WARNING – this is a sequel!
My stories are in the following order:
1. YOU WANT TO SAVE THEM ALL
2. DISAPPOINTING MARTYRS
3. MY DESERT GARDEN
If you need a recap, it's 100 years later, and Vash and his daughter, Tessla, live on Earth. Knives is 'stuck' on Gunsmoke with the plants after all humans migrated away, and Vanessa has just chosen to join him. This third installment focuses primarily on the events of Gunsmoke.
And I must point out that if I don't think anyone's reading it (coughreviewscough) I won't bother uploading more of the story. It'll be my little secret…
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Furry-edged feathers floated inside the bulb and swirled about in slow motion, settling into a soft, little pile at the curved bottom of the bulb. The eerie nest lay below the tightly-curled plant angel that hid her form from sight.
Was that a baby's arm she saw, rising from within the feather nest? Twins maybe? No, it was just one, a baby that sat up from the down to stare her in the eyes with dilated pupils. It tipped its little head back to wail with its sharp teeth shining. Hunchbacked babies yell silently, she reminded herself.
"If you aren't going to pay attention, should I bother continuing?"
She leapt back into reality, turning to face her fellow sentient plant. "Sorry," she offered simply, tucking loose hair behind her pointed ears before shoving both hands into her pants pockets. "Saw a ghost."
Knives frowned, lifting his gaze from the control panels up into the bulb. "Do you remember it?" he asked reverently.
"Parts of it," Vanessa replied honestly. She glanced up at her reflection in the glassy surface of the bulb. Her blind, white left eye, her deeply scarred left cheek, the scars winding down her neck toward the myriad of scars upon the remainder of her skin…Sighing, her gaze floated down upon a feather. "The bulb seemed a lot bigger back when I was small."
"It probably was. Larger bulbs were exhausted earliest; all that remain are considerably smaller. Back to the task, hm?" Hesitating, he turned to view her profile as she began to lose herself in the glow of the bulb once more. "We have time, we'll discuss negative production plant manipulation later."
"I didn't know they molted," she murmured, leaning forward on tip-toes against the catwalk's safety railing.
Knives clicked keystrokes and the bulb's light dimmed some. "They don't."
"Tell HER that."
He didn't respond. His face looked serious and he didn't meet her eyes as he stood, still, before the panels. He coughed.
Something was wrong, she could tell. He was easy to read. But then, a century alone on a planet would do that to a person.
Steadying himself on the rail behind him, Knives cleared his throat. "Callisto seems to be ill."
Vanessa stood back as well, and she thought she saw the bulb flicker. This angel, whom Knives had named 'Callisto,' was wound around her core in a manner that looked different than all of the other angels, she noticed.
"She used to be sentient," he admitted. "While you were away. She figured out how to join them, and she did it. And she was stable, until now. This…isn't stable. I…I don't know what this is," he added, though it was obviously painful for him to say.
Sentient, Callisto? There was another? A walking angel, how did that happen? "So you weren't really alone for the whole time?" she supposed aloud.
He grunted and stood to walk down the catwalk.
Ouch. Probably shouldn't have asked that, she thought. It seemed to pain him to recall Callisto. Was Callisto a woman who broke his heart, or did he make some huge mistake with her, to cause her to join the angels? Vanessa felt her stomach churn a little. Lifting her gaze to the huddled mass at the core, several odious possibilities raced through her mind.
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"We've a half day to go," Knives stated, shifting in his seat on the toma cart. He stretched and fastened the reins to the front handle, settling in to the journey. His toma knew their way back home; he trusted them not to stray or dawdle.
"Are you awake?" he whispered, squinting in the moonlight of five moons to see her bundled form on the cushioned bench beside him. Long, blonde hair lifted in the breeze and slipped past her cheek. He smiled.
She yawned and shifted. "Yep," she responded. "Getting tired? We can camp."
"Rather not. I'll be back on the usual schedule if we can reach the garden by morning."
Sitting up, Vanessa cracked her back. She missed her bed on Earth, but would never again sleep in it. "Alright. Do you need me to help you stay awake then?" she asked, yawning again.
Knives pulled his cloaks tighter about him. He looked at her expectantly.
"I'm thinking of an Earth animal," she announced, starting a guessing game.
"Is it aquatic?"
"Yes."
"Four-valved heart?"
"No."
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Hours later, the guessing game was through, and both struggled to stay awake through this cold, Gunsmoke night. Knives picked at his fingernails in the moonlight. Vanessa was softly humming some very old song. His mind raced, wondering what to speak about.
"It's nearly cat season," he began. "I was wondering if you'd like to watch your first cat birth?"
She stopped humming. Had he said something wrong?
"Tessla…She looks just like you," Vanessa murmured, face tucked behind a fold of blanket.
Knives breathed out slowly. His scalp began to itch. "Callisto…"
Waiting for him to continue, Vanessa glanced at him from the corner of her good eye. "When was she born?"
"About the same time as Tessla, I imagine."
Vanessa turned away slightly. "What was she to you?"
"I'm not sure. She called me her father; I told her I didn't like that." He sounded bitter. "She was only a few years old when she left me for the bulb. Callisto…Looked just like you."
Knives waited for a response, but none came. Again, he wondered if he'd said something wrong. She'd returned to Gunsmoke barely a week prior; he wasn't accustomed to keeping company yet.
Unbeknownst to him, Vanessa felt nauseous.