This is a text version of a comic story of the same name printed in "Katmandu Annual #6" some years back.

Let me know what you think.

"Katmandu" comic/world is copyright Carole Curtis.

Story and characters my copyright.



Dream Riding

Katmandu: Third planet, of nine, orbiting a G5 yellow star in a bar spiral galaxy. It possesses an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and sufficient water to support a wide variaty of life. Intelligent species consist of felines ("Big" cat [Hoplite] and "domestic" cat [Velite] types) and two rodent species (called "Ratkin" and "Mousekin")

"Present day Katmandu, night of Liar's Moon (Kat's equivalent of Halloween)."

"...and Sethe did his 'cute' act and got the biggest haul of goodies of all of us tonight!" Teah said.

"You'll have to watch him or he'll eat himself sick!" pointed out Arkin.

"Humph, you were just bad when you were his age!" the eighteen year old mousekin girl said.

"Snicker! True, all too true!" the similarly aged mousekin boy owned up.

The pair were in the back yard of Teah's home, which sat outside of the edge of their small town. Arkin lay on his side on a mat and had his head propped up on one hand and faced Teah who was sitting on her mat with her legs drawn up to her front and her arms wrapped around them. A silence fell between them and Teah looked out across the open bit of land to the hills that started about one hundred yards away.

"My uncle wants me to join his accounting firm when I graduate from high school," Arkin told Teah.

"Hmmmmm, all that math you love used to track other peoples' money," she commented.

"The work's steady and the pay is very good," Arkin said. "Your parents still pushing you to get married, soon?"

"Yes," Teah answered, frowningly.

"Got any particular...candidate in mind?" he asked.

Arkin chuckled at the "Don't give me that!" hard look Teah gave him.

"I thought so," he said.

Rolling over onto his back Arkin slid his hands behind his head and gazed up into the star packed sky. Teah looked at him with a questioning expression on her face.

"What about your wanting to be an engineer, all those grand projects you wish to build?" she asked.

"Six, likely eight, years hard work at university and there is no guarantee that I would pass," he said. "What about your art and astronomy?"

"Four to six years at college and, like you, no guarantee that I'll make the grade," Teah replied.

For several heartbeats the pair were silent, mentally wrestling with their mutual delemmas.

"Sigh. Which way to go?" Teah mused. "Always thought becoming an adult would make things easier...then you find out that life isn't that simple after all."

Looking to change the subject, a random memory kicked up in Teah's head.

"Remember those vivid dreams we had when we were younger?" she asked.

"Where we wore those silver colored coveralls with the clear bubble helmets and rode those odd looking beasts all over the stars?" Arkin said.

"Yes, those."

"You still have the clay models you made of those four legged animals...'horses'?"

"Still in my room," Teah said. "I have yet to figure out how those spindly legs can support the weight of their own bodies let alone a rider and gear as well."

"Odd," she said. "We know we saw a lot of things in those dreams but...yawn...hardly remember any of them."

Arkin felt a wave of drowziness wash over him.

"Yes, odd indeed," he said then dozed off.

Lying down so she faced Arkin Teah closed her eyes and followed him into sleep. Some time later their mothers came out to check on them.

"Should we....?" asked one.

"No. The night is good and they always did like sleeping outside when they could," said the other.

The two parents went back into the house and left their oldest children to their dreams.

"THUD!!"

The hard sound awoke the pair of teen mousekins. Sitting up they blinked and rubbed their eyes then turned their heads towards the sound. Their eyes widened at what they saw!

"Goddess!" exclaimed Arkin as he lowered his ears.

