Yeah, you can check out my project (called "How can this be?") in the Writers' Corner, and the "potential prologue" I posted a while ago. This is from the same universe, but much later. I've decided to write out-of-order in an effort to get more inspiration.
This story is intended to be the first chapter of the second novel in the trilogy. It introduces Kiane, the main viewpoint character of the second novel.
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The child-doctor calls me his “ferryman”. I am not quite so certain what the word means, but I am thinking it means someone who carries things back and forth from space. This is what the child-doctor uses me for. He gives me cargo and I carry them in the star-jumper for him, wherever he may ask me.
The child-doctor tends to use odd terms for everything. To him, the star-jumper is not a “star-jumper”: it is a “spaceship”. It is an odd name; I do not know what a “ship” is. He calls the place-points “coordinates”. It is a long word and I do not much like to say it. Too long. To him, I am the “spaceship’s pilot”. I think not. I am the star-jumper’s star-finder. Such strange terms the child-doctor uses. I don’t understand him very much. I doubt anybody does.
He has told me is a “human” and that his people live on the other side of the stars, where we can’t see or can’t be bothered to see. They are a strange people with strange words and strange bodies, but I find anyhow that most people are strange. The child-doctor disagrees. He tells me I am the strange one.
“You are strange, Kiane,” he says. “There’s not another one of your kind, anywhere in the Galaxy. At least where I’ve explored. Tell me—have you met another of your kind?”
“Kiane” is the mouth-noise he has for me. And he is right. I am alone. I have not found another like me through all my time being the child-doctor’s ferryman. I do not feel very much alone though. I have the child-doctor. I have the star-jumper. And I have the world of black water. So perhaps I am not alone.
“Kiane,” he called me when he first met me. When he first met me I was on the desert world. It was not a world I like much but I could not find a way off of it. One day I had crashed my star-jumper and then I was alone, and I could not make it work. I melted into black water and ran my surfaces over the silver rods. I tried to make the star-jumper go up again and leap into the skies. I could not. It hissed and burned and gave a smell that made my insides shudder and spasm. I knew it was beyond repair.
So I was stuck on this world. I do not know for how long I was. It was very, very long. So long that I almost forgot everything else. I almost forgot the world of black water. I almost forgot the cool of the stars on my form as I journeyed through my star-jumper, seeking seeking seeking. I forgot everything but the desert world.
Oh what a horrible world it was. There was no water anywhere. Simply dust. Dust sharp and stinging and burning against my water form. I had to change forms. I could not be water in this world, not when there was so much dust. Dust so choking, dust that prickled me with its little sharp grains and covered the horizon far as I could see.
When the child-doctor found me I had taken the form of most of the desert dwellers on that world. I was a thick, heavy, stout thing. Ugly. Skin that pouched and bagged around my body, skin hardened and scoured by hundreds of grains of flying sand. The people on the desert world found me and they took me in. But they weren’t kind to me. They were not a kind people overall. Their life on the desert was harsh and demanding and they could not afford to be kind to me.
They put me to work right after they found me. I was to run one of their “stations”. They called them “stations”. I called it all-closed-four-walls-smells-like-dust. That is too long a name though. So I settled for calling it my prison. It was a little building made of mud-from-desert-dust, settled right in the middle of a desert valley. We were constantly being assaulted by wind. So much wind. Wind that brought dust, so much dust, sharp dust scouring dust. Even in my desert body I still could not handle the dust. I dreamed of black water, calm and cool and so peaceful. Not dust.
We did not do much. We is me and two other desert dwellers. The two others liked to loll around, their paunchy bodies sagging. They sat and talked in mouth-noises. I did not like to make mouth-noises, especially not their kind of mouth-noises. Theirs were loud and deep and rumbled me inside and I didn’t like that. Me, I spent my time mostly in the middle of the prison, seeing dust so much dust everywhere and I felt sick. I wanted to leave. But I could not, because my star-jumper was broken.
Then one day the child-doctor came.
The desert-people liked to speak of prophecies; they thought everything could be predicted in the changing patterns of wind and dust. I thought this was nonsense and rightly so. The day the child-doctor came, nothing was different. The other two talked long and hard in their mouth-noises. They talked about the great cities to the south, and how they wished to go there. They were not doing their station-duty. I was not either. Our duty was to remain near the front of the station and greet any travelers that stumbled in. But of course there were no travelers. Not even the desert dwellers would brave the screaming winds, the raging dust.
So it surprised us all when a traveler came. I saw him first, because I was passing to the front of the station. Lately I had started pacing around the entire station because I needed to do something. Anything to distract from where I was. So that was how I noticed him first—because as I passed to the front I saw him stumble in, and collapse with a great mouth-noise grunt onto the floor.
I was shocked. I was shocked because I had never seen anything like the child-doctor before. He was not a stocky rough-skin bag, as the desert dwellers were. He was not like anything I had seen before, and when I first saw him I could only stare at him; I was too shocked. Such a strange body. Such jagged crooked appendages protruding from his sides, and what was that strange soft-looking brownish stuff on his top, when the rest of him was so smooth and pale?
But above all I noticed the dust. The stranger was covered with it. It sunk into the garments billowing around him, seemed sowed into the crevices of his skin. He had been walking for a long time in the dust. Too long.
When this thought floated through me, all of my apprehension disappeared. I did not care that this was a strange creature, the likes of which I’d never seen before. I hauled him up. It was awkward because he was larger than me. If I had taken another form it would have been easy. He was not that large, but he was larger than my desert dwelling form. So heavy. It was hard to carry him, and I had to struggle for breath. I did it, though. I carried him to my quarters and then I waited for him to wake up.
It took him a long time. Too long for my liking. The two desert dwellers hovered about our room, pestering me with their mouth-noises. I wanted to make them shut up but they would not. They wanted to know what the strange creature was. Who who who they asked me, why why why is he here?
I was glad when he finally woke up. The other two had gotten bored and drifted away to chat in mouth-noises again. I was happy they were gone. It left me alone with the stranger.
He struggled to awaken. He threw his odd appendages around and groaned and tossed his top appendage—what must have been his head. As he tossed and turn, dust fell in showers from his garments and his skin. I stayed patiently by his side, watching him. At long last he pulled himself up. He did it in a strange way. He bent his side-appendages in an angle and folded his body into a ninety-degree angle, so that his top half stuck straight up and his bottom appendages were still resting on the floor. It was an odd site. I have not even seen a grey one sit like that before, and the stranger’s body was built very much like a grey one.
“Hello,” he said through mouth-noises. He was speaking a different language from the desert dwellers. It was not as harsh; in fact, his words were very soft. Very rounded. I liked it immediately, and I understood it.
“Hello.” I replied in his language.
The stranger contorted his face in a bizarre way—his eyes became wide, much wider than I thought they would have (for they were much smaller and narrower than mine), and his mouth fell wide open. I thought it was amusing but I did not let my amusement show. It would not have been polite.
“How can—you do—you—” he sputtered. It was harder to understand him now; his mind’s intent was coming in short and fast bursts. Hard to grab hold of. “You—ah.”
Then the stranger became calm. He pushed himself up with his side-appendages—arms, I finally decided they were—and stood perfectly straight. As straight as a grey one stands. His face was no longer funny. His mouth was shut and his eyes stared straight down at me. I captured the intent floating from him: calm, precise, control.
“You’re a shapeshifter,” he said, “and that is not your natural form.”
“How did you figure that out?” I said. It was not hard to make mouth-noises in his language. I could almost relax.
He said, “I’ve heard of your kind.”
This was the first time I had heard anyone speak of my kind. Not even the grey ones knew what I was, though admittedly my experience with grey ones was limited. I had assumed I was alone. The only one there was. Sometimes the thought made me feel sad, but mostly I did not mind. I just wanted to leave this desert world.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I’ve heard…” he paused. The corners of his mouth dragged downwards. “I’ve heard of a shapeshifter. A shapeshifter with a ship, who crashed on a desert world.”
“What is a ship?” I said, politely. I could not capture any intent for that word so I did not know what it meant.
“The…” The skin between his eyes became wrinkled, almost as much as my desert dweller skin. “The thing…you came to this world on a—a vehicle—”
“That is my star-jumper,” I said, with a faint feeling of pride. I had built the star-jumper myself.
“Yes, yes, if you want to call it that,” said the stranger, his words coming hastily. “But listen—I require your services.”
