Finding Amaranth

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. When one disappears into the cosmos of darkness and space rock, they’re never to be found again. It is lonely in the cold and infinite wonder at the edge of the universe.

–

Some of Xanandu’s fondest memories were of Zion. Before the start of Rone’s harsh winters, his mother rounded up him and his little sister, Ecru, and they would fly to the tropical planet. The weeks in Zion were spent frolicking on the beach as their skin deepened into rich bronzes and browns from the long hours of collecting seashells and poking at crabs. In the evenings he watched his mother and grandmother concoct feasts composed of the sea creatures his grandfather caught while fishing. At night they would gather around the local bonfires in town and eat tons of food as his family danced to the music played by the locals.

Xanandu especially loved the days when his grandmother gathered them up on the beach to tell stories about Earth before Alizarin was formed centuries ago. The stories had been passed down for generations, but one always stood out to him.

His grandmother told a tale of the Mere. The Mere was a beautiful goddess aboard a golden spaceship cruising along the edge of the universe.

“Travelers would see the ship in the distance and would try to get closer to it. It was humongous– the size of a small planet and glistened like a bright star. No matter how close they got to it, the ship seemed to be unreachable.” His grandmother’s hazel eyes sparkled as she recounted the story. She gesticulated and her thick lips stretched with every word. The sunset formed a halo around her and glowed against her dark brown skin. Her thick graying hair was stretched and flat twisted in a crown around her head.

“There’s a saying that inside the ship named Amaranth, the Mere lives. Those that have managed to get close enough, have seen her beauty. Skin the color of obsidian, her eyes piercing like vivid jewels as her thick hair twirled in space and large wings extended from her back. They say she sings an enchanting song of an unknown tongue.”

At five years old, Xanandu remembered being wowed at the story. The Mere must have been more beautiful than his mother. He was curious about this mysterious goddess, but also terrified.

“They say those that have seen her,” his grandmother paused. “Their ships were never seen again.”

“Wow.” Xanandu was wide-eyed, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief. The story evoked strange feelings of intrigue. He never forgot it.

Every time they traveled back and forth between Zion and Rone he would stare out the window of the space jet, looking for that golden spaceship in the distance. And always, amongst the darkness, the stars, stations, and spacecraft traveling to and from worlds, he never saw it.

Eventually, as he grew older, he no longer looked for Amaranth.

–

Terra was a top vacation destination for the citizens of Alizarin. Xanandu liked the hotspot not only for the fact that it reminded him of Zion, but because it was easy to blend into the crowds. It was what Zion could have been before the Alizarin Defense had attacked the planet fifteen years ago.

The Tellus strip that midday was bustling. Crowds were out and about on the streets enjoying the nice weather and array of food vendors. Xanandu himself was enjoying the stop as he observed the crowd while eating a sandwich from his perch on a bench.

There was a family of five walking across the way. A small toddler in her mother’s arms pointed to a cosmos candy vendor, tiny hands opening and closing in want. Behind them was an older couple walking hand in hand looking so in love and reminded him of his grandparents.

Amid a bite of his sandwich, the midday news bulletin popped up against the side of a building. He paid it no mind until the bounty bulletins popped up. Suddenly his face was stretched across the projected screen. It had been the last picture that had been taken of him before he had removed his identity tracker. He didn’t look too different from then. His dreads were a little longer and he had grown a sad excuse of a beard and mustache.

He paused in chewing.

“Xanandu Falu, a twenty-seven-year-old Ronennite is wanted for conspiring against the Alizarin government with extremist group AAD…”

Shit.

The lady at the sandwich stand across the street looked at him nervously. It was already too late.

Sirens suddenly came to life blasting an emergency tone as the crowd before him reacted in confusion. Drones shot out overhead and instantly located him. He stood up and began to run as fast as he could, tossing his sandwich in a nearby trash bin. His ship, a refurbished amalgamation of Earthean electric vehicles, was stationed at Terra’s Intergalactic Airport a mile away. He brought up the vehicle application from his watch and pressed for summon on the projected menu as he wove in between people. As he neared the airport, something shot out from the front of the crowd.

It was a hoverbike. Atop the violet bike sat one of the galaxy’s most famous bounty hunter. Imber Morado.

Xanandu froze in spot as the crowd scrambled to make way for Morado’s bike. It was chaos. He caught his breath as the muscles in his long legs burned from overexertion.

