Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
Seen that Roland had thought he had risked everything to gain everything?
And with Rit's death, with Istrom under attack by Empire forces, had lost? Rit
hadn't seen it then, but now he could and in more detail than that one faint sense
of events he had felt while on the flitter and under attack. The images, the
sensations, all condensed as memory often became. Instead of the stars, the sky
was layers of black paper melting in the rain. Layers of paper and layers of eyes
as black. All melting.
He blinked the images away. “I was climbing on the rocks with him. I must
have fallen.” And saw that too.
Alicia shook her head. “That didn't happen.”
He had fallen, then stopped, wedged between boulder and tree trunk. Memory?
Or recreation? He had been climbing, but when the flitter had stopped by the
river, not during what was last night to him, not at Istarom.
Residual pattern draw?
“Rit, if you won’t tell me what happened, just talk to me. Say what you want,
but don’t make up things that didn’t happen.”
The truth was a pathway in his mind. He took one step with a feeling of
release. “She said to me that the night was very long.”
Whispered: “Cassa?” And firmer: “That was from Quin’tat’s story. From what
Garm said in the diamond.”
“I saw Camerat and Ri.”
“We’ve all seen them in stories and Net pulls. We've all seen...”
“You wanted to know.”
“I want to know the truth.”
“This is as true as I know how to make it. I think I invent what I see of her...
that a good part of it grows out of trying to make sense of the parts that are real.
Like you do with your own mind... the things you believe aren't necessarily true
or false, but they fit how you are now, how you feel now.”
Sometime during the telling, the walls dimmed and the bed became a nest of
blankets. He wasn't sure where the memories stopped and the stories began, or if
it was all a story.
She was there when he woke up, struggling to breath. Tika was curled up on
his chest but he had a cough as well. Sandwiches and tea were on the low table
beside the bed, and Alicia was playing rings and sticks with Eunni.
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca