Author’s Note:
Thanks again to everyone for reading! This is the third installment in an anthology series I’ve come to call The Diaspora. You don’t need to read them in any order, but they do build a larger world…or galaxy as it is. As always you can read it here, but an effort to make it as easy to read for as many as possible I have broken this story up into four posts so it’s easier to keep your place. You can also check it out on Medium:
https://medium.com/@YesItsReallyGriffin/we-the-liars-3bc177f31d69
And for the first time, it’s available on Kindle! (99 cents because Uncle Jeff has to have his blood)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BZVLM14
Also, for you Nook users you can have it for free!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/we-the-liars-griffin-turnipseed/1137259122?ean=2940162954644
——
Amon knew something was afoot the moment he opened his eyes.
Blinding light streamed down from a featureless ceiling, each photon fighting its way to be the first to sear his freshly thawed corneas. The kick of adrenaline that his casket had supplied to bring him into the land of the living was all that kept him from closing his eyes and sliding back into blissful oblivion. The chemicals rushed through his veins sending his heart into a furious pounding and gluing his eyes wide open for the onslaught of light. His muscles strained and pulled against his restraints as his body was driven forcefully into animation.
Amongst this torrent of sensation, a curiosity. Blocking the unyielding light were two heads, they peered down into his casket just as he began to hyperventilate. Why would there be two heads?
Amon had hardly known what he would find when he came back to life, or if he would come back at all. He had dutifully worked his stint aboard the Delaney’s Fable, five years of interminable solitude followed by sweet abeyance. As far as he knew there were only three possible outcomes when he went back on the ice. One, he’d be awoken mercifully by a dethaw specialist to help settle a new planet, a colony planet would have been found, this reckless bet he’d made as a younger man improbably paying off. Two, he’d wake up to another watcher pulling him out of cryo as best they could, he’d be thrown unwillingly into another work stint, his worst nightmares come to life. Or three, he wouldn’t wake up at all, the last five years of his life a fever dream before the grave.
None of these possibilities would explain why two heads, hair just grown out slightly from a cryo-shave, floating above two sets of denim-covered shoulders should be looking down at him chattering excitedly while his casket unceremoniously kicked him into consciousness. The synthetic adrenaline worked its way into his synapses setting charges racing along neurons as his mind attempted to decode the babble bouncing between the two heads. His mind, still flooded with chemicals from cryogenic stasis, didn’t stand a chance. So instead he did what he could do, which was tense every muscle in his body and hyperventilate.
“Woah. Easy, easy, easy there.” The first decipherable words hit his years laden with Russian accent, a concept itself that sent his mind careening down a myriad of memory paths. Who was this? Where had they come from? What did it mean for someone to have a Russian accent? Amon had no hope of answering even the simplest question in his current state, so he continued with his current strategy of mindlessly gulping down air as his heart rate continued to climb. “Take it easy, big, deep breaths.” He fought his instincts and managed, just barely, to control his breath. Every fiber of his body was fighting to work in overdrive. “That’s it, that’s it, a few more big breaths like that, slowly, slowly.” The first head said, it was finely featured and covered in a short wave of blonde.
Mercifully, the crest of the adrenaline passed and his body relaxed back into his casket, breath fell back into a labored wheeze. The room began to clarify around him. This was the dethaw chamber, he remembered it from the last time he came off the ice. But why had he been driven awake so forcefully with the adrenaline? Who were these people, and why were there two of them?
“Well that’s hardly the easiest way out of cryo chango, but it certainly is the fastest.” The second head offered, answering the least of his many questions. As his sight returned he saw that this head belonged to a dark, stocky body. A tight curl of black hair all that had regrown since it’s shave, the denim shirt and canvas pants indicated beyond a doubt that this was another watcher, as was the other. But why should there be two? “Unfortunately for you, we didn’t have much say in the matter,” It chattered on.
“Wh...wh...wh,” Amon tried, his vocal cords seized tight after untold time in stasis. The light head reached in with her clarifying body and unstrapped him. “Why two?” he finally managed to wheeze just before he rolled to the side and retched.
