I’m sitting this one out
Lydia
Is your stomach still bad, hun?
Kerra
I didn’t know you were sick, Maggie, you can use the med bay here if you want
It’s nothing bad, but I won’t be coming
I’d say send my regards but then you’d have to get Dexx to do another punch in the head from me
Scarlett
:D
Kerra
Fair enough but we all need to have a girls get together soon
Rosalie
I agree
Scarlett
I’m about ready to pop with Dexx’s spawn, so it had better be sooner than later.
I snigger a little at Scarlett’s last message as I shut down the group chat and open the airlock out into the scouring desert air outside of Dante’s sector. She certainly has the hulking great warlord wrapped around her little finger.
I know most of the others don’t venture out much, but I’d go stir crazy if I were to say inside the sectors. I used to spend all my time out on the moors and hills of my native Yorkshire, in all weathers. What the others don’t really know is I was an artist. I scratched a living from my sculptures and artworks, living in the tiny stone cottage I inherited from my grandfather.
Sure, I was also a lawyer once too, but that was a long time ago and something I don’t like to think about. Not after the debacle which was the groping barrister.
Now I’m an alien abductee with a bun in the oven, and I don’t think I could be further from what I was.
It doesn’t take me long to hike over to where the desert becomes a lush grassland and I can make my way to my favorite spot. Rising out of the waving vegetation is a rocky outcrop, long weathered by wind and rain, the buff coloured rock sparkling with mica, and as I climb into it, I can already hear the sound of running water. It makes me move all the quicker.
Vorostor has plenty of surprises, and I found this one on my second exploration. It’s a naturally heated azure pool, fringed with tropical style plants and a waterfall which cascades down a series of rocks that glint rainbow colors from the minerals contained in the water.
It’s like something out of a movie, and what’s even better is the Sarkarnii, for whatever reason, do not come here. Either they prefer their aquiums, their bathing pools within the individual sectors, or they haven’t seen the place, surrounded as it is with rocks and vegetation. I don’t care what the reason is. This place is mine, a little piece of heaven and somewhere I can spend several hours forgetting everything about my situation as an alien abductee on a brand new planet in the arse end of the universe.
I spread out my towel (or what passes for a towel) on the tiny white sand beach dotted with blue and green crystals before I put my picnic in the shade of a handy rock. My appetite hasn’t quite recovered since I first learnt Droik was returning, but then, I grudgingly admit to myself, that could be for other reasons.
For a while, I lie in the sun, soaking up the rays. Yes, I might have also fallen asleep for a bit too. Us pregnant ladies need all the rest we can get.
I’m hot when I finally come to my senses and the pool in front of me is very inviting. I shrug off my clothes. I didn’t botherbringing a swimsuit, given no one but me comes here. Nude bathing has to be the best kind, after all.
The water is a perfect temperature as I gently bob around in the natural swirl from the waterfalls. I do several splashy circuits, getting a little out of breath before I return to the waterfall where I can let the cooler waters cascade onto my shoulders and back, making my skin tingle and soothing my heart rate. I close my eyes and drop my head back, getting my hair wet and thinking of absolutely nothing.
“Hello, spitfire,” a deep, dark voice growls from my left.
I instantly duck below the surface, glaring up at the Sarkarnii silhouetted against the sun. His scales glint in the light, and I swim backwards to the middle of the pool.
“Driok.”
He’s here, in all his arrogant glory. Muscles bulging, dark hair tied up in a long plait down his back. Could he be bigger than before he left? It’s possible. Not that he lacked any bulk at all. His handsome face is quirked in his usual cruel smirk, his golden eyes, slit pupils mere slithers of obsidian in the bright light, slightly narrowed. He could be a movie star. He certainly has the ego for one.
