Abysmally.
I've written for Preparing for Glory three times--count them: three--in July. I am a terrible, terrible person when it comes to staying on schedule.
Maybe that's because I'm terrible at making schedules.
BUT that does not mean that I will simply drop Preparing for Glory and never speak of it again. No, I will not. I promised to write a book, and I will write a book. I am also getting the itch to start writing my next Defenders of Light book again, so I may have to relegate Preparing for Glory to one day a week (not that I was doing more than one day per week anyway), but IT SHALL BE WRITTEN, for I DECREE IT!
That said, I am terribly terriby sorry that I did not write more in the month of July. To make up for it, here is the third "chapter" of Preparing for Glory (when I do the editing, I may combine Chapters 2 and 3). There are bits that I don't like as much as the previous two chapters, but hey, it's a rough draft. What do you want, perfection? (yes, whispers the corner of Elisa's mind. I need it. I NEED it. Well, too bad, mind)
I hope you enjoy this story I am crafting. I have never done a Sci-fi before, and I feel like my writing narration style is similar to my other books, but hopefully I can write "adult" enough to separate it from my other books, with their younger target audience. Anyway, enough about my writing woes. Here is Chapter 3:
Chapter 3
Seth’s training, training he’d never
thought he’d need, flashed back to him. Do not approach a Seraphim. Do not transport goods for a Seraphim or
treat a Seraphim as a passenger. All
trade to and from the Seraphim’s home world has been suspended. Do not allow any Seraphim to gain control of
any advanced technology. If you come across
anything related to Seraphim or their home world, report to the Interplanetary Customs
Disciplinary Council.
Here was a Seraphim, lying
unconscious on the ground, thousands of light years from its home planet. How was this supposed to align with all the
reports and warnings that he’d received as a pilot over the past two years?
Phoebe quickly overcame her own
personal aversion towards Seraphim—that, also, had been engrained in society
fairly well since the discovery of the Seraphim—and crawled back to it. She touched the Seraphim’s arm, then cheek,
then cupping her fingers under the Seraphim’s nostrils. “She’s breathing,” said Phoebe.
“She?” asked Seth, still unsure of
what to do.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, gingerly
lifting the cloak off of the Seraphim and setting it to the side. “The males have this frilly thing on their
head, like a rooster’s comb.” Phoebe flared her fingers on her left hand over
her head, illustrating the frill.
“You know males from females?” said
Seth.
“I was obsessed when the Seraphim
home world was discovered. Weren’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh.” Without so much as a glance at Seth, Phoebe
examined the Seraphim’s wounds, pressing her fingers around the head wound, then
letting her hand hover above the broken wing.
“Come and help me. We’ve got to
get her to my father. Do you think it’s
safe to move her?”
Seth shook himself out of his
stupor. “What? No, we have to report this. If she’s here, then there could be others. They get their hands on a spacecraft, their
war will spread throughout the galaxy.”
“Oh, can you put your training in
the closet for once?” Phoebe snapped. She
glared at Seth. “I don’t know about
Seraphim, but if some human was beaten until they fell unconscious and they still hadn’t woken up, then I’d have
them halfway to the nearest hospital by now.
Now, if you want to join those Earthkeepers and be a bigoted humanist,
treating every nonhuman as a subperson, then this marriage is off.”
Seth felt his face burn. “I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean—”
“Just help me pick her up,” Phoebe
interrupted.
Pushing back his training, which was
screaming at him that he should report a rogue Seraphim’s presence on Earth to some form of authority, Seth squatted
down and scooped the Seraphim into his arms as gently as he could. She was surprisingly light—no more than sixty
pounds. The soft touch of the down on
the Seraphim’s arms surprised him—he knew Seraphim were covered in feathers,
but he hadn’t expected the feathers to be so delicate. The Seraphim was wearing some sort of
hand-knitted halter top, which allowed her wings to hang freely out the
back. They trailed along the ground when
Seth stood, along with her long tail.
“Can you help? I can’t walk like
this.”
Phoebe nodded. She scooped up a small bag that had fallen on
the ground—which Seth assumed the Seraphim had been carrying—and looped it over
her shoulder. Then she slipped the tail around Seth’s arm and awkwardly grabbed
the Seraphim’s wings. She tried to fold
them shut.
As Phoebe moved her broken wing, the
Seraphim moaned. Her eyelids fluttered
but remained shut, and she whimpered something that sounded like, “Daddy,”
before falling silent once more.
Seth stared at the Seraphim’s
face. It was strange, looking at
something so familiar to a human and yet so foreign. Her nose was narrow, her lips a pale pink,
her feathers a soft white except for her blue eyelashes, a scattering of blue
feathers sprinkled across her cheekbones, and blue feathers along her
jawline. The long feathers on the crown
of her head were also blue, to match the blue of her wings and the blue that
ran along the back of her arms. Yet
despite all the feathers and her misshapen feet, Seth might have mistaken her
for a teenager dressing up in a costume for a media convention. No wonder humans were so enamored with
Seraphim when they first found them. Of
all the intelligent alien species they’d come across, the Seraphim looked the
most like them.
“Okay, I’ve got them,” Phoebe said,
breaking Seth out of his musings. “Let’s
go before anyone sees us.”
With a nod, Seth started
walking. He and Phoebe moved forward at
an awkward mixture of a shuffle and a jog.
As they headed for the cover of the trees, Seth’s eyes flicked up towards
a camera that overlooked the cargo pads.
