The stars were just beginning to show faintly, but there was light enough for walking and walking enough in Maru’s restless body as she ventured through the tunnel of cypresses. A crossbreeze tended to sail down avalon street, the northeastern path that cut diagonally across The Oasis, and it pushed at her back now, towards the sliver of sand downs that she could see in the distance, through the window of emerald foliage over the surface of the road.
When the first explorers discovered the Oasis six hundred years ago, they had been so charmed by its mystery that they had intentionally reported terrifying things to the mother planet; enormous serpents that could eat through the hull of a recon skipper, flaming lizards that erupted from the desert in a fountain of sand to spit burning acid capable of burning a whole party of scientists in an instant. None of these things were without a few grains of truth, but they concealed the more immediate reality on the Oasis, which was a peace of peace and isolation that permeated everything about living there.
The Oasis is green hill of roughly three square miles in the Gravanni desert, another hemisphere entirely from Spaceport City, the only major Trans-orbital city on Galeo, and a bit of a rough one at that. Out of the nine moons orbiting the mother planet, Galeo is the least populated and most obscure.
The stars were still there, Mirui knew; they were just out of site. The cerulean blue sky had a dusting of purple about it, like a smoking bonfire of nothingness was burning just below the horizon, pulling at the corners of the sky. But there was light enough for walking and walking enough stored up in Mirui’s calves. She had an energy stored up in her body that burned like any gasoline, and so she after her apprenticeship she had stepped outside as soon as she could “By Bazly! See you tomorrow!”
“Oh Miru, actually mentioning tomorrow, I did want to talk to you about the moss cultures.”
But demands like that just sounded like a muffled wind once Mirui had gently closed the sand-scarred wooden door behind her, a nothing sound next to sighing of the emerald-needled cypresses of Oasis Six in the crossbreeze.
The crossbreeze tended to sail down Avalon St., the Northeastern street that cut diagonally across the Oasis. The Oasis being about a square mile of green, well-fed foliage, a tiny exception in the rolling golden dunes that spread out for a hundred miles or more in every direction. Bazco Labs was on the northeastern bit of O6.
A couple hundred years ago one of the first teams of explorers had discovered 06, and had found it so beautiful that they had reported terrifying things back to HQ. Huge serpents that could eat right through the hull of a recon skipper, Lizards that erupted from the desert in a fountain of sand to spit burning acid that could melt a whole party of scientists in an instant. Of course, these observations were not fiction at all, just a bit overstated perhaps.
There was only one building that Mirui knew of that was farther to the northeast than Bazco Labs, and that was the Risello farm. Mirui’s best friend in the desert, which is to say the universe, lived there. The youngest of a brood of twelve, seven girls and five boys, Sio.
After Mirui took her first step into the dusty road, her feet carried her like a mini atomic reactor. The wind at her back, she headed towards the Risello farm, but ultimately the sliver of dusty gold visible through the tunnel of emerald Cyprus branches, taking up space in the air like the velvet curtains of an enormous theatre. The birds ushered Mirui down her passage of dust and leaves with their strange cries of mourning and anticipation that Mirui had never quite cracked.
Sio was still working at the mill in town - he didn’t want to be a gas farmer like his family, but instead wanted to work the old trade of bread maker, from grain to loaf. So Mirui continued.
“Catch up with him later,” she noted away in a mutter.
The sky opened up and the road basically ended, at a small bluff of dunes where the cyprus rootes and the dandelions reached into empty space before surrendering to the emptiness of the sand and the wind.
But Mirui did not. She continued, right off the edge of the road.