words were familiar, like a sibling reunited. I spent hours studying the other books she’d brought home, running my finger over each word, understanding its meaning through touch. Mother even found a melodisk of a book being read, which ignited the language in my mind. She suspected their language was somehow in my blood, just like my need for air.
Layi
ng out the paper was slow, but by the time the sun rose to its full height, nearly a hundred pages sprawled around me. Pleased with my work, I sat down to lie in the sand and enjoy the heat.
Mother retreated to the water. This time of year, the sun was so close it felt as if its rays reached out and brushed my skin. The heat relaxed me, lulling me into a sleepy respite, but my mother’s sensitive skin dried out far too fast. So I lay alone on the beach, as she slept beneath the water just beyond the coral reef separating our cove from the open sea.
I closed my eyes, letting the heat seep into my skin. My mind drifted to the forest where animals hunted and scavengers picked at whatever scraps remained. Life wasn’t supposed to be lived like mine, alone. The situation would probably not change, though, as the few Sualwets I’d met were afraid of me, and—thanks to my mother’s stories—Erdlanders terrified me.
As a child I hadn’t minded the solitude, enjoying my mother’s attention and playing with the animals in and out of the water. But at fifteen years old, almost sixteen, something inside me longed for more. I didn’t have a name for it, but it tugged at me.
The sun floated across the cloudless sky as I half-dozed. Our cove might have been the safest place on the planet, solitary and undiscovered by Sualwets and Erdlanders alike. Images of floating boats and swimming clouds filled my mind until a sound jolted me from my thoughts.
A hoooooffff and then swoosh rose and the air moved as if something had run past me. I looked down the beach just as a dark spot shrank and then disappeared.
“Hey!” I jumped to my feet and ran toward the movement.
If it was an animal, it had already gone. Few ventured here. They were skittish around my mother and me. Perhaps it was used to groups, an Erdlander pet that had lost its way.
I raced after it, sand flying behind me as my webbed feet scooped it up, and sprinted along the beach until I reached the beginning of the forest. The trees were thin near the sand but thickened farther back, stretching out beyond my reach, colliding with a cliff wall that led to the mountains.
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