<USS Cervantes> "Green Heart" ACTION LOG

"Green Heart"
Ashne'e Al Kiara

The landing spot was supposed to be a desolate area, one the away team had
traversed many times before. It was a haunted place, the kind that brushed the
brightest thoughts with a bluish melancholic tinge. Sand choked the bleached
bones of the ruins. Here, under the merciless blazing thrust of the sun,
even the residue of jewelled tone paint that had clung so determinedly to other
walls had been bleached away here, leaving the remaining fragments white as
bone-shells, as funereal lillies, as decaying lace. Among the wind-pocked
sands, one could imagine a myriad long departed footsteps.

Yet, when the rush of transporter light faded, and the away team was left on
the planet, it was not a desolate place.

A million bejewelled blue wormholes wrapped the heavens in an embrace.
Below, lit by their ethereal glow, children played and beggars cackled, in the
thrum of nocturnal life. The ruined architecture was restored, rising gracefully
ino the sky, daises perfect and arches skillfully sloping without the merest
crack in the masonry. Verdant. Green. How could it be so verdant green?
Leaves spread out from every crevice, serpentine vines curled around walls,
branches, photosynthetic cells stretching to life, restoring circulation to the
lungs of the city, the impossible, beautiful blood of the city, flowing like
sap through the green heart of plants and flowers and trees beyond imagining.
How could this place have been stolen by the desert? How could it have been
choked to death in a sandy embrace?

How many years must have passed?

Felines crowded the streets en masse. Grit matted the fur of some, while
others sported elaborate coiffures that formed their sleek fur into pretentious
poofs and tufts. Most were naked, the beauty of their pelts their only
adornment.

A child, waist high, scrambled across the loose stone street toward an
arched entranceway. He held a violet stone aloft in his paw and it glinted in 
the
light of the wormholes. The guard at the door, a being with more muscles than
any creature had a right to, stepped aside at the sight of the stone, and
the door yawned open.

Inside, violet stones sparkled from the walls and off the floors where they
had been embedded in startlingly lovely whorls. Felines of every description
crowded the hall. As the door groaned closed again, a flash of movement, the
flowing of dark fabric, betrayed cloaked creatures two feet taller than any
feline present. 

"Ss'thla," Ashne'e said.

Many other felines followed the child toward the door, and a mass of violet
stones shone in their paws. The flocked into the hallway.

What could be the cause of such a gathering? Why would men, children, women,
destitute, wealthy, all this diverse variety be crowding together, untied
only by the violet stones?

"The rites of sand and fur," Kennedy answered.

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