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  Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.

  The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.

  Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.

  Starlight, Starbright

  Brian S. Wheeler

  Flatland Fiction thanks you for your purchase of this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoy this ebook, Flatland Fiction encourages you to send us a review at [email protected]. Unless otherwise instructed, Flatland Fiction reserves the right to post such reviews online.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Starlight, Starbright

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – The Revered Translator

  Chapter 2 – Native Splendor

  Chapter 3 – The Alien Assembly

  Chapter 4 – The Story of the Stars

  Chapter 5 – A Little Treasure More

  Chapter 6 – Feared Frailties

  Chapter 7 – Through the Looking Glass

  Chapter 8 – One Favor More

  Help Spread the Story

  About the Writer

  Other Stories

  Chapter 1 – The Revered Translator

  Few broods across Frelurn are as illustrious as the one from which I have descended.

  I come from the crimson brood. Though we now number only in the thousands, we have hatched some of our kind's most illustrious thinkers and artists. The priest Un'Yel, who scribed the prophet Terleck's words to announce our golden age, hatched from my line. My brood has named many stones, and many of the brood colors assemble at the ceremonies the crimson brood holds for its dead. We have built cities. We have mined treasures. No brood sacrifices more to insure the poor do not suffer cold.

  In all of my crimson blood's lineage, I am most legendary. Through all of my brood’s deeds, my accomplishments are judged the greatest.

  For I am favored among the strangers. The strangers unfold their stories that thrill our colors through me. Through me, the strangers unfold the sciences that astound us.

  My name in Un'Yhe, and I call the strangers friends.

  I am archivist of the museum and translator between the strangers and the broods.

  I still marvel each time I enter the museum we have built around the strangers. The walls house each item I have brought before the strangers for their consideration: the crystalline slivers from Mount Pela'ath; pillars from the ruins of Henleng, where the prophet Terleck first gathered the ancient broods to forge the alliance that holds to this day; skeletons of the six-legged Wendrook, the domesticated beasts upon which the broods so heavily relied before the strangers taught us of mechanical locomotion; tanks filled with the indigo waters of our sea, brimming with the glowing, electric eels that tickle our scales upon touch; great statues of Terleck and his prophets; the cherished stone plates upon which my descendent Un'Yel etched the prophet's teachings.

  So much of our world has been gathered for the strangers' consideration. Our museum is larger than any structure the broods have ever constructed. Its halls twist like a maze. Each chamber brims with our treasures, and the museum constantly expands.

  And I, Un'Yhe, oversee the acquisition, display and maintenance of each item gathered for the museum's holdings.

  I am the only master archivist the museum and the strangers have known. Not once have any of the strangers not marveled at what I have brought before them. Not once have any of the strangers not smiled when I entered their chambers.

  Some of the broods might consider it blasphemous when the museum houses the great statues of Terleck and Un'Yel's stone tablets, but I consider the strangers themselves the greatest of the museum's wonders.

  Few of my fellow curators share my knowledge of the museum's halls needed to locate the strangers' sanctum at the building's heart. The strangers are shy. They are prone to long bouts of melancholy. The strangers do not wish to feel like artifacts in this great museum, and so I bring only my closest colleagues to their company.

  As I enter Frelurn's great museum built to house treasures of two worlds, my new apprentice, Ah'Wren, waits next to my stone table.

  “Good morning, Ah'Wren.”

  I grin at seeing Ah'Wren's confusion flush across her high forehead, changing the turquoise color of her scales that denote calm amongst her brood into the deeper blues that tell of anxiety or excitement.

  “Sir?” Ah'Wren's tongue trips. “I don't understand.”

  I chuckle. “It's a saying among the strangers. It's a way they great each other at the start of a new day.”

  Ah'Wren's green, crescent eyes sparkle. “I have studied the word 'day.' The term refers to a period of time denoting a complete turn of their home world upon its axis while orbiting their solar center. The word is used as a length of measurement for their lives. Our language does not hold the concept, for according to the strangers, our world does not spin.”

  My golden eyes glow. “There is so much in the strangers' ways that is so foreign. The strangers will be happy that you take the time to learn their custom. They take pleasure in thinking themselves teachers. They will smile upon you when you greet them with that phrase this morning.”

  Ah'Wren's scales flush into purple, a color as deep as any I have ever seen exhibited by her brood.

  “Today?” Ah'Wren stands still as a stone. “I thought I would have to study more to prove that I was worthy.”

