Silence reigns over the cluster of empty wooden buildings and surrounding sands. Silence broken only by the occasional wind stirring dust around. Silence disrupted by an unnatural whine.
In the middle of the sand flooded main street, in the middle of empty air, a smooth white door slides open. Three women step through and the door slides closed before vanishing. The women look around, shielding their eyes from the glare of the midday sun and their faces from the blowing dust. The smallest of them, no taller than a small child despite having a woman's full figure, darts across the street and through double half doors which swing in the wake of her passing. The other two exchange a glance and a shrug before following. The inside of the building is as dusty as the outside and sand has blown in to nearly cover the floor. Tables surrounded by chairs are set haphazardly around the room, some littered with tankards and bottles, as if the last people to frequent the room had simply gotten up and walked away. Across the room is a bar, behind which the wall is lined with shelves displaying all shapes, colours, and cuts of glass bottles. A set of stairs to one side leads to an upper walkway lined with open doors, although it's impossible to see into any given room from the floor below. The tallest of the three, a slim woman with a long blonde braid, distinctly pointed ears, and light brown-green eyes, looks around and shakes her head. “A tavern by any other name...” “It's out of the wind... mostly,” The diminutive woman sets her pack on an empty table, “So we're here. What now?” “Now we hope they honour their word and leave us be,” The third woman, only slightly shorter than the tallest and somewhat more muscular, looks from one of her companions to the other, “We've gained a home of our choosing. What more could we ask after everything?”
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Wolntyff is the second planet of a young star and orbited by two moons. It has a potentially habitable sister world in the third planet of the system. The exploration efforts found Wolntyff suitable for terraforming, although the entire planet does suffer from strong nightly wind storms.
The Wolntyff colony is unique in that the colonists were not conditioned to forget Earth and are all aware that they are living on a colony world. The overall colony capital city is Odinsville and law enforcement is the purview of the colonia militia. The novel Colony Zero begins as sands from an unknown source are taking over the surface of the world and forcing the colonists to evacuate the small, unwalled settlements. Pamu is one of several planets in a system with a Sol like sun. It has two as yet unnamed moons and is a water world with polar ice caps and no ground above sea level. Its oceans are home to a host of sentient and not so sentient races, including a variety of dragon.
When humans arrived, they built their homes on floats anchored to the ocean bottom, not realizing they were disturbing the races below. What happens as a result is the subject of the novel Beneath the Waves. |
AuthorAlexandra A. 'Lexa' Cheshire is the author of numerous novels and short stories published through Howling Wolf Books. Lexa is a wife, mother, cat owner, and music lover. Archives
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