Was the camera pointed in the direction of the Earthkeepers’
attack? Had anyone been watching? An uneasy feeling twisted his stomach—he’d
never actually paid attention to what the consequences of breaching the laws
surrounding Seraphim were, but at the very least he’d be grounded without pay
if he were found out. His ship might
even be taken away.
Phoebe led the way between the
trees, finding trails where most people thought there were none. She’d grown up in these forests, run along
their many paths, a child of a small town that exploded in prosperity when the
spaceport was built. It was the
spaceport that had sparked her interest in repairing technocrafts, but she’d
never lost her roots in the woods.
It wasn’t long before they came
across the first outbuildings of the town.
Seth was glad—though the Seraphim was lighter than a human, his arms
were still getting tired. Plus, his feet
kept bumping into Phoebe’s, and they nearly tripped several times.
They skirted around the edge of the
town, keeping a line of trees between them and the nearest houses. Eventually, they came across a small building
that looked like a house that had been partly swallowed by a storage unit that
was tacked onto the back. Seth knew a large sign on the side of the building
facing the road read, “Russel McKay, Veterinarian.” A large fenced-in backyard ran along the storage
unit half of the building. A large
pepper-brown mutt, with chocolate eyes and floppy pointed ears, half-heartedly
wagged his tail as they approached. A
low growl grumbled in his throat.
“Hey, Fortitude,” Phoebe sang. “It’s just us.”
The growl stopped and the wagging
increased, though Fortitude followed them until they reached a gate in the
fence.
Phoebe kicked up the latch with her
foot and pushed the gate open with her knee.
She and Seth shuffled through the yard to the back door. “Wait here,” she instructed. She gently let
the Seraphim’s wings down to the ground and slipped inside.
Seth stood awkwardly holding the
Seraphim while he listened to Phoebe move through the building. Fortitude sniffed the Seraphim’s wings, then
Seth’s arm. He licked Seth, his long,
wet tongue wrapping around his arm with each swipe. “Fort,” Seth whispered, trying not to wriggle
under Fortitude’s attentions, “stop it.”
“Dad,” Phoebe called from inside the
building. “Hey Dad, I need your help
with something.”
Seth heard Phoebe’s dad say
something, and Phoebe respond. He
couldn’t hear what was said, and he was getting anxious standing out where
someone could see him holding a girl with giant wings in his arms. Plus, Fortitude had moved on from Seth’s arm
to his pant leg.
Before Seth could successfully nudge
Fortitude away with his foot, Phoebe called, “Okay Seth, come on in.”
He pushed the door further open with
his shoulder and slipped inside.
The inside of the storage unit was
segmented on the right side into kennels furnished with clean rugs and litter
boxes. There were a couple of dogs
sleeping in the kennels and a parrot sleeping near the front, but other than
that the kennels were empty. A wall to
the left separated the kennels from a stable for larger animals, and a
half-open hallway ran between the two segments.
At the end of the hallway was a door that led to the house half of the
building. The house had been refurbished
into operating rooms, exam rooms, and an office up front. Seth stepped sideways through the hallway,
trying to be careful not to tread on the Seraphim’s wings, up to the front
office. There was a large window that
let the vet see into the lobby, and Seth peered through the window.
Phoebe was sitting on the edge of a
couch in the office, and her dad Russell McKay sat behind it his desk. Phoebe looked up and smiled, and Dr. McKay
followed her gaze. His gaze fell on the
Seraphim in Seth’s arms, and his eyes widened.
He stood and rushed forward, his long white lab coat flapping behind
him, and said, “Put her on the couch.”
Seth slipped into the office, and
Phoebe helped him lay the Seraphim face-down on the couch. While they were
trying to organize her limbs and wings in what looked like a comfortable
position, Dr. McKay locked the door to the veterinary clinic and closed blinds
on the windows.
When Dr. McKay returned to the
office, he immediately shooed Phoebe and Seth out and closed the office
door. They watched through the large
window as he knelt next to the Seraphim, examined her eyes, felt around her
neck until he stopped at the back of her neck, then gently felt along her
wings. He stormed out of the office,
entered a storage room, and came back with a large brace and several pieces of
wire and foam. After some fiddling, he adjusted
the Seraphim’s wing and used the brace and foam as a makeshift splint.
As Dr. McKay set the Seraphim’s
bones, Phoebe said, “Thank you for helping her.
I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier.”
A rush of guilt filled Seth. “I’m the one that should apologize. My training got in the way, and all you
wanted to do was help someone in pain.”
Phoebe nodded her
understanding. They watched in silence
for a few moments, then Phoebe asked, “Where do you think she came from?”
Seth shrugged. “Maybe she was captured before the embargo
occurred. Or maybe someone smuggled her
here.”
“But why is she all alone? Did she escape? All she had was this.” Phoebe tugged the bag off her shoulder and
unzipped it. Inside were some small
sealed boxes, some clothes, and a small book that looked like a diary. Phoebe riffled through its pages. It opened to where a Polaroid-style
photograph was slipped inside. Seth had
only seen one of those in a museum. He
remembered being fascinated that a non-digital photo could be printed off
immediately after being taken. Yet the
existence of this particular style of photograph was itself not the strangest
thing. In the photograph, a little
child, white-faced and blue-feathered, sat on the lap of an older gentleman, with
three men varying from their early twenties to thirties clustered around
them. All five smiled into the
camera. While the girl’s wings weren’t
obvious, Seth caught a glimpse of bright blue feathers over her shoulder.
“How long does it take a Seraphim to
grow up?” asked Seth.
Phoebe picked up the photo. “I don’t know.” She glanced up, then pointed. “Look.”
Seth stared through the window. The Seraphim was waking up.
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