steam.

 

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Chapter 1

    I slowly circled as the old, cavernous room yawned above me. It was finally mine. After all the red tape, the flurry of work, and the unexpected entrance of my mysterious benefactor- there I was- ready.

    The place was completely raw, old brick crumbling as it climbed to the ornate ceiling. The reliefs on the white washed ceiling were in unbelievable shape, the tiny details delicate and beautiful. Ancient electrical wires blossomed out of the walls at random intervals. Dust motes hung heavy in the air, catching light from the huge circular window above the tall, narrow doors at the entrance. It was the most beautiful, serendipitous, and enormous blank canvas I would ever be given in my life. It was mine to transform.

    My vision- a bookstore-slash-teahouse-slash-museum encompassed a setting of tall towers of books interspersed with a vast collection of Victorian- era marvels with a science fiction twist. The curiosities, the design, the atmosphere would come together for a truly epic steampunk-themed attraction. It would be all that I dreamed for "Steam House”.

    Steampunk itself was a relatively new concept to this tiny mountain town, but it really is the perfect location. Silver Springs has a rich history of mining and steam power. A narrow gauge train still runs from Silver Springs to Mineral Forks, another smaller town at the top of the river and higher in the mountains. The train is the pride of the town and a huge tourist draw, the lifeblood of this former western hub of trade. I just had a burning hunch that my passion for the style and culture of steampunk could really find its home here in Silver Springs.

    I had trouble garnering support from the local chamber of commerce. I had no problem with the “steam” half- it was the “punk” part that was causing the most trouble.  (“Goggles? Science Fiction? Alternate History? Punks? I don’t…. what?”) When I’d gone to a meeting of the local Victorian Society in full on Steam Punk regalia, they told me it wasn’t “what we do here”. I took off my goggles and they let me in, their eyes looking disapprovingly at my teased and curled dark red tresses through their period-accurate monocles.

    “It’s just a trend, Ember.” Others argued, “It’s too odd, it’ll pass, and you won’t have any more customers a soon as it loses its-“

“-Steam?” I put in, snarkily.

    I couldn’t seem to convince them that it was because it was an oddity, because it was unusual and offered amusement, hot drinks, and plenty of strange and marvelous things to look at, not to mention, free WiFi, folks- that I believed it would succeed. I couldn’t quite seem to convince these established, local businessmen that me, an upstart, brash, and - let’s be upfront here, attractive- young woman could come bustling in and use this perfect space downtown to generate a successful business. It was all the more reason for me to prove them all wrong.

    I’d garnered just enough support and taken all the legal steps to feel that maybe- just maybe I could really pull this crazy idea off.

    Enter my mysterious benefactor.

    It couldn’t have come in a more cliché form- Yes, a letter. Complete with wax seal and flowery cursive, Like- I am not even kidding it literally looked like the guy had to be dipping a dramatically absurd feather quill into a pot of ink. It read:

        Dearest Emberleigh,

            Don’t Screw This Up. (Yes, in that perfect, wonderful cursive)

            Also, I have a collection that I would like to be featured in your space. Unit #706 in Storage East. I’ve enclosed the             facility code, the unit’s lock key, and some cashier’s checks for the support of your vision.

            I’ll be paying attention,

            (Illegible Signature- of course)

    The cashiers checks added to an incredible sum. Enough to make me want to run off and retire for life right there and then.  I might have- if the key didn’t have me dying of curiosity. I found the unit and unlocked it, shoving the garage door up as the sun hit the rows of boxes. It took several days worth of trips in my shitbox old car, to transfer them all to my apartment. Inside the boxes I found an incredible treasure trove of curiosities. It was as if all the artistic renderings of all things steampunk came to life- costumes, crystal balls, globes, stones, maps, ships, models, zeppelins, steam powered guns, steam powered gyroscopes, octopus sculptures, mining carts, Victorian everything- countless things that were literally the perfect collection of items for Steam House.

    After my panic attack and a long, long, conversation with my mother – who always manages to bring me back to Earth- I was more committed to making my dream work than ever.

