May

Issue 44

Swallowed by Lynx Nebula, by its stunning billows blinded, the traders clinked mugs, sang raucous songs, and lurched forward, gazing through ports at translucent undulations of orange and pink, dusty wisps packed with immeasurable grace and menace. Their holds bulged with pellets bartered from the Aphylax-- terrible gluttons, they, and worse businessmen. For fruits and beads, these pills, each restraining behind a brittle skin energy to light three worlds for a month, or one for three. The ship heaved forth, into the bright convolutions of the clouds, into the lustrous unseeing. Retirement awaited on the other side of Lynx Nebula, and ease, retreat from the throes of space, from the hazards of faring. They figured their takes, the whole take, and refigured, and they eyed their comrades warily. Thoughts of blood, their own and the others’, had occurred to them all, but mostly their fantasies came pleasant: hanging hammocks, green grass, soft swaying, and families not seen in ages; dreams of kin and property stained with memory’s kindest hues. The nebula grew dense for a moment, then cleared to expose a spaceberg the size of a moon, three hundred yards ahead. The Aphylax stopped and listened. He’d seen the faintest flash, but he’d only heard the tiny explosions of grapes between his teeth-- grapes he’d traded for his planet’s foulest garbage-- and the soft clinking together of the beads around his neck.