Chapter 8
Two weeks went by, and for the first time Melissa learned what it was like to continually share her life with someone other than family. Asil was the first person she saw when she woke, and the last before she went to sleep. They ate together, gazed on the massive crater together. She felt embarrassed when she needed to go to the bathroom, and vexed when he hinted that she needed to bathe. He sat nearby while she studied and practiced sussa, she taught him to cook and tend to other household duties. Rarely were they apart, and soon they fell to petty bickering.
“Could you pass the hula beans?”
Asil roughly pushed Nuri off the kitchen table and slid the bowl in front of Melissa, who dumped a heaping portion on her already full plate. “Haven’t you had enough?” he asked.
She stuffed her mouth, and rolled her eyes at him. “When you go a full two weeks with only one hour sleep, then show me how little you eat. I’m awake more, so I gotta eat more. Damn,” she spat, as some black sauce spilled on her already soiled sweater. “You made it too hot again.”
Asil nodded tacitly, and began to clear some dishes off the table.
“And get me some more fula juice -- this lofa is too dry.”
With a mannered, deliberate hand he retrieved the pitcher of juice out of the storage and placed it in front of her. “Anything else?”
Melissa paused from her feasting to look up at him. He was still the perfect specimen of masculinity, and in that instant of admiring him she suddenly felt ugly and fat.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her mouth clean with two separate napkins, “I guess it’s just frustrating to learn all that I have and not be able to put it to good use.”
“You float Nuri about very well, and keep our platform levitated and warm.”
“Yes, yes, but that requires so little effort now,” she said, with a dismissive wave. “Ever since I created you, I feel more powerful. I want to stretch myself, test my power, but I don’t want to go out and attract attention to myself by obliterating mountainsides.”
“Why don’t you make a menagerie?”
“A what?” asked Melissa, reluctantly pushing the food away.
“More pets, like Nuri, but who have limited intelligence and can keep us company. Smaller, dwarf-like creatures -- I read about them in your histories.”
Melissa thought on his words. “I like that.” She got to her feet, and paced around the main living room, thinking on all she studied. Believing herself to be an idelfada, she had read all she could on the subject, and could instantly recall all that was necessary.
“So not quite human, but not quite animal?” she asked.
“Yes, like little dolls or playthings.”
“Mmm . . .” said Melissa, as she conjured tendrils of sussa from her fingertips. “Perhaps like distant cousins of Nuri, with higher reasoning.” She barely had to outstretch her arms to manifest four balls of sussa, spinning furiously before her. Nuri scampered into another room, and Asil knelt in a nearby hallway, content to watch from a distance. “I’ve seen drawings in children’s books of funny little creatures,” she said, as the balls spun faster and stretched into small ovoids. “I can see the detail in my mind, Asil! Oh, the power I have!”
She flung her hands down, and four little beings of differing sex and hue appeared before her. And as they stood lifeless, she conjured eight more balls of sussa, and spun them into ovoids as well. She felt a little weak as she brought all eight of them to term, but could feel the books she studied integrating into her mind, becoming wisdom from which she could draw.
“Appear!” she yelled, flinging her arms down again. The balls of sussa coalesced into small humanoids, standing lifeless next to their earlier cousins.
“Impressive,” said Asil, as he slowly walked between them all. They were large, round-eyed beings with small, furry ears that drooped, hanging low beside rosy cherubic cheeks. They were hardy creatures with pale, white skin and thick muscle on their arms and legs. Their hands and feet looked similar, with each having three thick digits instead of five. Their teeth were few and low and smooth; made for grinding and drinking rather than chewing.
“Help me open their mouths.”
She and Asil pulled open their mouths, and Melissa hurriedly moved from one creature to another breathing in them the breath of life. Barely a minute passed before they sprung to life with a cacophony of chirps, whoops and hollers. Melissa couldn’t help but break out in a delicious wide grin, and Asil came beside her and laughed as well.
For almost two hours they watched as their small menagerie cavorted and played in the living room. For the first time in quite a while, all thoughts of sussa, Toby and Esoica were taken out of Melissa’s mind. She not only had something else to care for, but something that gave her joy. In the back of her mind she wondered why Asil wasn’t able to give this to her, but decided not to ruin the mood with unproductive musings.
When they became fatigued, the tallest of the menagerie came in front of Melissa.
“Who are you?”
“I am Melissa, and this is Asil.”
The others came and gathered around Melissa and Asil, dropping on their wide bottoms to have a seat.
“Who are we?” asked another.
“You are . . . hlenna; a race of our creation.”
“You both created us?”
“Well . . .” began Asil, until he was cut off by Melissa. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “We both thought long and hard, and brought you all into existence to keep us company.”
“Ooof,” said one of the hlenna, “my belly hurts!”
“You are hungry,” said Asil. “We need to feed you.” He whispered into Melissa’s ear; “what did you decide they would eat?”
Melissa thought for a moment. “You all eat the rough fern that grows in patches on the surface. While this platform may be our home, it is good to remember we are but a small speck on the surface of this world, and we should venture out regularly to remind ourselves of that fact.”
Asil nodded with approval. “So it’s a trip to the surface!”
Melissa brought the levitating platform down slowly, far away from where Toby and his troops were stationed, near one of the few patches of green to be seen on the surface of Iqui, near a spitting volcano that melted the snow for almost a mile around.
The hlenna ran headlong through the white wilderness, and while they were oblivious to the cold or freezing wind, Asil shivered as soon as they stepped out. Melissa bundled him in a thick coat of furs, and for herself she learned to conjur hundreds of miniscule firespheres that she kept in a tight orbit around her. As the hlenna explored, she and Asil walked for a while.