    I bought the space downtown- right out, completely. I got my designers involved and started the orders for the equipment and supplies we would need to transform my space. I began finding vendors and boxes filled with the most beautiful and interesting trinkets began to arrive at my doorstep. Books came pouring in- donations, finds from online, garage sales. I got security systems in place to protect the valuables. I got everything sorted and arranged with the health department, liquor license, and food prep for the tea-house portion, and got an in for a wholesale costumer so I could sell the fashion in addition to clothing my staff in it. I selected and antiqued furniture. I painted, built, sweat, stormed, spent hours on the phone, bargained, cajoled, yelled, cried, laughed, hired, sorted out staffing and scheduling, and one sudden day it was finished, and the doors were ready to be opened.  

    I got there early opening day, the brick walls accented with enormous tapestries, artistic works of metal hanging down amidst the chandeliers, dripping in glass and light. It sparkled off the globes, stones, minerals, and steam-powered models. The tall walls of books and ladders formed partitioned areas within the space. Tufted furniture in jewel reds and rich, deep colors offered retreats, and aromas of vanilla and teacakes wafted from the back kitchens. I slowly circled as the cavernous room yawned above me, now filled, now mine, now ready. Our first customers tittered excitedly, gasping as they entered, greeted by my staff, fully costumed and fully committed to being in character at all times. I smiled and breathed deeply, feeling a rush as it all began.

    The next seasons ebbed and flowed with the traffic of the tourists, but over the summer I had cultivated enough of a local following to keep me through the winters. The regulars would come in and enjoy their tea, see if there was anything new to look at, read my books, and sometimes buy a little trinket when someone’s birthday from out of town was coming up. I also seemed to get a good clientele of writers and artists, who would come in, use the WiFi, drink coffee, and create magic in the space of Steam House. I tried to have enough musicians and little events in house that kept us busy, and things, for the most part, took off. There was nothing else quite like it in Silver Springs, which was dotted with your average coffee shops and plenty of great restaurants. I had a lot going for me with the atmosphere, and as the months went by, my reputation as a business owner took true form. Madame Lettie- they called me, which was funny to me since I’m so young- but I’ll take it because it gives me a sort of queenly feel of respect. Of course, the steam punk dress costume every day definitely helped keep the image. My staff was amazing – it had taken some time to get that all ironed out- they were all so into it with costume and the culture of steam punk. I had to fight off quite a few more eccentric types who kept begging me for jobs, and a few clients that were determined to think we were peddling some less savory wares in the backroom- but I tried to keep a good mix that were loyal to me and respected me as their boss. As time went on, our reputation grew, we were featured in local magazines and the Silver Springs Gazette, and business was good.    

    My own life transformed – I finally felt financially stable, paid back all my student loans for my undergrad, and had a for-real savings account for the first time in my life. I stayed busy working Steam House. I was happy, I felt myself surrounded by the smell of the old pages and the spices of the tearoom. I felt inspired by the science fiction and Victorian feeling surrounded me. I felt like I found my path, my home, my calling.

    Sometimes I wish I could go back to the simplicity of this time, to my precious and adorable naivete. I wish this could have simply been my place. I couldn’t have been more wrong: as from the womb of the universe itself, my energy had long ago been set on a course for an entirely unusual fate.

 

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Chapter 2

      The call started as a vibration. I started to detect it as I walked around the shop, and seemed to have it narrowed down to an area towards the back, an area where I had displayed a lot of my benefactor’s collection. The hum seemed to pull me, and it seemed to grow more and more powerful the more I noticed it. I asked around my staff if any of them noticed it, but they just looked at me blankly.

    “It’s an old building” They would say. “You know what they say about Silver Springs being… you know… kind of haunted.” I snorted in their faces and kept wandering around, listening intently.

    I didn’t give these thoughts much credence, but I did feel as though I was starting to go a little crazy as I passed the area day in and day out, the tug just feeling stronger until one evening, it was a roar.

