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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

Chapter Three: Tellerine

7.

Everything that happened began with love. It was for love, for Zara, or even for humankind if I may permit myself such a lofty crown. She taught me so much. Sometimes I think she walks beside me wherever I go. She guides and teaches, but also laughs and loves in the shades of my dreams.

Soon after Zara and I met, I set aside my plans, and journeyed to the Corduwaine system to ask her father to bless the union we pledged together in the monastery gardens of Tulearth.

I was a young man tending a garden full of flowers under a powder-blue, perfect sky when I first saw her come in on the tiled, colorful walkways amid roses and jasmines. I had no idea who she was. I could see how beautiful were her long legs, her honey hair, her blue eyes, and well-proportioned features. The summer was as young as we were. I noticed several tall, slender young women on distant paths in the great gardens of Tulearth university. Like Zara, they strode in gracefully wind-blown sheer robes of subdued colors. They laughed and chattered happily—with just that cutting sharpness that the young can have when they joke about life and love, but especially about this boy or that girl. And what else would young women chatter about on such a perfect day?

I paused over my hoe and rested, watching them. I had my share of girls and drink, during my student days, so what could I make of these? They looked a few years younger, maybe new to the university, while I would soon to leave on my first astropath assignment. We lived an age of innocence, about to be ripped out of its sockets and thrown to hell by a massive, surprise Swarm invasion.

The beautiful young women's intrusion in those peaceful gardens was an excuse to rest and catch my breath. I grinned widely, panting, in the thick air that buzzed with bees and nuzzled with flower-seeking butterflies. I fancied myself to be as seductive as I was arrogant. In the summer heat, I wore only a gray, dingy loincloth and I must have been a sight. My sandal-shod feet were black with damp soil halfway up to my knees. My long, wavy dark hair dripped with sweat down to my shoulders, and my face was no doubt smeared with clay, through which my dark blue eyes must have looked startled and hungry. It is the instant language of young men and women, understood by two hearts. I wrote by hand in ink on a paper notebook an evening soon after, when my heart had become prisoner: "We flutter toward each other just as butterflies nuzzle dewy chalices of red and yellow and white flowers that wait for them in pregnant silence."

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