Rover of the Sands
You lie for a long time stroking the curve of Viola’s side, from her ribs, sliding over the persistent dip of her abdomen despite her advanced pregnancy, back up to the high peak of her hip, which you never tire of scaling. Tonight has proven somewhat unusual, as she is fast asleep while you feel almost as if there were a live current running through you, despite no one having seen or used electricity for years. Yet for lack of a better word, you are absolutely electrified. Your love tonight was passionate and carnal, slick with sweat and delirium. You took her from behind as she braced herself against the kitchen table, arching her back in a relentless plea for more and more and more until you both fell exhausted onto the bed.
For a short time, you had hovered in a sort of half-dream, recalling the moment you first saw Viola rising impossibly from the Moon Sands, beckoning to you as you sat speechless, unable to look away from her for even an instant. Her eyes were blazing with that heavenly blue as she seduced you right there in your little boat, rocking back and forth in the crystalline wastes.
Your first time with Viola was like nothing you had ever imagined possible. But when your encounter had come to an end and you lay adrift in the bottom of your craft, you saw her eyes fade to green and yellowed illness; you saw the strain in her face and knew that she was no angel but a woman in need of your protection. Already in those early days of the New Times, the law was clear. Anyone who fell into the Moon Sands was the victim of a terrible and irreversible fate. Whether they reappeared in Apparitions or attempted bodily to resurrect themselves onto the land, the sentence was the same: they must be pushed back, condemned for eternity.
Rumors abounded that those few who escaped the Sands came back damaged and twisted, projecting themselves in Apparitions, transformed into evil beings. But if that were true, then how could your wife be the beautiful and gentle creature she is? You took your commission aboard the Rover the day after you married her, no one ever asked any questions and for the last five years, you have lived in happiness, in stark contrast to the darkening world around you.
As you continue to caress your wife’s back, you find yourself seized by a sudden, impish urge to tell her all about what happened today, about Slugger’s strange visions and then your own scare in the cantina, about the mysterious hag woman and the captain’s even more mysterious response to it all. You feel inclined, no, magnetically impelled, to whisper it all in her ear, right now.
What harm could it possibly do? Yes, it would violate a direct order from McCann, but the fact is your wife is deaf. You can’t even be sure if her people spoke your language before the entire planet was buried in the shifting particulate that utterly erased the science of geography. Lying there, she is so innocent, so pure, soon to be the mother of your child. Why should a man be obliged to keep secrets from his wife?
You feel the ship rock beneath you, just like on that first fateful morning. You whisper to her…
For a short time, you had hovered in a sort of half-dream, recalling the moment you first saw Viola rising impossibly from the Moon Sands, beckoning to you as you sat speechless, unable to look away from her for even an instant. Her eyes were blazing with that heavenly blue as she seduced you right there in your little boat, rocking back and forth in the crystalline wastes.
Your first time with Viola was like nothing you had ever imagined possible. But when your encounter had come to an end and you lay adrift in the bottom of your craft, you saw her eyes fade to green and yellowed illness; you saw the strain in her face and knew that she was no angel but a woman in need of your protection. Already in those early days of the New Times, the law was clear. Anyone who fell into the Moon Sands was the victim of a terrible and irreversible fate. Whether they reappeared in Apparitions or attempted bodily to resurrect themselves onto the land, the sentence was the same: they must be pushed back, condemned for eternity.
Rumors abounded that those few who escaped the Sands came back damaged and twisted, projecting themselves in Apparitions, transformed into evil beings. But if that were true, then how could your wife be the beautiful and gentle creature she is? You took your commission aboard the Rover the day after you married her, no one ever asked any questions and for the last five years, you have lived in happiness, in stark contrast to the darkening world around you.
As you continue to caress your wife’s back, you find yourself seized by a sudden, impish urge to tell her all about what happened today, about Slugger’s strange visions and then your own scare in the cantina, about the mysterious hag woman and the captain’s even more mysterious response to it all. You feel inclined, no, magnetically impelled, to whisper it all in her ear, right now.
What harm could it possibly do? Yes, it would violate a direct order from McCann, but the fact is your wife is deaf. You can’t even be sure if her people spoke your language before the entire planet was buried in the shifting particulate that utterly erased the science of geography. Lying there, she is so innocent, so pure, soon to be the mother of your child. Why should a man be obliged to keep secrets from his wife?
You feel the ship rock beneath you, just like on that first fateful morning. You whisper to her…