“Surrender Falu!” Morado yelled. The woman was dressed in skintight jeans and a tricolored vest with the emblem of her people embroidered on the backside. Her cowboy boots pressed on the acceleration of her hoverbike as her manicured hands clutched at the brakes.

Xanandu looked around. His ship was inching forward towards the crowd at the landing area. If he continued summoning it, there was a chance that his calculated plan was going to work as he looked towards the hyper rail to the right. As the sirens continued and people snapped pictures and streamed him, he was getting more unwanted attention. The enforcement robots had probably been dispatched and were gaining on him as he was there with Morado.

She was trying to stall him.

A smirk was on her tanned face as her wild curly brown hair blew in the warm wind.

If he timed it right, then he could jump to it and take off on the hyper rail. Xanandu watched it before leaping up and grabbing onto the back of the last car.

“No way, Morado,” he yelled as his body collided against the train.

His hands were slippery against the door from nerves and his forehead beaded with sweat. As the rail train headed into the air, he could see his ship raise from the ground and maneuver itself through the air traffic towards him. Morado had already taken off as the rail picked up in speed his grip loosened, threatening to completely disappear with every movement. Xanandu watched his ship draw closer and Morado as well. When she rose beside him screaming for him to let go. He did.

His body fell through the air. His stomach lurched as he free fell and as quick as it happened, he fell through the open gullwing door of the The Saavi Falu. The spaceship straightened out as he sat in the driver’s seat and buckled up.

“Where would you like to go?” the robotic voice of the ship asked as Morado raced towards it.

“Planet Sirene.”

It was the only place he could go. It was neutral lands and a safe space for fugitives, though only for twenty-four hours as there was a three-day down period before the person could travel there again.

In the rearview projection on the dashboard, he saw Morado swear before she took off towards a large ship that floated in the distance. As The Saavi Falu rose to Terra’s stratosphere, he saw the bounty hunter drive into the back of the ship before it powered up.

“Thirty lightyears until Planet Sirene. You’ll arrive there in approximately three hours. Enjoy your ride.”

–

The fall of Zion had been sudden, the planet transformed into an unhabitable wasteland. The once beautiful planet stripped of its beauty and bountiful resources was now a desert. The oceans had dried up into cracked salt-laden pits; it was a shell of what once had been considered Eden. It had hurt watching it all unfold when he was twelve years old, struggling to comprehend what was going on and why. His mother had told him the Alizarin Defense had destroyed Zion. They had taken away his grandparents, his mother’s home planet, and the place that was a backdrop to some of his happiest memories.

Watching his mom fall into depression was the hardest. The people that had known her the longest and loved her little family the hardest were gone. Just like his father that had passed away months before Ecru had been born. Seven years ago, his mother had passed away from a respiratory virus that broke out on Rone. Unable to cope, he fell into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and joined the Anti-Alizarin Defense. They removed his identification tracker that had been implanted at birth and after a demonstration in Rone, protesters were jailed. He had been caught but managed to escape enforcement, ending up on the bounty list with the famous fugitive Jett Nadeshiko Calyx.

Imber Morado, on the other hand, was respected and feared all over Alizarin because of her determination and persistence to capture fugitives. Some said she became a bounty hunter after growing up with a mother that was always on the run. After growing up in that environment, she vowed to bring justice against criminals to prevent other children from being raised in that situation.

Xanandu understood that, but it didn’t quench the thirst for revenge he wanted towards a greedy government that eradicated planets that fought to exist and not be used as pawns for its natural resource consumption.

The last time he had seen his mother was the final moments of her life, taking her last breath through a hologram. It had been hard. Even harder for Ecru. He hadn’t been to Rone for a year or so due to his nomadic lifestyle. It sucked always being on the run, but it was a life he chose to live.

–

The Saavi Falu rode through space like a charm. The navigation was smooth and most of the time Xanandu let the small ship do its own thing. This time he had to override autopilot and manually navigate the galaxy.

He was trying to lose Morado who was tailing him. Despite his efforts of swerving in and out of space vehicle traffic, around charging stations and planets, she was still on his ass. He knew she wasn’t going to give up and he kept an eye on the ship’s charging levels as he navigated through a broken space rock colony carefully, but at a quicker pace that normal as he kept on an eye on the violet-colored ship behind him.

“You know one day you have to give up,” Morado’s voice sang through to his ship’s tele system. “This isn’t what your mother wanted. She would be sad to know you turned out like this.”

