...And Into The Fire

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

    Chapter 6

I held my breath as I slowly heard the voices start to come
closer. Next to me I could feel Marn as he rested his paw on
my knee.

"Shit!" one of the voices yelled out, becoming clear enough
to understand.

"What's wrong now?" another one asked.

The first voice let out a bit of a grunt. "It's a drop off."

"Let me see, move over." the voice paused, then let out a
low whistle. "If she came this way, she might have just
crawled right over the edge."

"What are you going to tell the boss?" The first voice
asked, a little fainter.

There was another pause. "Well, her sent isn't on the
ducting around here. I think we should tell them it looks
like she may be dead, but we can not confirm it."

"Sounds good to me." the first voice said, fading out again.

There was something else said by the second voice, but it
became to faded to understand. Risking a peak, I looked over
the edge of the catwalk, and down into the shaft. Below I
could see a spot of light in one of the ducts fading into
nothing.

I let out a low sigh.

"Hey, what did you do that there so hot to nab you for?"
Marn asked, turning the light on a bit.

I looked at him, "Don't worry, I'm the good guy."

"Well to you maybe, but I don't know about the rest of the
world." he said, crossing his arms a bit.

"Very well then." I said, and proceeded to tell him.

* * *

I leaned back against a large tree, and nibble at an apple
like fruit Oriana had found. Slicing off a bit with a pocket
knife I had grabbed before we had left, I slowly ate the
green fruit.

Oria was a few feet away, tending to a small fire, and
rubbing her feet.

"See why I brought the shoes." I said, popping another piece
into my mouth

She gave me a dirty look, and continued rubbing. "I'll get
used to it soon."

I wasn't one to talk. After spending about fours hours
walking before the suns and set, and my feet where bothering
me too.

Popping another slice into my mouth, I reached into my
backpack and pulled out a small PADD I had brought. Then sat
down to do some writing.

"What are you doing?" Oria asked.

Lowering the PADD, I said. "Trying to get some writing done.
I have a few things I really need to get done in the next
month or so, and I appear to have the time."

She rolled her eyes, and looked up to the sparse scattering
of stars above us. "Interesting life I'm leading." She
muttered.

I grinned. "Your not the only one."

She nodded. "I guess..." she paused, as if waiting for
something. "Fox, back at the house, you refereed to... that
man, as your version of The Master. What did you mean by
that?"

I started chuckling under my breath. "A bit of a pun of my
life I guess."

She looked at me from accost the fire, pulling her legs to
her chest, and wrapping her arms around them. "Could you
explain it?"

I shrugged. "Sure, but I doubt you will understand it all.
You know how I always refereed to the meddling I did as
Doctoring?"

She nodded.

"Well, you see, back on Earth there's a TV show called
'Doctor Who'. The main character in it, who's name is the
Doctor, does exactly what I do, meddle."

Oria 'ahhed'. "I see, so you named your meddling after
that."

I nodded. "Yes, though I'm a far cry from the Doctor. The
point is the main big arch-enemy in the series is called The
Master. So Grasion, being my arch-enemy, and also a natural,
is therefore my version of The Master."

She shook her head a bit. "That has to be the silliest
reasoning I've ever heard."

I smirked. "You haven't heard me talk about religion yet."

That caused Oriana to react, she strained a bit, and looked
me right in the eye through the flickering flames of the
fire. "If your logic about it works in the same way, I don't
want to here it."

I blinked, and sat back a bit, taking another slice of the
apple. "What prompted that reaction?" I asked.

She slumped down a bit. "Fox..." she paused. Then with a
sigh she pulled something out of her pack. Then walking
around the fire, she sat down next to me.

"Look at this." She said, handing it to me.

Pushing my glasses up on my noise, I looked over it. It was
a necklace made out of a small black silk rope that was tied
together. Sliding free on the rope was a small pendant made
out of what looked like pewter.

Carefully carved onto the pendant was the outline of a
lioness dressed in a kind of toga that barely covered her
rather oversized breasts. Folded behind her back was what
looked like a huge set of feathered wings.

I looked over to Oria, "What is this?"

She gently took the necklace from my hand, and pulled it
over her head. "It's a pendant of Thyrn, the one true god of
my people."

I raised an eyebrow. "You found a god? Wow." I'm sure I
looked as amazed as I felt.

She nodded slowly. "More as he found me after..." she
stopped, suddenly looked very pale though her fur.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. "She found you after
what?" I asked, correcting her mistake.

She gulped. "Fox... while you where gone, something happened
to me. It changed me a lot."

"Oh," I said under my breath. "Was that why you mellowed a
bit while I was exiled?"

She gave a small nod. "Yes... Do you know how my people move
from continent to continent?"

I shook my head. "Flying?" I asked, thinking about what
happened to TWA-800 back on Earth.

"No... we have a... under water train system."

I nodded, "and...?"

She gulped again. "Well, about 6 months before you came
back, I was going to see some family in one. Something
happened, and the train derailed and crashes partly out of
the tube."

I blanched, I had a feeling about where this was going.

"The tube flooded, and the water presser flooded the first
two cars before the pressure doors could close. The third
car was already half full of water from the first seconds of
the water exploding in. The pressure door to the forth car
had closed as well, and the door between the twenty-seven
people in the third car and the water was slowly leaking."

She wrapped her arms around her legs, and looked to the
ground. "I was in the fourth car, which was mostly empty,
just me and two others." She paled even more. "We where down
there for two days, we barely had any air left by the time
the three of us where rescued."

Looking up at me, I could see she was crying. "Fox, there
was only four cars in the train. There was no where I could
go, there was nothing I could do... For most of the first
night and day, we could here the survivors in the other car,
yelling for us to open the door, prying at it, scratching at
it."

I saw a haunted look in her eyes. "I heard them beg and
plead as they slowly drowned to death. Some nights...I can
still hear them in my dreams."

She shivered, I could think of anything to say, so I wrapped
my arms around her, and held her tight.

"One of the other two," she continued, nearly in a whisper,
"one of them was a priest of Thyrn. We shared a hospital
room together for a week. She told me about her believes,
and some of the stories of Thyrn. It was a way to cope..."
she trailed off, crying into my shoulder.

I just held her, not able to say anything to her. The only
thing I could do was comfort her.

Eventually she cried herself to sleep in my arms, not
wanting to wake her, I just sat there holding her, envying
her for being able to do just that, until I too fell asleep.