[12/22/99]
[An El Hazard Fanfiction]
[Nathan Baxter]
Nighttime wind blew chill against her skin, a heat-drinking vampire that
would have killed an unprotected human in minutes.
She barely felt it, for she had been designed to operate in far greater
extremes of climate that this.
Makoto leaned against her, bulky in his parka, and she could sense how his
body systems fought a ferocious losing battle to stay warm.
She whispered to him, "You shouldn't be out here. It's too cold for you."
He didn't take offense at her protectiveness, he knew her too well. And
besides, she was right. Still, he shook his head and said, "It wouldn't be
the same from inside."
She sighed, and held him close, then set up a thermal field around the two
of them. She'd humor him about wanting to be outside, but darned if she
would let him give himself pneumonia.
Her eyes, designed to pick out incoming shells using visible light alone,
could easily see the frozen golden glow of distant Tokyo, even from this
lodge high in the mountains.
The sky above was pitch black, scattered with diamond dust. It seemed as
though they sat at the center of a wheel of solid crystal, microseconds
after it had shattered, leaving tiny flecks of itself to scatter wildly. The
galactic spiral took the role of the slower moving pieces, still clustered
near where the rim of the wheel had been, while the firmament was formed by
racing shards, happy to be freed from their former shape.
Clouds clustered darkly over the eastern horizon, indigo so deep as to be
nearly black wreathed by silver where the light of Earth's solitary, distant
moon fell.
On tendril of floating mist seemed to stretch up into the sky, just barely
brushing the disk of the moon, as though the Earth was reaching up a hand to
brush away its satellite's tears.
Perfect memory had its drawbacks, but it was worth remembering all the
horrible days of the War just to never forget this moment.
Makoto twisted in her arms, and pressed his wind-chilled lips to hers.
Neither of them noticed the cold.
Be well, all, and Happy Solstice.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nathan Baxter, Grand High Emperor of the Lobsters.
Author, Bubblegum^5, El Hazard: The Continuing World
(Now, if you've heard of both of these, THEN I'll be
impressed.)
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"Das ist ein Geheimnis!"
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