    It was an evening that I’d stayed late at the shop, finishing up some orders from our costumer and drinking some red vanilla rooibos. I was wearing all black, accented with a frosted gold. My feet were clad in tall, laced and buckled boots. I was tightly cinched in a corset, with a short skirt in front and a large bustle and train in back, long, billowing strips of fabric flowing from the bodice. An equipment belt was layered and cinched low around the fabric at my hips, and I sleeves that stitched to my shoulders. I wore a pair of huge, gold rimmed goggles set up with my heavy ruby curls, and of course my signature heavy, dramatic makeup.

    My concentration had broken from my inventory forms, and I listened to the vibration grow and pulse. I stared at the surface of my tea, as it quivered with each pulse. The light in the shop was warm and glowing, the tangy, clove scent of old books filling the space with a sense of warmth. I slowly became aware the light seemed to take on a colder cast, the looming tapestries rising above me washing out, giving me a sense of menacing doom. It was as if a warm candle had been blown out, and the curiosities and marvels in the room seemed to become suddenly terrifying- sharp teeth, strange creatures, a sense of wrongness. The pulse of the vibration seemed to knock my heartbeat of cadence, and I felt a hot wave of adrenaline surge over me and instantly energize me.

    I started slowly towards the back, my boots seeming to contact the wooden floors impossibly sharply. I felt yanked to the pulse, and an image of a cartoon character, pulled by the steaming fingers of a freshly baked pie filled my mind as my boots continued their inexorable march.

    I entered the small cove, all the peculiar collection pieces of my benefactor leering around me. I walked to a shelf and picked up a small sphere, about the size of a baseball, which seemed to be carved from some sort of heavy, precious stone. It was dark like obsidian, but seemed to have an undertone of deep azure. It was a globe, but featured engraved continents, a much different world than our own, strangely shaped continents and oceans. The light reflected off the color of the sphere and I held it in my hand, sensing the vibration grow around me in intensity as it became the same as the anxious beating of my heart. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the moment, feeling the rush of blood through my veins, feeling my breath, sensing that the weight of the sphere had become an extension of my own hand. I dropped the sphere and it fell, too slowly, to the floor. There was a sudden rush of dry heat, and white light, and a feeling as if my very energy tore from my body, and I abruptly fell through our dimension.

***

  I sat up on my hands and knees, spitting sand. A white hot sun set its piercing gaze upon me, and my throat parched almost instantly. It was too bright for my eyes to see, and I hurriedly remembered my goggles, thankfully tinted to make it bearable to open my eyes. Around me, blue and white hued dunes rose and fell like waves of the ocean. I picked up a handful of the soft, tiny grains, letting them fall through my fist like sand from an hour glass. Up close, it looked like the sand was tiny grains of lapis lazuli, amethyst, turquoise, pure white pearl, and aqua marine. The sun shocked through grains that looked like topaz, giving the sand a warm, golden glitter over the blue. I saw a sphere sitting before me, half buried in the sand. I pushed the dazzling grains to the side, exhuming the sphere from the dune. Its engravings were familiar, Earth’s continents etched into the globe, and I felt a yearning nostalgia settle over me. I looked around. There was no pulsing, no vibration. I shoved it into one of my belt pouches.

I stood carefully, looking around. The sky was a lighter, pastel blue, with one tiny fluff of a white cloud over towards one horizon. Almost familiar- though the blue sand was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Still, it was made of familiar colors and substance, so it wasn’t too foreign to be unsettling.

    What was unsettling was the caravan coming at me from the- south?- from- that direction at least. It stretched farther than the dunes would allow me to see, a thin, sinuous line of beasts and people making their way across the blue desert like a snake. I stood up, my black clothing contrasting against the sand, and stark against the mostly white that the caravan seemed to wear. Even the beasts of burden sported short white coats on their humped bodies. The front of the caravan seemed as taken aback at my appearance here as I was, and they cautiously halted. A voice called out, and a line of the sand began to move in front of them, or so it had appeared, as a line of blue-garbed, crouching fighters seemed to appear from the sand itself and surround me, sharp, bow-like weapons drawn and aimed at my piles of curls, ready to destroy me in a moment.

