Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue

she was the cause of it.

Her rage melted at the sight of the horror. She could feel the urge to sleep overcoming her again. Her stomach, her entire body, felt hollow. She was overwhelmed by a lack of appetite—for food, air, even life.

“Why?” The pathetic question trailed out of her in a feeble voice. Directed at no one in particular, she wasn’t sure if it ranged beyond her own ears.

Edison turned away from the view and met Molly’s wet eyes with his own. “Inevitable,” he said quietly.

She looked beyond the pup to the large black Glemot, who had turned to face them. Water streaked down the fur on his cheeks and his dark lips were pressed tight, his small ears folded flat to his head. He addressed them all in perfect and jargon-free English. “Go get some rest. I will answer your ‘why’ soon enough.”

••••

Cole had to physically drag Molly away from the depressing vista. Rooms were offered on the Station, but Cole ignored the black beast, his anger defused by the obvious sadness resonating between the Glemots. Nothing made sense, but they weren’t going to kill them. Yet. Rest and then some answers sounded good. In that order.

Back in Molly’s quarters, he helped his friend out of her flightsuit, but left her jumper on. He held the sheets back as she curled into the bed, a thing with no will. To Cole, the sight of her suffering was even sadder than the horror below, the blackness growing in her more blinding than the firestorm on Glemot. It was the destruction of something even more beautiful in his eyes. He wiped moisture off his cheeks and turned to his own quarters.

Walter passed by, heading out the cargo door with his computer in hand and a bounce in his step. His joyful energy twisted Cole’s last nerve into a knot.

“Officser Walter out to sscout,” he announced to nobody and everyone.

Cole moved to throttle the kid, unadulterated wrath coursing through every fiber in his body. He wanted to harm the boy, to hurt something. He moved behind Walter, but stopped himself just in time. He leaned against the bulkhead and watched the kid bound through the airlock.

Walter had no clue about the nightmare below. The amount of destruction unfolding, the number of creatures dying, he probably didn’t understand the danger his own life had been in, or what Molly and Cole had gone through to get them all off the planet. To Walter, his time on Glemot had been just another dandy adventure, and now he was off to loot a Naval complex.

Cole’s anger faded into irritation, and then envy. He could imagine how nice it would be to not understand. To see one’s microcosm as the macrocosm. To focus a meter beyond one’s own nose. Who was Walter harming by remaining ignorant? Cole wondered. Who was Molly harming by regressing? Curling up in a ball and having something else keep you warm—it was an ugly, yet seductive, coping strategy. Cole went to his room and stripped down to his bare skin before sliding between sheets that smelled of forest floor, of moss and bark.

He shut his eyes and dreamed of not knowing or caring. The hideous and alluring thoughts danced in front of him, beckoning and repelling at once.

Part IV – Betrayals

“The mind rejects the very things worth knowing.”

~The Bern Seer~

23

Molly had no idea how long she’d slept. The urge was to stay there forever. To waste away between the sheets, carried off by invisible critters one dead cell at a time. But her brain hummed with questions, urging her up and out. Part of her needed to see the damage she had wrought, to see if the ring of destruction had fizzled out or finished its task.

She rolled over and extended her numb legs out of the covers. Her jumpsuit was on; she couldn’t remember getting into bed. Lowering her bare feet to the cool steel decking, she wiggled her toes. Her mind still felt hazy— disconnected from the rest of her body.

Her sling lay folded on the dresser. She donned her flightsuit first, then secured her arm with the woven Glemot grasses. Perhaps this was all that remained of their planet. Molly fingered the reeds, brown and dry—she couldn’t help but think how readily they would burn.

Soft sounds from far away trickled into her ship, warning her that a door was open—an outer world attached. She followed the sounds of distant pumps and circulating fans through the airlock. Down the long corridor and out the carboglass observation window she could see Glemot, like a beacon of cruelty. There was no one by the window—or so she thought. As she got closer, she recognized the black silhouette. Against the pitch-black of space, his ebony fur made him almost invisible. Molly could only distinguish the fringe of the massive beast, so dark it verged on purple, as it sheened in the light of distant stars.

“Good morning, Molly,” he said without turning.

Molly met his reflected gaze high in the glass. “Is it morning?”

“Up here, it’s morning when you get up. It’s evening when you become tired.” He turned to look at her. “Maybe, for me, it will be evening forever.”

“Who are you? And do you know what happened down there?”

“My real name would sound funny to you,” he interrupted, his voice a sonorous bass. “Call me by my Earth- language name.”

“Which is?”

“Campton.”

So many of Molly’s recent memories were still bubbling to the surface, it took her a moment. “Like the tribe?” she asked.

“Just like the tribe. And yes, I know what happened down there. I caused it, not you.”

Molly stared at him, her teeth clenched. She envisioned climbing up his back, her fists full of fur and fighting to the death, but his imposing bulk, his calm stillness, the sadness in his eyes—they confused and paralyzed her.

“I know you have many questions, I see the obvious ones on your face, but first I would like to give you some answers you don’t even know to ask for. Will you listen?”

Molly turned away and squinted at the fiery orb. She touched the glass hesitantly, as if the planet could burn her, but the thick pane was cold from the vacuum of space. Outside, a fiery new star existed where a green planet had once been.

“I’ll listen,” she said, “but I can’t promise you I’ll understand, or my anger will lessen. I’m pretty kinetic right now, but you probably don’t know what that—”

“I know what it means. You’re upset. Angry. I understand that. If I don’t sound like my brethren, it’s because I’ve lived up here with Earth’s archives for so many of your years. And I’m old. My wisdom has grown far beyond the juvenile stage that most Glemots… Well, imagine a human that learned so much about language, it could babble back and forth with a child. That should help you grasp—”

“So now I’m a baby to you? I said my anger wouldn’t lessen, I never promised it would remain where it was.” She turned around and sank to the decking, her back against the glass. Not wanting to look out the window, or at Campton, anymore, she stared down the hall into the small mouth of her ship.

“No, Molly. You are not a baby to me. I have come to respect you greatly. Edison is quite taken with you and your friends. I just… don’t think my kind can empathize enough to talk for another’s ears.