The Final Showdown - The Moon Trilogy - Book 3

Chapter Twenty-five:

   Clarity was vaguely aware of a dim light shining from somewhere beyond her closed eyelids. A soft, soft glow that pierced the murky depths she'd fallen into.

    The light was most likely brighter than it appeared, but her dull thoughts couldn't grasp that fact. The air that she sucked through her slightly-stuffy nose was cold and sharp on the back of her throat.

   This crispness that she breathed into her nose made her cough, and the dry sound felt foreign as it fell on her ears. She almost imagined someone else had coughed, but she knew it had been her. The sting in her throat was rather indisputable evidence.

   She took a deep breath and attempted to drift off again.

   A sudden and very chilling thought ripped through her calm half-sleep: How am I still alive?

   The last time she had been conscious, she had been suffocating on some desolate moon with probably no chance of surviving. Her eyes snapped open, and she wasn't sure if she could have kept them closed if she wanted to.

   She looked around frantically, but both her eyes and mind were foggy. Nothing quite registered except for the same pale blue light. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes to try again.

   The windows were rounded at the top, but square at the bottom... arches. The word had almost escaped her. The stones that the walls were made out of was a dull yellow-brown, almost like sandstone. Clarity couldn't see the sky beyond, because there were long, silky swaths of fabric hanging down in front of the windows.

   The fabric was ruffled by a slight breeze that blew in through the open arches. She shivered.

   The room was empty, except for the cot-like bed that Clarity was lying on. She was barely a foot off of the ground. There was another arch-shaped hole at the far side of the room, but this one was much bigger; big enough to be a doorway, despite the fact that the bottom extended in a mini wall about two feet up from the floor.

   The same cool breeze also blew through this arched opening, but there was no fabric curtain to ruffle, here. A short hallway extended about ten feet out in front of her before veering sharply to the left. She couldn't see anything beyond that.

   Where on Earth was she? How had she gotten here?

   Her throat ached with the caress of the frozen air.

   She looked down to find out why her body wasn't cold when her nose and face were freezing, and she discovered that she was wrapped snuggly in a blanket that looked to be made out of plant fibers—like coconut husks woven tightly to form a sheet. It certainly wasn't as itchy as it appeared to the naked eye. In fact, it was almost soft.

   When the shock at finding herself alive and the confusion at the sight of her surroundings finally wore off, she realized... There was nothing to look at. There weren't even any notches in the smooth, brownish wall. The only thing that held Clarity's interest for more than a few seconds was the swaths of fabric that covered the windows. They were thick enough to block out the few, but at the same time, they were so thin that even a slight breeze was able to send them swinging.

   She broke her gaze away from the mesmerizing curtains when she heard approaching footsteps coming from the big archway. The door.

   She looked, and she saw a very strange sight, indeed.

   It appeared to be a walking tree. Its head was long, narrow and gaunt, with branches stretching at least a foot above where the head actually ended... or where it looked like it ended. Its legs and arms looked like branches as well, but they were thicker, corded, and covered in moss and vines. None of the branches bore leaves or flowers of any kind. The whole thing was long and skinny, only the central chest area wider than Clarity's thighs, which weren't very large.