  “I would never have granted you access so far into the archives had I not thought you worthy.” I feel my own scales fill with the deep crimson famous of my lineage. The exuberance of my colleagues seldom fails to be contagious. “Seeing a new face will please the strangers. They yearn so much to talk, and you will need the time to learn their difficult tongue. Our anatomies are so different that mimicking each other’s words is a great challenge. You will need practice, and you will need it as soon as you can get it.”

  Ah'Wren works to remain calm, softly humming a melody for focus I have heard from others of her brood. I tend to the duties that first demand my attention at each turn in the museum: insuring that power supplies and their backup systems are working at optimum levels so that the strangers are not placed in jeopardy, checking to see that the proteins the strangers require show no signs of infections that would ha
rm our guests' alien immune systems, studying the charts created from data obtained from the most recent strangers' blood samples for any illness we might recognize. They are strange duties for an archivist, but I recognize their importance and take pride to have been given the chance to conduct them.

  Ah'Wren continues to hum softly. Still, her scales glow in a dark shade of purple. She has spent her young lifetime learning the stories, the histories and the sciences the strangers have brought to us. She deserves the chance to let her colors shine on the day she will have the honor of meeting the strangers.

  A set of numbers spikes my attention as I look over the charted data from the blood samples. My red scales shift into a dark shade of umber.

  “Is all well, Un'Yhe?” Ah'Wren asks as she notices my colors shift.

  “I don't know,” I respond. “So much about the strangers remains beyond our comprehension. They are such fragile creatures.”

  Ah'Wren's green eyes widen as a disembodied voice answers a summons I send from my desk's computer. The technological gifts the strangers have supplied to us remain wondrous even to Ah'Wren.

  “I have been sitting at my stone expecting your call, Un'Yhe,” Seh'Ulk's voice remains steady as it travels invisibly to my speaker. I would prefer to see him to judge the colors of his scales.

  “What is you opinion on the anomalies in the temperatures?” I ask. “Anything we need to worry about?”

  There is a pause before Seh'Ulk replies. “I have no way of knowing. The remainder of readings remains routine. But I can't help but worry.”

  I close my golden eyes and silently pray to Terleck. Seh'Ulk is my most trusted of doctors.

  “Thank you, Seh'Ulk. I will ask them how they feel.”

  Seh'Ulk chuckles. “I envy you, Un'Yhe. We all wish we shared your gift of language.”

  The mentors of my brood reason that I have inherited my uncanny talent for language from none other than the crimson brood's legendary Un'Yel. Stories relate how Un'Yel never faltered to translate the prophet Terleck's words into each of the brood's different tongues. I was young when the strangers arrived, and I had mastered every dialect and language among the broods before I deciphered the first words of the strangers. I served as a translator to traders. I traveled as an emissary for the arbitrators whose judgments maintain our era's peace. I have served as an instructor so that I might share a little of my talent to students who come to me from across the broods' many colors. I would've lived a proud life even if the strangers had not arrived. I would still have made my brood ancestors and elders proud.

  Then the strangers arrived, and their coming elevated me to a status of which I had never dreamed.

  Some of the strangers laugh that it was simple fortune that brought me to them during those first days following their arrival, when the strangers were dying, when they were frantic to communicate their danger, when the strangers worried none among the brood would understand their cries, or hear how to honor them after they perished.

  Many other strangers believe that the presence of a prophet much like Terleck answered their cries and prayers by sending me to them, that my arrival was guided by a divine kind of fate. They tell me a miracle tied my tongue to theirs.

  I don't know which belief is closest to the truth.

  I had been harvesting jyleth stalks, from which I extracted the ink for my students' pens, when I came across the suffering strangers. But come across the strangers I did, and their voices sounded like a strange, wonderful new music. I did not understand the noise’s meaning, but the rhythm of their tongue, the cadence of their phrases, mesmerized me with an alien world.

  I was the first to understand the sounds the strangers gasped for shelter. I was the first to understand the noises the strangers made for survival. For that, I have been rewarded with their friendship.

  Turning my attention back to Ah'Wren, I allow the gold to return to my eyes. It is rude to let imaginary concerns shadow the happiness Ah'Wren's dedication has earned.

  “Do you have any questions before I introduce you to the strangers?”

  Ah'Wren's scales pulsate. “I have a question for you.”

  “I will be happy to answer it.”

  “What is the hardest word in the strangers' language to understand?”

  “That is a good question, and an easy one for me to answer,'” I reply. “The strangest word they know is 'star.'”

  Ah'Wren does not understand. “What does it mean?'

  “I will let the strangers explain that word to you themselves,” my eyes glow, and my scales are plush in crimson. “It will give them another chance to tell their favorite story.”

  * * * * *