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trans_92010-06-12 10:57 am
on-an-impulse.livejournal.com) wrote in trans_92010-06-12 10:57 am
Entry tags:
[someone is calling me]
Shinn had gone for one of the motorbikes as soon as they’d touched down, driving it straight off the obs deck and into the resort town. He passed a few solid blocks of shop fronts filled with sarongs, driftwood jewelry, and the alien equivalent of tiki torches before running into a larger and exponentially less kitsch store stocked with clothes not just meant for hanging around the beach. He’d mentally run down what he’d usually pick up on a chance to disembark and realized that the only things Stacy wouldn’t supply were real clothes and food. Food would go bad, but the mismatch of casual clothes he picked up would last long enough if Stacy had somewhere to wash them.
But that was all he wanted from the busy part of town. He hit the island’s approximation of a highway and took off for the opposite end of the place. It was a good bike, the tank was full – he could blank out for an hour or two, racing the breeze.
He stopped, finally, where the road widened into some sort of “look at the beautiful view” spot, or maybe it was just some place for trucks to pull over. He didn’t really care. At a glance, the area was deserted, and there was a stairway of sun-bleached wood down to a white, sandy beach. He parked the bike and stepped down to the shore, stripping down to lightweight shorts at the stepping into the surf. The waves seemed erratic – probably thanks to the new sentient moon parked in orbit – but he’d been swimming almost as long as he could walk, and further out the water was calm enough to float. The sun was warm, the sea was gentle, the breeze was clean…
How long had it been since he’d wound up swimming…? As far as he could remember, he’d been on leave at Diocuia only months ago, but he had no way of knowing how long he’d been sleeping on Stacy. It could have been years, and… the little cove by the cliffs was gone now. So was the memorial at Onogoro, the dunes he and Mayu had played at… And someday this postcard world would probably end up just like Orb.
Knowing the Ohm would wipe the whole "no weapons" planet out of existence made the place a lot harder to enjoy.
But that was all he wanted from the busy part of town. He hit the island’s approximation of a highway and took off for the opposite end of the place. It was a good bike, the tank was full – he could blank out for an hour or two, racing the breeze.
He stopped, finally, where the road widened into some sort of “look at the beautiful view” spot, or maybe it was just some place for trucks to pull over. He didn’t really care. At a glance, the area was deserted, and there was a stairway of sun-bleached wood down to a white, sandy beach. He parked the bike and stepped down to the shore, stripping down to lightweight shorts at the stepping into the surf. The waves seemed erratic – probably thanks to the new sentient moon parked in orbit – but he’d been swimming almost as long as he could walk, and further out the water was calm enough to float. The sun was warm, the sea was gentle, the breeze was clean…
How long had it been since he’d wound up swimming…? As far as he could remember, he’d been on leave at Diocuia only months ago, but he had no way of knowing how long he’d been sleeping on Stacy. It could have been years, and… the little cove by the cliffs was gone now. So was the memorial at Onogoro, the dunes he and Mayu had played at… And someday this postcard world would probably end up just like Orb.
Knowing the Ohm would wipe the whole "no weapons" planet out of existence made the place a lot harder to enjoy.