Some days the noise in my head was only bearable when I went to the caves outside Cathay or took a flyer out beyond the mountains to the Grasslands.  The creature that had burrowed into my arm and made its home in my nervous system several years back sang in my mind.  Its constant song could either be calming or be the noise that kept me awake half the night.  This night, it had kept me from drifting off to sleep. I had been up half the night, staring at the ceiling.  An hour later, I wandered out to the balcony on the side of the Tower to stare up at the stars.  The unfamiliar stars of Kiannon.  We were so far from Earth.  When the sun rose, I took my flyer and headed out to the Grasslands.  Leezel followed me.  

"You shouldn't leave Cathay without a guard," she scolded me.  

I ignored her. In response, she did what she always did, ignore me and follow me.  She trailed behind me on a separate flyer, 10 yards back.  I glanced back at her stoic determined face, her braids flapping behind her in the wind, a laser pistol at her side and a rifle strapped to the side of the flyer.  I soared up into the early morning sky, the two moons still visible at my back.  The hum of the flyer's motor straining as I drove it up and up until we crested the mountains that surrounded the city.  The air up here was icy this early in the morning.  

"Taryne!" Leezel called out behind me.  She coughed.  The air was so cold up here that it was harder to speak.  

You should take better care not to lead your followers into danger, Taryne.  A whisper from a voice long dead.

"Shut up," I muttered. 

A few feet below us, a light snow covered the ground.  It was still summer, but there was always snow on the mountain tops.  I raised my hand to catch Leezels's attention and then pointed down to the foot of the mountains, where the Esle Grasslands ran into the mountains.  When I looked behind me I saw her nod.  Once we had crossed over the mountain's bulk, I began to descend, the air and the breeze that hit my face warmed.  I began to hear sounds of crickets as we swooped low over the tops of the grasses that were at least waist high.  The Council settled the first city of Cathay just beyond the mountains. The city was cradled and protected from the rest of Coracle.  Out beyond the mountains, there were still lots of unknowns.  I kept an eye on the horizon.  I didn't see any Red Kraiks, the enormous creatures that resembled our long-extinct dinosaurs.  They loved to swoop in on prey hiding in the grasslands below.  This early in the morning I didn't expect to see any.  I took a deep breath, trying to let the tight feeling in my chest ease.  The creature burrowed inside me wouldn't let me die needlessly.  They and their kind had plans for me.  It was that thought that had kept its song from lulling me to sleep.    

I flew northeast from the mountains.  The Esle plains started a few hundred feet from the base of the mountains and stretched as far northeast as the eye could see.  I didn't want to fly to Eldritch, but I wanted to get far enough away from Cathay to feel as if I were hundreds of miles away.    

"Taryne, the flyers won't get to Eldritch.  We still need to get back," she called from behind me.  

I knew she was right, but the same feeling that hummed under my skin and made me leave my room knew this was not the place to stop.  I needed to keep moving.   The sun crept above the trees and lit the tops of the grasslands and crept across them, the light slowly reaching us.  I could see individual stalks of grass swaying below me.  I pulled back on the flyer and descended.  The flyer's exhaust blew the grasses apart.  I maneuvered the flyer down and felt it sink and crush the grasses beneath it.  A moment later, Leezel caught up to me and set her flyer down 10 feet away.  She climbed off the machine and waded through the grasses that separated us until she reached the space around me.  She reached her hand out and touched my shoulder, with a worried expression on her face.  I turned away from her and looked at the sunrise.  The crickets had fallen silent.  Landing had probably scared most of them away.     

"I'm fine.  I don't need another visit to the doctor.  They've tested my blood, done a hundred other tests.  I am healthier than I've ever been," I said.  

"I didn't say anything," she said. 

"You were going to."

"Was this another one of those 'impulses' you told me about?" she asked.  

"It's not an impulse." 

Leezel decided to let my statement just hang there.  The crickets realized we weren't moving and decided to resume singing. 

"I just *know*.  I needed to leave the Tower..."

"And jump on a flyer and come out here?  Out where your enemies could attack you," she said, stopping when she saw my expression.  "You had another one of those dreams, didn't you?" 

I glanced over at her.  The sun was now above the horizon of grassland.  Leezel held her hand up to shield her eyes to look back at me.  

"They wanted me to see something.  Something out here."  

"They.  And you say you're ok.  We need to go back now and get you back into the Mothership's isolation ward," she said.  

"There is something..."  

Looking back out to the sunrise, I saw a black shape against the morning sky.  A raspy croak pierced the early morning and the sounds of the morning: the low song of the grabe(?)birds nesting in the grass and the crickets, all fell silent.  Leezel’s eyes scanned the sky and she saw the Red Kraik the moment I did.  At the horizon, its black wings seemed no larger than a crow.  But each flap of its wings drew it nearer.  We would have two minutes to get on our flyers.  But we wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to out run it.  Up close, its wingspan was twice the length of one of our flyers.  It would pick us out of the sky from off of our flimsy little machines.  Because I had come out here without thinking, we didn’t have the one thing that kept Kraiks off of us: the force shield poles(forgot the name)?  Any hope that it hadn’t seen us disappeared when it let out another harsh croak that let every creature that heard its voice now that it was hunting.  

Leezel rushed over to her flyer and grabbed the laserrifle from the side of her flyer.  

“Taryne…”

I shook my head. 

“Try to hide under the flyer.  There’s no way I’m leaving you out here to be killed by that thing.”  

Leezel went over and crouched between the flyer and the grasses, gripping the rifle tight.  

