The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire

by Anne Spackman

Eiron didn’t like children. At least, he didn’t have time for them. Actually, when it came down to it, he didn’t really consider them to be people, not real people, only small, underdeveloped, thoughtless creatures who needed more guidance than he had patience to give. He remembered his own childhood vividly, and that was enough.

  But out of everyone, Selesta’s children were the first to accept him. They came running out to meet him as he and Alessia approached the ship, eyes round with curiosity and with the promise of play. Eiron found himself overcome by a barrage of questions; more surprising was that for once, he didn’t mind. Their enthusiasm made a sweet welcome.

  The children seemed to consider him quite a novelty. He was the only grown person they had ever seen that had come from the outside, finally making the legendary outer world real to them. As the years passed, the Selesta community had grown as children had been born, but no unfamiliar adult had ever intruded into their world.

  Alessia told them stories sometimes when she came back from the surface, but she never stayed with them for very long. Once she had told them about Eiron, but to them he was as a character in a story.

  Still, the children had already decided that they liked Eiron, and they were delighted when Alessia told them that he might come for a visit. She was the only one who could make them believe that this was possible. They believed in her as they believed in magic, that she could do anything. After all, even the ship’s computer that spoke with a synthesized voice obeyed her instructions as if it wished to please her and not just because it was programmed to do what she requested.

  Maybe Eiron could even tell them some new stories, stories as good as Alessia’s. After all, he knew about the world outside, had flown in a big blue sky that they had never seen except in the simulation room. Alessia had said that he came from a city where millions of people lived. Anything could happen in a city so big!

  It was all Eiron could do to try to answer questions one at a time. He wasn’t used to it. He had no siblings of his own and hadn’t seen children in several years because he had spent so much of his life in training and at the military barracks north of the capital.

  Then it struck him. He could see mixed heritages in most of them, as plain as his own. They were like him. But shame, grief, and ostracism had not taken their youthful joy and dreams from them.

  But, he thought wistfully, they had never seen a real sky.