"Shiny Planet"

Obviously, an actual title is needed. Eck. Here's the short story I said I might post. I've got it dated and printed and saved up the wazoo but am still slightly worried someone might turn it into something not half-bad and steal it without mentioning li'l ol' me. In which case, I'd have to sue them and sew them (to a meteorite...). Be warned, ye piratey kinds- yarg!

(From my 2008 Nanowrimo Novel "Dedication"-- short stories are intermixed with the narrative)-- which means I also have this on the Nanowrimo site on my account. Feeling v. protected (though a little vain O.o)

Working title "Shiny Planet" (anyone have an actual title?)--

It was brighter than I had imagined, the light so intense that I had to shield my eyes with my hand and look at the ground. The dirt below me shimmered, as though someone had mixed in glitter with the soil, and this shimmery dirt caught in the wind occasionally and carried through the air, giving everything the illusion of being an illusion. It smelt old. Although I know this description is vague and offers little, it is exactly as I felt, as though I were entering some ancient library, sealed off for hundreds of years and preserved until my entrance. It was a hot sort of old smell, the heat slightly above the temperatures reached in even the highest regions of Earth.

My companion handed me my goggles. In the shimmery air, her hand too glistened, making her appear as though she was merely a figment created by the random shapings of the wind. Perhaps nothing here would appear real to me at first.

I placed my goggles over my eyes and offered a brief “thanks” to my companion. She said nothing in response, still taking in her first few experiences of the new land. I stood beside her and looked up, surveying the sandy scene that looked a lot like something you would see in a fairy tale. Of course, there were very few trees, and would have been few colors at all if the glittering sands had not caught the sun in tiny prisms. Or perhaps it was something other than sand, pollen maybe. I must admit to you that I am not a scientist. That was not my purpose here.

The sun seemed dangerously close, as though it might crash into us at any second. But, really, it must be the case that any deviation in the proximity of the sun from a person’s location makes he or she nervous. My companion certainly seemed anxious, though I really couldn’t expect less, given the circumstances.

“What do you think?” She asked me, turning to face me with her lovely figure, lovely face glittering, making her seem like a goddess, the goddess of this strange place.

I considered this question. “It is iridescent.”

She laughed but ended up coughing as she inhaled the glimmering bits. I rushed to her aid but she shook me off with her hand and removed her water bottle from her side to take a large gulp. She continued to smile as her coughing became less frequent and stopped.

“I didn’t mean for it to be funny,” I said, shyly, continuing to watch her.

“You never do,” she replied as she hitched her water bottle back to her side, “That’s what makes it so funny.” My companion then stretched, her back and shoulders, producing various cracks and snaps, before sitting down rather abruptly, more accurately allowing herself to fall into a cross-legged sit. “What should we do first, do you think?” She looked up at me with a hand shielding her eyes, the sun still too intense, even with her goggles.

“We should assemble our new shelter,” I suggested as I mimicked her way of sitting, which wasn’t nearly as easy to do as it had appeared. “It could get dark at any time.”

“It won’t get dark at any time, ever,” my companion countered. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“One of the points,” I replied. I leaned back, resting my entire torso in the sand, half-worrying that gigantic tentacles would suddenly reach out of the ground and wrap themselves around me. I would have a moment to scream, to simultaneously warn my companion and bid her adieu, before being pulled into the ground and devoured. Most likely, the beast would tear me into tiny pieces, first my limbs, so that I would have the sensation of being ripped apart, and then my head. But then, it was only a half-worry.

The sun fell strongly on my face, and I felt the shining particles attach themselves to the hairs on my face and head. I wondered if I glittered like my companion, if I could ever look half so appealing. But then, that wasn’t the problem, was it?

“It isn’t how I expected it would be,” she said to me, and I nodded in response. “I thought it would be hotter.”

“It is very hot,” I replied, and felt my skin burning to prove it.

“But it could have been worse.” She took out some sunscreen from her backpack and rubbed it messily across her face in splotches. It smelled like grapes. “It’s actually kind of pretty.”

“Yes, the iridescence is very nice when it isn’t lodged in your throat,” I agreed, which made her laugh again, though I still was not trying to be amusing. I think there must be something strange in the way that I talk now. I used to make her laugh before but it was always when I had meant to. Something was strange here. Perhaps it was the heat that did it.

