Armhianthia by Arbhin Cioc (cat reading book .txt) 📖

follow his fingers. A numb feeling slowly covered his mind forcing his eyes to close slowly. Memories of long ago crept from behind and gave him images for his eyes, like photos they appeared in front of his eyes. He dismissed the images and watched his hands work, but as quickly as he trid to focus, his mind seem to wander off again. Battling his own focus, he send the first message back to earth, with his status of health in it. He hoped it explained the lack of messages of the last sending. And he hoped that some medical person from earth would be able to help. Some ideas to reduce the effect of the poison. After sending the messages he was so tired, that he didn’t even think about moving to his bed. His eyes followed the stars on the screen empty minded.
When a star left the screen at the corner, his eyes shifted to a new star. Eyeing it with a blank stare, his mind wondering about the color of it, what the purposes of those colors were. What kind of star it was. His education went through his mind in instances. Every color told an amount of minerals inside the star and its age. In his mind he went through them all. He remembered a teacher, trying to teach them the significant of stars. The professor never understood the lack of interest of his students.
“If you lay with your girl underneath a tree, after spending your whole evening at a disco. Wouldn’t it be great that you could tell her that there was something written in the stars?”
In the back of his mind Parce heard the professor talk. The class was silently grinning on the professors ideas. Parce heard someone say: “I say that all the time already.”
The professor smiled widely as if he was expecting this reply already.
He raised his hand to point to the speaker. “And if she asks you what it is, that is written, can you answer her?”
The speaker hesitated a bit, by this personal addressing.
The professor took that moment to push on further. “You couldn’t tell anything. Because you would have had no idea what a star is saying.”
The speaker of before tried to be funny: “I don’t speak Stars.”
“No you don’t,” the professor replied. “Unless you listen more closer to my lessons. I will make you understand the language of the stars.”

The college room faded from Parces mind. A tree appeared in his mind. He was looking from an other ones view, to his own body. He had taken too much drinks. His girlfriend had been troubled. She woke in the middle of the night, not finding him next to him. He had promised her to be home before midnight.
She had been furious not finding him and had been waiting in the living room for him, when he didn’t arrive an hour later, she had turned to restless. Parce had the history of getting into fights at the end of en evening. Half hour later she’d pulled her coat over her sleeping dress and walked to the party, where Parce had said to be going. Arriving there, no one could say, where he had gone. One of his friends told her Parce had gone home several hours back already.
Disturbed she walked the streets back to home, looking in every direction to find him, when finally she found him, laying asleep against a tree.
Her breath got stuck in her throat. Silently she called him, but he gave no motion. He laid there slumpy against a tree in a square area, at the borders the fences of the neighbours stood a dim yellowy wood sparsely lit by the half moon over head. His head against the tree, resting with his chin on his chest, his arms slumped besides his body. Approaching two steps she saw a very faint motion of his chest moving up and down.
All her fears washing off her, she felt like she could scream. Wake him up and yell at him for scaring her so much. But she hesitated. She walked up to him, sat down next to him at the tree and watched him sleep. Relieved nothing serious had occurred to him, she trailed with a hand over his cheek and cuddles herself next to him. Her back against the tree, just like him and silently she watched him, than moved her view to the tree and its branches. The leaves were green and bright rustling gently with the sparse wind, or maybe some animal like a bird moved in its top. She moved her view to the stars watching a stellar.
“...there is something written in the stars for us...” Parce mumbled. He had woken somewhere between the moment she left her focus off him and when she looked at the stars. Or maybe he had felt her looking at the stars. He somehow always seem to feel those special moments from her. She liked stars, they gave her a feeling of rest and easiness. And those easy moments, when she was totally herself, Parce seem to feel that in her. She looked at Parce, not sure she had to slap his face for this indecent joke. She thought it better not to. Instead she raised her hand to stroke back some hair from Parces eyes, and watched his drunken eyes.
“Did you really had to drink so much, Parce?”
Parce tried to say something, but after three attempts he stopped trying.
“… there is something written for us in the stars…” He replied.
Marine looked up at the stars. “What do they say then, dear?” She asked.
Parce tried to point with his arm up into the sky. With his eyes he looked at her and said: “That your eyes have the same color as Betelgeuse.”
She smiled. She had always thought that the constellation Orion had something special. And Betelgeuse was one of the oldest stars of Orion.
“Come we have to get home, Parce.”

