Page 39 of Ava Stargazer (Planet Xai #2)

Ava itched to return to Xai, but they were not due to leave until later in the day. Their launch time was several hours away. So instead, she now sat across from Iryl and Joy, impatient for another reason. They were still in Iryl’s living area, around his table, with the lights turned a bit low. Iryl was at Joy’s side and Vox at hers.

“Are you ready to do this?” Ava asked. She looked at Joy sitting in front of her, seeing the tiredness in Joy’s face, reflecting back Ava’s own exhaustion from all the tests and questions today.

There were jitters in her stomach, along with a nervousness she couldn’t quite place. Despite the fatigue from the day, Ava sat on the edge of her seat in anticipation. Ready to see what Joy remembered.

The irony was not lost on her that Ava had shied away from her own memories in the past, and the Cipra logs to an extent, but was eager to see those from another. Not the painful ones that she knew Joy shied away from herself, but of the Earth that Joy remembered as a very small child.

Joy was sitting, relaxed, seeming at ease now. “Yes, these are fine. Not the last memory, but the others. I want you to see.”

Iryl sat close to Joy, mumbling as he shone, “Truthfully, Rhutg could do this better but ... I am more familiar with Joy’s mind now.”

Vox said to Iryl, leaning forward, “You take from Joy, and I’ll then give to Ava from you. Let’s see if it works. It’s too much to both take and give at once when their minds work so differently from ours.”

Rhutg stood to the side, just observing. “I can help if you need it. But probably only from Ava’s side. If you need help, Vox, if the tremors start, I’ll step in.”

Vox just fixed him with a look, and Rhutg snorted. At Ava’s concerned glance, Vox explained, “I’m not forcing anything, just being a conduit. This should be fine.” He leaned over and held her hand. “Close your eyes.”

Ava did as told, and almost immediately a sensation like a video feed played in front of her. She briefly shook in shock, opening her eyes and taking herself out of it, before settling again and closing to watch. The images were disjointed and jumbled together. It's fuzzy. Ava scrunched her face, with her eyes closed, as if that would sharpen them.

Finally, the images gave way to clarity. A sunset. From Earth. With one large sun overhead. Next to a moon. A single moon, large in the sky, obscured a bit by clouds. It wasn’t completely full but hung there, friendly, in a way that made Ava open her mouth in wonder as she sat in Iryl’s hardback chair.

Ava was in the memories of a child, looking through Joy’s eyes, as she ran in a clearing near dusk, the yard covered in a grass similar to that which grew in the solarium. Her small hands squirted water out of a hose, and there was another hose she ran through that had water shooting upward, over and over. Joy laughed while an older woman with pale hair like Joy’s watched. An animal with golden fur and a tail ran by her, carrying a green sphere in its mouth, and Joy ran, chasing it.

Her mother eventually stopped her and served her a cool drink in a large red cup with ice cubes. A big red fruit with black seeds with a green rind sat next to the cup on the table.

Ava’s brows narrowed as she scrunched her face even more. The pictures were hazy, and then changed to a different scene.

In this one a bright blue vehicle that traveled on wheels was in the vision. Joy opened the door to get in, struggling to climb up, until the woman with pale hair came over and helped. The woman leaned over, and Joy was strapped into a seat with a buckle over her, and she watched the scenery pass as they left a building where the vehicle was kept. There were animals on the side of the road that looked like coars, only they had white and black spots and were not shaggy. And others that ran fast with a mane and tail that whipped in the wind. The memory focused a lot on those, but other details, details Ava wished she could see, were not in focus, blurred out in favor of what the child was interested in. But she did notice a smattering of tall buildings in the background after they left the animals behind.

There was another memory, one of many tall buildings, and vehicles next to them. It was all metal that twisted high into the sky, looking like some of the large cities she’d visited doing transports with Ebel across the stars. Only, these buildings reflected the light of the single sun that was present in all of these memories.

And Humans. They were there.

They were everywhere.

Their faces and shapes were fuzzy, but clear enough to see them everywhere walking. Humans all around as that single sun shone down on them from overhead and Joy looked through the window of the vehicle as it traveled. There were once so, so many.

Then there was one more memory. In this one Joy was scared. There were people fighting while the eyes she looked through hid. Loud bangs were everywhere. And the older woman with the pale hair, no longer having the soft eyes like she did when the child was playing in the sprinkler, held on to Joy’s hand as they were pulled together and marched along by creatures that the child hid her face from and did not get a good look at, but Ava could see that they wore robes. Very familiar robes. But Joy did look back as they walked up the ramp, one last time, at the world, at Earth, with fire everywhere behind them. The air was so dark with smoke that the sun from the first image was not visible at all.

The memory ended there. Iryl played the sunset image once again before finishing.

Joy said softly as Ava came back to awareness, “That’s all of Earth I remember myself. I don’t know if any of that was real either, or my imagination. I was really young when we left. My mother told me much more about the animals and things though, before she passed away. I put it all in the log you had.”

Ava sat, stunned, feeling an attachment to the place in Joy’s memories. It felt like looking at a ghost, and she rubbed her arms where goosebumps had formed. She didn’t know quite how to categorize or rationalize what she had just seen.

“Do we know what happened? To Earth? My mother just told me that she was taken when she was asleep,” Ava said, trailing off. “Every one of us children at Cipra was born there, so none of us knew anything other than what our mothers told us. They said right before they were kidnapped that they had made contact with aliens and fighting had started on Earth, and it was poisoning everything.”

Joy looked at her sadly. “Right, yes. I was awake when we left. You saw it. I was put on a large ship. None of us had a translator implant then so we ... couldn’t really understand. Anyways, my mother and I went directly to a farm to work. They kept children with their mothers as sets.”

Just like how I was kept with mine. Ava said idly, “The robe. It looked like the ones the Yar wore, in your memory.” She let that thought hang a moment before asking, “Were Humans successful at fighting? At all?”

“I don’t know, but then everything was on fire and they just came and took as many women and children as they could. I don’t know what happened after we left. We had to be quiet. If w-we weren’t...” Joy’s voice choked up and the stammer she had returned by the end.

Iryl stepped forward, his tone soft. “The logs from Cipra, the bit I downloaded, said the planet is no longer habitable. It just said that in reference to not being able to gather any further breeding stock. But I don’t know any more. We do have coordinates now, however, of Earth.”

Ava felt a pang, thinking of the sun overhead from Joy’s memories. That sun should still be there though. I would like to see it someday.

Instead, she turned to Vox. Vox looked stunned as well, seeing those memories for the first time like Ava. “Vox? Can you show Joy Xai?”

Joy smiled. “I already saw. The mind thing is harder for them to do back to me. Iryl showed me pictures instead. I can’t wait to go there.”

Ava shook her head, looking out over the courtyard right outside a window in Iryl’s quarters. It was bathed in shadows, the trees above filtering the sunlight from the twin suns that reigned over Elyheim. But Ava felt nostalgic for a different sun. And not even the one on Earth. She missed the one on Xai, and the triple moons that hung high at night.