It wasn’t until they had Amon pulled out of the casket and had him huddling under a blanket with a hot cup of broth filled with restoratives that something approaching a fully formed thought made it all the way through his mind. By then he could just about take the measure of his companions. They were seemingly complete opposites. One, a heavyset dark Latino man with a crooked grin and tattoos creeping up above his collar had introduced himself as Basilio. The other, Anya, was all he was not, petite and fine with delicate features and wisps of blonde hair shining back in the bright light.
That was where the differences ended though, they both seemingly had an undying love for boisterous banter. Indeed, Amon thought they hadn’t stopped talking since he first cracked open his eyes and figured this rapport probably went back as long as their relationship. Although whether they were truly kindred spirits, or just two humans so starved of companionship that they immediately clung to the first person they saw, Amon couldn’t discern. In the end, it didn’t matter. The babble continued, flooding his ears, clogging his neural pathways, and blocking each attempt at coherent thought. Finally, he couldn’t take another quip from the duo.
“Enough!” he let out in a papery wheeze, voice still unprepared for use. The two faces turned towards him. “Enough,” he repeated in barely a whisper. “I, I, I need to think...”
“Oye! He speaks!” Basilio exclaimed. “Well, it’s no fun but the adrenaline kick sure gets ‘em up and moving in a hurry.”
“Indeed.” Anya agreed, leaning in and prying open one of his Amon’s eyelids to check his pupil contraction. “Reflexes look alright, and you’re talking which means you’re on the fast track to dethaw, for whatever that’s worth.”
“Still going to be un chaqui enorme amigo.” Basilio put in, further confusing the situation with another language.
“He means you’re going to have one hell of a hangover,” Anya lent more helpfully. “Good news is when the ship dethaws you like this and pushes you up with adrenaline the worst of it is over in a day or so, rather than the slow thaw which is gentler and safer but has a longer recovery.”
“I didn’t know there was more than one way off the ice,” Amon rasped, bewildered as to why they were talking about this when he had so many more pressing questions. “Why....why are there two of you? There’s only ever supposed to be one to wake the next watcher. Are we still traveling? Am I here for another work stint?”
Basilio let out a low whistle. “Cabrón, five minutes back with the living and you’re already getting at the questions we don’t have answers to.”
Anya put a comforting hand on his knee and looked up at him warmly with her deep blue eyes. “Yeah you’ll have lots of questions I’m sure, and we’re here for you, but you should know we know fuck all more than you. Let’s start with the basics then, what’s your name?”
“Amon, Amon Osman. I’m from Cairo, I came on the ship as maintenance crew. Didn’t you?”
“We did indeed, and I, like you, did my stint awake, unlike this lucky bastard over here.” She said sticking a thumb over at Basilio.
“One day I’m eating dinner with mi abuela in Sucre, next I’m waking up to my new best friend Anya here.” He agreed with a smile of crooked teeth. “Well she’s either that, or she can’t get away from me on this ship.”
“I don’t have much of a bloody choice now do I, Basilio?” She shot back with a warm smile. “I’m trapped out here in the void with a good-for-nothing drug-dealing Bolivian gangster.”
“Former drug dealing gangster, thank you very much. Out here I’m Basilio Cardenas, Starship Technician.”
Amon had to let out a dry chuckle at the man’s mocking pride and endearing smile. “Waaaa, he talks and he laughs! You’ll get on just fine with us chango,” he said, scooping Amon up with a thick arm before dropping him into a wheelchair. “Vamos let’s go meet the others.”
“There are others?!” Amon gasped, almost choking on his broth as they rolled out into the long cold halls of the ship. “Bet your ass there are!” Anya chimed in joyfully. “Your addition makes five of us clueless mothers.”
“Five?” Amon whispered, bewildered. “How long have you been awake?”
“Well as you may have guessed by Basilio’s butt-ugly grow out he’s been out for about five months now,” she snarked. “I came off about a year ago. But Mali has been awake for about four years, and Stephanie...”
