The forest teemed with life, but at the same time felt very much inanimate and uncaring.

The planet─ The Place, Twix reminded herself, rolling her eyes─ was so strange compared to Earth, and it made her so much more uncomfortable than she was willing to let on. Especially in front of all these people, and especially in front of Jace.

She felt strangely shy around him; their dynamic was off, and the atmosphere surrounding him felt charged with an intense electricity that both attracted and repelled. Maybe it was just due to the cameras─ though they were light-years away, Twix felt the weight of all the eyes watching her. There wasn't any room for her to mess up, and that meant that in trying to get to know him, she was in some ways preventing him from really knowing her.

And she did want to know him. If they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, she didn't want their relationship to be awkward.

This silence between them certainly was. She pretended she was just taking in the forest, but her eyes kept drifting back to him. She felt treacherous thinking this, but he was admittedly attractive─ tall, tan, with dark hair and a crooked smile.

You have a boyfriend, she reminded herself, looking away. Stop.

She focused on the trees instead, trunks as wide as cars and an interconnecting canopy of leaves. The fluorescent plants cast an eerie glow on the forest, but it felt peaceful rather than alarming─ quiet and untouched.

"Want to see what's up there?" Jace asked, pointing up at the ceiling that the trees formed, echoing her train of thought. It looked more like moss than leaves, Twix realized, and it would probably support their weight. But even then, there was no way she'd even consider climbing up there.

"Let's just keep walking. It's a bunch of trees."

"I'm going."

"No, you're going to fall. Let's just go."

Jace gripped onto the trunk. "There aren't really any good handholds," he said. "I wonder if─"

"I almost failed the first aid class on the ship."

"I'm not going to fall."

She crossed her arms. "I'm sure."

He started inching up, hugging the tree with his arms and legs, scooting bit by bit. Twix watched with slight amazement and a good bit of fear as he climbed.

"Be careful," she warned.

"I am careful," Jace said through clenched teeth, reaching up. His hand slipped suddenly; he let out a groan and came crashing down the tree to the ground.

"Jace!" Twix was at the foot of the tree then, reaching out a hand to help him up. He took it and stood, brushing the dirt off his clothes and wincing.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"I'm fine."

"I told you not to─"

"Shh," he said, and she glared at him.

"I was talking!"

"Quiet," Jace hushed, and the note of urgency in his voice convinced her to listen. The forest descended into silence for a few quick moments, and then she heard a noise. They looked at each other, his eyes full of wonder, hers startled and afraid.

"Something out there?" Jace whispered, and now they were a team against the noises in the dark.

Twix nodded. We should go back to the shuttle, she thought, every survival instinct in her body screaming against continuing on. The forest that had seemed so peaceful just moments ago was now threatening. Anything could be here, and they would be completely surrounded.

Get it together, she chided herself.

"Let's check it out," Jace said, and her heart rate spiked at that idea.

"We don't know what it is," she said. "Let's go back."

Jace held her gaze. "There might be something out there, something nobody's ever seen before. Doesn't that make you the least bit curious?"

Not right now.

She'd just got here. She couldn't die already─ she didn't want to die at all. And somehow, that thought had never crossed her mind until now.

She just hadn't thought of this as dangerous.

"I don't─"

But his disappointed expression made her change her mind.

"Sure," she said, "let's go." His face transformed into such a full-on smile then that she was glad she'd said so, even though inside she was shaking.

You're going to see something no one's ever seen before, she reminded herself. She'd be able to draw it later; wouldn't it be worth if for that?

Would it?

They trekked through the forest, following the sound. It came randomly every few minutes, sounding somewhat musical, and Twix was reminded on the sirens in the Greek myths she used to love. She'd thought it was so funny, the excuses people made up for their lack of understanding, but also how horrible the explanations they invented were, how much fear they brought on themselves through these stories.

Well, maybe we'll scare some three year olds, she thought, glancing at the podcams floating just out of sight behind them. For a moment she could almost picture it as a movie, fantastical and hardly real.

But it was real; this was their life─ but even to her it felt like a strange dream.

The song reached out to her again, and she allowed herself to be pulled into the music, until she was walking along to its beat even after the notes faded. It was like nothing she'd ever heard before, and maybe, maybe, it was worth investigating.

Louder, louder, louder. The ground crunched beneath her boots; Jace's footsteps rang out ahead of her; the podcams floated behind, changing angles every now and then. And she needed to see what was making the noise, that beautiful, haunting melody. It sounded like a cry of pain and joy, a bittersweet last kiss, a lingering sadness that would continue after the sound died. It was the sound of a lover's goodbye, a dying breath, but at the same time a sound of renewal and growth, of plants breaking through the dirt and unfurling leaves into the light, of a new small fist closing around a mother's finger. It was a song of life and death, goodbye and hello, love and hate. If all the most potent feelings and memories could be contained into one song, Twix thought, this was it.

The ground started to slope downwards, into a darker part of the forest, but it didn't seem so threatening now. It took her a few minutes to realize that the tulips were gone, that the faint light she was seeing came from another source.

"Twix," Jace whispered back to her, "Can you see it yet?"

"See what?" she asked him, her voice rising and falling in an unconscious attempt to match the lilt of the music; she realized this, but only vaguely.

"Over here."

She walked faster down into the earth to catch up to him.

And she saw it.

A pool of colors, dancing and fluctuating, illuminating the cavern they had entered. It was more beautiful than the stars, than waterfalls and the smell of fresh air, than love itself. It was all of these, and more, and Twix felt herself approaching it even though she hadn't decided to move her feet.

She was iron; it was a magnet.

"What is it?" She asked, her voice echoing in the cave. She noticed that the liquid was moving upward from time to time, like waves, but the motion was of mountains forming and dissolving in the blink of an eye. They reached up to touch the ceiling of the cavern, then descended back down to the rest of the pool. The waves, she realized, were making the song, which was so much louder here, vibrating within her, until she knew that she was a part of it, that she had to be a part of it. She crouched down by the liquid, reaching her hand out over it, feeling the music dancing at the pace of the changing colors. Her vision swam until the pool was all there was, and she heard and felt nothing but the song and the colors and the beauty and the pain of it all. She thought someone was talking, but it didn't matter, because it was gone within seconds, replaced by the sleepy numbness and fiery electricity of the pool's song. She eased her finger into the liquid, felt it thrum within her, so much stronger than the music. Twix needed it, needed to be with it in some absurd sense she couldn't quite comprehend. The colors swam in the pool, merging together, and she thought about how close she was to it. How far.

She needed to be closer.

And for a second, a bit of doubt lingered in the back of her mind, urging her to step away. But the song grew louder, and it was gone, and all she could think about was how beautiful the pool was. She pictured herself getting closer, falling in, disappearing into the song and the colors and the feeling, and then she realized that was what she was doing, and she was sliding into the pool, and the colors were so much more intense and then so few and so dark and she was floating and flying and falling and fallen.

The world went black, and Twix was gone.

I hope you've enjoyed this preview of Colonized! If you did, please check out a copy on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078PZG2ZW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1514686693&sr=8-1&keywords=colonized+kimberly+tate and leave an honest review. Thank you for your support!

(The cover at the top was made by CaroDelMonte.)