Xanandu rolled his eyes as he increased the speed to max after exiting the rocks. Morado’s ship swiftly followed him with ease.

“And what about your own mother?” he spat out. “Would she still love the very daughter that killed her?”

It was silent for a while. Xanandu smirked. “Guess that hit a soft spot huh?”

He laughed, before stopping. In his peripheral was the violet ship. Morado was in the cockpit staring straight at him, anger evident on her face. It was too late to react even as he turned the steering yolk to the right, before suddenly realizing there was a station next to him as the ship chimed in warning. He swerved the ship back to the left just as Morado slammed her ship into his.

Down he went. Saavi beeped warning that the ship was damaged. Below he saw the winds of a space hurricane and his eyes widened in terror as his ship was jolted again with a rough hit that caused his head to violently jerk to the side, and his ship to roll several times before everything went black.

“You left me no choice.”

–

It was strangely quiet when Xanandu came to. His eyelids were heavy as he sat up. His neck was pained as he gave out a groan, dreads falling into his eyes. At first, he thought he was dead, but the scene before him caused him to suddenly be alert.

Encased in the warm orangish glow of a nearby galaxy was a spaceship sailing in the cosmological horizon. It was huge and glinted in all its beauty. It glowed gold.

Xanandu’s heart raced wildly in his chest as his hands flew over the projected screen of the dash area.

He increased the speed of his ship to max and shot forward. Ten minutes elapsed and he wasn’t getting any closer before something shifted and the in the distance began to move and transform into strangely humanlike movements. In the blink of an eye, it appeared as if the ship itself had been a mirage, and instead, a gigantic woman was floating through space.

Her skin was the color of obsidian almost blending into the darkness as she looked at him. Her eyes were as large as stars, the color glowed vividly like ametrine as her full lips stretched out and she began to sing without moving her mouth. It was a song he had never heard before, but it was pleasing to the ears. The goddess was beautiful as her stark white wings stretched out from behind her, unfolding with a great wind that Xandandu didn’t even think was possible. She was completely nude, her thick black hair in a long braid. Gold thorns were intertwined in the strands settling into a fiery halo crown atop her head. The goddess’ ethereal beauty was both frightening and comforting at the same time that it was overwhelming. Xanandu suddenly felt the same as when he was a child, those twenty-two years ago staring at his grandmother in awe of her tale. A tale that he thought was just a rationalized story of the Ergo Quadrilatère.

His ship was like the size of a small pebble in a human palm in her hand.

“Mere,” he managed to croak out. She seemed to hear him as she closed her eyes in pleasure, her song never ending as he listened, it overwhelmed him with emotions, of absolute agony to the edge of orgasmic. Such were conflicting feelings, yet he did not feel a sense of fear or threatened by her as she came closer.

He grew weaker by the moment as his eyelids were heavy once again and he was lulled to sleep.

At the edge of the universe where ships came to disappear. It suddenly all made sense. Gathering resources from smaller planets depleting them of life and killing off the inhabitants with radiation storms when provoked. They wanted Mere, the mother, the protector of the universe to die.

–

The sound of the ocean was strong in his ears as he woke up. There was a sharp pain in his neck as brown fingers grasped it, fingertips stumbled over sand-covered skin. He was against a beach, The Saavi Falu nowhere in sight. It was confusing as he managed to get up, bare feet sinking into the hot sand. He looked around. In the distance were high-rise buildings of a world he did not know. Xanandu began walking towards where a woman was stretched out on a beach chair soaking in the sun. Her body was fit in her bikini and her umber skin glowed.

When he got closer, she waved at him, a smile on her face eyes hidden by dark sunglasses, and her face framed by black wavy tendrils. She handed him a fringed pink flower. The same ones that were left behind in every Jett Nadeshiko Calyx crime scene. She had her own story, but Xanandu didn’t know much about her. He was confused yet couldn’t find his voice as he carried on.

When he reached a building that looked like a hotel, inside one of the windows he saw the news bulletin headline that made him stop in his tracks. A strange feeling overtook him. It was like how his stomach dropped with the sudden fall of his spaceship earlier– or however long it had been, his concept of time was suddenly interrupted. But the feeling itself was a mix of shock and sickness that made his mouth instantly go dry.

Famous bounty hunter’s spaceship was found drifting in space without an operator, the hunter’s whereabouts unknown.

Finding Amaranth Audio Vibes