MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

╰⦇ O N E

𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐚

( Hi Everyone! This chapter will be the ONLY edited chapter of this book. If you like the way this chapter feels, check out the rewritten version. That version will be different than this one in a lot of ways but it follows the same basic plot points and has the same ending. So, I implore you to check out that one when it comes out (if it isn't already). Ciao!!)

     Iris opened her eyes, a milky opaque darkness swirling where sight should've been. Her breath slowed and she cursed as she once again remembered she was blind. Waking up without being able to see should have been usual to her by now. She started to squirm and found herself restrained. Her heart thundered suddenly in her chest. And then her situation hit her hard, like a bullet in the lungs. She couldn't help but curse her luck- or lack of. It was truly terrible and her chest ached to be free of the small enclosed space she was trapped in.

     Iris felt her heart ache with each second she squirmed and her vision remained dull and empty. Until three years ago, when shrapnel from a lab explosion stole her eyesight, she had been a high-functioning member of Earth society. She was at a base with the Marines. She had once taken great pride in her career, studying plants to regrow the fallen rainforests of the old world. Then one day, one terrible day in the freezing ashen winter, a bomb detonated in Iris's lab. In shielding her comrades she lost most of her face and her eyesight. The veteran benefits only did so much for her and all she gained was a fixed face. But, without her sight she was obsolete. She was useless. She spent her days thereafter living with Tom Sully, someone she had become acquainted with in the botanical gardens of what had once been Central Park, New York City.

     At first, her life seemed over. But, now she had a second chance thanks to Tom. The brother-like friend had secured her an Avatar, and a spot in the program he was a part of. Not only would she regain her sight, but Iris would also soon have a functioning body, not weakened by the lack of life or muscle a blind person had. And she would practice botany once more, too. Iris had the chance to study alien plants not many knew much about in order to procure new, heartier trees to withstand Earth's pollution levels. She had never seen the things that Tom had once described to her, not even in her dreams. Bioluminescent, man-eating, shrivel-up-into-themselves plants on an alien planet light-years from Earth surely struck a lovely chord inside her back then.

     But now Tom was dead. In his stead, his brother Jake, Iris's beloved drinking buddy, would become the Avatar driver. Although Iris loved Jake like a brother too she mourned Tom every night and day, though there wasn't exactly a night or day where she was now.

     Iris was in space. She was floating somewhere near Pandora, she knew, otherwise she wouldn't be awake. A scraping sound made her wince and she stopped squirming beneath the very uncomfortable straps as the cryopod opened and she breathed less-stuffy air into her stiff lungs. Every inch of her skin crawled with discomfort. The fear of the unknown gnawed on her brain, a habit she had been unable to break since she'd lost her sight. All she could do was wait.

     A pang of dull pain wafted over her temples. A migraine began to burrow its way into the middle of her brain, pounding on her skull. With each passing second, she became more and more nauseous.

     "Reaching in Iris," shouted a voice from somewhere above her. Iris sighed in relief as Jake's calloused hand clasped around one of her wrists. She felt the straps come undone and with the help of her friend she floated upright. Her stomach slowly settled. Jake rubbed her back in slow circles, resting with his shoulder pressed against hers. It soothed her. 

     While Iris had served in her botanical courses with Tom, she had also served in the field with Jake. Where Tom didn't have the stomach to venture, Iris and Jake did. Iris had made plenty of enemies unloading rounds into innocent people in the name of her half-wit country and dying asshole of a homeworld. She didn't feel good about her past. She wasn't proud to be a Marine and had to be the only Marine on the ship to feel that way. Her past had cold, clammy hands, and in the dark when she could neither sleep nor see she felt them grip her neck in a bony chokehold.