“Stephanie esta muy kh’encha, she has some seriously bad luck.” the Bolivian put in solemnly. “She worked her stint all by her lonesome, then pulled Mali off the ice and tried to go back down herself but the ship wouldn’t let her. That was nine years ago, now. Pobre chica has lost almost a decade to this pinche ship.”
“Time’s a bitch Basilio, she’s coming for all of us if we can’t figure out what’s going on.” Anya agreed.
“So, what? You all have just been awake on the ship with more and more people waking up and you have no idea why?” Amon wondered.
“Pretty much my friend,” Anya replied with a friendly glance as she walked alongside his wheelchair. “A few hours ago we got a set of clothes from the biofactory and a note saying where to come collect your sorry ass. The ship, when it decides to defrost another one really seems to be fast tracking it, we barely had time to get to the dethaw chamber before you woke up and started losing your shit.”
“De nada cabrón.” Basilio said, accepting unoffered thanks. “If we hadn’t ran down here as fast as we did you probably would’ve given yourself an aneurysm pulling at those restraints.”
“...Thanks, I guess.” Amon replied belatedly. “So where are you living? What have you been doing all this time?”
“Well not fixing the ship, that’s for goddamn sure,” the petite Russian scoffed. “We’ve mostly been pissing away our time trying to figure out how to keep ourselves fed, and keep from killing each other.” She shot a playful elbow into Basilio’s side.
“Oye huasa!” he yelped. “Look it’ll be better if we all talked together back at the house. Estephania should be putting together quite a spread for us tonight, we’ll have you back to feeling like your old self in no time. Why don’t you tell us about yourself Amon?”
So the three of them walked slowly through the cool halls of the ship, the walls slid by in their creamy texture, the ship supplied the sounds of wind whispering through palms to mask the echoes of their footfall, and Amon began to tell his tale. How he’d grown up in Cairo working the delta dam, his hydraulic engineering experience making him a natural applicant for the Delaney program. How a series of catastrophic dust storms off the Sahara choked out the city and sent his mother and grandmother off to an early grave with dust pneumonia, leaving him with no path forward on Earth. He told them how he’d nearly hung himself from the sycamore behind the house during his workstint, and how blowing glass in the workshop had kept him sane and held him back from the brink. Apparently Anya had worked her stint before him because she didn’t receive any of his glassware, but there was plenty of it in evidence at the house now. The boisterous pair lent a sympathetic ear to all of it, mercifully keeping their usual chatter to a minimum, only adding a word of encouragement when Amon was almost lost to tearful reflection.
The halls passed in an hour and an eternity.
When they finally rounded the corner to the threshold Amon fell silent. Where stretching halls had been now a wall of greenery filled the open archway, he choked on his words as memories flooded him. During all the interminable years aboard the Delaney’s Fable this sight had always meant home, and yet it was the one he’d hoped to never see again. Nevertheless chemicals flooded his brain telling him that safety lay ahead and as the gates opened up tears poured forth. Anya handed him his stack of work clothes all freshly laundered, but clearly the ones he’d worn during his stint, and his boots. As he grasped their battered leather collars he broke into outright sobs. The cruelty and the beauty of this place weighing on him in equal measure.
Amon’s companions stepped discreetly outside while he changed and steeled himself to take his first steps into this world that was at once new and old, honest and forged. He took a teetering step out of his chair and crossed through the air curtain, with his first hungry gulp of this rich, warm air the tears stopped and he stretched his arms out wide. A man savoring all the feelings of being alive. He bellowed at the top of his lungs with joy and rage and gratitude and pain, as his new companions stepped in beside him to catch him should this absolute catharsis become too much.
Then Amon took his first steps forth into this new, old world. His boots, lovingly crafted by some soul unknown, having become as much a part of himself as his own hands now went from turning aside spades to holding him upright as he staggered in the loamy dirt. Anya and Basilio stood just to his side as his first unsure steps took him across the bridge that leapt the little perimeter stream. His strides gaining more and more strength as they passed through the wood, cottonwoods towered overhead in the full vigor of summer.
