Author's Note: This story is set in the continuity of my "Earthling" trilogy, which is to say, an imagined combination of the Battle Story and Chaotic Century timelines. While reading the "Earthling" series and its associated side pieces is recommended and will help you get more out of this one, it is not necessary to do so, as "Desert Illusion" stands quite well on its own.
I hope you enjoy, and reviews are, as always, deeply appreciated.
DEDICATION
For Yuji Kaida, with gratitude
Chapter 1
Once upon a time, there was a blue planet, hovering lonely in the outer reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. This planet's name was Zi. Across its deserts, plains, forests, and oceans teemed wild mechanical creatures called Zoids, as well as primitive peoples called Zoidians.
Zi was quiet.
Spread out over several continents, Zoids and Zoidians lived peacefully together, giving according to their abilities, taking according to their needs. The Zoids evolved over time into different types of creatures, with different appearances and characteristics. The Zoidians split up over time into different tribes, living in different places and adopting different customs. But in spite of these differences, all continued to live peacefully together. And Zi was quiet.
But then, one day, the searing heat of war came.
War consumes all; even the victors are savaged by its horrors.
Those who survive are irrevocably changed.
Zoids fought other Zoids. Zoidians fought other Zoidians. Zoidians and Zoids worked together to fight other Zoidians and Zoids.
Zi was no longer quiet.
Her waters flowed red, stained by this savagery. Her lands were littered with fallen people and machines.
Amid this carnage, a soldier who had endured unendurable torture at the hands of a frustrated enemy lay dying, cradled in the arms of his faithful comrade. But when it came time for him to enter what lay beyond, he hung back. He could not bear to leave. Haunted by the cruelty he had suffered, driven by the need to protect others from that same fate, he remained tethered to the broken blue planet that had been his home.
And who was that soldier, who was unable to pass on, whose tale I shall now tell? To which tribe did he belong? For what cause did he fight?
It does not matter, for none remain who know.
-.-.-.-
ZAC 2036
Pyxis had always been a bit of a strange child. She had been born, as was found out after the fact, on the very same day that the Earth ship Globally 3 had crashed down on Zi. Her father could often be heard joking that Pyxis had been one of the Earthling survivors. "It's the only logical explanation for her oddities," he would say, a twinkle in his eye.
Indeed, Pyxis often seemed lost someplace far away. She spent hours gazing out the window of her family's humble cottage on the outskirts of a lonely army base in the southern Elemia desert. As far as her loving but concerned parents could tell, there was nothing to be seen but low, rolling hills of sand all the way to the horizon. What was out there that fascinated their precious, precocious young daughter so?
Her mother and father learned quickly to keep a close eye on Pyxis, for almost as soon as the child could walk, she was darting out the door and into the desert the moment her minder's back was turned. More than once, search parties had been dispatched, as Pyxis had proved to possess an exceptional stamina and determination that were not in the least hindered by her short legs and small lungs, and she would ultimately be located many miles away many hours later, usually happily exploring some crumbling ruin no one else had known was even there.
If there were anything exerting more of a pull on Pyxis than the desert, however, it was the desert at night. The dunes were ashen and mysterious; the sky was delicate and infinite. Three moons hovered closely together, countless stars freckled the silken blackness, and the pale wash of galactic light arcing elegantly overhead whispered promises of planets and places unseen. Pyxis frequently awoke in the night and left her bed for her window seat, where she fell asleep dreaming of ancient tales told by starlight.
For Zi harbored stories; Pyxis knew this instinctively from the very first time she had heard the constant wind blow. The desert breezes bore little hints to her eager ears, whispering fragments of births and deaths, war and struggle, love and loss, and so she listened carefully, very carefully, awaiting the day when Zi would at last share its secrets.
Pyxis' mother was tucking her in one clear, starry evening. "Now, dear," she said, "please be sure to stay in your bed tonight. Your father and I will be going out for a while, and we need to know that you'll be safe here."
"Yes, Mama," Pyxis said.
"You may look out the window if you like, but you mustn't leave your room. Do you understand?"
Pyxis nodded. She had planned to go outside tonight, but she didn't want to unduly worry her mother. She could go tomorrow, instead.
"There's my good girl," her mother said, kissing Pyxis' forehead. "Good night." She got up to leave the room.