She lay down too, and rolled over to be beside me. I stretched my arm to rest by her side, but did not touch her. The sand grew hot beneath us, and I wished that we had brought a towel. But then, this wasn’t a pleasure cruise, either. To be entirely candid, I must admit that the reason for our stay here was, at this point, competently eluding me.

“We should assemble the tent,” I suggested, and I stood, carefully, the pretty dusts sweeping off of me in the motion and with the wind. I could feel the wind push through my hair, sending the shimmers from it as well, apart from those that were always there. I could feel the sands begin to stick to me as I sweat and knew that the two of us would soon be uncomfortable.

I imagined that the sun was setting, growing a little more to the west as each second progressed, though I didn't even know which direction was which or if, perhaps, the sun set in the north here. It was a hopeful notion, at best, and the result of the heat on my mind, at worst. I wished I had thought to shave my head before coming, to give my scalp at least a bit of reprieve from the heat. If it had been a little hotter, I imagined it might have burst into flames.

“I don’t have the energy,” my companion whined, slightly, but she stood nonetheless.

We returned to where we had come from, where the tent and a box of provisions lay, including matches and a few logs to start a fire. I think those might have been meant as some sort of a joke, though they were heavy to carry, I remembered. The tent was small, you could tell even with it disassembled, and sadly black, which would look dismal against the mostly brownish orange, though shimmery, landscape.

Taking up a few pieces, I glanced to my companion. “Do you know how to construct this?”

She rummaged through the box, trying to find the instructions. I was fairly certain we had never had any, but it seemed a pity to ruin her hopes so quickly. “I think we must’ve lost them,” she exclaimed, and she walked over to me. “I’m sure we can figure it out, though.”

It took us nearly an hour to complete the tent’s assembly, and we were exhausted when the effort was concluded. From the box, we removed two energy bars, which we ate voraciously, though they had no taste to speak of.

However, it was a great disappointment when we entered the tent, for it was even hotter than the outside, due to the black color, which took in great amounts of heat. In order to combat this, we removed our clothes and ripped them, covering the small roof with their pastel colors. With any luck, this would eventually cool the tent, provided the wind did not blow the garments away.

We sat inside the tent, beside each other, but not touching, for a long time. My companion would occasionally wet her fingers in her water bottle and fling the droplets at me, smiling sometimes though sometimes sad. There was nothing really to do. I went out to get the box and set it at the opening of our tent, so that we could reach it from within.

“Is there anything interesting in there?” My companion asked, glancing over my naked shoulders and back to the box’s interior.

“Do you want to have a hand at carving one of the logs?” I tried, taking one of them out and showing it to her.

“No,” she replied, a bit disappointedly, “If we got splinters, there wouldn’t be any way to get them out.”

I nodded and returned to her. As I began to set myself down, my companion called out abruptly for me to stop. I froze, my knees bent, imaging myself quite unattractive to look at in such a position.

“Stand up again,” she commanded, and I did. I stood before her and watched her look me over, every detail of my body. She had seen it many times before, so I wasn’t sure what she was playing at. Perhaps I was simply more interesting to look at than the tent’s dark walls.

“Never mind,” she muttered, after a few minutes. “Just sit next to me.”

I set myself beside her and met her gaze, which had turned melancholy. “Do you want to try to sleep?” I asked.

“I don’t think I could,” she replied, though she lay down nonetheless. She sighed deeply, glitters shooting from her mouth, and closed her eyes. I watched her for a very long time. The dust settled on her quickly, enveloping her figure so that it looked as though she was wearing a very tight body suit, and then, as though she were an erotic figure created out of the sand by a naughty child.

I quietly emptied the box then refilled it, trying to trick myself into believing I was organizing things. It certainly seemed as though we were already running low on supplies, but I supposed that must be impossible. It would take a very long time before we ran out. I wondered if we might devise a calendar to count the days. But then, if the sun never sets and the sun never rises, I think that they cannot really be days at all. In this place, night and day are the same.

In an attempt to occupy myself further while my companion pretended to sleep or perhaps made a play at being dead, I tried to remember her name. It was silly, I was sure, that I could have forgotten it, and, in fact, I was positive that I could never have forgotten the name of my only. And, yet, I found myself in the awkward position of having lost it, somewhere along the way.

She stirred, finally, and shook herself violently to remove some of the dust, though it clinged to her as though it were permanently attached. She coughed, noisily, a few times, and freed her mouth, for the most part. Sitting up, she smiled a dusty grin at me. “Did you try to sleep?”

