Before they got back to the house, they saw Eleanor running across the field towards them.

  She shouted something to them as she ran, but neither of them could hear very well yet.

  “We can’t hear right now!” Marianne yelled back at her.

  When they got close enough to read her lips, Eleanor asked them, “What was that? I’ve never heard anything like that in my life.”

  “It came up the cliff again. It had broken a fence rail,” Marianne explained.

  Aziz held up the broken halves of the rail.

  “Mon Dieu!” Eleanor shouted. “Did you shoot it?”

  “I only winged it. But the shot clearly hurt and surprised it enough to make it fall.”

  “We should get inside and check that Rania and the children are okay. And tell them we are,” Aziz insisted.

  Both women nodded in agreement and they headed into the house.

  Rania noticed them as soon as they entered. She held Genevieve tightly to her chest. Pierre was nowhere to be seen. “Games over, Pierre,” she called, “I couldn’t find you.”

  Pierre crawled out from under the sink.

  “Is everything okay?” Rania asked.

  “We can’t hear yet. You have to look at us when you talk,” Aziz said to her, not sounding particularly alarmed.

  Eleanor, Rania, and the two children suddenly turned towards the front door.

  Marianne asked, “What is it?”

  Rania turned back towards them and answered, speaking slowly and clearly, “Several horses coming at a gallup, heading here.”

  Eleanor reached to take Genevieve from Rania and said, “Come with me Pierre, Lets go see who is coming in such a hurry.” Eleanor went out the front door with the little ones.

  Marianne said, “The thing from the cliff tried to attack Aziz when he was repairing the fence. I winged it with a shot and it seems to have fallen off the cliff. To be honest, he’s lucky to be alive. That was foolish of us. But he’s a brave man.”

  Rania looked at Aziz sternly, the reprimand in her eyes clear to be seen. He shrugged back at her.

  Renee Desjardins, along with two men carrying plasma rifles, stormed into the house. "What did you do?!?” she shouted.

  Rania said, “You will need to face them if you want them to understand. They are still deafened from the noise.”

  Renee turned towards Marianne and Aziz, and repeated her demand.

  “I shot the creature that you said didn’t exist. It was trying to kill Aziz.”

  The armed pair escorting Renee looked at each other.

  “What happened, exactly?” Renee demanded.

  “Aziz was fixing a broken rail, same as Andre. But I was wary this time and waiting with the rifle ready. I saw the tip of what looked like a tentacle. Something came up over the lip. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen. As I said, I think it was a tentacle, blue, about a meter long and half a meter thick. If that was a tentacle, I can’t imagine how big the creature is.”

  Marianne paused and shuddered.

  “The instant I saw it, I fired. I hit the tip of the tentacle. It certainly would not have been enough to do real damage to it. More like shooting someone’s pinky off, I think. The loud screech was when I hit it. The surprise must have made it lose its grip on the cliff, It fell and crashed into the canopy below with an enormous thud. It has to be intelligent. Breaking the fence was a trap it laid.”

  “He’s intelligent, alright,” Renee said, sounding solemn.

  Marianne looked at her oddly before she continued, “Aziz was amazingly brave. I had told him to run away from the cliff the instant I fired, if I fired. But he finished repairing the fence. He even thought to bring back the broken rail, so it could be inspected to see what we could learn.”

  Rania went over to hug her husband.

  “Watch your messages closely. You’ll both be summoned to a special council meeting shortly,” Renee said curtly.

  “Is there a doctor on the plateau who can check out if they have permanent hearing damage?” Rania asked.

  “I will send someone as soon as they're available,” Renee stated dryly. She nodded to her escort and the three left the building and were soon heard riding back towards the village.

  “She knows more than she’s saying,” Rania said.

  Marianne slowly nodded her head as her gaze continued to fire arrows at the door Renee had just left through.

  Aziz turned to Marianne and asked, “Why do you hate us?”

  Just then, Eleanor led the two children back into the house. Rania said, “That’s probably a conversation for another time.”

  ++++++

  Eleanor left shortly after Renee, leaving the children in Rania’s care. Marianne led Aziz out, this time spending more time explaining how farming worked on the plateau and how it was different from the way it worked on Earth. Aziz was an eager student, wanting to know how everything had to be done. And why.

  She explained that they got a soaking rain for about an hour almost every night a few hours after sunset. Making sure that water was captured was crucial for the farming. That made creating and maintaining his farms irrigation system crucial. It almost never rained during the day up here, although the jungle had thunderstorms almost every afternoon.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  After a couple of hours, Marianne decided it was time to head back to the house. She trusted Rania, but wasn’t comfortable being away from the children for that long.

  The children were happy to see her. Rania was holding Genevieve, but handed her to Marianne as soon as she arrived. Pierre eagerly explained the new game that Aunt Rania had taught him. Being wanted, but not needed 24-7, was a wonderful feeling, Marianne thought.

  “They both ate their snacks,” Rania said, updating their mother on the important status events. “I just changed Genevieve a few minutes before you got back.”

  Once Marianne was seated and had listened to Pierre’s excitement, she looked for messages from Renee or the council. “Aziz and I have to go to the council at 10AM tomorrow.”

  “I saw that message for Aziz, too,” Rania noted.

  “I assume they’re not going to give you a medal like they should,” Aziz said.

  The two women shook their heads no.

  “Oh, and listen to this message from Renee. It looks like it was sent to everyone in the colony,” Marianne said.

  “Fuck her!” Marianne shouted.

  “I guess that means we’re definitely not getting medals tomorrow,” Aziz added.

  “We didn’t get that message,” Rania said.

  “Sounds about right,” Marianna said, shaking her head. “She never bothered to add any of the new settlers to her list.”

