![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Aurora’s World: Atecia: Opal: Talking to Margery (part 6)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
“Is there any particular reason for that?” Opal asked, studying Haidar. Even though he was still Margery the differences between the two of them were beginning to become more obvious to Opal and she knew the emotions were his. “Did they talk about why they saw the race that left you here that way?”
“We talked about everything, Opal,” Haidar replied, almost smiling. “Especially during the first season we were here, as that was when the days were still lengthening and we often spent the dark hours before we could sleep, as we weren’t used to not having artificial light. Building a fire the first night was fine, but the choice we made was that it was important that we learnt to rise with the sun and sleep when it became dark, in order to better learn the way the world we had found ourselves on worked. As the days got longer we had more time to spend working in the fields, or hunting for other food, or just generally exploring, because we wanted to know if there were other people here.
“Some of us wanted there to be, in the hope that they would trade with us, so we could have candles once more and things to write with, but the explorers went for miles in all directions, leaving behind poles to guide them, and didn’t find anyone else. It was hard to believe that we were the only ones here, a hundred of us to populate the entire world, and yet that seemed to be the way things were. Of course there was only so far they could go before they had to return. We had no idea if there were predators out there who might eat our explorers if they stayed out overnight or if there were other settler somewhere who’d already found us and were waiting for the best time to get one of us alone.
“From the beginning I had trouble believing that there was anyone here, because I didn’t think the race who left us would have placed us on an inhabited world if they truly were scared of whatever illness it was that we had. They wouldn’t have wanted to have given it to anyone else, either, and as I thought we had been imprisoned here, in the hope that we would die, placing us somewhere with another group of people would mean that we’d have help, and that wasn’t what they wanted for us.” Haidar sighed. “I could be wrong about why we were left here. Maybe they were trying to save us. I just have real trouble thinking that a race who wanted us to survive would have left us with so little.”
Opal bit her lip. “Even though I’ve only heard from you so far, and I would need to talk to someone who believed that you were left here in order to ensure your continued survival, I have trouble believing they would have left you with so little too. If you want someone to survive you do your best to help them, but they seemed to do everything they could to make it hard for you.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.