    I put my hands up and dropped defensively to my knees, hoping that that would indicate some sort of common communication of surrender. The camouflaged fighters waited, still as the sky, until there was movement from the caravan, and a small host of people walked into the circle. People, I assume, meaning human, at least, from all appearances, though my brain was trying to figure out how the same features might have evolved to the same features of Homosapiens with which I was familiar. Is this Earth? A different time? A different planet? --but these intellectual riddles were beginning to make my head hurt, or it was dehydration, or the harsh sun, or whatever dimension-falling had just happened to me. Whether this was a dream or some strange new reality, or death, my only option at this point was to just play along.

    One of the humanoids, garbed in white fabric wrapped around his face and body, started speaking. He (or she, or it?) also wore eye protection, though it was a single lens spanning the face from one ear to the other. I couldn’t make out the muffled, strange sounds.

    “My name is Emberleigh.” I started to ramble, then saw how uncomfortable my alien sounds were making my captors. “Er… I come in peace?” I asked, unsure, almost laughing at the strangeness of my situation and my choice of words. Cheesy as hell.

    The leader made a sound, and gestured at one of his compatriots, a very tall form who carried a white bag slung over his front. He rooted around in the bag for a moment, and then walked towards me, holding out one hand and pointing to a tiny, strange, metal contraption in the other. It looked old and rusty. In fact, it looked like something that belonged in my shop. He pressed the top and out sprung tiny appendages that made me think of tiny little robotic legs. I reeled back from the strange object, and a fighter on each side of me grabbed me and held me still as the tall one came ever closer, making a gentle sound that lulled me into a strange sense of trust before placing the thing on my earlobe and I felt its tiny metal legs scamper into my ear.

    I felt terror at the violation, and suddenly sound changed as if I had swimmers ear, then adjusted, went in and out with static like some sort of radio transmission, then suddenly, it was all crisp and normal and I felt as though nothing had happened at all.

    Not until the leader spoke and I could perfectly understand him.

    “Who are you?!” He questioned. “What faction?”

    “I… I’m Emberleigh. You can call me Ember.” I said, and they understood. Whatever the hell they had just implanted into my ear must have reached it’s spindly little legs into the speech center of my brain and taught me an entirely new tongue. What. The. Fuck.

    “Ember.” I said again. “I’m lost. I’m confused. I must have gotten hurt, I don’t remember anything.” There, good one. Amnesia must exist here too, might as well go with it.

    The leaders face seemed to purse into an expression which I suddenly understood to mean at once pity and slight distrust.

    “Please.” I said. “I’m thirsty? I don’t know where I am.”

    The tall one reached into his garb and pulled out a white leather water-skin. He handed it to me, and I drank from it cautiously, tasting a substance that was close to water, though slightly different. It was, thankfully, as refreshing and quenching as the coldest water could be.

“Thank you.” I said, holding the skin back to the tall one.

“We can’t leave her here, not with the storms coming tonight” the tall one said, looking to the leader, pushing back the skin for me to keep.

    “Search her, and place her in the care of the enlightened ones.” He said, gesturing to the fighters. They circled in, patted me down. One reached into my equipment belt, taking out my cell phone, some cash he threw aside like garbage, a couple coins which they all regarded with excitement, a tube of lavender tea tree lip balm which they passed around, smelling and exclaiming over. Then they pulled the small, heavy sphere out of one of my pouches. They regarded it, disinterested, then handed it back to me, as if it were nothing. They confiscated the rest, which didn’t bother me too much with exception of the cell phone, which the tall one took cautiously as if it could trigger a nuclear blast. I felt stripped when they took the phone, though I knew that I certainly wouldn’t have cell service here, wherever the hell “here” even is. The sun scorched down. My lips could use a slather of that balm. Maybe the cell phone wasn’t the thing I missed most, after all. I was thankful to have the sphere back, the weight of it comforting by my right hip, as though it was somehow the key to how I might get home.

    “Escort her.” The leader said, and one of the fighters grabbed my sleeve roughly and pulled me alongside over the dunes and back into the white line of the caravan, where all the white garbed people stopped and stared with strange and amazed expressions on their faces. I wasn’t sure if it was my strange clothes, my pale skin, or my make-up and goggles, until one reached out to touch my hair, and pulled back as though it was made of fire. I heard nervous whisperings of “fire…. Flame…. Like the blood-lightning…. “ I stared at them. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like something I want to understand at all. I swallowed my sense of panic and let the shock of the whole ordeal settle comfortingly over my mind. Here we go.