Before them stood a figure that, compared to themselves, was huge. The being was more then half again Arkin's 4' 2" of height (Teah topped out at 4 foot). He (They both thought of the being as male) was a four limbed, two arms and two legs, plus one head, biped like themselves. That was all they could really deduce about him because his body was fully covered in a somewhat bulky looking metallic suit and his head hidden behind a reflective golden visor set in the front of the helmet that fully encased his head and neck and was sealed to the collar of the suit. On his back rode a pack that measured some two feet high by one and a half feet wide and about ten inches in depth. Odd as this being looked what stood behind him was even more strange looking but, to Arkin and Teah, all too familar. They were the beasts, the horses, from their dreams! And what beasts! Their bodies were of polished metal with articulating joints in their legs and ankles. Manes of silver ran along their heads and the backs of their necks. The most striking feature about them was their eyes. They consisted of hundreds of crystal facets and had an electric blue glow about them. All bore saddles and the one immediately behind the being had bags hanging off the sides at the back of its saddle and there was something that looked like a blanket roll draped over the front of it. The mousekins saw that he held some kind of folded cloth in each of his hands.
Strange as all this was neither Teah nor Arkin felt any fear, only awe at having old dreams come alive before their eyes! They scrambled to their feet.

"The Rider!" Teah said.

"Why the surpised looks?" he said. "You knew I'd be here."

He tossed the clothes to each of them and they insinctively caught them.

"Put 'em on!" he commanded. "You know how."

The first thing Teah and Arkin did was wrap their tails around their waists, tucking the last several inches of them into the waistbands of the trousers both wore then Teal wrapped her long hair around her neck. Next, they shook out the suits they had been handed and stepped into the legs, put their arms in the sleeves, then sealed up the suit fronts. The Rider handed them pairs of gloves and they drew them on and snapped the seals shut at the wrists of their suits. Helmets followed then each was given an enviro pack. Arkin emplaced one on Teah's back then she did the same for him. The pair did a followup check on each other's suits then turned to face the Rider. The whole procedure had taken less then four minutes.

"See, you remembered," stated the Rider. "Hit the saddle, you two! We've got a lot of Range to cover tonight!"

Arkin assisted Teah onto her mount then hauled himself up onto his own.

"Let's go!" he called, eagerly.

And the three steely steeds lept into the air!

In a matter of minutes they cleared the atmosphere and entered "hard" space. The couple looked down in wonder at their world as they did one orbit around it to see as much as possible, then the Rider led them further into space until they arrived at one of Katmandu's three moons, flying just a few hundred feet above its surface.

"Your 'Liar's Moon'," the Rider told them. "I don't want to land here because the hoofprints would last for thousands of years. Some day your people will come here and we don't want them to see any of that."

They headed further on out and came to the system's sixth planet, a gas giant with huge, bright rings encircling it.

"It's strange but star systems that have a ring world like this one tend to have a 'living' world like your own in them," the Rider informed them.

At the ninth planet, about half the size of Katmandu, they landed. Arkin dismounted, knelt down, and picked up what looked like snow lying of the ground. It wouldn't pack and he let it sift through his fingers.

"Your outermost planet," said the Rider. "From here your sun, over there..."

He pointed.

"...is just another bright star in the sky. The temperature is so cold that nitrogen gas becomes ice crystals. From here we go into interstellar space."

Teah gave the Rider a speculative look.

"Sir, why do you travel like this?" she asked.

"Define yer question," he said.

"Well, you could travel in something like a space version of our ocean going ships," she said. "I would think it would be safer and more comfortable then riding like this."

Arkin swung himself up onto his mount.

"True, and most space going peoples do it that way," the Rider said. "A very long time ago my ancestors rode and worked in the raw...'elements' on my origin world. I wanted something similar and this is as close to that as I can get in space. And, speaking of which...."

He jumped his horse towards space once more and Arkin and Teah followed. They were shown all kinds of sights, strangely shaped and wonderously colored nebulas, a supernova in the early stages of its explosion, and they skirted close to the event horizon of a black hole that was stripping the matter from a hot blue star. Then they came to a small white star that had what appeared to be a faint mist around it.

"This is called a 'white dwarf' star," the Rider told them. "Some time in the very far future your sun will become like this."

"Why does it look misty around the star?" Teah asked.

