Chapter 25: Event Horizon — Part 9

I wanted to go home. Laura said, despondently.

It took me time to tame the wind, and that ant will take thousands of years to replace. I found myself hoping you could heal a little of this world. I thought that was why you came. Your friends have been working diligently, working miracles. Selfish little girl, that you can’t be more like them.

Selfish or not, how can I help this world? Laura asked. Twisted and broken as you are, what can I hope to fix for you?

How can you help me? Earth answered quietly.

No matter how hard I try, nothing ever changes. Laura sounded piteous.

Nothing? The voice of the wind sounded tired. Let your friends keep nothing, then, and I will have nothing of you.

The Wind reached into Laura’s mind and twisted her thoughts until she could think of nothing. The ant crawled again, healed of its injuries, and the trees regrew their thorns. Then the world vanished, and Laura was alone in an unfathomable darkness, all her senses muffled to the point that she felt she might not exist at all. After what seemed hours in an absolute state of darkness, her eyes were open again. Laura felt burned, scarred, naked, and alone. Helpless in every sense until she heard Vodia’s voice, seeping into her head like salve to a wound.

Vodia’s quiet voice held only concern for Laura. Your past won’t have you . . . Now what are you going to do with your future?

Laura made several vulgar comments, then calmed down. I’m going to find a new home, and it’s going to be the best new home I can make it.

Vodia seemed to nod inside her head. Good, and how do you intend to do this?

Laura’s answer was long in coming. I’m going to take this world, make it mine, I think I need to change things.

Change comes only when creation and destruction are in harmony, in a natural balance.

Laura tilted her head in sudden epiphany. Just like Susan. Just like Earth.

You’ve already evolved, others need but change as well. The fever you feel isn’t the residual heat of the damaged Earth, it is the fever of change. Your symbiont and the one here are hybrid now, having merged. Let the symbiont within your blood, now part of what has been present for eons in my soil, flow through the veins of your new people. Let it heal this world as it did your soul, let it rise up and reshape my lands, revitalize this world and bring us peace.

Laura rose out of her trance.

“Make me like you.” Kris said, his voice fearful yet confident.

There was no turning back. Kris had asked. Kris would be the first. Her lips touched his, and he took her to the floor, her legs half in and out of a small stream of water. Laura’s body, having been changed by the symbiont, was capable of transferring symbiotic fluid from a small gland located directly at the entrance of her vaginal tract, just above her clitoris. The transfer would only trigger during orgasm, and only at Laura’s will, when a small spike of skin would harden enough to prick Kris where his pubic patch crossed over his pelvic bone. She pierced him hard, and he screamed in a mix of pleasure and pain, his blood splashing her groin as the gland blasted the wound with symbiotic fluids. The fever hit Kris within moments of their lovemaking, sweeping through his body. He somehow lived through the passion and the illness, and within days, rather than weeks, he was like her.

His first thoughts to Laura were affectionate. What do you wish of me, my love?

Laura smiled, kissing his neck. Go with Joni and Trina, help those you can. The hour of change is upon our twin world. Many hundreds of thousands will die, and there is nothing I can do but comfort them as they go.