The last starship winked out with a yellow-red burst and Morganier stared at the afterimage its psychothrusters left behind. She imagined she could see into the viewports. There, Probirer was strapping in and departing for another life. She would probably never see him again. He promised he would be back but he would not be the same man even if he did return. He was about to see too much.

She tore her gaze away from the sky and returned to real life, as real as it got out here. The dunes of Abrogriadia were unmercifully hot, their oppressive heat turning the air into some kind of hateful vacuum. Morganier had to seek shelter soon.

She took a pull of her moontips and set out down the sandy path. Moontips were not legal out here but Morganier was stockpiling. Stockpiling A LOT. Probirer was her only source and now that he was gone she had no way of getting more. They didn’t do much for her nowadays but when she first started they did indeed. Probirer showed them to her years ago, out in the Wasted Reaches where no other souls could be found. Underneath a dark cold overhang he gave her a small vial of the blue liquid. Moontips, he called him. You breathe them in for a few seconds and fight the sensation that your head just popped off.

“And then what?” Morganier had asked in a tentative whimper that betrayed her total fear.

“Then you go to the moon,” Probirer had replied in his sly cocky way. She had always liked how his eyes looked when he had information nobody else did. He would not say how he came across the moontips but shared them freely with her and Morganier liked feeling like she was a part of his special club.

An aggravated rustling drew Morganier out of her desert reverie. Off in the distance the sands shifted in alarmingly symmetrical patterns: signs of trouble. Abrogriadia was hell and she did not blame Probirer for catching the last mercenary frigate out of the system but she still wished he hadn’t. She hurried down the path, away from the Prowler that would surface at any moment. There was no telling its size before it broke through. It was a ferocious beast. It had poor vision but was still a fearsome hunter.

Draining her vial of moontips, she hustled down the dunes, giggling through her grief and fear. The moontips blended different parts from different emotions and helped put her in a tolerable headspace.

The heat of the hellish afternoon dissipated and Morganier approached the waterfall. Even if it streamed to the Great Abyss, it still streamed. Morganier was there. She reached out and pressed herself into the raging waters. They were cool and refreshing.

“Do you remember the first time we did this?” Probirer asked. His dark hair lay heavy along his shoulders. She liked his hair. It glowed and flowed. It flowed like flowers and glowed like glowers!

“Eeeeeeeeeeee” Morganier answered in a way that was not unlike every other way. “Moooontipsssss.” She looked at him. She was pleased she no longer had to. A laugh blew out the side door and the chamber vibrated in time with the classical music. Probirer smiled at her. The ship reversed its psychothrusters and the mercenary frigate groaned out of lightspace. The nausea subsided and he peered out the viewport. Morganier’s face hovered in clever ripples in front of his own. Waterfalls, the mirage whispered. There were no waterfalls on Abrogriadia but that did not prevent them from moving, not in the slightest.

The Prowler’s fangs glistened, sharpened by years of harvesting superheated sand. FFEEEEEEEEDDDDDDING TIME thought Morganier as her addled brain failed to integrate its contents.