At last they broke out into the high grasses of the outer paddocks. Above, the sky stretched off in its contained infinity, as the simulated sun sunk past the horizon leaving the world soaked in lilac. And there. Off just barely visible on the rise, was a sight Amon loved and hated to see once again. The old farmhouse. There outlined in violet was the home he never wanted, and yet was still beckoning all the same.
It stood exactly as he remembered. Neat and plain, two wood-clad stories with square windows and a large covered porch overlooking the gardens and the fields beyond. It was every inch the idyllic American farmhouse. Amon hadn’t known how long it had stood before he awoke the first time, and he had no idea how long he’d been asleep now. But here it was, the one seemingly immovable object in a sea of so much change.
As they made their uneasy way along the well-trodden track towards the house Amon could just pick out a figure digging amongst the gardens. Coming just within earshot the figure stood, remarkably tall, overall clad, with a basket on their hip and stretched out a long arm in greeting.
“Oye Estephania we brought home some ice!” Basilio called out with a laugh.
The figure was in fact a powerful, tall woman with broad shoulders and a mane of warm brown hair. She dropped her basket and hurried over to us as we stepped out of the grasses and into the garden.
“You assholes!” she protested. “Making him walk already, he’s about to fall over!”
“Hell, this crazy bastard was ready to walk the second we woke him up!” Anya shot back in a playful retort.
All the same Stephanie fell in beside Amon and threw an arm under his wobbling shoulder, nearly lifting him off the ground in the process. Just then, the front door slammed open and a slight, dark figure stepped out onto the porch.
“Can you not keep it down? I’m trying to work!” They bellowed, waving their tablet about.
“Oh relax Mali! I hear the boss is away anyhow.” Anya hollered, smiling.
The slight woman, Mali, briskly met the party out on the path throwing another helpful arm around Amon, grasping near his waist as Stephanie’s powerful frame had nearly lifted him clear off the ground.
“Thank you, thank you,” he protested. “ But really, I want to walk on my own, get my body working again if I can.”
“Well you don’t have to tell us twice!” Mali laughed, giving him a playful nudge sending Amon staggering. He caught himself on the stairway rail just before he took his first steps back into the house, breath laden with decades of mixed emotion. He paused and took a deep gulp of air and opened the door.
Amon looked back and forth savoring the peacefully mollified surrounds, it was nearly all the same. Somewhere along the line some poor watcher had gone out of their way to make tidy new furnishings that bespoke years of developed craftsmanship. The great table, now hewn of dark red wood, was strewn with belongings. Papers and hand drawn maps and at one end and the evidence of a dinner ready to be served at the other. But as he looked beyond, out back, where he ought to see the little reservoir out near the treeline, Amon got his first hint that something was truly changed about this place. Where windows had been, doors now covered almost the entirety of the back wall.
“Feel like home?” Stephanie asked kindly.
“Well almost...as much as I never wanted to see the place again. It looks like you all have been busy though.” Amon replied.
“Hmmm, indeed. After I couldn’t go back to sleep when I woke Mali up we knew we had to expand the living quarters,” she said laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s not exactly the Ritz, we had to strip half of the perimeter forest bare on the back side for materials, but at least we have something to keep the rain off and enough space to keep from killing each other.”
“How much have you had to build?”
“Well the house was only ever built to accommodate one, so we’ve probably tripled the square footage but we have split everything into three rooms. We’re ready for you, but God help us if many more wake up. We’ll be sleeping folks out in the halls before we know it.” She prophetised with a heavy sigh. “None of that should worry you now though, my friend. Dinner’s nearly ready, I’ll wash my new greens and we can get to it!”
“Capo a little of Estefania’s home cooking and you’ll be right as rain!” Basilio cried, hugging Amon around the shoulders then helping him into a seat.
Dinner was a revelation.