  ++++++

  Aziz cleaned up after dinner while Marianne took the chance to spend more time with Pierre and Genevieve, whom she’d seen much less of today. She smiled at how quickly Pierre had bonded with Rania, which was good. At least until the inevitable happened. He has had four care givers and two of them will die on him before his fourth birthday. That has to take a toll on him. Aziz came over and put an arm around Rania. She may hate them, but she’d a pretty good idea what they were going through. She wasn’t sure if knowing in advance was better or not.

  She decided to take the kids to bed now and give them a few minutes. It has to have been another hard day on them. She got Pierre into bed without much of a struggle, promising to give him a kiss before she went to bed. She nursed Genevieve before putting her down for the night. She’d only moved her into her own room last month, but she was finally doing well sleeping through the night.

  When Marianne got back into the common room, Aziz repeated his question from earlier, “Why do you hate us?”

  “Because you destroyed my parents’ France, the one I should have grown up in. Because of the hellhole it’d become, Andre and I decided to come here. But now I’m stuck here without Andre. I hate all of you who made us come here.”

  “So you hate our parents. But we were born in France, well into it being a hellhole,” Aziz replied. “We’re five years younger than you. We’d nothing to do with the collapse of your France.”

  “But your parents did! Your people did! All of you. I hate all of you!”

  Rania spoke up, “What were our parents supposed to do? Stay in Tunisia and die? Because of the changes to the weather, Tunisia no longer has arable land. And there are regular days where if you’re outside for more than a few minutes, the heat will kill you.”

  “Then they should have stayed in Tunisia and died. Or gone somewhere else.”

  “You did notice that everywhere got overwhelmed by climate refugees, too, right? And most of our people did die.”

  “Good! You’re all filthy raton!”

  Marianne regretted saying that as soon as it left her lips. In her head, she understood their point. Aziz and Rania seemed like good people, friendly, supportive and hardworking. They were here because two homes had been destroyed, Tunisia and France. And Aziz was losing Rania to coming here, just like she lost Andre to the move.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s not the first time we’ve been called that. We were hoping we’d heard it for the last time when we got on the ship,” Aziz said.

  The three sat in silence for a few minutes. Rania was the next one to speak, “Yet despite your hatred, you’ve welcomed us into your house, trusted your children to me. You could’ve let the monster get Aziz, but you didn’t. I think you hate the idea of us, but not us personally. That’s something you can build upon as you live as neighbors, hopefully for long lives for each of you. I’d like to see you two be friends.”

  They returned to silence. This time, Marianne said, “I think you two should take my bed. It’ll be easier on Rania. I’ll sleep on the floor in Genevieve’s room.”

  “Won’t you be uncomfortable on the floor?” Aziz asked.

  “It’ll be far more comfortable than a lot of the nights in the peace brigade. We usually slept on a patch of dirt or sitting against a wall. Tomorrow we should inventory your items. I suspect they gave you an air mattress that I could use.”

  “Anything you find in there, you’re welcome to use,” Aziz offered.

  Marianne decided that Aziz and Rania should know more of the workings of the colony before the meeting tomorrow. They chatted for a few hours, while Marianne explained how things worked. She turned three quarters of the product of the farm over to the council, for which she was given credits. The furniture, the kids clothes, and Genevieve’s diapers were most of what she‘d spent her credits on.

  They’d been given Pascal, their horse, in year two. She thought Aziz might get a horse sooner now. The goats and the horses had mostly been sent as embryos, with a few brood mares sent to raise the embryos.

  She had a quota to maintain for the farm’s productivity. When Andre died, they only dropped it by ten percent, although she only got 75% of the credits she’d previously received.

  She thought they should understand the workings of the council as well. In all her interactions, it was pretty useless. She didn’t trust Renee in the slightest. Jacques Piton was just incompetent and backed Renee without thought. Georges Clements was the only council member worth spit. Renee takes orders directly from the foundation, although communication with Earth is challenging and rare. It’s part of why their arrival was so important. Renee certainly received new information once the ship came out of hyperspace.

  Marianne explained about the dissatisfaction with the council at the meeting a few days ago. She’d had no idea it was as widespread as evidenced there.

  Rania and Aziz had not heard of the German colony targeted for Dorado. When they were recruited, they were told they would be part of 1560 new colonists. They only discovered the lower number when they came out of hibernation.

  ++++++

  Aziz watched Marianne go into Pierre’s room to give him a goodnight kiss. She reappeared a moment later before disappearing again, now into Genevieve’s room. For all her expressed hatred, she’d treated them fairly. He really couldn’t complain. And she seemed to trust both of them. He had no doubt she’d let them know when she thought they’d screwed up.

  He looked at Rania. She looked so frail already. These first days had been very hard. He’d give her as much support as he could so she could make it as long as possible. And he had to show her that he was going to settle in fine, make something of the farm. Make a life for himself here. She was worried that he would not fare well without her. It was not an idle concern; he never had before. But showing her that he was going to be alright was one of the most important supports he could give her.

  He gave her a hand up. They each put an arm around the other, walking arm in arm into their new bedroom. Under better circumstances, he would’ve had expectations tonight; they had not slept in a bed together since they left Earth. Most of that time, they were in hibernation. And once they woke up, the bunks in their tiny cabin were way too small for two; they barely fit one.

  It was never discussed, but neither of them wore any sleepwear that night. She laid against him, her head on his chest, his arms wrapped around her. It felt so good to hold each other like this. He was going to miss her so much. He was trying not to cry, but the corners of his eyes leaked without permission. He hoped she didn’t notice. Then he noticed the drips falling on his chest.

  “I love you, Rania.”

  “I love you too. I'll never stop loving you.”