I crouched down near the back of the flyer, but something kept my eyes on the creature as it flew toward us.  Another croak and it began to descend.   Our astrobiologists thought they were probably similar in size to a small pterodactyl, but more deadly.  After the creatures nearly wiped out our Eldritch outpost, we learned how to kill them.  And then we used their claws for knives.  I’d read the survivor’s reports.  I stood up.  

“Taryne!” Leezel screamed behind me.  

The Kraik circled above us and then dove down.  I watched it in slow motion as it grew closer.  Their beaks were just as sharp.  Carnivorous, they could hunt us like sheep.  But I did not fear it.  

The sun was behind it as it dove toward me.  

I heard Leezel try to get off a couple of shots at it.  

“Leezel, stop!  You’ll draw its attention.”

“Dammit, Taryne, I’m supposed to protect you.”  

Twenty feet above me, the creature stretched out its neck. 

I held up my left hand.  

And I felt it sweep past me, the wings so close, they brushed my hair.  It rose back up and flew backwards.  Hovering above us, it seemed to consider the small brown skinned woman standing waist-high in the grasses. 

“Do you understand, Taryne?” Asked the voice that sounded like my Daddy from decades, now centuries away from Earth.  The creatures that spoke through my memories repulsed and comforted me.  How could they speak with his voice?  

“I don’t understand,” I said.  

The Kraik descended slowly, 15 feet away from me, until it softly landed in the grass.  Leezel ran up beside me and tried to aim at it.  I pushed the rifle down.  The Kraik stepped slowly closer. 

“Do you understand?”  Came the voice again.  “We are seeking a balance.  We have seen what you did to your world.  Live with us in balance.”  

The Kraik halted 10 feet away. 

“Taryne…” Leezel said, her voice shaking.  

I kept my eyes on the Kraik.  

"Leezel, don't move," I said. 

"I don't think I could if I wanted to," she whispered.  

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the rifle was shaking.    

The Kraik stood still, its black velvety feathers fluttering in the breeze that drifted its smell toward us.  The rank smell of the carrion that it had recently killed forcing its way into my nose.  I could see blood on its forearms and talons.  I could feel Leezel staring at me and then at the Kraik.  

“Leezel, can you record this?  No one will believe this, even if you testify,”  

I shot a glance at her and she looked back over at the Kraik standing across from us and then nodded.  She tapped the recorder on her helmet and focused on the Kraik.  

"Where I come from, we negotiate with words.  We don't threaten.."

The voice laughed in the raspy way my Daddy did.  

"Come on now, Taryne.  We have dreamed your dreams, read your histories and seen your people in this place.  You don't listen to those you don't fear.  We seek a balance."  

"I am not the leader of my people.  I am only one voice,"

"But you could tell them about us."

"And they would try to exterminate you.  They would kill me and then go to the cave where you found me and poison the river."

"They would have to burn every creature," the voice said as the Kraik stepped forward, hissing.  

"Taryne," Leezel whispered.  

"And if we lived in balance.  What would that mean?"     

"We listen to each other.  You don't destroy needlessly.  We grow together," the voice said. 

"There are some of us that want what you want, but there are others on the Council that don't believe in...a balance.  What happens if they violate the balance?"  

I swear I could almost hear my Daddy pull on his pipe and exhale. 

"Would you exterminate them like your Kraik did at Eldritch a few years back?" I asked. 

"We didn't know you then.  We know you now."  

"But what would you do?"

"If we listen to each other, we will grow together,"    

"What does that mean - would you warn us if we violated the balance?"

"Taryne, you know me well enough to know that we are reasonable.  We would listen to your needs as you listen to us," he said.   

"Stop speaking in his voice!  I do know him well enough.  I don't know you."  

"Be our voice, Taryne, and we will grow together," they said.    

The Kraik let out another raw cry that pressed again my ears.  Leezel screamed behind me.  

The creature flapped into the air above us and flew off to the East.   I watched it get smaller until it was a black spot in the sky.  I turned around to see Leezel slumped on the ground crying.  

Nothing I said or did would convince Wen or the AGP to change their minds.  If I came to the Council and told everyone that the world we had adopted as our new home had a sentient creature that was living in my body, they would isolate me and try to destroy it.    

"Give me your helmet," I said. 

Leezel struggled with the buckle locking the helmet on her head.  I reached down and unbuckled the helmet.  I lifted it slowly off her of head and smiled at her.  I walked over to my flyer and smashed the helmet on the side of the flyer until the camera hung off the side broken.  

"Why did you..you asked me to record," she said.  

"I need to time to think.  If this gets uploaded to the Mothership I'll have to answer questions I'm not ready for yet.  Keep this a secret for me?" I asked.  

Leezel stared at me, then nodded.  She stood up, held out her hand for the helmet.  I gave it back to her.  

"I had an accident and my helmet took some of the damage," she said.  "But I need to know what happened here," she said, gesturing at the flattened grass where the Kraik had landed.  "Kraik don't stop and stare at people, Taryne.  What did you do?" she asked.  

She hadn't heard the other half of the conversation.  

"I owe you an explanation.  But we need to get back to Cathay before people notice that I'm gone, ok?"  

She nodded and pulled the helmet back on, the camera dangling from the side.  

I watched her get back on the flyer.  She lifted off and spun the flyer back toward the mountains and I followed.  I had a lot to explain and I needed a way to convince people to listen to me - without telling them about the voice. Only crazy people hear voices, Taryne.