“Services?” I said, but then I caught the intent only a few seconds later. “You wish for me to help you?”
“Yes. I don’t have a ship—star-jumper, whatever.” He shook his head. I was unable to catch any intent from that gesture so I didn’t know why he did it. “Mine crashed and burned. But yours—”
“My star-jumper is broken,” I said, and felt a sudden wave of sadness at the words. The star-jumper had seen me through so much, and now it was gone forever. “You cannot use it.”
“It’s still intact, isn’t it?” Intact—in one piece. “If you repair it—” Repair—fix, “—it will fly for you. I’ll help you repair it.”
This was too generous. I had gotten used to the desert world and in this desert world, to display generosity was to ask for death. I felt weak—I almost, for the first time, felt my form begin to dissolve. I looked down and saw the folds over my stomach were shimmering very slightly. No—this—wouldn’t—do—
But I didn’t want to believe the stranger. Why would this creature come into my desert prison and offer to free me? He wanted me to do something for him. I knew this, and I told this.
“What can I do for you?”
He did not seem to notice me at first. In fact, his eyes were fixed on my stomach—or rather, on the shimmering on my stomach. I tried to solidify and succeeded somewhat, but it was becoming harder and harder for me to hold my form together. But when I asked the question, the stranger looked up at me. His eyes were very, very, blue. Blue like a stardust child’s skin. I had never seen a creature with eyes that color before.
“You can…” He paused. A tip of something pink and wet appeared from his mouth and wet his lips. “You see, I require help. There are things I’ve got to do, but…I can’t do them alone. Having a shapeshifter as an aid would—would make things much simpler for me. And it will help you too. I get the feeling that you really don’t want to stay here?”
“You will…you will take me off this world?” I could no longer fight my mounting joy. Oh how I wanted to be free away away from the sand and the dust oh my star-jumper the black water—
“I don’t think you’ll be much help to me in this form, though,” he said. The skin between his eyes was creased again. He seemed to be concentrating, hard, on me. “You’re not even holding it very well.”
This was true; I was not. My joy had gotten into me, had coursed through every nerve of my body until I could barely hold my solid, wrinkled paunchiness together. My stomach folds were dipping, shimmering, becoming more fluid. My walking appendages were spreading in a pool of dark water around the dusty floor.
“Oh—” I said, disconcerted. Even though I hated this form I did not want to let go of it just yet. I felt insecure and unstable whenever I became black water when I was not on the black water world. There was nothing to buoy me up, and I had to spread all over whatever surface I was on. That was most unpleasant. “What form—what form shall I take?”
It was getting harder to speak, because my face was beginning to melt as well. I struggled to become solid, commanding my nerves to stop melting, to harden. But nothing could stop it. I had borne this form for too long. It was time to change. The stranger had merely provided the catalyst.
“Hmm…” The stranger’s between-eyes-skin creased further. He was staring very intently at me. “Take on a form like me. Can you do that?”
I could, and I was only too eager to. “Yes,” I said. “But I must—I must sample your DNA—”
“Go right ahead. I won’t stop you,” he said, and spread his arm-appendages out wide.
I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation. I did not stop to warn him because I did not think he would find the experience unpleasant. With a shudder I dropped my unwieldy desert dweller guise, becoming water again. But only for a moment. I did not allow myself to spread on the floor; I used all my strength to leap up and engulf him.
He cried out, but only for a moment, because I surrounded his face, preventing him from making further mouth-noises. He jerked his arm-appendages and leg-appendages, trying to get me off, but I would not be stopped. He had asked me to do this, so I would.
Then, after I was sure I had engulfed his entire body, sticking to him like a second skin, I loosened—and sunk into him, my cells joining his cells.
In that instant I ceased to be and he ceased to be and—
I saw. I saw others of his kind, with limbs as jagged as his and bodies that folded into angles as easily as his did. I saw him, smaller than he was now, with two other small ones, and two other big ones. I saw him running through a field of green; I saw him holding the hand of one of the big ones; I saw him again, looking more like he did now, not dressed in the loose dust-colored garments he was wearing now but in a long white garment over more colorful ones. He was bent over a row of strange clear tubes, examining them with a watchful, wary intention.