“No,” I replied, “I organized the box.”

“There isn’t very much in there,” she said quietly, but she came over to view my work nonetheless. “How long was I out for?”

I figured she was playing some sort of game. She had not slept and we were both aware of this fact and, additionally, I had no way to measure time. “A few hours,” I lied, and she nodded.

“Do you want to go exploring?” She asked, and I replied “yes” very quickly.

We left the tent with only our goggles on, and continued carrying on through the desert with the sand cutting into our flesh lightly. The sun seemed ever closer, though I told myself it must be further, and the heat tried to dry the sand onto us like concrete. We continued into the endless day until we were back at our tent. It appeared that this was a small, globular place. In order to get any sort of exercise, we circled our tiny planet a few more times.

My companion took me back to the tent and we again sat. She looked tired, beneath all the sand, and she breathed heavily. We had not walked far enough for her to be so exhausted, but the heat seemed to affect her more than it did me.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “I can get your water bottle, if you want.”

“Just lay by me,” she pleaded, and I did, because she sounded so miserable and we had only just arrived.

She brought her fingers so that they were only a few centimeters from mine, and I worried that she might forget herself. I coughed to remind her, and she pulled away, standing abruptly to look down at me. “Why do you have to look so handsome?” She asked. She probably would have screamed this question if sand had not been hardening in her throat, stealing away her voice.

“I look like I always looked,” I replied, and I too stood. Her eyes continued to trail me. “Why would I appear any differently?”

She shook her head. “It’s just so hard.”

I nodded and wanted to approach her, but kept my distance. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, but then I admitted, “I seem to have forgotten your name.”

I had expected her to be surprised or even angrily shocked by this news, but she just sighed, quietly, to herself. “Of course you have,” she replied.

“Why?” I asked. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You seem to remember some of it,” she countered, and she approached me again.

“You can’t touch me,” I explained, voicing what we both knew.

“My name is Anne,” she said quietly, “but you’ll forget it again. You always do. They made it a little bit easier for you.”

I wanted to touch her, it filled my mind and it killed me that I could not fulfill the one action we both longed for. “How did we get here? I don’t remember. Why do you remember?”

“Because I killed you, Peter,” she exclaimed, and she threw up her hands in irritation, though I was unable to discern whether it was aimed at me or herself, “And I had to go where they send people who kill those the one they love.”

“Why did you kill me?” I asked, somehow calm.

“I don’t know, I just did!” She began pacing the tiny tent, small circles. “And you were there, after they pumped sodium thiopental into my veins, waiting. You’d been waiting. They said you wanted to be with me, despite everything.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“They didn’t want you to remember. It was too awful and you didn’t do anything wrong and it’s more painful for me, having to keep telling you all this! It was too wonderful for me to get to have you again.” She looked at me, and she might have had tears, through she just looked shimmery to me.

I thought for a moment, and felt that I had known this, somewhere inside all along. Yet, I had forgotten. And, she claimed that I would forget again. I couldn’t believe that I could forget this sort of thing, and yet, it wasn’t a matter of thought. “How long have we been here?” I asked, for it had only been half a day for me.

“Forever,” she said, and she cackled piteously. “I don’t know how long. We keep putting up the tent and tearing it down, and food keeps reappearing. And our clothes. And you keep getting mesmerized by the shimmers and saying the exact same things. And I can’t even touch you, or they’ll take you away from me.”

“I wish I could touch you,” I said.

“Me too,” she replied.

I considered her for a moment. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, but then I admitted, “I seem to have forgotten your name.”

It was brighter than I had imagined, the light so intense that I had to shield my eyes with my hand and look at the ground. The dirt below me shimmered, as though someone had mixed in glitter with the soil, and this shimmery dirt caught in the wind occasionally and carried through the air, giving everything the illusion of being an illusion. It smelt old. Although I know this description is vague and offers little, it is exactly as I felt, as though I were entering some ancient library, sealed off for hundreds of years and preserved until my entrance. It was a hot sort of old smell, the heat slightly above the temperatures reached in even the highest regions of Earth.

EDIT: Apparently, by posting on Nanowrimo's website, I am copyrighted, thus,
Copyright 2008 Amanda Martin

Edit 2: How did my spellcheck not catch "shiny" spelt "shiney"? Oh.... now it does... weird. Silly glitches.