The collective labor and experience of four motivated minds working this fertile land transformed a slurry of raw inputs into transcendent art. While Amon had developed a passable proficiency with the gardens on his stint, enough to provide a diet with enough variety to keep the worst of the monotony at bay, he had never grown half of the variety that was served to him that one evening. Beyond that were delicate cheeses courtesy of the cow and Basilio’s labor of love, and several steaming loaves of bread that Mali had made when she needed a break from furiously burrowing into her tablet. Every dish, every ingredient, every plate was all watched over my Stephanie’s scrupulous eye, running the bustling kitchen like clockwork even as the house became more and more crowded.
The ship had even provided wine for the occasion. The vines were now just withered old sticks out by the lake, but somehow somewhen some watcher had poured their soul into these bottles, waiting the years for the vines to bear fruit then carefully mashing it into delicate ambrosias. Even an AI could see an event that called for a little celebration.
Amon sat back in awe of this little family that had sprung up in the least likely of places. Basilio and Anya continued their boisterous banter, dodging this way and that to lend a hand when called for, and avoiding a slap from Stephanie’s spoon when they got a bit too cheeky. Mali carefully set the table and carved up her bread and laid it steaming before Amon with a block of salted butter and a smile. Stephanie, matron of the house, gave a call when the main course was ready, a hearty lasagna laden with all the splendor of the gardens, and everyone scurried to their places around the table as she took her seat at the head.
“To Amon!” Basilio called, thrusting his glass skyward, “Another cojudo come to our little familia.”
“To Amon!” The rest cried joyously, making the occasion feel like a long awaited homecoming rather than the existential crisis that it was.
Wine flowed, dish after dish spun their way round the table, and the conversation relaxed into a langruous stream as these lost souls reached out and built new connections. The more Amon ate the hungrier he became his jolt out of cryo catching up with him and sending him after every spare calorie he could grab. Stephanie looked down the table warmly at him, happy to fuel his recovery. As they got to talking Amon learned a little more about his new family members.
Stephanie Morritz was a chef-become-nurse from St. Louis who’d caught the bad side of a divorce from a young marriage that left her with few options other than to head over to the Delaney recruitment office to try her luck there. Against all odds she was accepted, and with little family left to speak of she said what few goodbyes she had to make and headed off towards the spaceport.
Mali Saetang was a true rarity, a maintenance worker who was actively recruited by Delaney to be a part of the venture. She grew up in Pattaya City and had built a formidable resume as a computer systems architect by the time she was sixteen, when she was captured by a militant group and held in solitary captivity for three years. Far from breaking her spirit her time alone had seemed to spur a further bent of her creativity, she sketched out a series of new storage and security systems that she then went on to sell to a couple high profile banks in Bangkok. A mind that grows more productive in true solitude did not stay off of the Delaney radar for long, and several local gangs began to come after her for information on the bank systems she’d built. So the recruiters had little trouble elucidating the appeal of a fresh start to Mali.
The profane Russian, Anya, needed little motivation as well to try her luck with the Delaney venture. She’d grown up with little family in St. Petersburg and wound up at twenty working the industrial docks having to contend with heavy machinery and heavy seamen alike. Her love for surly language had persisted as she taught herself English and Mandarin with what little free time she could afford. But it was her mechanical aptitude that had likely landed her a berth aboard the Fable, she’d held her own on the docks for her ability to mentally take apart vast machinery and find the simplest, most effective repair possible. A skill that was in short supply out in the depths of space.
And finally Basilio Cardenas, the jovial Bolivian who’d grown so close to Anya in his short time awake. He alone among the five of them hadn’t been previously woken for a five year work stint, though whether that was luck or misfortune was anyone’s guess. Certainly he’d saved years of his life from the abyss of interstellar travel, but now to be thrust into this strange place under such unsure circumstances would be trying for any mind. Basilio took it all in stride. His formative years were spent running the back alleys of Sucre helping along the family business of cocaine trafficking. So he needed a natural resilience to survive. Eventually though, rival factions within the family shrunk the ground beneath his feet and sent him running to the relative refuge of and uncle in Sao Paulo and eventually into the waiting arms of the local Delaney recruiter who picked up his innate mathematical aptitude and resilience almost immediately, and offered him a shot at a new life which he seized with relish.