Doctor, the word drifted into my mind. A man of science.
More glimpses and flashes of him. Him talking to three others. Two of them looked the same like the ones I’d seen previously, but different—they were bigger, their faces more lined. But his wasn’t. He looked exactly the same as he had before, small and slim and eyes so bright.
Juvenile. Child. He had not grown from his larval state.
I had seen enough. I had enough genetic data now to become like him—four limbs, body of angles. And I knew more about him. I did not understand all that I knew, but I knew and that was enough.
And so I pulled away, removing my presence cell by cell from the child-doctor’s body. I became water again, but not for long—as soon as all of me was out of him, I reformed. I maneuvered my cells to be just like his, building myself an angular smooth-skinned body. I even created an outpouring of the soft substance on the top of my head. Hair, I’d learned it was called from my probing in the child-doctor’s mind.
When I was done, the child-doctor stared at me, his eyes wide again, his mouth open. He was breathing very hard. Waves of shock radiated from him, and I wondered if I had done something wrong. I let my consciousness loose on myself, seeing me not only from my new eyes but with my mind, drinking in my entire new form.
I had taken the form of an older and more mature member of the child-doctor’s species. I was taller, with more muscle mass, and my skin was darker. Much darker. A deep shade of brown, the same color as the bluffs back home near the black water. My hair burst wildly from the top of my head, and glinted brilliant silver—the same color my eyes had become.
I had even shifted into garments. Loose ones like the child-doctor’s, but not colored beige. Soft blue. Just like the child-doctor’s eyes.
“Ahh…” said the child-doctor when he had found his voice. He moved his head up, and down. A gesture in the affirmative. Strange, how easy it had become to read him now that I had taken on a form like his. “That’s interesting. A silver-eyed boy…”
I did not reply to this. I turned my new hands back and forth, examining them. “Interesting” indeed. But it was better, so much better, than my old form. I didn’t think I could ever go back to…that.
“Well, I suppose it’s time for formal introductions. Dr. Nicholas Legardo,” he said, extending his hand. I stared blankly at the hand. I didn’t know what to do with it.
“Oh…” He realized I was confused, and dropped his hand back to his side. I admired the way it fell back, perfectly straight, not bending once. “I suppose you wouldn’t…but I must know. What is your name?”
Name? I didn’t know what he meant at first. The word was an unfamiliar one. But I sensed his intent and then I knew what he was talking about.
“I don’t have one,” I said. And why should I? I was not one of his people, I was not one of the solid people. I did not need a mouth-noise.
“I see,” said the child-doctor. He put his hands by his sides and they disappeared into his garments. I was startled to see his hands disappear but was too polite to point it out. “I can understand that…but it is a bit troublesome. How about I give you a name?”
Give me a mouth-noise? I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea. I still am not. But if he wanted to I wasn’t going to stop him.
“Very well,” I said. “What do you want to call me?”
“Hmm…” He put his hand on his chin and surveyed me for a long while. I could tell he was deep in thought so I did not interrupt him, even though I began to grow impatient. Finally, the child-doctor broke the silence.
“I’m thinking…I’ll call you ‘Kiane’.”
“Kiane. Kee-ah-neh.” I tried the name on my new tongue. It rolled off the tongue nicely, but I did not like it. I didn’t much like “names” in general, though. I had already forgotten the child-doctor’s name and I didn’t care. “Child-doctor” seemed a much better description for him than whatever his name was.
“Come, Kiane,” said the child-doctor, and he turned toward the door. “Let’s go fix your spaceship.”
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This is only the first part of the chapter, so excuse the kind of abrupt cutting-off point.
All criticism is welcome. In particular, I want critique on Kiane's voice. I wanted to make him sound very alien and foreign, but I wasn't sure how well I carried it out (blecch, I think his voice needs to be a bit more sensual than it is right now). So pay particular attention to the alienness of Kiane's voice. And also pointed out if I used common anthrocentric phrases like "just an inch" or "in my head" or whatever.
I know the Legardo backstory is confusing, but I won't elaborate on it because this would pretty much all have been revealed in the previous novel. "Grey ones" and "stardust children" are aliens that will factor into the story later. Though I'm not so sure about the grey ones.
Fire away!
Awesome job!
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