I nodded, grinning at her. A new series was always exciting, and this one was cloaked in mystery. What did its pages hold?
Cora flicked on an adjustable hover lantern and motioned me to the floor cushion she’d plopped onto. I happily cuddled under a blanket next to her, cracking open my first book.
The cover felt like leather, but considering the vegetarian heritage of Shurwinn, I assumed it was an alternative. Stamped along the spine in bold silver lettering was the title: Known Cosmos Book 1.
I ran my fingers over the raised relief cover art: Ryst and Nayth, eyes closed and surrounded by blooming moonflowers, just like the marble image on the wall above us.
The interior art was just as breathtaking as the sculptures. The same couple, but this time rendered in an oil painting—a backlit cosmic scene of Ryst and Nayth surrounded in a glowing nebulae. My fingers traced down to the bottom right corner where a name was written in soft cursive.
“Larron Sloan,” I read aloud, and Pitch chuckled softly. He was lying on a grey shiki, hands folded softly on his chest, unfocused eyes staring at something I couldn’t see.
“You know him?” I asked softly.
He smiled, but said nothing, so I turned the page, pausing when I saw the book’s publication date: January 13, 2860. Ryst Nova’s 150th birthday, just a few months away.
So, the Known Cosmos Earth Press planned to release this story to the public very soon. Was this book the end game to centuries of secrecy and planning?
Eager, I started in, surprised it was a story of one person: Ryst. Who survived terrible violence, but didn’t walk away unscathed. She was changed and had a difficult time getting used to life after near death.
As I turned the pages, Cora’s arm tightened against me, and she whispered, “Dream walker.”
I nodded. Cora must've read the chapter where Ryst met a lover beyond imagination while she slept.
I kept going, getting the idea of what Slydar Joon meant by telepathy, but it wasn’t quite what I saw in stream shows. It was a softer, more subtle presentation, and Ryst never called herself telepathic. She had a sense of people that she found overwhelming and largely unwelcome.
I kept going, hungry for more.
Every now and then, one of my friends chuckled, just like me and Cora, but otherwise, it was quiet in the Sanctuary except for Filly’s sleeping wheezes.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Watching Ryst’s journey unfold, I recognized familiar quotes from Sibsil Creed peppered throughout the book. All the snippets I’d read on stream were there in epigraphs, sprinkling a story within the story throughout Ryst’s life.
I bet HC loved it.
“Affect them deeply.
So they’ll keep looking.”
Suddenly, I saw it.
For a century, Sibsil Creed published entertainment in the form of graphic novels and cartoons. Little teasers that kept people like HC hooked on the mystery. And here we were hot on the trail.
While I wondered where Sibsil was leading us, HC said one word that shifted everything.
“Talented."
“Umm hmm,” his wife Paddy agreed. “Like Talents are a thing that happens. People meeting in dreams and telepathy, Wimpy!"
I couldn’t stop reading to listen to them though, I had to keep going. What did Ryst do once she knew she was Talented?
Nanna stood up, stretching. “Well, I think Dr. Nova was onto something. She’s ranting about why we’re stuck with only 9 Galaxies. Where’s the tenth? Or the hundredth? I don’t know if she was right that the answer is mystical not technological, but I’ve read enough books to know foreshadowing when I see it.”
Ice slithered down my spine. Nanna must’ve gotten further than me because I hadn’t read a rant like that yet, but the words were familiar. Like something I’d wondered in the back of my mind in an amphitheater in Colorado.
What was beyond the 9 Galaxies, and why hadn’t humans ever ventured into it?
“Nanna? What chapter?”
“The Things We Crush.”
I flipped two chapters ahead and found it, skimming in a rush. Ryst bemoaned the state of the Known Cosmos. War was over and financial prosperity reigned, and yet, she was deeply troubled.
Her extrasensory perceptions showed her that everyone, everywhere in the 9 Galaxies was suffering, and life without wars hadn’t brought peace.
"How do we have real peace, Denten? Is it even possible in the Known Cosmos?"
"There’s something more out there. I feel it. I connected to it. My skull broke open, and I reached into something beyond the Known Cosmos. It’s mysterious. Mystical. And something in me changed when I connected to it."
“How do I get to it, Denten? What’s beyond the 9 Galaxies? What’s stopping us from the tenth galaxy, or the hundredth? What if it isn’t a technological breakthrough that we need to leave behind what we've always known? What if the way out of the Known Cosmos isn’t by starliner? What if the path is mystical? And what if, here, in the 9 Galaxies we are too broken to find it?”
Ryst’s words echoed through my skull.
“What if the way out of the Known Cosmos isn’t by starliner?”
The oil painting of Ryst and Nayth surrounded by stars came to mind, and something was there at the edge of my memory, like a shadow in the corner of my eye I couldn’t quite see.
Talented.
The way out of the 9 Galaxies.
How did it fit together?
Nanna’s whisper interrupted my thoughts, “I need some sleep before I can wade any deeper. I can take Filly home with me, Rhoda. I'll put him bed.”
Rhoda shook her head, “I’m ready too. Let’s go get some sleep.”
I nodded to them, closing my book and noticing the others did the same. Glancing over my shoulder at the carving on the wall one last time, I left the Sanctuary behind, silent in the moonlight.
In our rental, Cora and I collapsed into bed, drifting off, but I kept seeing that couple with the swirling nebulae. The words from Book 1 rolling round and round in my mind.
“What if the way out of the Known Cosmos isn’t by starliner?”