Temple in the Stars – Part 8
I am laying on the couch, warm, full, and completely content with how the day has gone. In short, I am at the polar opposite of my normal writing state of mind. Said state is normally made of liquid hot anxiety-magma, capped over very poorly by dreams of future success, atop a towering mountain of my insecurities. It swirls and churns, ready to erupt at the slightest disturbance to it’s unknowable internal balances. You know, the basic mindset of every author ever.
Dramatic internal demons aside, I’m also coming from a stage where I honestly don’t wish to write. It’s not that I feel I have nothing interesting to say. If I ever reach a point where I can successfully transcribe one of my daydreams into words, I’m going to start making profane amounts of money. No, tonight’s reluctance is borne of peaceful comfort. Writing is an act of creation, involving struggles and wrangling my snarling dinosaur of a mind into the appropriate activity. Making a T-Rex use a keyboard is never an easy task, even when your heart is fully committed to the task. On nights where you feel less than 100%… Well, you get the gist of it.
However, the story is at a delicate point. It is now teetering on the brink of the revelation that I’ve spent the better portion of a month building up to. I’m getting chills at the Big Reveal, and I’m the one writing it! It’s been enjoyable to build up to this moment, and I am at once filled with giddy excitement and nervous dread. We are going through this moment together, and all I want is all I’ve ever wanted: For someone else to derive as much enjoyment from my imagination as I do.
Without further daydreams,
Temple in the Stars – Part 8
Ashley floated in space, barely breathing as she pondered her options. Certain death lay behind her, and her only hope lay ahead. That hope had just rejected the rock she had thrown at it as firmly as it could’ve. What now? Ashley thought with cool detachment. Her oxygen counter had ticked down to zero just seconds before, and she was officially living on borrowed time. Once the emergency supply was gone, it would take only moments for her to build up damaging levels of carbon dioxide in her suit’s tiny atmosphere. She floated up to her only salvation locked away behind a transparent gatehouse, and rested her head against it. Ashley wanted a view of the achingly beautiful scene below her to be the last thing she saw.
As Ashley pressed herself against the bubbles outer edge, drinking in the view, her helmet began to slowly sink into the surface! Mind racing with mad hope, she used the lack of gravity to flip herself into a position along the edge of the hole she had cut in the rock. Planting her feet firmly, she once more placed her helmet against the smooth surface. With her feet braced against the rocks, she began applying firm pressure to the barrier, heart racing as she sunk further and further into the surface. She could feel a tension building, but it wasn’t any normal sense of pressure. Her muscles registered nothing, instead her straining against the rocks put pressure on her mind. She felt her very sense of self being squished as if it was encased in it’s own bubble, but this bubble was constricting her in the same steady manner that she herself was encroaching on the vista below.
The tension on her mind grew ever tighter. Ashley soon could barely remember who she was, what she was doing, or why it had been so important. Her mind screamed in agony, her suit ringing with the sounds of her anguish as she shouted in concert with her writhing thoughts. She pushed, hardly knowing why, lost in the ocean of her own torment. An enormous tearing sound echoed along her entire body, felt instead of heard. The sense of pressure vanished so suddenly that for a terrifying heartbeat, Ashley feared that it was she who had done the tearing. Then she felt gravity asserting itself on her once more, and began rushing towards the ground which was almost 20 feet below her. It was coming towards her with alarming speed, and she barely had time to flip around and open her helmet to the atmosphere within the sphere when she landed with punishing force. Just as she had feared in the desperate seconds before impact, the force of her landing caused her to lose consciousness. Had she not had the foresight to open her helmet, she surely would have suffered the terrible death she had suffered so much to avoid.
Slowly, the darkness receded, and Ashley began to realize that she was still alive. No small thing, considering. Laying on the soft grass and churned loam of her landing site, she slowly took stock. Nothing seemed to be broken, which didn’t make a ton of sense to Ashley, but she could feel the torturous bruises she had gotten all along her back and realized she was far from unscathed. Moving her head caused it to swim sickeningly, so she abandoned any effort to try and sit up. Instead, she simply stared up at the ceiling far above her. The surface of the bubble she had entered was completely unmarred, showing no sign of her passage. It was as completely without blemish as when she had first seen it. Curiously, it also did not have any glare. This sphere was well lit, but the light surely should play some sort of reflection along such a smooth surface. Nothing. Come to that, she couldn’t even see where the light was emanating from! She raised her hand, and it showed a shadow beneath as clearly as if she should be staring directly into whatever star lent it’s solar energy to the cause. Yet all she could see as she scanned as far as she could without moving her head were various types of asteroid marred only by the tiny indication of the hole she had cut out far, far above. .
To be continued…
– Justin
