Two years ago, I wrote this little flash fiction ghost story for Halloween. If you've finished Liminal Space, you know that the events underlying the story are now Official Amaranthe Canon. Because I never can leave well enough alone....
***
Proele.
The word whispered through her dream, carried along by an eerie, haunted wind. Wisps of fog obscured any details of where she was, but everywhere she turned, there was only the word.
Proele.
Nika awoke with a start. Silvery moonlight drifted into the bedroom, and she turned to see Dashiel sleeping peacefully beside her.
Taking care not to disturb him, she eased out of bed and tip-toed to the kitchen, where she poured a cup of coffee and took it over to the windows looking down upon Mirai One.
Proele. She knew the word, though not from where. It took only a fraction of a second to delve the history banks and she had her answer, though not her ‘why.’ Proele was the name they’d given to the planetoid where, near the end of their two-century-long Exodus away from the Anaden Empire, they’d first discovered kyoseil. Though the rock wasn’t fit for habitation, they’d paused there for several weeks while a team set up a camp on the surface to extract and study the mineral. After loading up sizeable samples in the holds of their generation ships, they’d continued their journey, and only after settling on Synra had the first experiments integrating kyoseil into their biosynthetic bodies began.
She wondered. Had Magnus Forchelle known as he stood on the planetoid’s surface what he had found?
Proele.
She jumped in surprise. She wasn’t dreaming any longer, was she? She pinched herself. No, she was not. Yet the ghostly voice had echoed anew in her mind nonetheless.
She sighed, sending ripples through the steaming coffee held at her lips. It appeared she was going to Proele.
Read the rest at the link: https://www.gsjennsen.com/news/2023/10/31/ghosts-of-proele
(Image Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona)
