The Sweeping

By Andrea Renae

They say there’s nothing like a sea breeze on Earth. That it gets into your joints, pierces the soul. That it’s delicious, as if you could bite off chunks and let it melt on your tongue like Kroterean skyfruit.

But the fumes from Luna’s artificial oceans can make you ill for weeks, if they don’t kill you first.

Yet here I am, shoving off onto that poisonous sea in a homemade funnelcraft, filtration apparatus fused to my face. Because tonight is the Sweeping—the giant storm that occurs once every fifty moon years, powerful enough to break through Luna’s atmosphere for the briefest time. It’s the only chance I have to make it to Earth on my own.

Fafka take me if I’m not getting off this cursed rock today!

Grevi clung to me before I left, his clawed fingers digging into my polyskin suit. “Even if you make it through the Anortho Sea, you won’t survive the cyclone.” His sooty eyes held me captive. “Is it so terrible here? They gave us a home.”

That last word made me snort. Luna had been an attempt to make the moon habitable for homo sapiens. Although they’d developed something that could pass for an atmosphere and fabricated an ocean, its climate quickly became volatile, and everyone who lived there grew sick. When a race of alien refugees—my people—showed up on Earth’s radar five years ago, seeking a life unpolluted by the radioactive slag industry, the Intergalactic Alien Council knew just where to put us.

“This is no home! Why do you think they deposited us here so quickly, took our ships? The IAC sent our species here to die, Grevi. To rot where no one could see.”

I searched his face, but there was only fear. A glowing tear snaked across his skin like a distant star. “And you believe humans will be different, Xanatta? They will not care for us, either.”

The wind whipped off the waters, and I turned away to avoid breathing the gasses. When the cloud dissipated, I grabbed his spiked hand. “Maybe they don’t know we’re here.”

He merely laughed, and some of his corrosive doubt spread to me.

“I’ll find a way to come back,” I whispered. To save our people. To save you, my soul-match. But even though I wanted to believe it with both my hearts, it was a vain dream.

Grevi looked away. “I hope you’re right,” he muttered as he left me on the fetid beach.

And I let him. I couldn’t bear to reason with him until my throat bled. Again.

My ship pitches between the mountainous waves, and my eyes sting from the spray, not the memory. I curse the celestial bodies and fumble for my goggles. They snap to my face just before I hit the trough and the semi-fluid waves rise over my craft. It is swallowed whole. There’s nothing I can do but cling to my restraints and trust I calculated the buoyancy of my vessel accurately. The slimy green drains away, and moments later, the swell pushes me to its crest.

It’s a good thing I have something forcing air into my lungs, otherwise I’d forget to breathe.

A gargantuan, gray-green cyclone twists and winds Earthward before me. It’s easily three catzo fields wide and twice as high. The gelatinous ocean is like a tame boxpup in comparison. It submits to the Sweeping’s dominion, moving through it and shooting across the black expanse of sky in an iridescent ribbon.

Now I understand why Grevi refused to come with me.

Terror taking hold, I reverse the thrusters and punch the throttle. No freedom is worth facing this entity.

But I’m too close to the Sweeping’s irresistible slurp, and my vessel accelerates toward it like a tortle in the Backward Falls.

Throwing myself into a reclining position, I slam the toggle that closes the atmospheric shield, sealing me inside my funnelcraft coffin. All I can do now is pray it will withstand the journey—that I’m right about the Sweeping’s power to carry me to Earth.

Fafka, take me…

A ripping, a crashing, a wringing-out. The calamity outside causes my stomach to migrate to my throat. A feeling of weightlessness grips me, and my ship’s engine sputters to life, locked on Earth’s coordinates. Terrible imaginings fill my mind as oblivion beckons louder with each passing macrospan. My eardrums will surely burst in the roar. My body will be liquified from the inside out.

All grows dark without, within…

A terrific jolt awakens me. Then, all is calm.

I’m… alive?

After confirming my location with the navigator, I flip the switch to open the shield. It slides out of sight, and golden light tries to cauterize the spit right out of me. I heave myself out of the ship, rip off my mask, and vomit up the meager sloup I’d eaten before the voyage. Thank Fafka, I can breathe. Gritty earth gives way under my shaking hands. Collapsing, I stare and try to make sense of the sky.

There hovers Earth’s profaned moon, with the winding snake of the Sweeping cracking its unnatural atmosphere. I watch the tentacled cyclone retreat into the moldy chunk of rock that was once my tomb.

Something salty-sweet assails my senses. It seeps into my skin and pierces my inner being. I breathe Earth’s sea air for the first time.

And it does taste delicious.

A shout echoes over the beach, and a cluster of pink beings, hair whipping wildly, runs toward me. They stop, trading frightened expressions with each other.

Maybe Grevi was right to fear them.

But one shakes its head and crouches, brushing sand from my face and crooning words in the universal language of kindness.

Laughter bubbles from my chest. If I were right about the Sweeping, and I was right about Earth’s occupants, than maybe I’m right about this too…

There is a home for my people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea Renae grew up wandering the Canadian prairies with a cat in tow. An only child, she thrilled in stories of all kinds. Writing became a way to process life’s countless beauties, hardships, and oddities. She can often be found playing piano, experimenting with watercolors, knitting sweaters, or practicing for her inevitable fame on the GBBO. Her heart will always be with her family, her friends, and her goofy goldendoodle.

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