A Just Farewell

PLEASE
CONSIDER SUPPORTING THIS WORK

Thank you for downloading this ebook of “Heritage and
Shimmer.” Should you enjoy this story, please consider supporting
my efforts by visiting my website located at
www.flatlandfiction.com
,
where you can find additional stories of science fiction, fantasy
and horror. Crafting each story takes a substantial amount of time,
and each act of support allows me to devote more of my day to the
dreaming and writing of my stories. Please consider offering a
financial show of support for this story by following the
instructions found on my official website, or consider leaving a
review at Smashwords to help my work attract the interest of
additional readers. Thank you for your interest in this story, and
readers are always encouraged to send me feedback through my email
at
[email protected]
.

Sincerely,

Brian S. Wheeler

A Just
Farewell

Brian
S. Wheeler

Published by Brian S. Wheeler at Smashwords

Flatland Fiction thanks you for your purchase of this
ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author
and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any
commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the
author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of
content is allowed. If you enjoy this ebook, Flatland Fiction
encourages you to send us a review at
[email protected]
.
Unless otherwise instructed, Flatland Fiction reserves the right to
post such reviews online.

Your support and respect for the property of this
author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely
coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s
imagination and used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2015 by Brian S. Wheeler

A Just
Farewell

Brian S. Wheeler

Chapter 1 –
Escaping It All

Chapter 2 –
Elevating a Holy War

Chapter 3 –
The Ultimate Answer

Chapter 4 –
Slender Shoulders Holding the Weight of the World

Chapter 5 –
Adultery Committed Against the Maker

Chapter 6 –
Time to be a Man

Chapter 7 –
A Lamb Taken to Slaughter

Chapter 8 –
Blessed Hands

Chapter 9 –
Scratching at the Sky

Chapter 10
– A Boy Given a Purpose

Chapter 11
– In the Wink of an Eye

Chapter 12
– A Sight to Inspire Prayer

About the
Writer

“I built my castles in the sky after I realized that
dogma would conquer our world.” – Sebastian Knopfler, architect and
engineer of the castle-class space stations.

Chapter 1 – Escaping It All

“Tell me again, sweetie, what you’re going
to be doing once we start our new lives on the planet Regis?”

“We’re not going to live on a planet, hun.
We’re going to be living on a moon.”

“Can a person live on a moon, Blake?”

“Rachel, you’d be amazed to learn how many
places we can live out there in the stars.” Blake squeezed his
fiancé’s hand. “They’ll train me to be a welder while we wait in
one of the space stations for the moon colony to finish settlement
preparations. Once we reach our new home, I’ll be helping to build
an entire new city for people just like us.”

Rachel grinned. “I’m so proud of you. It
makes me so happy to imagine you building something new. Everything
on this old planet Earth is ruined and wasted. But we’re going to
escape it all, and you’re going to help build something great
again. It thrills my heart, Blake.”

The line of passengers that curved in front
of Rachel and Blake slowly trudged another few steps closer to the
massive rockets waiting for their occupants on the magnetic rail
tracks that would launch the machines into the heavens. Armed
sentries patrolled every inch of the launch facility, and they
removed passengers from the line for random pat-downs for weaponry
and contraband. Rachel gripped Blake’s hand as a pair of the
uniformed sentries pulled a young man out of the line only a few
meters ahead of their position. One sentry trained his rifle upon
the trembling stranger while his companion rummaged through the
single, small bag that was the only piece of luggage any of those
waiting for a rocket ride would be allowed to take with them as
they started a new life amid the stars.

Rachel rested her head on Blake’s shoulder
as the sentries moved further along the line. “Do you think the
savages will follow us?”

“There’s no way they could follow us,” Blake
smiled. “Look at all the security around this launch facility. Look
at all the soldiers guarding this place. There’s just no way any of
those savages could sneak aboard one of these rockets.”

“But do you think they would try to follow
us anyway? Do you think they would want to follow us into the
stars?”

Blake laughed very softly. “Why would they
want to do that? They’ll have the entire Earth for themselves. They
can do whatever they want with it. They can just go on blowing
things up until there’s not a living thing left to butcher in name
of their god. And how would any of those savages follow us even if
they wanted to? They know nothing of building rockets and space
stations. They know nothing about travelling the vast distance
between the stars. They can hardly count beyond ten. The savages
haven’t built anything for generations, and so they get just what
they deserve. They’ll get to live in all the ash and rubble their
bombs created.”

“So there’s no way they can reach us after
we lift away in one of those rockets?”

Blake winked. “They can’t even reach us
now.”

Rachel relaxed her grip upon Blake and did
her best to be optimistic, though the site of so many armed
sentries patrolling the launch facility still made her uneasy. A
new life awaited them, one in which they would no longer have to
live in fear of a savage infiltrating their city to detonate a
maiming and killing bomb in the middle of their loved ones and
neighbors. They would start a new world on a welcoming moon, and
they would never be intimidated into worshipping any god, nor
adhere to any bearded cleric’s faith. Most of all, they would
build. Rachel smiled to think of the gardens she could plant, of
how fresh tomatoes might taste, of how she might even find the time
and the material to learn to paint watercolors or play an old-time
piano. The savages may have made such simple pleasures beyond reach
on the remains of old and wasted Earth, but the stars would remain
far beyond the reach of the dogma that decimated what had once been
a beautiful world.

