Page 41 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER THREE

Ellie

I awake so abruptly to the sounds of chaos I forget for a little while about my dream.

An enormous creature with a gaping maw and sharp lashes around its face is attacking the camp.

Or trying to. It looks weak, rib cage showing through its fur.

It snarls and stalks back and forth, but it seems reluctant to come any closer.

I scramble to where my spear is propped against the side of the escape pod, grabbing it and turning back towards the creature.

We drive it off without much difficulty, but it concerns me. The creature knows we’re here now. It could come back.

Of course, if it does, it gives us a chance to kill it.

It might be scrawny, but it could feed us for a day at least. Maybe more.

As I eat my meagre breakfast, I try to picture ways we could injure the creature.

Trap it. Kill it. I can’t think my way round those lashes, though.

I could throw my spear, but if I missed, or didn’t get a killing blow, I’d be left without a weapon.

If I knew how to make a net, like the fishermen back home used, maybe I’d be able to get somewhere.

But I only ever saw the fishermen on my walk home, chugging their little boats into docks just inside the district walls.

I remember watching the boats come in as a little kid - seeing the gates open out, letting them through the wall and into the docks for their cargo to be unloaded.

Fresh catch of the day. Never very much.

I remember hearing them talking about the seas being empty, fished until next to no life remained.

I thought of the sea as a small place, but after seeing the ocean here, I can’t imagine how humans ever managed to empty one.

No, I don’t have the skill or the supplies to make a net to trap the creature, and fighting it would risk serious injury. Grace might know how to strap dislocated fingers, but she’s not trained to deal with something serious. She doesn’t have the skill or the supplies, either.

I decide to try heading down the beach in the opposite direction today.

With the rocks preventing me from going any further on the one side, I figure I’ve got a better chance of finding something on the other.

It’s only when I’ve been walking for some time, the sun beating down on the back of my neck, that the memory of the dream comes back to me.

In the light of day, it feels especially ridiculous.

The chosen mate of a handsome alien. It’s not hard to understand why my brain chose that little scenario.

It’s a variation on the theme of the fairytale every bottom tier parent whispers to their child at night.

If you work hard and do right, one day, someone will come and rescue you from this hell.

Someone will raise you up out of the gutter.

Back home, that someone had to be an upper tier boy - one of those perfectly polished creatures with fashionable clothes, shiny shoes and a permanent expression of disdain.

The fairytale was that one would turn his gaze on you and the disdain would drop away, replaced by wonder.

Out here, there is no upper tier to dream about. So my mind has conjured an alien.

I don’t like the idea that part of my subconscious has fallen back on the old dream of rescue by someone else.

I’m not five years old anymore, I know that’s not how the world works.

Upper tier boys are interested in bottom tier girls for one thing only, and it has nothing to do with making life better for bottom tier girls.

Judging by the tent the alien was pitching in his trousers, he had the same thing on his mind - a little bit of reality creeping into the fairytale.

Then I’m practically giggling to myself, remembering the way my spear conjured right into my hands when I wanted it.

I’ve heard of lucid dreaming before - the ability to control your dreams, direct them - but I’ve never experienced it.

I figure whatever I consumed that made the dream so vivid also made me feel so conscious within it, able to control and manipulate it.

I’d almost be interested in trying it again.

Except, I think it was probably the eggs that did it.

I didn’t dream like that the first night, just collapsed into the parachute and immediately sank into blissful nothing.

So unless it’s something that builds over time, it must have been what we ate last night, and we’re not getting any more of that.

I look out at the vast stretch of sand before me.

Empty. There’s nothing moving, nothing living, as far as the eye can see.

The sun beats down, relentless, reflecting off the white sand in a way that makes the air shimmer.

Every few minutes, I think I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, only to find it’s just the haze.

Rather than just continuing to walk, I decide to search the section of beach I’m on thoroughly, from the very edges of the trees to the damp sand where the waves lap.

I find a few bits of crispy dried up plant - long strands of something that crunches under my feet as I walk over it.

I consider collecting it up to take back, but getting close to it, I can smell the rot.

Where the sun hasn’t dried it to an unpalatable crisp, the damp sections have mouldered and decayed.

No good. Besides that, I find a few pretty stones that glitter as they catch the light.

They remind me of the sorts of things that passed for toys among bottom tier children - bits of glass worn smooth, interesting rocks - and for a moment, I miss my parents with a strength I’ve not felt since they passed over five years ago.

Nostalgia doesn’t get us fed, though, so I pass on the rocks and keep walking. I walk and search for hours, only stopping when the sun starts its descent towards the horizon. I trudge back towards the escape pod, my heart and my limbs heavy.

I volunteer for first watch that night again, sure that if the creature is going to attack, it will do so once we’re asleep.

I’m hoping the fact that it attacked at dawn means it’s a daytime creature and will need to rest tonight, but I won’t count on it.

I keep my spear close as I watch the tree line and hand it to Carrie when it’s her turn to take over.

She clings onto it like it will do the fighting for her.

It would be easy to be angry at Carrie for being weak, useless.

But it’s not her fault. Mercenia decided who we were, kept us all so small, so narrow, that being anything else is beyond our comprehension.

Carrie was a seamstress - responsible for darning socks and repairing uniforms Mercenia were too cheap to replace.

She can mend a busted seam, sew a button back in place, but that’s her entire world.

How can she be expected to survive on a planet like this one when everything she’s ever had to cope with in her life has been small?

I lie down on the parachute, thinking I’ll sleep light, jumping at every slight noise, expecting the creature to come back. But exhaustion drags me down, pulling me into the deep, empty black of unconsciousness.

Except, it isn’t empty.

I’m back in the tent.

And the alien is also here.

The sight of him sends the same thrill through me as it did last night, the way he looks at me through the strands of hair falling in to his eyes doing strange things to my chest, my stomach.

Conjuring feelings I haven’t had for years.

I drag my gaze away from his lean, muscular body and up to his face, meeting his eyes.

He looks at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Because of course he does. And though earlier I thought it might be interesting to try this dream again, now I’m here, I bring the weight of my failure to find food with me.

I’m tired and irritable and disappointed in myself and really not in the mood.

“Do we have to do this again?” I say to no one in particular. My own head, perhaps. “I’m tired. I’d like to rest.”

And by rest, I mean sink into the peaceful oblivion of proper sleep, where I can’t worry about anything for a few hours.

“We can rest, linasha,” the alien says, taking a seat across from me. He doesn’t make any moves to come closer.

Good.

I sit down, then change my mind, lying down, curling up into a little ball.

Because maybe I can fall asleep here. It feels so real, like I’m actually awake.

I half expect tiredness to make my limbs heavy as soon as I set my head down.

It doesn’t. I feel strangely charged, like an electric current is running through my blood, energy and vitality filling me.

It’s only in the real world that I’m tired.

I wish I could bottle how I feel here and take it into the real world with me.

I roll over. The alien is still sitting there, watching me with curiosity and heat. I feel a prickling on my skin, as if his gaze is a physical thing.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow and dammit, my heart jolts, my body warming in response to that little look.

I think of the stones on the beach that reminded me so strongly of my parents.

I guess I’m feeling closer to my younger self, my fear about the future making my mind go back to the old coping mechanisms - parents who will never let anything bad happen to you, upper tier boys who will fall in love with you and take you away from it all.