Eventually the lazy rounds of introductions were completed and attention fell back on Amon. He’d eaten his fill and had his head filled with more stories than his half-frozen mind could parse. Silence fell across the table and he ventured his first real contribution to the conversation.
“So, wha.....” he trailed off, trying to address the elephant that hung over the room so delicately.
“So what the fuck are we doing here?” Anya chipped in.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
Stephanie cleared her throat and four pairs of eyes looked up at her obediently. “I wish we had a better answer for you Amon,” she began. “I’ve been awake for nine years now and have only come up with more questions. To be honest though, at this point I’m tired of searching for answers, this life on this farm may all be a facade but it’s the best life I’ve had,” she confessed. “I’ve been able to build a better family here than anywhere else. I wake up every morning to clear skies and plentiful rain rather than the perpetual dust that lingered over St. Louis. They built the American dream of old right here on this ship, and it may all be a lie but it just may be the best life I’m ever going to get.” Her clear green eyes dropped to the table as she trailed off.
“Well on that cheery note,” Mali piped up. “As much as I love spending my time here with Steph, I have been able to uncover some information from within the ship’s libraries as to our current situation to see if I could figure out what the hell is going on, although admittedly all of my research has generated more questions than answers.’
“First off, the CRS Delaney’s Fable has been flying for 1,563 years if the charts are to be believed,” she said, skipping over this bombshell of information as if she were delivering the weather report. Amon barely had time to react before she barreled on. “That would be why most of us have already been woken up for our stints already, Basilio got the blessing of waking up for the first time to whatever the hell is going on with all of us.’
“But back to it. So just under 1,600 years, and we’ve made a fair bit of headway. From what I can tell we’ve bounced through ten different systems and kept on going,” once again, Mali skipped through potentially shattering revelations with little ceremony. Amon simply held his tongue and let the torrents of implications flood his mind as he tried to keep her words straight. “By now we’ve actually made a bit of headway out towards the Perseus Arm of the galaxy, given that it was out at the wider range of our specified sector of space. Although we’re still thousands of years from approaching it’s outer limits. But we have passed through a system relatively recently, about 75 years back we pulled into orbit around a star and then eventually fired the engines back up and carried on.’
She pulled up a new map, showing the Fable’s trajectory since they’d left the last system the ship was now clear out in the belly of interstellar space, the system they’d left the closest point of reference by far. Mali continued, “Now this obviously is showing our current course, if the charts are right we should arrive at the next system in about 125 years, relatively brief flight time for this ship of ours. I’ve been looking at this chart for about four years since I woke up, and it’s tough to distinguish due to lack of reference points but it does seem like we’re making headway.” She paused and locked eyes with Amon. “Of course, that is, if we are to believe the information the ship is feeding us. We’ve been more or less trapped between here and the dethaw chamber since I woke up. The ship could be feeding us whatever it wants, although why it’d lie I can’t imagine, still that’s what I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of.”
The room shrunk around Amon, his breath quickened, and blackness overtook his vision as the meaning of this deluge of new information took hold on his mind.
“Alright, alright Mali. Slow down,” Stephanie stepped in, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “You’ll give the poor guy a heart attack overwhelming him with information like this. Just breathe Amon, as confusing as this may be we’re all safe here.”
He fought back the coming panic breath by breath. All eyes around the table were fixed on him beaming with empathy as he struggled to fit this new information into his understanding of the world. Finally he regained some composure.
“So as far as we know, we’re stranded awake aboard this ship and the nearest system is over a hundred years away?” he gulped. “As far as we know we’re all as good as dead?”
“As good as dead together amigo,” Basilio reassured, lifting his glass with a solemn smile.
