Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Her very special way of calling me an imbecile.
“You’re to be a father.”
This time, my sibling shuts the door in my face.
If only I had a care.
FIFTEEN
My hand has come to my stomach many times throughout the days since I was finally smart enough to realize why I’d been vomiting. Even though it’s still flat, I feel a connection each time I place my hand there. My hand lays upon my stomach for a different reason now, though, trying to contain the nervous butterflies taking flight there as the ship approaches my new home. Finally, we are arriving on Hallalah.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Bothaki says beside me.
I look away from the light pink sky showing through the windows to give him an exasperated sigh.
“Oh, yes, I’m just going to a new planet I never even knew existed a few months ago, having to learn almost everything over, oh, and meeting your parents.”
“Is that what this is about?” he asks, chuckling. “You worry about meeting my parents?”
“Of course, I do.”
“I mean … it has to go better than me meeting your father.”
That makes me laugh, and I’m so grateful for the way it fades some of the anxiousness inside me. But then my thoughts grow somber when I consider the parent of mine he didn’t meet.
“My mother would have loved you,” I say low.
“You think?”
I nod. “She would have loved you just for the way you love me alone.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him, kissing my temple. We remain silent as the ship gets closer and closer to the ground. I’m sure Bothaki is just marveling at a home he hasn’t seen in so long, but me? I’m in awe of everything I see. There’s one sun, a bright orange globe as the backdrop, but its brightness doesn’t make me have to look away from it the way the sun would on Earth. Instead, I find it hard to turn away. There are several moons, each a different shade of orange, getting darker as they are further away from the sun until the furthest is like a burnt, round canvas against the pink sky. Rich green covers the ground, dark brown, tall trees sprouting high, their trunks thick, and branches displaying foliage the color of sunsets back on Earth. There are green leaves, too, but I find those trees spattered amongst a forest of many colors. There are flowers of all different colors and heights. The shades of colors are unlike any I’ve ever seen, and some of them are so tall that they rival the trees.
“What is that?” I ask, pointing at the beam that shines up from the ground. It cuts through the cloud and then comes back down, like a rainbow of light arching into the sky.
“Whenever a child is born, Hallalah greets and marks them with a light that forms from the ground where their birth has taken place.”
“The ground?”
“Females birth on the land here, so the moment the child comes into this world, it can feel the land beneath them, embrace the land as it embraces the child. The child must have been born today from how bright the beam is. It will shine for three changings of moons, dimming each day until it fades. On that day, the oldest Mina of that family will perform the crista ceremony. My grandmother, Sinad, my father’s mother, does any ceremonies for our family and Vabila is her second.”
I open my mouth to ask another question as my eyes follow the beam up into the sky. But my mouth simply hangs open while my eyes widen at what I see. The clouds, a darker pink than the bright sky, but it’s not their color that amazes me. What seems to be taking place within them is the amazement. Lightning flashes inside them, in a way that I’ve never seen, making the clouds glow, even the ones that are low. No thunder sounds as I watch the lightning in different clouds.
“How can that be?” I ask, looking up at Bothaki. When he furrows his brows at me, I continue, “The clouds. There are … storms in them.”
He smiles. “You could say that.”
“Does it rain much here?”
“Often enough that everything can thrive.”
“And me? I will thrive here, right?”
He turns to face me, and his hands come up to cradle my face. “You will. Don’t doubt it for a second. You and our baby will thrive.”
I nod and take a deep breath before turning my head to look out the window again, but keeping my body pressed against Bothaki. Although the sky remains the same, the landscape changes, and mountains rise from the ground, gray and huge, their peaks disappearing into the pink clouds. As we get closer, I gasp at the house I begin to see carved into the face of the mountain. Not a house. A palace. A grand palace, with blue and purples lights shining through the windows. Not fires, but a glow of light. Around the palace, curving the mountainside are other houses, smaller, clearly built to not obstruct the rivers that flows between them. Some even have trees coming through their roofs, as if the houses were built around them.