Excerpt from my debut novel Out of the Great Black Nothing, for the April A-Z Challenge.
Today I cover three letters at once: M-N-O. Put them together, and you get MOON, which is the heart of my debut novel, GBN. It's a little longer than normal, and somewhat surreal, but I hope you take the time to enjoy it, and find it time well-spent.
For my friends new and old, I hope to spend more time this week hopping to your blogs. Last week was a bust! Hope to see you soon.
For his part, Gamjen had been sitting on the backside of the moon, away from the Earth where only stars and the sun and other planets could be seen, watching the galaxies spin. The Earth with its remaining moon were both on what Gamjen considered the far-side of the sun, away from Canis Minor and Canis Major. They were angled so that Gemini slept. Capricornus and Aquila and Pavo showed themselves, but over the next few weeks, those would fade as Phoenix and Andromeda scrolled into view.
There had been three moons in the time before, when Gamjen sat spooning with his lover all those thousands of millennia ago, when the Earth bubbled in tumultuous lifeless rage and the sun burned white-hot. One moon spun away with Gamjen's lover. The two leftover moons crashed one into the other, decimating the smaller and sending meteoric shrapnel caterwauling through space and into the Earth's newly-formed oceans.
"Are you sure you do not want to go down there?" Sho said. She wrung her wrists through her hands, and as she twisted her forearms, her feet lowered onto the surface of the dark side of the moon. A puff of white powdered moon-rock spewed up around her ankles and drifted outward in a bellowing mist. Black hair swayed around her head. "Would you like to go down there for a while, dear, to Earth?"
"No," Gamjen said.
"Have you ever been down there, dear?"
"Never thought about it. Never cared."
"I've been down there many times," Sho said. She pointed through the moon toward the Earth hidden on the far side. She touched her wrists as she spoke, wringing her fingers around them.
"Does it hurt?" Gamjen said.
"In ways you can't possibly imagine."
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Eric W. Trant is a published author of several short stories and the novel Out of the Great Black Nothing. He is currently represented by Debrin Case at Open Heart Publishing. See more of Eric's work here: Publications
5 comments:
Curious as to how that works its way into your story.
I'm a sucker for anything a bit out there so you had me at "surreal". This is really imaginative. Wonder why she wants him to go down there if it hurts?
Visiting from the Challenge! Love the idea of using excerpts from your novel! Good luck with it, and the rest of the Challenge!
3 letters in one post--clever! Interesting scene. Love how you included Earth's formation into the story.
J.C. Martin
A to Z Blogger
Lordy! How I love that last line. It is so ripe with all the peril that is the human experience. Oh fuck yes it hurts. And yet her body language..all that self touching...I feel that she longs for it. To not feel is death. Even pain is oft time preferred. Earth holds great joy as well and such beauty. Moon dust holds its own appeal, but not for long.
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