With a shock Parce lifted his head up. He had fallen asleep. He felt a pain in his neck muscles and his breast was tight as a knot. Suddenly awake he felt all the pains in his body come back up again. His feet were killing him and his arms were almost impossible to move. After the heaving of his full body, only on his arms, they were tensed because of the strain put on them. Moving his arm slowly, he tried to avoid too much muscle pain, he reached for the belt. He had locked the belt to secure himself to the chair, to prevent from falling off. With trembling hands, from tired muscles, he had a hard time getting the belt lock to open. With a click the lock fell open and Parce glided off the chair to his feet. But at the same moment he put his weight on his feet, they failed hold and Parce fell on his knees. Immediately he felt the pain from his feet like stinging bees through his body. On his hands and knees he crawled to the bed and rolled on to it.
Not a moment on bed, and he already thought why he hadn’t done that earlier. He felt the stress and tension fell off him. His head started spinning, giving him the feeling that he was flying in circles. He didn’t care for blankets, not even his clothes. The bandages of his right foot was all bloody and dirty again, but he didn’t care anymore. He felt everything in his body ache.
He just had to sleep. That would take the pain away and give him strength for the next day. He laid his head on the pillow again, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then his mind drifted away.
The Search Continues

The Search continues

A week has past since Luse left prince Trakands court. His coach was empty beside him. The prince had ordered a coach for Luse alone, for the Eagrivals comfort and pleasure. But Luse would rather have had company. The coach was good and luxurious, but it would not make a long road shorter. He gave up reading his book. As much as he had read it now, he could literarily spell every word that stood in there, word by word. And the writer was good detailed about everything already. In his thought he tried to figure that one thing the writer wasn’t writing about. The headmaster of the Eagris told him about this town, what the writer talked about as Ardika. Today little was left of the city. But it was just outside the borders of Lagus. South west side, in the mountains there that cut off the borders of the habitant world, with the rough outside world. But for now, Luse was heading with his wealthy coach to the farthest city possible. From there he had to find someone able to travel him to the borders of Lagus. Of course if there was no one to bring him there, he had to walk the whole distance, but he couldn’t start to think about the distance he had to walk. Let alone the time it took him to travel it, by foot. For another time he eyes the interior of the coach. He could not say the Nadirand people were rich with luxury. But the prince had his coach be decorated with patches of gold, aligning several figures which decorated the inside of the panels. At the doors figures of soldiers were painted, standing in guarding or attacking poses. Over the seats on both sides some Nadirand royalties were painted. Looking down on the passenger below. Different heads on either side of the coach. The seats were made of red plush. With diagonal gold thread linings. The storage room underneath the seats were closed with carpentry panels. The crème coloured panels of the door, with the red of the couches were hard to the eyes. But the wood coloured covers under the seats gave a relaxing contrast.
Luses eyes went up to the roof, where a thin fabric was pinned to the roof with copper nails, with a big head, every ten thumb. A neat pattern of copper color, combined with the thin crème fabric gave a nice texture.
His eyes dashed off to the outside world again. He had been watching the inside for far too long already. But he saw the outside world slowly change. The long pine trees had been exchanged to thicker trees. The soil was slowly turning more yellow, instead of the brown dirt of higher up north. He wondered if he had to sleep in the coach again, this night, or that he was able to spend the night in a bed. It would have been a good change for once. He had been using the red plush for bed for five nights already. That last inn had had a good bed, but after five days of plush his bones were sore now.
Looking at the sun he