Discovery - The Sooth, S1E2
Juniper and her sick father investigate the blue pond that should be gray. 7 min. read
New to the story? Start at the beginning.
Previously: Juniper and Seraphine take their Sooth test and hope to finally heal their dying father.
Discovery
Planet: Mariner
“It’s time for snacks,” said Marcel. Juniper stood on the lip of a small inlet where her newly blued pond curved into the shoreline. Cattails swayed behind her and drooped over her head, a lazy canopy.
“Now?” she said as she fitted the disposable strip stick into the click. “We’ll have the whole lake finished before last meal.”
Marcel cocked his head to the side and pointed one finger to the sky. It had darkened from a woolly gray to iron, quickly it seemed, and a breeze tugged at Juniper’s clothing, pulling the loose fabric one way and then pressing it back to stick to her sweaty skin.
She scowled. Her father was right.
“Can you get any further out?” called Marcel.
Juniper scowled up at him. “Not without getting wet,” she said.
“Why do you think you’re wearing boots?” he said. “What kind of an apprentice are you?”
She snorted at him but waded into the shallows and dipped the stick into the water. As soon as the water worked its way up the strip to the scanner, the click would analyze composition, content, microbe levels, pH, everything. Then it would tie the location data to the sample and link it to the rest of the data in Marcel’s research. Juniper squelched back to her father.
“Over there,” he said. A broad plane tree stretched out over the edge of the tree line. Behind it spread full forest. The tree’s broad trunk and waxy leaves the size of her father’s face would provide plenty of shield.
They sat in the cool shade of the tree and munched roasted juji peas from Juniper’s pack while Marcel skimmed through the information they had so far collected. He muttered at each new sample.
“I wonder if the levels are the same across…” his voice trailed off. Juniper popped another crunchy pea into her mouth and sucked off the tangy salt. The rain sputtered at first and then pounded the dry earth. Even it fell hot. Each drop kicked up the dry dust it landed on, and soon Juniper’s sweaty brown skin was caked in a lighter layer of tan dirt that clung and skimmed over her in a thin grime. She felt like the little salamanders that startled from the mud and slid into the pond each time she neared the water’s edge.
“This doesn’t look like…” Marcel said. He rummaged in the pack some more and attached the diagnostic chip to the end of the click. Juniper turned away and looked out over her blue lake that should not be blue. She broke off a thin blade of long grass next to her, peeled off strings from it one by one until it was too thin to split, and held it to her nose. Sweet with undercurrent of old dirt. She picked another stalk and peeled the strings off.
Her father was dying and this hidden pool of water was returning to life.
She stopped before she grasped the next finger of grass, her hand outstretched. A shiny yellow insect the size of her pinky tip struggled up the grass blade. Oblong armor with white spots and a long black horn in front. Juniper lowered her hand and leaned in to look. Something had crushed the bottom corner of its shell and damaged the rear right leg, which stuck straight out to the side.
“The blue-C must be back…” said Marcel to himself. Juniper snapped back to attention.
“What?” said Juniper, “how could that happen?”
But Marcel didn’t answer and didn’t seem to notice she had even asked a question. His whole brain focused on the click, and Juniper had seen him engrossed in his work enough times to leave him alone.
The little beetle struggled up the leaf, but it each time he approached the thin top, he wobbled and then lost his grip. He slid two or three lengths down and then re-climbed it again.
Juniper looked down at the earth near her feet for a nest. Did it have a home? Was it lost? What if its family was looking for it. She pushed aside a few of the smaller stalks with her toes but saw nothing.
The beetle fell and crawled up the grass again.
“Juni, did you hear me?” said Marcel.
Juniper jerked around toward him, and he burst out laughing as she tried and failed to look like she had heard him.
“The rain stopped,” he said. “We can do the other side of the lake.”
Juniper turned back to the beetle but it was gone.
“Normally we wouldn’t take quite so many samples from one lake,” said Marcel as they shuffled back down toward the water’s edge, his arm laced through his daughter’s for support, “but I’ve seen nothing like this since your first teeth fell out as a little girl.” He walked more slowly than the last time they were out when the first bits of green were just pushing through the soft earth. Much more slowly. The just-drowned ground squelched beneath them and sucked at their knee boots. “Maybe it’s an influx of something new, something from a distinct source. That could show up in mapped samples.”
Juniper looked at her father’s arm threaded through her own. No long sleeves today. He had hidden his arms and legs for months now, but today was too hot. She avoided outright staring by glancing down at his skin and then back up at the water over and over. Thick white wrinkles sagged and slid down his arm and piled up at the wrist where they began to flake and tear. It looked like Seraphine’s lizard when its skin whitened and detached in preparation for molt.
Juniper stopped, closed her eyes, and tried not to vomit.
“You okay?” said Marcel. When she didn’t open her eyes, he fished chemorrah juice out of the pack and pulled the lid. “Drink,” he said as he brushed the bottle against her hand.
Though warm, it was fruity and sweet and pulpy, pressed last summer from the fruit off their tree at home.
“Are you ill?” he said. He rested the back of his hand on her forehead and then her cheeks to check for fever.
“Am I ill?” Juniper repeated, her voice rising like the wind. “Me?” She glanced at his arm, noticed that he saw, and quickly brushed away the tears that began to form in her eyes.
Marcel looked at his arm and the skin that threatened to pull off like a long glove.
“Juni,” he said softly. “Juni, I know this is hard.”
“Hard? Your arm looks like Sera’s lizard,” she said.
Marcel blinked. “Seraphine’s rock lizard?” he said, “the one who changes from purple to red to brilliant green every time she molts? Finally I’ll be as pretty as Tsuki?”
Juniper stared for a moment and then laughed and then cried. The sunshine glinted off Marcel’s recently-sprouted silver hair that threaded through the black like white mycelium tendrils through dark soil before it pops through the earth as mushrooms.
Marcel folded her into his arms and she wept onto his sticky shirt under the cloudless, steely sky. She and Seraphine had to pass the test. It was the only way. Then they could tell their parents what they had been doing for the last year.
“Come on, Juni,” said Marcel as she wiped her mottled face, “let’s go home.”
“And not finish the rest of the samples?” she said. “You haven’t even told me what you found on the scans.” She fitted another strip stick into the click. “What kind of boss are you?”
Stay tuned for next week when…
Juniper and Seraphine find something horrifying in the surf, and a meteor might be not a meteor.
New episodes posted on Wednesday mornings
Just so you know what to expect. See you then!
Episodes 1 - 3 are free. Things start to heat up after that.
About The Sooth
Juniper “Juni” Beauchard plans to become a Sooth so she can heal her father from his terminal illness. But her skills attract the interest of both aliens who want her to cure their home world pandemic and her own Prime Minister who wants Juniper to destroy the aliens. Will she make it back to her father in time?
I am currently revising book one of three and posting it here as episodes. Did you find a plot hole, continuity error, typo, something you really loved or that will stick with you? Please post in the comments! Knowing what is or isn’t working helps me make the story even better. Thank you!