“Why don’t we live on the surface, instead of on these floating platforms?” he asked.
“It’s too cold. On the levitating cities, we’re closer to the sun. The sky acts as some perverted magnifying glass, warming the upper climes and distorting the light as it reaches the ground.”
“How do you know all this?”
“It was told to me -- part of our history, passed down from those who lived long ago. Before sussa, people lived exclusively on the surface. Supposedly it was difficult, and few survived. Back then they used ‘science’ to detail their observations and understand their world. They were a very serious, very disciplined people.”
“And then sussa?” asked Asil.
“Yes, then the Archsussa, who was able to conjur warmth with a finger-snap, able to break off great tracts of land and suspend them high in the sky. Able to part the clouds to bring warmth, able to manifest a whirlpool of water from the frigid seas up to a levitating city. The cities had rich crops because of the Archsussa and plentiful livestock. As long as sussa was passed down from generation to generation, no other person had reason to want.”
Asil stopped at the summit of a small hill. Before them sprawled snowdunes for as far as the eye could see. Melissa watched him, wondering how he learned to stand so nobly. Only in that moment did she
realize she was coming to love him. She had always thought that pure subservience was the key to love, but was amazed to find it was Asil’s recent bouts of aggression and even defiance that made her respect and desire him more.
As they stood on top of the snowdune, reflecting on the cold, pristine beauty of the surface, Asil asked; “what caused the Second Apocalypse?”
“I don’t know. It might have been an accident, or it could have been the Freilux breaking our people to get more power.”
“I don’t think it was an accident. I think scientists still exist, Lissa, and I think they want all you Archsussa to die, so they can take control of the people once again. While I am unable to read most of your books, I am able to read some of the histories, and from what I’ve read they were a disgusting, ignoble people who sought to control nature -- even the world itself by chemical and machine. And from what I learned of the First Apocalypse, it is too coincidental that all the damage this time was limited to the Levitating Cities.”
As she watched him climb back down and head back to their small abode, despite the new theory he offered all she could think on was; how did he know to call me Lissa?
After a long while of playing in the snow, the hlenna hurried back to Melissa complaining of the cold. She smiled, amused at their simple natures, and conjured several small firespheres to warm them. She even cleared away a large tract of snow so they could sit on solid rock, and when she did that, she uncovered something unexpected.
“What is that?”
They all knelt by a large shell of metal, buried deep under the snow. Its radius implied it was a massive object, smooth, with white, chipped paint along its length.
“What do you suppose it is?”
“Let’s find out!” chirped one of the hlenna. “We can get shovels, and dig it out.”
Melissa pulled up her sleeves, and began to manipulate sussa in her hands. “Or, you could all stand back, and I can melt the rest of the snow around it.” She was about to thaw the snow, but saw the expression of the hlenna had become downcast. “What is it?”
“They wanted to do this for themselves,” whispered Asil in her ear. “Don’t deprive them of the journey of discovery.”
“But . . . what else is my power for, if not to make life easier for others?”
Asil shook his head in frustration. “Do you remember when people thought of you as having little or no value? How did it make you feel? Did you want to learn anything new, or become better than you were?”
Melissa nodded, suitably chastised. “I see what you mean. Come on, little hlenna -- I think there’s shovels in the house!”
A great cheer went up, and back into the house they trudged. Melissa fabricated a dozen shovels inside a storage closet for them to discover, and before long they were busy uncovering the metal artifact while Melissa conjured more firespheres above to provide warmth.
“What do you think it is?” asked Asil.
“I don’t know. I know people once lived on the surface, but I thought they lived in caves and did little more than hunt and sleep.”
“Perhaps the truth hasn’t been passed down like you had hoped.”
Eventually, the hlenna grew tired as they were small creatures with limited metabolisms. They uncovered a great portion of the leviathan metal beast, and Melissa said they should be proud of themselves for all they had done.
But if it were left overnight, they ran the chance of having snow undo all their work. So Melissa helped them the final way, though she made a point of saying they could have done it all themselves if not for the snow, and they made it much easier on her by uncovering as much as they did.
She raised her hands, projecting millions of white-hot tendrils of sussa, and the snow crept away like the receding tide, revealing the perimeter of the object. Almost as long as a building was tall, it was wide and cylindrical, with two small stubs of wings attached near the rear and a few windows running its length.
“What was this,” asked Asil, as he tried to peer in, “and how long has it been here?”
“Let’s go in and find out.”
She used sussa to pull open the door, and ignited several firespheres outside. She created a vortex of warmth that extruded all the frigid air and circulated dry air back in so when they stepped in, not a bit of ice remained. It still smelled damp, but it was comfortably warm.
“Handy to have one of you Archsussa around,” remarked Asil. “Also convenient how beautiful you are.”
Melissa blushed, as she herded the hlenna inside. “Come on and see!”
It was like a long room, filled with chairs and the floor upholstered in some artificial material. Small glass windows were inset into metal housings that opened into black nothingness. Melissa sat in one of the chairs and touched the glass.
“What were these for?” asked Melissa.
Asil touched the screen himself, to no effect. “Can you find out?”
Melissa sat back, thinking on what her mother had done, opening a ribbon to go back in time. She had read some about time travel in the books, but still had many to go before she absorbed all the knowledge within them all.
“I . . . I can’t do that now. I could lift this plane up, but I know not how to search into the past to find where it came from.”
“Well, at least you know your limitations,” abruptly remarked Asil. “Come on, little hlenna, it’s time to go back home. It’s nearly supper, and we still have to gather those roots . . .”
Melissa sat for a few more minutes in the damp chair, her pride stung.
Damned him -- I made him! Who does he think he is? So I haven’t read every book -- I got us inside here, didn’t I?