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From rooms away, the VR unit stated, “Merlianne is calling.” Sarah looked from the graves to the stars, and then slowly, back to the open door. Merlianne did not call every night, and she didn’t call her every night. Why tonight? If Jeffrey had seen it, and Diane knew, then Merlianne would also know, only she would not be as gentle. Sarah sniffled and then smiled. If they ever met, she thought, they would come to blows sooner rather than later.
Lloyd wandered in, sniffing the air tenatively and then winding his body around her legs. As if reading her thoughts, he padded out of the room and looked back, his golden eyes meeting hers. Without a word, she nodded, and followed him back to her bedroom, and into a long sleep with a single dream.
She dreamed that she was in her bed in a room like the one she had back on Earth, back in Missouri, back in Carlyle. It was still dark outside, but then the spaceship landed, with flames so bright that the dark became daylight. The windows rattled and the models she had of planets and League ships on her bookshelves shook. There was a door right beside her bed, and hanging up on a hook was her spacesuit, although it only needed to cover her stomach to her head, for some reason. She put on a lacy cream-colored skirt that just reached her knees, and brown-gold shoes that looked like slippers, but with a single strap that arched across the foot. She opened the door and ran outside, across a dusty barren landscape, to greet the spaceship. Its door was close to the ground and the pilots had already spilled out in similar space-suits that only covered the top halves of their bodies. They cracked open their helmets and smoked. Their faces were sweaty and unshaved, and they traded jokes about being greeted by a princess. She blushed. Then Daniel came out, tall, clean-shaven, black hair rustled by the wind. He took her in his arms and said, “It’s been such a long time! How have you been?” Joy shot through her and the words that sprung from her heart were, “This is the only time that I feel alive.”
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