But I knew something Agatha didn’t.
Gharr moon was not my homeworld but it was similar.
We evolved in unison with this very same creature.
In the past, my ancestors struggled mightily with this beast.
When there were several of them, they could wipe out an entire Vulcarian village without much effort.
Over the eons, my culture developed weapons to overcome them.
Eventually, a special Vulcarian was born with the ability to directly overcome the Desert Flower threat with special glands in his body.
He passed the ability down to his descendants, of which I was one.
Now, I was trapped in that disgusting thick liquid in the belly of the Desert Flower.
It would consume me—slowly, over the course of many years.
I floated like a newborn ready to be born—and that, strangely, was what I was about to do.
I found that center inside myself, that soft golden light at the heart of every Vulcarian, and embraced it.
The warmth escaped my body and heated up the surrounding liquid in that giant pouch.
I listened to the rhythm of my heart and sent out pulses, simulating the process it went through when it gave birth to a Desert Flower.
As the heat rose and the creature felt me pulsing inside it, it shivered and a gap opened in its belly, spilling me across the sand.
I coughed and sputtered, struggling for air on my hands and knees.
The slimy liquid ran over me and drenched the sand.
I pushed myself up onto my feet in time to see the Desert Flower snatch Agatha again and drag her along the sand back in the direction of its quivering gaping maw.
I approached the vine that held her by the leg and rubbed the birth liquid over it.
The vine let go and set to slurping at the liquid on my body.
To the Desert Flower’s mind, I was its offspring and it would treat me as such.
The moment the creature released Agatha, she kicked back to get as far from the creature as possible.
She slithered half a dozen yards before she stopped and looked up into my face.
It took her a moment to recognize me.
“Egara?” she said.
She got to her feet and beamed with joy.
“Egara!” she said, throwing her arms around me. “I thought I’d lost you! I thought it ate you and… and…”
She pulled back and looked at me again, tears already shimmering in her eyes.
She had no other words she could think to say and leaped forward once again to wrap her arms around me.
“I’m so pleased you’re okay,” she said, her voice so soft and gentle it took me by surprise.
That golden light in my chest swelled as I took her in.
She was a little scuffed from the sand and vines that’d dragged her across the desert but she was otherwise okay.
“What happened to you?” Agatha said, peeling her hands off me and the thick goo coming with it. “And why are you covered in goop?”
“It’s the creature’s stomach fluids.”
Agatha’s face screwed up in disgust.
“Stomach fluids?” she said, peering at the stuff on her hands and chest from where she’d hugged me.
“I convinced the creature I was her child who needed to be birthed and… well, here I am.”
She just stared at me like she didn’t understand a word of what I’d just said.
“Your mom?”
“Well, not exactly like a mom—”
Her eyes bulged and she stabbed a finger toward my leg.
“Look out! The vine! It’s trying to grab you!”
“No, it’s not. It’s the Desert Flower. She’s cleaning me off, the way she would with one of her newborns.”
“Oh.”
She wore a frown. I doubted she would ever fully understand what I was trying to tell her.
The vine stretched out and reached for Agatha’s leg.
“So, I guess it’s no danger to us anymore?” she said.
The vine snapped around her ankle and set to dragging her along the sand again.
“It’s no longer a danger to me,” I said. “But it is to you.”
I smothered the vine in the goo and once more, it let go.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Agatha said. “I don’t want this thing to be my mom.”
I was about to explain to her that couldn’t happen unless she went through the same birthing process I had but she didn’t much look like she was interested in learning that.
I took her by the hand and led her away.
I glanced back at the vine.
It rose and swayed side to side. I could almost have mistaken it for a wave of goodbye.
Or was it a wave of hello?
We returned to our camp and packed up.
Agatha moved faster than I had ever seen her.
She kept glancing at the floor and hopped when she thought she felt something slithering around her feet.
Her skin crawled and she didn’t stop checking over her shoulders until I told her the Desert Flower’s tendrils couldn’t reach the distance we’d traveled.
I didn’t tell her that we would almost certainly be within the territory of another Desert Flower by now.
“How much further to the shuttlecraft?” she said.
“About a day’s walk if we don’t stop too often.”
We watched as the twin suns rose and pirouetted across the sky, dancing in each other’s everlasting embrace.
It was mid-morning by the time Agatha began to wheeze and struggle to breathe in the oppressive rising heat.
She would have removed her shirt but it provided her with some much-needed protection against the blistering suns.
For me, the temperature was about right for a nice stroll through a desert.
I kept my focus on the sky for any blinking lights or signs of the guards’ drones that could be circling overhead.
I didn’t want them to get the drop on us the way they had last time.
It was blind luck they hadn’t discovered us instead of the other prisoner.
I really had no idea how the other prisoner had managed to escape Ikmal.
He couldn’t have come through the same gate we had.
The guards wouldn’t have made the same mistake twice and allowed it to remain open.
There must be another way out but for the life of me, I couldn’t think what