“How many children do you think we’ll
have?”

Blake kissed Rachel’s cheek. “We’ll have
three girls and two boys. We’ll also have a cat and a dog.”

“I hadn’t thought of a cat and a dog. I’d
very much like that.”

“I tell you, Rachel, you’re going to be
amazed at the things we can have amid the stars.”

* * * * *

Chapter 2 – Elevating a Holy War

In one hand, Abraham carefully loaded his
brush with orange pigment. In the other hand, he gently held the
burrowing cockroach. He was proud of the brush he had crafted with
strands of his own hair, just as he was proud of the paints he had
mixed from the dyes he had pilfered from his mother’s loom. He
feared to think how badly his father would beat him should it be
discovered how he idly wasted time painting the shells of the bugs
he considered his pets and friends. Yet the sense of pleasure and
pride that Abraham felt whenever he looked upon the painted shells
of his insect friends seemed worth the danger in the young boy’s
estimation.

“Hold still, Oscar. Your shell will look
wonderful with some swirls on all that orange.”

The village’s great horn shrilled just as
Abraham’s brush neared the bug’s shell, and the cockroach tensed.
Abraham knelt to set the bug upon the ground, and his friend
scurried for the chamber’s corners as the horn echoed through the
tunnels that composed the subterranean home of Abraham’s
family.

“Abraham! Hurry to the ladder before father
learns you again hesitate to answer the clerics’ summons! He won’t
be so merciful with you if you’re once again the last of the
village to climb up to the surface and answer that great horn’s
call!”

Abraham cringed at the sound of his brother
Ishmael’s voice, and he hurriedly hid the paper cups that contained
his paints into a box he kept far beneath his cot. Quickly, Abraham
sealed the container that held the sugar he saved from his morning
tea. Ishmael would be very happy to report to their father how
Abraham wasted a resource as valuable as sugar to coerce his
cockroaches to come out of the shadows so that he could decorate
their shells. His father and brother would tell him that sugar and
paint couldn’t be wasted on such filthy bugs, and they would tell
him that it would be best to simply squash those cockroaches
beneath the heel of his boot. They would tell Abraham that his time
would be better served in the study of the Maker’s Holy Book. Thus
Abraham knew that he was not the only living creature in jeopardy
of hurt should his brush, paints and sugar be discovered, and so he
frantically hid all his secret treasures before Ishmael saw he had
any of them in his possession. Ishmael had felt the hide of their
father’s belt many times, and Ishmael would take great pleasure in
witnessing someone other than himself feel that belt’s sting.

“I’ll drag you out of this home if I must,
Abraham! I’ll not let you bring our family any shame because you
tremble beneath the ground!”

“I’m coming!” Abraham’s voice cracked. “I’m
nearly at the ladder now!”

Abraham bolted into the largest chamber of
his underground home that served as his family’s great-room. The
family’s most precious carpets, heirlooms passed among the
generations, spread about the walls and floor to decorate the room
in which his family gathered six times a day to answer their
clerics’ call to prayer. Though the horn shrilled through the
chamber, Abraham’s mother remained seated at her loom just as she
was during any day at such a time, weaving a network of patterns
and lines upon another cape to relate the another story of another
of their tribe’s heroes. Though the clerics taught him that the
Maker frowned upon any sentiment a boy might feel towards his
mother that would in any way differentiate her from any other woman
in the tribe, Abraham remained very proud of his mother. She was
among the village’s best weavers and seamstresses, a woman the
clerics turned towards whenever a great achievement or observance
in the honor of the Maker demanded a very special and complex
pattern to be threaded into a hero or cleric’s cape. Abraham knew
his mother was very pious, and he knew that her soul would neither
dance nor tremble when that horn wailed above the ground, knew she
would not allow that horn to distract her while she worked her
thread.

Abraham stole a glance at his mother while
he paused at the ladder’s bottom rung. He always felt afraid
whenever the clerics’ horn called him to the earth’s surface, for
he hated to look into the sky and see the blocky, gray castles
built by the unbelievers orbiting overhead and casting such
enormous shadows upon the ground. He had always paid too much
attention to the stories his grandfather had told him concerning
the days when the castles still rained fire and death down from
their purgatory between the Earth and the Maker’s celestial
kingdom. He had ignored the advice of his father, and he had paid
too close attention to those ghastly tales his grandfather relished
recounting until his youngest grandson trembled and feared the
dark. Abraham had discounted the clerics’ warning to never place
too much faith into the words expressed by the elderly few who the
Maker waited so long to invite into his heaven. Abraham had
listened too intently to his grandfather, and though a full season
had passed since his grandfather finally died for his Maker,
Abraham still hesitated at the bottom rung of that ladder.