Where the Streets Have No Name

Author: Jessica Massey

Date: June 29, 2005

Chapter 3 - Zia

Our world had fallen into despair all around us while Freya unknowingly continued in it's mundane existance. Etho sat quietly waiting for us to reply. He looked at us in turn, waiting. I knew that he had not wanted to tell us this way. The reality of his news was something not to be taken lightly. We could live on, in denial, no more. Avalon and I would never play our game again. Childish whims do not have a place in times like these. Silently, Avalon slowly stood up. He left. It was now just Etho and I, alone in our contemplations. I could not bare being by the ocean any longer. It was a symbol of more pleasant days in my memory and I wanted it to stay that way forever. Slowly I followed Avalon back into Freya, my city and home. We left Etho alone.

Avalon returned to his home and I to mine. Being orphans, we returned to no one. Alone in my house, I chose to sit on the floor to think over things. A few short years ago, it seems like forever, we lost our parents. Many lost family and friends back then. All to the same mysterious illness. Maybe it had something to do with what was destroying Zia. I didn't know, then. This was not the first time in our history that a cataclsym had brought about terrible changes. A thousand years past, we came to Zia from the now disappeared planet of Earth. Only a few had survived. Our human ancestors found this planet after many years of diligent searching. Once Zia was called Jupiter, an uninhabitable planet, but the same force that decimated Earth gave life to this planet. Now it has an atmosphere and is able to support living things. Flora and fauna were brought here by our ancestors that stored away many things on their space machines. Time has changed us all; most believe for the better. We no longer resemble the creatures that arrived here so many years ago. Most of the wonderful things brought here to Zia have survived the passing of time, but the humans did not. This planet transformed them into different beings until at last they more resembled animals, than people. The Quistrals were just one of several races that came into existance and with each new generation, we change. More Loran are born into each generation now. I had started to wonder if the Earthlings had been meant to survive the cataclsym. The ways of the gods are strange, if they even still existed. They had probably left us long ago. I was left alone in my silence and despair the entire night, but that is how I had preferred it.