Sneak Peek Sunday

A child’s picture book.

With human words written inside.

I took a shaky breath. Not many people knew how to read the dead language, but my ma had made sure the knowledge stayed alive within me. There weren’t too many of us still left around. I’d heard a Drayian museum displayed a few freeze-dried corpses. They took a huge risk if they did. The Ko wanted us erased from existence and memory. Some said they didn’t even want human DNA in the space dust.

In fear of retaliation, no other race would help my kind even though we’d been hunted to near extinction. It was said that a species called the Torrath had aided my ancestors once. Nothing remained of them. The Ko had made an example of that world.

Living on the run since the day we were born had toughened my race over the centuries. We lived everywhere, yet nowhere was home. At a moment’s notice, all could be lost. We loved hard and fought dirty. We’d become survivalists.

Now we hid, disguised as other races, and lived among them, or faced being delivered to the flesh traders for Ko delivery. Some humans used body paints. Others, like me and Brody, used prostheses. We traveled as Jurranians with long, prehensile ears and vertically slit pupil contact lenses. They contained neurotransmitters so the ears moved naturally and the pupils dilated or constricted. With some creative hairstyling and dyes, we could pass as them. If anyone found out what we were…

Releasing April 7th

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Annie Nicholas