    For a long while and into the night, I walked with a group of women who were known as the “enlightened ones”. They too, wore white, but with sapphire strips which indicated their station of so-called enlightenment. They carried themselves peacefully, deliberately, reminding me of Buddhist monks in their silence. I walked along the blue and gold speckled sand, as the sky faded to night and a spray of unfamiliar stars occupied the heavens. People started pointing to the direction from whence they had come, where a great storm of black clouds had gathered, swirling angrily. Bright, glaring crimson bolts of lightning sparked out from the boiling depths of the clouds, and some of the group pointed at my hair. “The girl with Lightning Hair.” They said, “Bad Omen.” They also said. I began to feel uneasy.

    The gathering stopped as the loud, booming thunder from the blood lightning rolled across the darkening desert. The caravan seemed to dismantle and reassemble into a fortified camp, and the gathering took shelter within. The carts which carried their heavily scented cargo of spices and thick, exotic tapestries turned outwards against the desert, and seemed to be made of some sort of anti-conductor. I felt safe within our fort, as if lighting could strike it again and again, and no harm would come to us. And it struck, the lightning came and sparked and boomed and railed, and though I lay in sweat and panic, the gathering slept peacefully around me, as though the booms were but a lullaby. All slept except my guard, my blue-garbed fighter, who stared fiercely out from his visor with sharp, amber-hued eyes.

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Chapter 3

      The call started as a vibration. I started to detect it as I walked around the shop, and seemed to have it narrowed down to an area towards the back, an area where I had displayed a lot of my benefactor’s collection. The hum seemed to pull me, and it seemed to grow more and more powerful the more I noticed it. I asked around my staff if any of them noticed it, but they just looked at me blankly.

    “It’s an old building” They would say. “You know what they say about Silver Springs being… you know… kind of haunted.” I snorted in their faces and kept wandering around, listening intently.

    I didn’t give these thoughts much credence, but I did feel as though I was starting to go a little crazy as I passed the area day in and day out, the tug just feeling stronger until one evening, it was a roar.

    It was an evening that I’d stayed late at the shop, finishing up some orders from our costumer and drinking some red vanilla rooibos. I was wearing all black, accented with a frosted gold. My feet were clad in tall, laced and buckled boots. I was tightly cinched in a corset, with a short skirt in front and a large bustle and train in back, long, billowing strips of fabric flowing from the bodice. An equipment belt was layered and cinched low around the fabric at my hips, and I sleeves that stitched to my shoulders. I wore a pair of huge, gold rimmed goggles set up with my heavy ruby curls, and of course my signature heavy, dramatic makeup.

    My concentration had broken from my inventory forms, and I listened to the vibration grow and pulse. I stared at the surface of my tea, as it quivered with each pulse. The light in the shop was warm and glowing, the tangy, clove scent of old books filling the space with a sense of warmth. I slowly became aware the light seemed to take on a colder cast, the looming tapestries rising above me washing out, giving me a sense of menacing doom. It was as if a warm candle had been blown out, and the curiosities and marvels in the room seemed to become suddenly terrifying- sharp teeth, strange creatures, a sense of wrongness. The pulse of the vibration seemed to knock my heartbeat of cadence, and I felt a hot wave of adrenaline surge over me and instantly energize me.

    I started slowly towards the back, my boots seeming to contact the wooden floors impossibly sharply. I felt yanked to the pulse, and an image of a cartoon character, pulled by the steaming fingers of a freshly baked pie filled my mind as my boots continued their inexorable march.

    I entered the small cove, all the peculiar collection pieces of my benefactor leering around me. I walked to a shelf and picked up a small sphere, about the size of a baseball, which seemed to be carved from some sort of heavy, precious stone. It was dark like obsidian, but seemed to have an undertone of deep azure. It was a globe, but featured engraved continents, a much different world than our own, strangely shaped continents and oceans. The light reflected off the color of the sphere and I held it in my hand, sensing the vibration grow around me in intensity as it became the same as the anxious beating of my heart. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the moment, feeling the rush of blood through my veins, feeling my breath, sensing that the weight of the sphere had become an extension of my own hand. I dropped the sphere and it fell, too slowly, to the floor. There was a sudden rush of dry heat, and white light, and a feeling as if my very energy tore from my body, and I abruptly fell through our dimension.

