Page 1 of Selected By the Dragon Alien
ONE
Turi didn’t mind night patrol duty. Thesogfrutfields were quiet. The air was cool. She could walk between the rows of thorny, fruit-bearing vines and be alone with her thoughts. Turi had no shortage of thoughts about life in Settlement 112-1. Every time she looked up at the sky and saw the swirling, ever-present vortex that was the home of the Axis—their supreme rulers, their gods, theirmasters—she wondered why they had to answer to these cruel beings whom they never saw, but who controlled them through an overseer who resided in a black fortress on cliffs overlooking the settlement. All the Axis did was take their food and make demands.
She had learned to keep most of her critical thoughts to herself. Nothing good came from voicing them. All she got was punishments and extra duties. But night patrol was never a burden, even when she was made to do it in the name of discipline. Her only job was to keepcibratsaway from thesogfrut. The only hard part of that was staying awake the whole night.Cibratswere small and harmless. They scampered away at the sound of footsteps, but left to run amok, they could severely damage crops.
Her stomach dropped at the sight of one of the traps her brother set. It had been set off and huddled inside the small cage were two juvenilecibrats. The small, furry creatures pinned their huge ears to the backs of their heads as Turi approached the trap. They huddled together, faces smeared with the red juice of thesogfrutthey were gorging themselves on.
She crouched before the cage, slapping a bug that came to sting her neck where her designation number, 224-E, which had been imprinted on her skin shortly after birth, read in blue ink below her ear.
“What were you two thinking?” she asked the little creatures in a chiding voice. They couldn’t understand her, but they let out whimpers and gazed up at her with huge dark eyes. She’d seen these two before. She’d released them fromthis very trapthe week before. A mournful whine came from the dead brush beside the field. The little ones’ mother crouched there, staring helplessly as her babies quivered in the trap.
Turi’s brother and father would kill these two immediately, if they were on patrol, but she never had the heart to do it. Thecibratswere just trying to survive, like her own people were. Like all the living things in these miserable settlements were. She lifted the cage and shook her head. “Stay out of these things,” she scolded. “You won’t be so lucky if my brother finds you in here.”
The two little ones bolted for the brush where their mother waited. Turi gathered up the partly eatensogfrutthat the babies had left and tossed them into the brush with the littlecibratfamily. The mother gathered them up and stuffed them in her pouch as her babies burrowed their little heads under her fur. “Keep them out of the traps,” Turi said to the mother, wishing the creature could understand her. The mothercibratlet out a quiet, relieved coo and melted into the shadows with her little ones.
Turi sighed and carefully plucked two ripesogfrutfrom the vines, pricking herself in the process, to reset the trap. Her brother and father couldn’t know that she had spared the two “pests.” She’d be forced to kill one as punishment andthatwas an experience she didn’t want to repeat. According to her father, Turi was too soft, too curious, and questioned the way things were way too much.
Still, living on her family’s farm was better than what would be coming for her in a few short years. Once she came of fertile age, her father would choose a betrothed from another settlement and she’d be sent there to live, work, and breed for the rest of her life. At the age of twenty-two, her time was running short. Every day she inspected her hair for signs of color. When the black strands changed to a different color—probably blue, like her mother’s—and gold spots appeared on her forehead and spine, her time here would come to an end. She’d be considered ready to mate and produce offspring. Her two sisters were already gone. Turi was the last female.
After cursing and sucking on her pricked finger for a moment, she rose to continue her patrol, confident that thosecibratswouldn’t venture out into the fields any more that night. There were stillfilbatsandirgsto keep an eye out for, and they could be quite nasty sometimes. But nothing stirred in the fields. Not a sound. Not a rustle. Not even the wind dared to blow.
The quiet of it all put Turi’s senses on alert. Then, she heard the flapping of great wings. She looked up to see a dark shape temporarily blot out the light of two of the planet’s three moons. Massive wings spread out impossibly wide, carrying a long, powerful body overhead. It was the overseer, flying quietly above her. She ducked on instinct, dropping into a crouch and covering her head with her arms. Had he seen that she’d given precioussogfruttocibratsand spared their little lives? Would she face punishment?
The overseer glided by without pausing and disappeared from sight. Turi wanted to run back to the house, which was quite far away, but she’d get no comfort from her father. He would send her right back out to finish her shift, so she waited. Listening. Every sense attuned to the possibility of the overseer’s return.
Instead of the heavy beat of wings, the sounds of the field gradually returned to normal. The breeze picked up. The creatures that roamed at night resumed their nocturnal noises. Turi uncurled and rose, looking warily up, not at the Axis’ vortex, which curled around the sky even now, but for the overseer and his ever-watchful eye. He came to the settlement infrequently, but each time he did it was as memorable and terrifying as the scaled being’s appearance.
The rest of the night passed without incident. Morning came with red and purple streaks across the horizon, turning the Axis’ vortex into a dark, foreboding blemish on the otherwise beautiful sky. Turi returned home, tired. Her feet hurt. Her belly ached with emptiness. As she trudged up to her family’s home, she saw her father and brother standing before the door. Their heads were tilted. Arms were crossed. With them stood two Riests, the holy men of the settlement. One of them held a book filled with images and they turned the pages slowly and carefully, examining each one. All four males heard her approach and turned to her, brows low.
Turi’s stomach turned to ice. “Father?”
“Do you know anything about this?” her father asked, pointing to a symbol burned into the wood of the front door. As her attention had been on the group congregated in front of the door, she hadn’t seen it until now. The air still held the faint smell of burned wood. Her knees almost gave out in fear. It was an elegant-looking mark, like a stylized dragon head in a circle, seared precisely in the center of the door.
The blood drained from her head. “N-no. What is it?”
He didn’t believe her. She could see that plain enough. “The Riests are trying to decipher its meaning,” her father replied. “It was put here by the overseer last night.”
“Oh?” Sweetfek, he’d seen her. The overseer knew what she had done and—and cursed her home, or something like that. Her mouth turned dry as dust. “That’s…strange.”
Her brother, Seggiat, advanced on her. “What happened in the fields last night, Turi?”
“N-nothing,” she stammered out. “It was a calm night. No problems. Nothing to report.”
Seggiat’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You’d better not be lying, or I’ll advise Father to marry you off before you’ve reached maturity. You’re always causing problems.”
Turi backed away. “I did nothing,” she said weakly. “There was nothing to see. I don’t know—”
“Leave the girl be,” said a new voice. Her tall, blue-haired mother came around from the side of the house, basket in hand. “Wait for the Riests to make their inspection.”
“Silence, female,” snarled Turi’s father. “Your word is meaningless here.”
Her mother stood taller, well used to being dismissed by her harsh mate. She placed a hand on Turi’s back. “It will be okay, child,” she whispered.
Turi leaned into her mother’s strength and straightened her spine. “I did nothing wrong.”
“We’ll see,” snapped Seggiat as he turned toward the Riests, who murmured excitedly over one particular page in the book they pored over.
One of the Riests straightened his red hat and turned to her father. His robes swished with the force of his movement. “Excellent news, Tregit. This is a symbol of protection, bestowed on the land you farm.”