"Will you tell me a story, Mama?"
Her mother stopped in the doorway, her silhouette faint in the dim light beyond. "About what, my love?"
"Anything. I love the stories you tell me."
She laughed, perching once more on the edge of the bed. "I think I've told you all of the ones I know."
"No, I'm sure you haven't!" Pyxis insisted. "There must be one you've never told me before." She settled comfortably under her blankets and looked at her mother. Mama, like almost everyone else in their humble little military settlement, didn't have much in the way of material goods, but still, dressed as she was for an evening out, she was lovely and radiant. Pyxis sometimes thought her mother too magical to have come from Zi, not knowing that Mama, in turn, thought the same of her violet-eyed daughter.
"Ah, perhaps you are right." Her mother fingered the pendant she now wore, a stunning piece rarely removed from its jewelry box. It was the only thing in the room, Pyxis felt, able to rival the ethereal beauty of her mother. "Do you know about this stone in my necklace?"
Pyxis shook her head. She had always loved this pendant and its peculiar translucent swirls of dark color. "Please tell me."
"It's made of something called 'sleeping cosmosite.' It's an exceptionally rare and valuable mineral."
"Where did it come from?" asked Pyxis.
"Well, my little wanderer, that is the story I will now tell you. And after I tell you, it is time for sleep. Alright?"
"Yes, Mama."
"Good. Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there was a lonely asteroid drifting through space."
"What's an asteroid?"
"It's a big rock that circles around, or orbits, our sun, just like Zi and the other planets in our solar system do. This asteroid had drifted through space for so long that he was almost as old as time itself. And imagine floating in outer space for that long, with no friends and no one to talk to."
Pyxis, a very lonely child herself, who was often shunned by the other children for her dreamy oddness, immediately empathized with the asteroid.
"One day, the asteroid decided to look into space and see if he could find anyone to talk to. But there was nothing and no one, for even though you and I see our moons and many stars when we look into the night sky, outer space is actually quite vast, and very empty. And so he looked farther and farther and farther away - farther even than any telescope on Zi would ever be able to see."
"What did he see so far away?"
Her mother stroked Pyxis' hair, the color of twilight's last blush, back from her forehead, and ran her fingers gently through those long locks. Pyxis had screamed and cried so vociferously when it had been trimmed for the first time - "But how will I feel the desert wind in my hair if it's so short, Papa?" she'd sobbed - that they had never tried cutting it again. Nowadays, it fell to the girl's hips. "Beyond all of the stars and planets, the asteroid saw the nursery."
"What is the nursery? What did it look like?"
"It was a beautiful sea of swirling clouds: turquoise, aquamarine, blue, and indigo. It was the place where stars are born."
Pyxis, transfixed, looked to her mother's pendant, seemingly glowing even in the room's faint light, then back to her.
"The asteroid fell in love the moment he saw her, the nursery. He had never seen such beauty anywhere in the infinite heavens. She was radiant beyond imagining, and from the dust of her luminous clouds, she sculpted the stars, sending them out across the universe to become suns just like ours.
"But how could the asteroid, a small, lumpy, gray rock, impossibly far away, be able to go to her? How could he ever be with her? Was he doomed to wander forever through space, only able to see his beloved from afar?
"The asteroid thought of her, only her, and nothing but her. Eons passed and he grew heavy, weighted down with these painful thoughts, and slowly, the gravity of the nearest planet began to pull him in. Closer, closer, closer, and the asteroid did not fight this, even though he knew what happened to asteroids drawn in to a planet's atmosphere."
"What happens?"
"They become meteors and meteorites, my love. Sometimes we see meteors as shooting stars, burning up high in the sky. And other times, they make it through the atmosphere to become meteorites, and fall flaming to the ground."
"Which did the asteroid become?"
"The asteroid was so heavy with the sadness of his unrequited love that he first became a meteor, burning bright in the sky over the planet. And he was so heavy with his pain and loneliness that he did not burn up and become a shooting star, but instead traveled afire through the atmosphere, where he landed, burning hot and melting, in a great desert on that planet."
"What happened then?" Pyxis asked breathlessly.
"The asteroid took one last look into the heavens, to the birthplace of the stars. What he saw there, the nursery's beauty and remoteness, were mirrored in and burned into his molten contours, so that he would now reflect his love forevermore. And so the asteroid, a big, lumpy, gray rock, was now a meteorite, a small stone, imprinted by the cosmos and the mysterious swirling clouds of the one he had lost."
