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Hallucinatory


(Author's Note: this is part of a short story I wrote in 2017 for the Tevun Krus #44 Sword and Planet edition, titled Ranadel. Just  seemed to fit this week's prompt for The_Weekend_Write-In, hallucinatory)

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Marianna opened her eyes to find herself lying flat on her back, looking up at a violet sky. Two bluish suns hung low on the horizon. She shut her eyes. Damnit! I must have hit my head. I'm hallucinating. She opened her eyes again. Nope, the sky was still violet and there were still two suns.

The plane crash! She sat up and looked around wildly. Where were the pieces of aircraft? The other passengers? Surely she could not have been the only person to survive? But there was absolutely no sign of the plane. No twisted sheets of metal, no bits of luggage, no passengers. She was alone. She realised she was still wearing the orange oxygen mask and plastic airbag over her face, but it was no longer attached to anything. Useless. She tore it off.

Her brain struggled to process what her eyes were seeing. She appeared to be sitting on top of a golden sand dune. More sand dunes stretched to the horizon on her left and on her right she could see enormous mountains, with what appeared to be a city nestling at the bottom. Tall, graceful towers of blue and indigo glittered in the early morning light. It was like nothing she had ever seen before.

A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision caught her attention. In a daze, she turned her head for a closer look. A group of three figures was cresting the dune to her north—or was it south? Their black clothes stood out sharply against the golden sand. Even as she watched, the group stopped, dropped the heavy bundle one was carrying, and took off their cloaks. In a flash, they turned them inside out, revealing the golden lining. One of them drew a fourth cloak from a thick belt around her waist and wrapped it round the bundle on the ground. They put their cloaks back on gold side out, and suddenly Marianna was struggling to see them. Against the sand, the camouflage was almost perfect.

Then the bundle wriggled, dislodging the cloak. Marianna got a glimpse of a terrified face staring right at her, before the cloak was pulled over his head again, and his body picked up and hoisted over a shoulder. The captive's eyes had seemed to plead with Marianna, begging her to help. She didn't think the others in the group had seen her, occupied as they were with their own priorities.

The fear on the man's face and the roughness with which his captors handled him, shot her straight into agent mode. She might be stranded on an alien world but she could still tell a kidnapping when she saw one.

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