WORLD: Yuqyth, TIME: 563598, CHARACTER: Iom

Drawn to them blindly, I follow. On to my promising destiny, to my long-awaited secret goal. Along the world of silence, which I am more than ready to abandon, where the lovely blue skies overhead and eternal green seas contrast with the beaches of softest white sand. Full of expectation and affection I watch as the artificial bird of prey gets caught by the waves and thrown out onshore, landing so harshly and unluckily that the ship turns over several times before it is buried in the sand, and hold on to what I'll discover. My hopes are high and so are my chances, this time.

A pair of heavy doors on each side of the jet opens, shaking off the layers of dusty sand, and reveals a shadowy sight of the engines and machinery standing along the inside walls. For a while I wait considering the best possible tactics to be undertaken in order to succeed with my plan, unsure whether the passengers, the strangers from the distant unseen worlds, survived the harsh landing, then dare to step closer.

When I enter the one small room, which inhabits the whole inside of the jet, being a control room and a living room as well, I notice that two bodies are lying across the floor in pools of purple blood, broken and pitiful human forms under a veil of mist. The computers keep blinking and crackling in attempt of breaking the dead silence while I inspect the remains of the poor lost souls.

Obviously, the life had ceased in the older one of them for good, leaving behind nothing but an empty corpse that keeps lying still, decaying, ready to be eaten away by the sands of time or carnivores, but regarding the other body... On close examination I can well hear his silent slowing breath, I can clearly feel his pulse, growing weaker still. And despite this awful carcass that presents itself to my sight I feel the closeness of my fate, calling upon me to reach fulfillment, and I know with certainty what I have to do. Act quickly I must, before the body that lies spread before my feet dies and the soul departs to rest for eternity somewhere in heaven, unreachable, beyond this world.

Moving swiftly as fast as I can I head towards the computer engines, my steps struggling across the shattered smoking garbage on the crushed and damaged floor, and turn my head around lastly to see the body of a young man as he now opens his bloodied eyes in agony and whispers some curses in a foreign tongue, painfully, fighting a battle that has been lost already, with the will and resistance of a warrior. Though I realize that there is no choice for me here and now, I see how good this one is, the circumstances that had led my journey across the worlds into this very room. With all my strength and all my last, I sink my teeth into the wiring.

* * *

A sweet eternity of a moment or just a second passes by until I open my eyes and rise to my broken feet. My arm is aching badly. Through a purple veil of blood I gaze at the wounded hand, painfully decorated with shards of glass and metal, and take these out carefully while the blood keeps flowing down in streams slowly. My hands...my own, human hands... Then my wounded vision slides down to the computer terminal with a number of screens that blink vividly and hundreds of buttons and switches covering the walls that smile all but invitingly.

Just like I had been doing this for ages passed already, I begin pressing the smooth, cold buttons in order for the monitors to display in gleaming green letters the desired ready status, then for the heavy main doors to shut away from the outside world. I am left standing in the middle of an isolated dim space where the only spare rays of light come in through a few pair of small windows. I touch another button. Time to call S.O.S.

Soon after I send out the signal that is usually giving hope to the desperate souls lost within the thunderstorm in the middle of the wide ocean, or the ion storm in the corners of never-ending empty space, I hear a familiar welcome noise from above, accompanied by the rhythmical splashing of raised waves, as the large newly-found mothership draws near, returning across the light-years to pick me up.

Then the entire room within the exploration jet shakes violently, sweeping me off my feet. I hit the ground just to recover, then hold tight onto the walls as I feel that some kind of a tractor beam must be holding the shell of the vessel within its grasp of unknown force, raising it off of the surface, carrying me on invisible wings, up and away.

I whisper a sweet farewell to the beautiful place that has sheltered me kindly for so many years, the warmth of the sand and coldness of the ocean, the eternal peace within the calm salt waters. Finally I tear away from the wonderful landscape that keeps scaling down and disappearing in the distance far beneath my prying eyes, crying in astonishment the blood that dries in the corners of my vision. I seat this tired, wounded body down, in the center of the broken mess of bits and pieces of objects that I can't recognize, still burning with orange and blue flames, in the midst of the blood-splattered carcass, and I watch all these witnesses to the disaster with amazement that would stir the feeling of guilt within every other soul, and I rest almost comfortably.

A brand new world awaits with arms wide open for everyone, a beautiful new beginning with all the equal chances, a long and happy lifetime in a young and undamaged world, always gazing at the distant, eternally shining stars. The magic attraction of possibilities make me smile, as with the returning of a mighty warrior gifted in stealth with eternal knowledge and wisdom nobody will be able to foresee about how the newborn life is going to turn out...

The life that rises out of the ashes every time that death comes close, the life that feeds upon the bodies and souls of the unfortunate and hunts them down until they reach the heaven's gate. Thanks to a lucky coincidence, I have just been granted with another chance, with another time to live again, hiding in secrecy among the mankind, preserved in the unsuspecting kindness of their hearts and learning and gaining knowledge within the midst of their trust, and this is a chance I've never wasted.

As the charming bird of prey flies above the high skyline of sunlit misty clouds, just a distinct black shape against the dreamy homelands of the playful past, there beneath the engines running smoothly and silently within the chilly air, among the sparkling wiring and cables, a tiny blackened lizard body is smoking and burning down to ashes.