“Oh it’s not so bad as all that,” Mali cut in. “For one, things have been changing faster and faster on the ship. Steph woke me up four years ago, then two years until Anya, then a year until Basilio, now you just a few months later.” As if this was some sort of grand reassurance to remedy the doom that was clouding Amon’s mind. “But it’s not just us, new information has been becoming available to me faster and faster. I spend most of my days combing the available parts of the ship’s libraries for any clue into what’s going on and new troves have been opening at a faster rate. Plus, more halls out in the ship have been opening. At first it was an occasion when the door from the homestead opened, then we got access to the dethaw room, and now more and more halls in other parts of the ship have been opening themselves up to us. That’s what all these maps are, us trying to chart the open halls,” she said gesturing to the pile of maps at the far end of the table.
“As if we’d want to go anywhere else on this godforsaken ship,” Anya guffawed. “What like we’re going to want to go hang out in the cryo halls with all those frozen mummies?”
“Oh look on the bright side cabróna,” Basilio chipped in. “Before too long we’ll have the run of the place and you won’t have to see my ugly ass ever again.”
“I can’t wait,” she shot back with a playful punch in the shoulder.
“The increasing rate of new wakers is a double-edged sword, though.” Stephanie cautioned. “It’s nice to have new faces, and they’re certainly a sign that things are changing. We have room for one more after Amon with our current setup before we need to get building again.” She sighed and looked around pensively. “Eventually we’ll start really straining the resource balance of the homestead. This place was built to keep one person alive, fed, and in balance. We’ve already had to greatly expand food production capabilities and soon enough we’ll run into serious issues with fertilization and nitrogen fixing no matter how clever we get with crop rotation.”
“Steph, ever the joyous light.” Mali quipped in with an impish smile.
Stephanie shook her head and laughed, hard realities were no match for good company this evening. “Whatever comes our way, we’ll figure out a way to face it head on. Now, Amon you get a break on dish duty tonight since it’s your first night, but tomorrow we’re putting you to work, so don’t get used to it! I’m sure you’re beat though, so you can shack up out back with Basilio.”
“Oh you poor bastard,” Anya moaned. “I can hear his snoring across the workshop, you’ll never get a wink of sleep!”
“Callate cojuda!” Basilio protested. “Don’t you worry Amon, we’ll get on just fine.” He rose and collected plates and Amon was promptly shown off to his cot.
In truth, Basilio did snore, but even that couldn’t keep Amon up.
His bed may have been nothing more than a firm cot over a floor of packed dirt, but when he first saw it after dinner it looked like the finest feather bed ever constructed by man. He staggered towards it exhausted and stuffed and content. As soon as his head hit the pillow sleep engulfed him like a coming tide.
Amon strode swiftly out of the cover of trees and into the tall grasses of the far paddocks. It was a view he’d seen a hundred times before. The rolling green hills becoming more and more orderly as they approached the old farmhouse upon its rise. But this was not his farmhouse, and this was not his homestead. He was outside. Well and truly outside. The sky was no clever facade, behind him the woods stretched off unbroken into the dark shades, the sun was radiant and warm on his cheeks as it cast its last rays of the day before descending below the tree tops. A thousand new scents filled his nose, nearly all of which were nowhere to be found on his homestead. This was the truth to the lie he had been living, he felt it with all the surety of a dreamer.
He walked confidently through the paddocks, long strides covering the ground with ease. A soft evening breeze rustled the grass and brought a new scent to him, fresh water. As he crested the little hillock on his way up to the house he could see the source. Where on his homestead there was just a little pond behind the house, here an arm of a great lake reached out towards him. The water was mirror flat and shone with all the brilliance of a true sunset lavender and azure and sunburst glowing brilliantly back up at a sky painted with the same colors.
With a smile Amon turned back towards the house. It was just as he remembered it. Square and neat with little windows set across the front and a wide porch spanning it’s width. The wood was weathered but well kempt and covered nearly every surface in its protective embrace. He took the two steps up from the garden path onto the porch and he turned around to look back at the path he’d followed from the woods. Beyond the tree-covered hills rose higher and higher to a few craggy peaks off in the evening haze. He drunk in another intoxicating breath of someplace that could be so real, so alive. Finally, he turned and reached for the door handle. It flew open with a scream.
The scream ripped him from sweet oblivion and set his heart to racing, he looked across the room at Basilio just as they both heard the body hit the floor.