***

    I sat up on my hands and knees, spitting sand. A white hot sun set its piercing gaze upon me, and my throat parched almost instantly. It was too bright for my eyes to see, and I hurriedly remembered my goggles, thankfully tinted to make it bearable to open my eyes. Around me, blue and white hued dunes rose and fell like waves of the ocean. I picked up a handful of the soft, tiny grains, letting them fall through my fist like sand from an hour glass. Up close, it looked like the sand was tiny grains of lapis lazuli, amethyst, turquoise, pure white pearl, and aqua marine. The sun shocked through grains that looked like topaz, giving the sand a warm, golden glitter over the blue. I saw a sphere sitting before me, half buried in the sand. I pushed the dazzling grains to the side, exhuming the sphere from the dune. Its engravings were familiar, Earth’s continents etched into the globe, and I felt a yearning nostalgia settle over me. I looked around. There was no pulsing, no vibration. The etchings seemed to fade into the surface of the sphere, its blue color fading to a slate, gleaming hematite.  I shoved it into one of my belt pouches.

I stood carefully, looking around. The sky was a lighter, pastel blue, with one tiny fluff of a white cloud over towards one horizon. Almost familiar- though the blue sand was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Still, it was made of familiar colors and substance, so it wasn’t too foreign to be unsettling.

    What was unsettling was the caravan coming at me from the- south?- from- that direction at least. It stretched farther than the dunes would allow me to see, a thin, sinuous line of beasts and people making their way across the blue desert like a snake. I stood up, my black clothing contrasting against the sand, and stark against the mostly white that the caravan seemed to wear. Even the beasts of burden sported short white coats on their humped bodies. The front of the caravan seemed as taken aback at my appearance here as I was, and they cautiously halted. A voice called out, and a line of the sand began to move in front of them, or so it had appeared, as a line of blue-garbed, crouching fighters seemed to appear from the sand itself and surround me, sharp, bow-like weapons drawn and aimed at my piles of curls, ready to destroy me in a moment.

    I put my hands up and dropped defensively to my knees, hoping that that would indicate some sort of common communication of surrender. The camouflaged fighters waited, still as the sky, until there was movement from the caravan, and a small host of people walked into the circle. People, I assume, meaning human, at least, from all appearances, though my brain was trying to figure out how the same features might have evolved to the same features of Homosapiens with which I was familiar. Is this Earth? A different time? A different planet? --but these intellectual riddles were beginning to make my head hurt, or it was dehydration, or the harsh sun, or whatever dimension-falling had just happened to me. Whether this was a dream or some strange new reality, or death, my only option at this point was to just play along.

    One of the humanoids, garbed in white fabric wrapped around his face and body, started speaking. He (or she, or it?) also wore eye protection, though it was a single lens spanning the face from one ear to the other. I couldn’t make out the muffled, strange sounds.

    “My name is Emberleigh.” I started to ramble, then saw how uncomfortable my alien sounds were making my captors. “Er… I come in peace?” I asked, unsure, almost laughing at the strangeness of my situation and my choice of words. Cheesy as hell.

    The leader made a sound, and gestured at one of his compatriots, a very tall form who carried a white bag slung over his front. He rooted around in the bag for a moment, and then walked towards me, holding out one hand and pointing to a tiny, strange, metal contraption in the other. It looked old and rusty. In fact, it looked like something that belonged in my shop. He pressed the top and out sprung tiny appendages that made me think of tiny little robotic legs. I reeled back from the strange object, and a fighter on each side of me grabbed me and held me still as the tall one came ever closer, making a gentle sound that lulled me into a strange sense of trust before placing the thing on my earlobe and I felt its tiny metal legs scamper into my ear.

