SWNOVELS Chapter [9] Closer
The scene was still in motion—airborne eddies of crystal shatters, turning in the sunlight’s radiance across the Saturn Moon. Quantum[X] was still rising, flying up from his launch from the valley below, holding the crystal sail to his feet.
At the peak of his rise, he became level with the three distant stars—the beacons of light he had followed to his present place. All he had to show for it was a broken ship. Have only just arrived, he thought. Wondering what was yet to come, he plunged towards a range of icy moguls with bottomless trenches, slivered between them.
Using the sail as a board, he slicked down the backside of a slope that flowed him unto the brunt of the bumpy patch. He carved them fluidly till winding about a berm that whip-slung him up—forth—down towards a slivered abyss. Spinning on board, he landed the tail of the sail upon the crevice, sliding over its bottomless darkness by the fine line of its edge. Sliding out past the end of the gap, he slowed to a stop. Stepping off the sail, he brushed the ice from his suit and surveyed the realm.
The moguls behind him had smoothed out unto the icy plain amidst which he stood. Apart from the cracks riddled throughout it, the only variation in terrain was the crater, roughly a hundred meters ahead of him. A thick haze was swirling within it beneath a shard of the mainmast that rested across its diameter.
In the distance, the plain sharply sloped up along a glacial vertical of smokestack proportions—a Lunar Butte, perched over a cliff. From his vantage, he could see nothing past the drop-off beyond it. Above it, a misty plume was mushrooming in the dark heights as it drizzled up from the top of the butte. Scanning from the distant terrain to his present place, he observed no sign of life. There was no indication of the one for whom he had come.
“Risen... to this?”
High overhead, a snowflake the size of a leaf was floating along the shards of the vessel. It was the first object he had noticed since landing that struck him as something pleasant to see. Alarmed by its Surreality, he lifted his arm as opening palm. §uper§tring§ unslung—attached—reeled the flake to his fingertips.
Upon the touch—
(snowflake) | {deconstruct} | [properties];
/*
- State: Solid;
- Size: 6 in2
- Shape: Hexagonal;
- Density: 1.6 kg/m3;
- Temperature: -76.5º C;
- Composition: 2 Oxygen, 1 Carbon;
- Compound: Carbon Dioxide (Dry Ice);
*/
The data bored him. Turning it by the light, he scanned its design, searching for signs of encryptions entangled. Nothing supernatural, he thought; an outlier to the vision, yet nothing more than a Snowflake of Dry Ice.
Suspicions averted, he took a moment to admire the natural symmetry of the six-sided crystal. It was then he realized that not its size had caught his attention, but the snowflake’s perfection; flawless, down to the particle. Suddenly, he found himself unable to look upon its symmetry without thinking of another.
“But risen for you...”
Opening his hand, he released it from his fingers, sending it back in the direction from which it had come. The snowflake drifted up through the heights, towards a place in the night where two stars were side-by-side. Against the darkness, it was hard to tell if they were twinkling points or blinking eyes.
“For your deliverance, beyond the darkness...”
Looking over his left shoulder, he zoomed far behind him, across the cosmos, to the silhouette of Mother Earth before the Sun.
“Come out of the night.”
Returning his attention along the diagonal before him, the snowflake was still drifting towards the two stars. It stopped, suspended in space with perfect stillness, the snowflake began to glow; the warm light, emanating of it, outlining the shadowy touch of the one who had caught it.
"As you wish"
Nearly six feet below the snowflake, a horizontal string of light emerged from the darkness, shining its light about the seams of the sinuous figure, balanced upon it.
Quantum[X] advanced a step towards her.
“Closer...”
The silhouette was taking her time to admire the delicate creation in her palm.
"Is it safe?"
She glanced left, looked right.
"There’s a monster amongst us"
She gazed down the diagonal, her starry eyes, aligning with the vertical bars of his lens.
“O?”
Breaking their line of sight, he scanned the Misty Crater up ahead of him.
“Of your design?”
At his angle, he could not see much through the white haze, churning just below the rim of its hollow, occasionally brushing up beneath the long, mainmast splinter, rested across the crater.
“Should I see what I can turn up?” he asked, “Or is now good to deliver you from this place?”
A string of light emerged from the darkness, one step down from the first. A third appeared. And then another. With sweeping procession, a stairway of taut lines appeared along a diagonal, crossing from where she stood to over the Misty Crater before touching down a short ways from Quantum[X].
"Where is there to go?" she asked.
In face of the stairway outline and the polar realm, enveloping, he thought of the warm planet from which he had flown.
“Home would be nice...”
Her starry eyes turned from him to the dark sphere before the Sun.
"Homesick so soon?"
Scanning the vista beyond her, Quantum[X] observed that the Lunar Butte was the only geographical feature hidden from the Sun. The stack was stuck in the shadows cast of the mists, flowing of it, clinging to the heights overhead.
“Mother Hærth is in danger...” he said, “Thought you’d like to see her, one last time...”
She released the snowflake to the rest of the shards, drifting through the atmosphere.
"And abandon this silent night?
Upon my wonderland of ice?"
With escalator procession, the strings of light began smoothly cycling down the diagonal.
"Where every moment’s
Aligned
With my [X] in mind?"
Upon touching down to the Saturn Moon, she stood directly across from the iridescent superhuman.
Quantum[X] advanced. Once near, he proceeded circling about the silhouette. Unable to perceive much about the depth of the hourglass figure, he came to a halt before her.
“And where are you, my eclipse?”
She crossed the distance that remained between them.
"I am here…"
She raised her arms out towards him, resting them over his shoulders as her waist naturally flowed into his grip. His open palms were amidst welcoming her hips when they sifted unto her stomach.
There was nothing there to hold. He did not feel her embrace. She was empty, void as a shadow, only the suns her eyes, brimful of life, beaming unto his lens.
"I am
Everywhere
About you"