Into the Chrysalis

A Serialized Novel
By Francisco Colber
Chapter Four

“Ciia, keep your eyes on me”, he urged. Unlike my previous journeys above the sky in ships, I was floating freely. My Zzolan form enshrouded within his. He said nothing for above all things, and from now on, I needed to observe and listen. Soon my home world was overtaken by the brightness of its sun: other planets joining its glowing aura — we were gaining speed. “We are traveling to Kye-terra”, he said. I knew of that world. We had never visited it as it was beyond the range of our starships. The clouds below us gave way to a beautiful scene of rocky steppes, and to the south and east, an endless sea of sandy plains and dunes. This world had no seas, only strangely beautiful ochre colored deserts and flat basins that seem to have no end. Unlike other desert worlds I knew about this planet had no life forms: no cacti, nor any kind of insect. When we landed we saw that the ground was dry, wind-scoured valleys were littered with billions of round stones of every size — perennial winds had sculpted them in-situ. Hidden in a quaint serpentine valley my father had once built a small dwelling for a special daughter’s Quest. He gave me a small leather pouch, and asked me to keep it in my pocket.

“Keep this with you at all times. I will be with you, in the shelter, but you will not be able to see or hear me.”

“What will happen to me?”

“This world will show you its harshness, at first as a whimper, later, as rage.”

“Is this world alive so it can hate me?”

After a quiet time he brought me to a high plateau where he pointed out a distant mountain where a telltale wisp of turbulence hung like a borealis. “It is beginning,” he said. I turned to him, but he vanished. The dreaded storm came swiftly just as my father had said, first as a tiny breeze, followed by stronger gusts. The shelter was strong, built with the round stones that littered the landscape. My window to the world was a very narrow slit in a north-facing wall: a lookout. Soon hot sand began to shoot through it. I sealed the windows with wet sand and pebbles. The storm retained the same intensity for another week, but my food and water supplies were running low. Father said there would be more water under the shelter, in a glass cylinder — but prospects of my going out safely grew bleaker by the hour. I had edible roots at the ready, in a storage box. By the third night the steady winds began to intensify.

The small stones soon imploded like gunshot and could not be re-packed. I thought of using larger stones, but it was clear that venturing outside would be impossible, but even the fierceness of these latest bouts were bearable, that was until the next morning. The dark clouds blocked out all hope of stillness; the storm blew with the ferocity of that which my father had alluded, hammering away at the shelterís walls, which began to weaken. I hunkered next to the root box. “Father, show yourself? This is enough.” The storm kept roaring and soon the walls caved in. The full force of the storm bore down on me. Sand grains and stones were pelting me from every side. The root box and all its contents went flying every which way. Then, when all seemed lost, I remembered the small pouch: it contained a ceremonial pebble, not mine but my mother’s. Those were normally kept by the family of the candidate.

Surprisingly it was my mother’s clear stone: representing her final attainment: Empathy. “Why was I given this?” I thought. As a child I had held it often in my hands, and knew every crevice on its tiny surface, aside from its great significance I knew it had no magical properties, or any power to save me. “Why this stone?” I thought. Then all went black.

To be continued…