    I felt terror at the violation, and suddenly sound changed as if I had swimmers ear, then adjusted, went in and out with static like some sort of radio transmission, then suddenly, it was all crisp and normal and I felt as though nothing had happened at all.

    Not until the leader spoke and I could perfectly understand him.

    “Who are you?!” He questioned. “What faction?”

    “I… I’m Emberleigh. You can call me Ember.” I said, and they understood. Whatever the hell they had just implanted into my ear must have reached it’s spindly little legs into the speech center of my brain and taught me an entirely new tongue. What. The. Fuck.

    “Ember.” I said again. “I’m lost. I’m confused. I must have gotten hurt, I don’t remember anything.” There, good one. Amnesia must exist here too, might as well go with it.

    The leaders face seemed to purse into an expression which I suddenly understood to mean at once pity and slight distrust.

    “Please.” I said. “I’m thirsty? I don’t know where I am.”

    The tall one reached into his garb and pulled out a white leather water-skin. He handed it to me, and I drank from it cautiously, tasting a substance that was close to water, though slightly different. It was, thankfully, as refreshing and quenching as the coldest water could be.

“Thank you.” I said, holding the skin back to the tall one.

“We can’t leave her here, not with the storms coming tonight” the tall one said, looking to the leader, pushing back the skin for me to keep.

    “Search her, and place her in the care of the enlightened ones.” He said, gesturing to the fighters. They circled in, patted me down. One reached into my equipment belt, taking out my cell phone, some cash he threw aside like garbage, a couple coins which they all regarded with excitement, a tube of lavender tea tree lip balm which they passed around, smelling and exclaiming over. Then they pulled the small, heavy sphere out of one of my pouches. They regarded it, disinterested, then handed it back to me, as if it were nothing. They confiscated the rest, which didn’t bother me too much with exception of the cell phone, which the tall one took cautiously as if it could trigger a nuclear blast. I felt stripped when they took the phone, though I knew that I certainly wouldn’t have cell service here, wherever the hell “here” even is. The sun scorched down. My lips could use a slather of that balm. Maybe the cell phone wasn’t the thing I missed most, after all. I was thankful to have the sphere back, the weight of it comforting by my right hip, as though it was somehow the key to how I might get home.

    “Escort her.” The leader said, and one of the fighters grabbed my sleeve roughly and pulled me alongside over the dunes and back into the white line of the caravan, where all the white garbed people stopped and stared with strange and amazed expressions on their faces. I wasn’t sure if it was my strange clothes, my pale skin, or my make-up and goggles, until one reached out to touch my hair, and pulled back as though it was made of fire. I heard nervous whisperings of “fire…. Flame…. Like the blood-lightning…. “ I stared at them. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like something I want to understand at all. I swallowed my sense of panic and let the shock of the whole ordeal settle comfortingly over my mind. Here we go.

    For a long while and into the night, I walked with a group of women who were known as the “enlightened ones”. They too, wore white, but with sapphire strips which indicated their station of so-called enlightenment. They carried themselves peacefully, deliberately, reminding me of Buddhist monks in their silence. I walked along the blue and gold speckled sand, as the sky faded to night and a spray of unfamiliar stars occupied the heavens. People started pointing to the direction from whence they had come, where a great storm of black clouds had gathered, swirling angrily. Bright, glaring crimson bolts of lightning sparked out from the boiling depths of the clouds, and some of the group pointed at my hair. “The girl with Lightning Hair.” They said, “Bad Omen.” They also said. I began to feel uneasy.

    The gathering stopped as the loud, booming thunder from the blood lightning rolled across the darkening desert. The caravan seemed to dismantle and reassemble into a fortified camp, and the gathering took shelter within. The carts which carried their heavily scented cargo of spices and thick, exotic tapestries turned outwards against the desert, and seemed to be made of some sort of anti-conductor. I felt safe within our fort, as if lighting could strike it again and again, and no harm would come to us. And it struck, the lightning came and sparked and boomed and railed, and though I lay in sweat and panic, the gathering slept peacefully around me, as though the booms were but a lullaby. All slept except my guard, my blue-garbed fighter, who stared fiercely out from his visor with sharp, amber-hued eyes.

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