We are also now at risk of drowning, being burned, crushed, and electrocuted, all at fucking once. Obviously, Rex was not being paranoid, but he has no time to say I told you so. He is doing his best to keep hold of me and stay atop Tyche as we navigate the perilous flooded plains of what used to be a jungle and now is full of floating trunks.
One day, a very, very long time from now, these trunks will be buried by silt and turn into coal, and our bones will turn into petrol and I’m not okay with any of that. I just want to live. I want to survive. I want to make it through this absolute clusterfuck.
I can do nothing to save myself besides hold on to Rex. He urges Tyche on through the storm, and she moves, brave and stoic as ever, seeking escape from the localized chaos. The three of us could be killed at any moment, but by some miracle we are not. Every time we seem to come to an impassible flooded river, or burning bank, a new path somehow opens up. Heavy rain quenches flames, or the waters recede for an opportune moment. Has life always been this tenuous? Did I simply not notice how destruction surrounded me on all sides?
We go on until we are exhausted. Then we go on past the point of exhaustion. None of us are thinking, feeling creatures anymore. We are simply meat machines running for automatic survival while all around us the world crumbles and folds in on itself.
I don’t know when I lose consciousness. It’s not sleep, it’s just the cessation of being conscious. I do know that I am suddenly opening my eyes, and it is a new day.
The storm has passed and I am lying next to Tyche on the ground. Rex is holding me against his chest. His eyes are closed, but his chest is rising and falling in a regular motion. We made it. Somehow, we all made it.
“Hello, my love,” he rumbles as my movement wakes him.
“We’re alive.”
“For now.”
“Rex, what the fuck was that. That thing was as tall as a mountain. How was that real? Was it real? Did I imagine it?”
“You imagined nothing,” he growls softly. “I cannot answer your other questions. I do not understand all the many cruel ways of this broken world.”
I cuddle into him, so glad just to feel him next to me. Above our heads, the sky is blue, but I no longer trust it. Tyche and Rex and I are alive, but all our supplies are gone. The storm and the fallen trees ripped the harness from Tyche’s back and dragged almost everything away. We have no food in reserve. We have no weapons to defend ourselves. We have nothing. We are nothing. I feel like human debris, washed up on an uninterested shore.
“There’s no point to this, is there?” I shiver a little as the warm breeze tries to play with my hair. It no longer feels friendly. Everything around us feels like something barely tolerating us.
“Points are hard to define,” Rex says, vaguely. I probably owe him an apology for thinking that he was paranoid and crazy, but I don’t think he would care for it. “That’s why we set our own goals. That’s why the shiny thing matters.”
“Ah, fuck the shiny thing,” I growl.
He lifts his hand and points his finger toward the nearby forest. I follow the line he is pointing in, and at first I don’t see anything. Then the trees part, their upper boughs moving as though they are being moved aside by some unseen hand.
“SHINY THING!”
I am on my feet in an instant. My brain is overrun with a thousand thoughts and feelings, and they’re all competing for tongue space. I can’t give voice to them. I can only give voice to one thing.
“SHINY! THING!”
Seven
Kristine
The shiny thing is just over the next ridge. I feel like I can almost touch it…
“We’re almost there!”
Rex isn’t as excited as I am, but then again, Rex is never as excited as I am. He’s just not that kind of alien king.
“Rex. We’ve almost done it.” I hold onto his arm and try to drag him up with it.
"What have we almost done, exactly?” He asks the question in the same sort of tone a Zen master might ask you what the sound of one hand clapping is. Except this time, there’s an easy and obvious answer.
“Found the shiny thing!” With a lack of other external goals, the shiny thing has become a substitute for all the goals I used to have back on my old planet, or when I was alive. I’m still not entirely convinced that I remain alive. I feel too good and too much. I feel so many things, and way more of them have been better than they had any right to be.