"Ahhhh, a bit of science there," the Rider replied. "For most of its life a star is 'burning', fusing, hydrogen into helium. When this type of star uses up most of that hydrogen it swells, goes nova, and begins fusing the helium into heavier elements. One of those is carbon."

The Rider held up one of his hands, a four fingered hand, and began tikking off his points.

"Now, we have loads of carbon..."

One finger closed.

"...under high pressure..."

A second finger closed.

"...and thousands, tens of thousands, of degrees of heat."

Third finger went down.

"Give all that a few million years and what do you end up with?"

The mousekins looked at each other with questioning expressions then both arrived at their answers.

"Diamonds!" the two chimed in together.

"Correct!" said the Rider.

"But, what does that have to do....?" questioned Teah.

"...with the 'mist' around this star? As time goes by there are eruptions in the dwarf and they fling pieces of solid material out into space."

The Rider put his hands out and a few seconds later Arkin and Teah thought they saw something bright slam into each of them. He extended his hands out to them so they could see what he held between his thumbs and forefingers, a pair of crystals almost two inches in length.

"Shards from a diamond star," the Rider told them.

They turned away from the white dwarf, heading into interstellar space once more.

"What now?" asked Arkin.

"A lesson in perspective," said the Rider.

"Perspective?" asked Teah.

"Yes. Now, close your eyes and keep them closed 'til I tell you otherwise."

The Rider wagged one finger at them.

"And no unauthorized peeking!" he commanded.

An indeterminable amount of time passed before Teah and Arkin felt the slight jolts that told them that their mounts had landed on some surface and stopped.

"Okay, open your eyes," they were told.

They did and after blinking their eyes a few times they truely beheld the sight before them. The looks of wonder on their faces was something to see!

Meanwhile, back at the "ranch":

"Goodness! It's been hours!" stated Teah's mother. "I'll check on the kids in the back yard!"

"They're hardly children anymore," observed Arkin's mother.

"Sigh, that's true. Where does the time go? Seems not that long ago they were just learning to walk!"

Both women stood up and started for the back door.

At an planetoid in deep, intergalactic space:

The sight that had Arkin and Teah dazzled was three clearly visible galaxies and several other possible galaxies further in the background.

"This is a galaxy cluster," said the Rider. "That one..."

He pointed at one.

"...holds your sun. There are some four billion suns, stars, in your galaxy alone! And for every star there there are millions of other galaxies! Worlds, places, peoples, and wonders literally without end!!"

The Rider turned his mount around so that he faced his two companions.

"Listen t' an ole range rider, you two. You are at a crossroad in your life and life is like your galaxy, this universe. It is full of unknowns, pleasant and bad, good spells and rough range. You can 'homestead' in a quiet place and avoid most of that, or...you can saddle up and brave sores, throws, sights and all. 'Ride' life for all it has to give! Yes, it's risky, but a lot more interestin' and satisfyin' when you reach Trail's End. The choice is yours and yours alone."

The two mothers reached the back door and swung it open then stepped outside. After a moment their eyes adjusted to the dim night lighting and they saw their oldest children lying on their mats, asleep. Arkin and Teah were on their sides, facing each other, with their groundward arms stretched out towards one another, their hands clinched shut. Upon getting close the older women could see the softly happy expressions on the sleepers' faces.

"Looks like their dreams are good ones," said Arkin's mother.

"Sure does," said Teah's mom. "We may as well let them sleep here 'til morning."

"Yes, it would be a shame to interrupt such pleasant dreaming."

The mothers turned away and started back for the house. Arkin's mother heard her friend sigh.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I was thinking..."

"Yes?"

"...that wouldn't it be nice if, just for once, life could be like one of our better dreams."

Unseen by their mothers, Arkin and Teah's hands opened, revealing the diamond shard that each of them held within them.


"Well, it could have lasted minutes, or a hundred thousand years!"
Kelly Rogers, "Planet Texas"