Page 4 of Seven Oars
“You’ll get an adventure,” Eze promised.“Just be careful what you wish for.”
Fawn's eyes sparkled with excitement.“I wish to find interesting men.”
“Sure. Only they’re no human men, love.”
Sassa burrowed deeper into her little cot.
Another spaceship took off nearby, howling like a disturbed demon and rattling the windows.
Using the noise as an excuse to end the conversation that had suddenly turned personal, the women returned to their narrow camp beds. Once again, they had closed off, united in their silent determination to keep their distance.
Long after all the noise had died down and the darkness had fallen, Rosamma lay awake in her narrow bed, wrapped in a shawl.
The women around her were so different from one another. So different from her. For now, their life paths had aligned, but it wouldn’t last. Their separate futures lay ahead, swirling ominously with the unknown.
Treacherous thoughts about staying behind meandered through Rosamma’s mind. She and Ren were forever linked together by their half-breed nature that required them to exchange energy to survive. If only they could exist apart…
Once they took off, Rosamma would lose every familiar sight and smell, every little comfort that surrounded her on Meeus.
Priss, the terraformed asteroid, was a miserable place. Lawless and rough, a kind of a last frontier, it had thin recycled air and poorly purified imported water, both rationed out for the residents. And most residents weren’t even human.
Funny, Rosamma thought, that she should worry about aliens, herself a mixed-race. Yet the prospect of living among them frightened her. She was so very human—not just by half of her blood, but by virtue of her upbringing. Human culture was all she knew. It was familiar. It was home.
Tears leaked from her eyes. She curled into a fetal position and covertly blotted them away with her shawl.
Do I have to go?
She was so afraid of flying into space. Afraid of so many things. She was timid and frail, the worst character ever for an adventure.
But if she stayed behind, Ren would stay too. And Rosamma couldn’t refuse her brother a fighting chance for a better life with the woman he loved.
It was hard to live other people’s dreams.
Chapter 2
One week turned into two.
The tension inside the cabin grew heavy, and even the chill Gro had gotten short-tempered.
“I wish we could go outside,” Mara complained, and she spoke for everyone.
Being confined to this dilapidated building with barely any facilities, always conscious of having to remain invisible and stay quiet, made their waiting game so much harder.
Rosamma, used to being indoors more than the others, struggled with idleness.
But more than that, she struggled with the constant presence of people around her, day and night. Strangers who were neither family nor friends. Women like Alyesha, who looked right through her. Or women like Mara, who didn’t look at her at all, unsettled by her odd appearance.
She, who had so often decried her loneliness and wished to meet new friends, found this sojourn with fellow females disagreeable.
“I will take out the trash,” Fawn volunteered.
Alyesha looked up from her mirror. She spent hours on her beauty routine, and not just out of nothing better to do. It was a full-time occupation.
“No need for you to go. Someone else can take a turn.”
Fawn almost bowed down to Alyesha’s authority, but rallied.“Who wants to deal with trash? It’s no bother for me.”
“You take forever to get back. What takes you so long, anyway?”