Pyxis' eyes slid again to the pendant hanging below her mother's throat, to the shimmering, mist-like tendrils of color it held: turquoise, aquamarine, blue, indigo.
"The meteorite fell asleep on that new planet, and in his dreams he was able to be, at last, with his beloved." Her mother stroked Pyxis' forehead again, and the little girl blinked, her mind quite awake but her eyelids growing heavy. "And then one day in that desert, a man came along and found the meteorite, and brought it home, and cut and polished it and set it in silver. And when it was ready, he gave it to the one he loved." She smiled at Pyxis. "And that is the end of my tale for tonight."
"Thank you, Mama," Pyxis murmured drowsily, visions of the heavens dancing in her head.
"Of course."
"Halley," came Pyxis' father's voice from the other room. "It's time."
"Coming," she called softly, then turned back to her daughter. "Sleep well, little traveller. See you in the morning."
"Good night, Mama."
Her mother kissed Pyxis' forehead one last time and slipped silently from the room, closing the door behind her.
Rustlings and soft voices were audible for a few minutes from across their little cottage, and then the front door opened, and closed, and the house fell silent.
Pyxis lay quietly in her bed, listening to the constant winds blowing by outside. She thought about the asteroid from the story, and felt sorry for it, that it would never be able to be with its love now that it had fallen down to Zi. But she knew her mother loved the necklace it was now set in, and hoped that this served as some solace to the lonely asteroid. Her mother, after all, was surely more beautiful than even the stars' nursery so many millions of miles away.
Pyxis nudged her covers gently aside and padded over to her window seat, upon which she settled down in her usual comfortable position. The cloudless sky was bright with the sparkling of uncountable stars, and De, Se, and Ae hung in a cluster far to the right of Pyxis' view. She let her eyes wander through the heavens, imagining that the nursery were visible to her on Zi somehow, seeing in her visions the delicate entanglements of dust clouds and cool colors.
Just then, a wink of light far above moved, leaving a long, glowing tail behind as it streaked across the sky and down, it seemed, into the desert. Pyxis blinked, quite unable to believe her eyes, and maybe wouldn't have, were it not for the bright afterimage the object's light had left behind her eyelids. "An asteroid?" she breathed.
No. A meteorite.
-.-.-.-
The desert could be very cold at night, although Pyxis didn't mind. She hustled over the low dunes, her feet, ankles, legs, and lungs strong and accustomed to traversing sand for long periods. Her violet hair streamed behind her like a banner, catching the wind and revealing its movement.
Millions of stars twinkled cheerfully overhead, and the trio of moons followed along on the little girl's nocturnal adventure.
Pyxis thought she had a good idea of where she was going, for her keen eyes had noted carefully where the meteorite appeared to have landed. However, it wasn't until she'd been running for over an hour, the orienting lights of her home base long since lost to dunes and distance, that it first occurred to her that she might have thought wrong.
She stopped at last, panting, and stood atop a low hill as her breath slowly returned to her.
She didn't know where she was. The desert offered precious few landmarks under even the best of circumstances. And now, when she had been so single-mindedly pursuing the fallen meteorite that she had failed to take much note of her passing surroundings, the desert seemed to be the same in every direction she looked.
Except, of course, for the trail of her footprints in the sand, leading away, back from whence she'd come. Pyxis looked at it for a long moment. Unless she tried to navigate by the night sky - a skill which she had explored but was far from mastering - this was probably her only means back home now. And yet, and yet. She looked in the other direction. Somewhere beyond where she stood, she felt sure, a rare sleeping cosmosite stone was waiting for her, one she could keep for her very own, so that it - and maybe she - would never have to feel lonely again.
They would come looking for her in the morning, wouldn't they? She didn't need to go back just yet.
Still...
She looked at the trail of footprints once more. Already the relentless wind was shifting the sand around behind her, covering up her tracks. The sooner she headed back, the more of a trail there would be for her to follow.
Ultimately, however, it was curiosity, and an abiding, unspoken desire to feel a little bit less alone, that drove her recklessly onward, further into a cold, unforgiving, but beautiful landscape that held on so very tightly to its secrets.