The shuttlecraft smashed into the monster, emitting a harsh blue-white explosion that tore through it, blinding me, and turning the world white.
Egara
I wrenched the passenger seat from its moorings and held it in front of myself, preparing to use it to cushion my fall.
And what a fall.
It wasn’t a long way down but the speed concerned me.
It made the ground blurry, fuzzy.
The wind roared and whipped my hair, snapping my clothes.
I peered over at the console and brushed a hand over the cool metal of the craft’s door that framed my exit.
I’d been through a lot with this shuttlecraft.
More adventures than I could count.
But it represented my past, not my future.
That was Agatha’s domain.
A host of new exciting adventures awaited me.
I just needed to rescue her from the jaws of death first.
The Desert Flower Monarch was far larger than any I’d seen in the past.
I wasn’t sure the shuttlecraft would take it out but I had to take the chance.
I peered at the creature.
It reached up with its sprawling tentacles, ready to snap around the shuttlecraft as it came in to land.
Would the ship slip through?
I couldn’t wait to find out.
I needed to jump now.
So I did.
I braced the chair with both arms and tossed myself out the door.
I was halfway to the ground when the ship struck the monster and tore into its soft and pliable body.
It flailed its tendrils and screeched a horrible sound like glass tossed into a blender.
Thick viscous liquid seeped from the tear in the corner of its mouth.
The ground rushed up to meet me.
Time slowed the way it always did during times of high drama.
The chair struck the ground first.
As it did, I landed on my shoulder, badly, and felt something tear.
I rolled end over end, taking out the worst of the blow and tossing up great plumes of sand.
I rolled five, six, seven times before I came to a stop.
I laid on the ground for a moment, dizzy and disorientated.
I pressed a hand to the sand to shove myself up.
Sand smothered the blood peeling from the corner of my mouth and neck.
I rolled onto my back and peered up at the sky, unable to contain the giddy and crazy high-pitched laugh that issued from my lips.
It was a mad, dumb shit thing to do.
But I had done it and survived.
I grunted as I rolled onto my shoulder and immediately wish I hadn’t.
The bones crunched and shot a bolt of pain into my chest.
I rolled up onto my feet but couldn’t stand, not yet.
I closed my eyes and waited for my senses to right.
The creature continued to scream, in a higher pitch now.
Even through my eyelids, I saw the enormous explosion that must have been the fuel cells biting the dust.
And still, I could not stand.
“Egara?” the sweetest voice in the galaxy screamed—not in pain but excitement. “Egara!”
It was music to my ears.
She crashed into me with her usual lack of grace and knocked me back down.
She straddled me and kissed every inch of my face.
“Are you all right?” she said between kisses. “What do you think you’re doing? Flying a spacecraft into a monster?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” I said calmly, the pain subsiding as I reached up to tuck a length of hair behind her ear. “All I could think about was you.”
She grinned and tried to pull her laugh back but it exploded from her uncontrollably.
All of a sudden, tears were in her eyes.
I reached up and wiped them from her face.
“Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to mine.
She gave herself to me as I gave myself to her.
The way fated mates were always said to coexist.
Each equal in the other’s eyes as neither could survive without the other.
And I knew then I made the right decision to come back.
As the Monarch squealed its last shriek, its tendrils fluttering in pain, it finally flopped to one side and was still.
It turned out the shuttlecraft was enough to silence the beast for good.
The prison guards began to get up from their positions dotted about the monster, most unaware of where they were and what they were doing there.
“Get up,” Agatha said. “We have to leave before they realize you’re here.”
She reached out a hand to me but was too weak to heave me up by herself.
I rose by myself and, still a little shaken, she helped lead me from the fiery blue pit of the Desert Flower Monarch’s dwelling and final resting place.
We slipped into the darkness, hoping never to be found again.
Agatha
We staggered through the darkness, letting our feet find the way.
What little moonlight there was waxed and waned through the sporadic cloud cover.
I hoped we wouldn’t run into another Desert Flower before the night was done.
I stood no chance of protecting us from it alone.
Although Egara’s arm pressed heavily on me, I timed my movements with him so we could keep slogging on.
I didn’t know how we were going to survive the night, never mind escape the planet but I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Egara.
No matter how long or short that was.
Egara panted, struggling to breathe the same way I had until our first kiss.
He clutched a hand to his chest with an expression of intense pain and a thin film of sweat popped across his brow.
It had to be something serious.
Of course it was.
It wasn’t exactly normal everyday practice to throw yourself out of a moving shuttlecraft while it was still in midair.
“Wait,” he said. “I need to rest.”
He slumped to the ground and focused on his breathing.
He sucked air in deeply through his nostrils and out through his mouth in very slow deliberate gasps.
I’d never seen him so hurt before—even after fighting a vicious battle in the pits.
“I should go back and get the prison guards,” I said. “Maybe they can help you.”
“They can’t help me. I just need a little time.”
But we don’t have any time.
I couldn’t bring myself to
