Excerpt: Traveling the Stars --Or How to Get Irrevocably Lost (Working Title)

It was hot and sandy outside the ship. Kalik had to brace her eyes from the beating heat of the sun that insisted on greeting her forcefully after she had been cooped up with numerous artificial lighting bulbs for several days...weeks even.

Gren had still yet to wake up; his body was slung in a sling across her back as she trudged across the desert. They had been heading for a space station when Che'kraa had lost control of the ship. The ship was more or less intact, but the batteries and fuel were gone, and only Gren knew how to fix this. Gren, who again, was unconscious and strapped to her back via crash webbing as she crossed this seemingly endless desert.

"Maybe they'll have something better than food cubes," Kalik mumbled to herself, trudging through sand that easily came up to her knees. "Or something non-cardboard tasting. That would be amazing if we ever make it there. No local currency, no help from you, Mr. "I hit my head and have been out for weeks", Che'kraa is stuck worrying over the ship, so all responsibility falls to the girl on your 'to-do' list. I hate my life sometimes."

The desert kept coming, no matter how far she trudged. She was starting to think she might die out here on some strange planet, light years away from home, away from everything she's ever known. Survival keeps her going. Keeps her putting one foot in front of the other. Keeps her mind focused on Gren, and how much he's relying on her to find them safety right now. Gren. He needs her. That thought puts new life into her, new energy, and she keeps trudging onwards until finally the view of a city in the distance hits her blinded eyes.

A city. This had to be one of those mirages they spoke about. But every step takes her closer to the shimmering image, and as more of it comes into focus she's pretty sure she couldn't imagine something like this. For one thing, her imagination would have fountains flowing from every orifice the city had to offer. A smell on the wind that smelled like wonderful, clean water. This smells like salt, and people, and animals, and the occasional whiff of food.

Her stomach growls. She has no idea how long it's been since she last ate. She doesn't know if there's night on this world or just a perpetual day that keeps on going, keeps on burning its inhabitants.

She finally makes it to the front gates of the city. The walls rise above her, looming and ominous. The guard glances her over with something approaching surprise and a sneer. She's sure she looks like something very much out of the ordinary with crash webbing fashioned into a sling across her back and some golden creature limp in its meshy hold. She dressed for heat as much as she could, so she has on a pair of cloth pants that are a little big for her and a tunic that is airy and light. Everything else was too bulky and would have made her sink into the sand like a giant slug being drowned in a pile of salt.

After a few minutes of scrutiny, the guard waves her through, and she stumbled into the packed streets of this great city. She doesn't even know the name of this place, this planet. She's pretty certain she won't understand the language, but apparently Che'kraa's injection that she forced her to get is working as intended. She can hear everything, understand everything despite the accents and the gestures. Without a destination, she simply wanders, almost getting run over several times by merchants who shout at her, waving their whips in the air over strange beasts she didn't think she could imagine.

She stumbles to the side, mouth feeling more parched by the second. The world is starting to spin for her, and she is fairly certain it's due to lack of moisture in her pores. She feels like aged jerky attempting to find its place in the big bad world that only wants to eat it, suckle it till there is nothing left, then spit it out in the sewers to rot along with the rest of the garbage. She knows she is not garbage, but without money, without coins, she might as well be such. Even the pickpockets pass her by without a second glance. She's worse off than they are.

The world spins again as something else bumps into her. She hears a squawk, the shuffling of claws on cobbled streets as she tries to find her balance and finds only imbalance in that great spinning circle. The words addressed her way sound a million miles away as her body, weak from worry and stress and gravity that she is only yet becoming accustomed to, decides that it has had enough. She feels arms wrap around her as her senses leave her and she can only hope that she isn't about to become a victim of someone's sick fantasy.