Sarkata (On Hiatus)

Chapter 9: Nina

Nina walked aimlessly through the orange orchard. Earlier she had seen a girl climb a tree and run amongst the branches. She smiled to herself remembering when she was young and could do that in the forests of Kishtore. Unfortunately for the strange Tempran slave she was just that, a Tempran slave, never allowed to make her own decisions ever again.

"Do you wonder why she had that orange?" Erok asked continuing their discussion of the girl.

Nina shrugged, "Not sure. Maybe she was hungry."

"She didn't eat it. She just... stared at it..."

As she rolled her eyes she said, "Maybe she was going to eat it and decided not to."

"But it was more like a-"

"Why do you care so much about the girl Erok?" Nina could care less about the girl and she wanted to know why Erok was so entranced by her.

The dragon curled its body around Nina's neck loosely. The scaly scarf shook its head, "But Nina, the way she galloped through the trees was magnificent. Almost like-"

"She wasn't born in Tempra. I know." Nina finished for him, "And she probably wasn't. They do get slaves from out of country you know." Nina informed.

Erok grunted and didn't really say anything else for a while. They wandered more through the orchard and their nostrils were hit with powerful scents of the orange fruit. The fruit was never around when Nina was a young girl; they are a recent fruit to the planet, and she had only ever seen them in Tempra. They were a bright color and you couldn't miss them if you tried. The orange fruits grew high in the tree. The skin of the trees ovaries were thick and a mist erupted from them when peeled. Sometimes the mist engulfed the consumer in a citrusy aroma, other times it scorched the eaters' eyes. Nina wrinkled her nose, remembering when her eyes were burned from the fruit mist for the first time.

"Are you sure we can safely walk around the orchard?" Erok asked breaking the silence.

Once again Nina rolled her eyes. "Yes Erok. We can."

"Are you sure?" he pressured.

"Yes. I scoped out the area. There are only six Guards in the whole Palace grounds. Two at the front gate, two at the Palace door and two at the back gate."

Erok pursed his lips in defeat.

"Stop worrying so much." Nina assured, "I've got this."

Nina ran her tongue over her sharp teeth. She was hungry and they haven't eaten since the previous night. She was on the verge of opening her mouth to tell Erok they should get something to eat when a sense of drowsiness overcame her. "Erok..." she uttered shakily before she collapsed.

A moment after she collided with the ground, she woke up. Nina groaned in slight pain from the impact and sat up wheezing air into her lungs. She knew where she was. It was the only place she could be. The only reason she ever knocked out randomly was if they needed her. Blackness pinched her face from anger but more so because of annoyance. The place was very bright and it always took a moment for her eyes to adjust, when they finally did though she always saw the same place. Nowhere. The Gods always took her to nowhere. It was so white and pure. The pureness created the glow that dilated her eyes every time. Nina stood up and set aside her slight pain from doing so. It was as if she were in a white world of space. She was in a white world of space. There was nothing. There was never anything, just miles of unbounded space. She took a step in the limitless world and light blue sparkling dust wafted up and clouded around her feet. It was something she never got used to. Nothing could explain why the dust was there. Well, the Gods could but the first time she asked they completely ignored her question. Nina figured that if blue dust spewed up everywhere she stepped then the world she was in would have to be blue, yet it was white. Nothing made sense, but if she was in a world of nothing in which the place was white but the dust was blue then in fact Nothing didn't make sense. She walked on.