They arrived...somewhere else. It was fall. Evening. Scent of cypress in the air. She held Athena tight to her, creeping through mostly silent streets, slipping into shadowed passages whenever someone did pass by. She didn't immediately recognize the language.
Ahead, a half-completed temple. She inched up the stairs, still holding her kitten, crouching and peering through a gap between one nearly-finished wall and the doorframe. She could make out through fitful, flickering light stacks of wood, large, uneven bricks, finer-quarried sections of stone.
She had to get closer. She started to stand up, and crouched down again. Two figures approached the doorway. She slipped into the nearest hedge, watching them as they passed. They weren't...human, she didn't think--rougher features, reddish skin, and--did one have horns?
She watched as they walked to a cart nearby, each easily picking up a pallet of bricks and walking back into the temple. She waited a few heartbeats, then followed. She needed a closer look.
She crouched down again, behind another large crate of building materials, and peered around the side. And again, she was perplexed at what she saw. If she was correct on the general time period they were in...wherever they were...they didn't have access to highly refined metals, yet...she could have sworn she was staring at modern scaffolding.
But modern scaffolding aged and pitted, scaffolding upon which stood more of the...not human figures...and yes, at least two also had wings. What was...where was...she?
She crept out of the temple, mystified, and it wasn't until she was halfway down the stairs that Athena whispered "Daddy's here."
What?
"What do you mean, dearling?"
Athena nodded to a place behind the temple. She crept through the dense undergrowth, and finally stared in stupefaction at the shore, where a very bedraggled Hiro was partially out of the water. She looked up, and she could just make out overhead the Gray Area.
Wait. Two Gray Areas?? One was shimmering almost, but not completely, over the first. What could have caused--
And there was a bright light--
Swept into the air, spinning in circles, reaching--for Hiro, for ground, for the ship, even she didn't entirely know--with one hand, clinging to Athena with the other, spun in place to face the eerie purplish glow--
And she was through. Falling, doing her best to roll first, protecting the kitten with her own form, landing heavily in the silken mist still drifting on the floor of the tower. She blinked. Rift. Ghostly tentacles. Home.
"But Daddy--"
"Precious, we will find your father. I promise."
When she could stand, she took the stairs carefully down, tracked down the nearest port pad, and shot up to the nursery, where she settled Athena in, the others clamoring to know what had happened. They had no food left, and she dashed off to fill the bowls, and when she came back...
...Enoch had fallen sick.
What now?!
(Continued in part XLV.)
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