* * * * *
Two tendays passed. With practice, Eiron learned his way around the well-traveled corridors, making friends among the Baidarka mission’s descendants and spending a lot more time with them than he thought he would. After the first week, however, he began to stick more to his own normal sleeping hours and so saw less of them every passing day.
The initial novelty of his presence was beginning to wear off, and the adults resumed their routine daily activities. The children had a school that they attended and also retired early. Eiron had not seen Alessia since the day of his arrival, and after the second tenday, he found that he was spending the most of his time alone.
The first morning of the third tenday he woke early but found he couldn’t get back to sleep. The timescreen on the wall suggested that somewhere above this prison in the rock Rigell would be rising, dispelling the grey nighttime mist with sharp, static sunshine flooding the land. He remembered how much he loved watching the sun rise; he had seen dawn after dawn while flying on patrol over lonely, uninhabited sectors.
Thinking about the outside world, he found himself wandering somewhere near the outermost airlock an hour or so later. It took him a few moments to remember where the airlock release was located, and then some more minutes to figure out how to activate the device.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but somehow the air outside tasted fresher, even though it circulated within the ship. In the open space he remembered, a few nariars of grassy green stretched away, dotted with trees and lit by an artificial light from high above. Eiron had been told that the past three generations to live on Selesta had created these gardens and fertile pasturelands outside the spaceship, though above them there was only barren desert.
But the sight of the cavern, however vast it was, only reminded him of the reality of his confinement. He wanted to get out for a bit, but he didn’t feel up to a run, so he decided to walk around the ship. The walk had to be at least five nariars, long enough for him to reflect on all that had happened to him in the last few tendays.
It was only until he came to the ship’s edge that he saw the dark and narrow tunnel twenty micro-nariars wide connecting the cavern to a glimmer of light beyond, visible as but a small speck in the distance. Curiosity overcame his fear, and it drove him down the tube-like space flanked by rock and cold metal; half an hour passed before either of these readily became discernible. Then the beacon of light began to illuminate the darkness, softening it into shadows that seemed bright now that his eyes had grown used to the pitch black.
The cavern which greeted him at the other end seemed much smaller than the previous one. Though more brightly lit, the semblance of dawn, midday, and evening must not have been maintained here because it was already nearing dusk and the light above shone unwavering. Grass grew only on a discolored rectangular patch marked by little hills several hundred paces ahead; beyond and to the right a naked rock floor appeared untouched since the day the cavern had been hollowed out.
Few of the inscriptions etched in the stones made any sense to him, but he nevertheless wandered down the aisles, reading, reading, yet trying not to register. Only the furthest and oldest graves made him stop. He read the plaques over and over slowly. But the names he knew already.
At Derisar’s grave he sank to his knees, giving way to fatigue, intrigued by the objects assembled there. Long-dead flowers had been left to decay in a pot at the foot of the grave; someone had put up a stick next to it where a yellowed image clung. Eiron stared at it—a moment in time frozen as a woman laughed, clutching her little girl in her arms.
The impression remained behind his eyes even as he closed them. That touched him, though he wasn’t sure why. You accept death as a part of life, that was the way of it. It no longer mattered to the vanished people in old stills; they had taken their memories with them, but this day lived on before his eyes. He wasn’t sure why he found it so absurd that he, a stranger in time, should have come across it. Or why the still of this child tugged at his heart.
Had there been enough other smiles to make up for losing her father?
He heard a crunching in the sand and wrenched his head around hard and quick, the habit of a soldier, then rubbed the side of his neck regretfully. Alessia stood beside him, a wreath of flowers in her hands.
“It was his anniversary today. I promised him—that I’d remember.” She explained and gently laid the flower wreath on the grave. “Let’s come away now. Sometimes it’s better to let things rest.”
Ironic, he thought. Her words betrayed a trace of envy. In her place, he would not feel that way, he thought.
The seconds slipped away, but Eiron said nothing. Then, rising, he let her lead him back to the ship.
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 42
