I slid a book onto the library shelf, eager to find out what else she’d tell me if I kept Sorchen talking.

  “What do you do in the library all the time, Sorchen? You knew all those Art books in the Preservation Library. Have you read all of the books in the sections labeled Art or Erotica or Family?” I asked with a smirk.

  My snark was met with Sorchen's throaty laugh. “Many, yes. I haven’t read every book in the library here, but most of the Art, Erotica, and especially History. Particularly Shurwinn and Earth.”

  “Woah, really?” I asked. "I barely touched on the Ancient Earth stuff, but it’s all throughout Chaludra, and it was really profound for me to read it, even though I had no idea what all the gods were and why there are so many naked, pale people on their temple ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.”

  “Yes, you may not know this yet, but here in Media, we have a prized collection of books. It’s a type of repository for knowledge of our ancestors, and I find it particularly interesting,” she confided.

  “Are you an historian? Researcher?” I wanted to know.

  "No, no, it’s just my personal hobby,” she waved me off. "The Shurwinn have a fascinating history, and what has happened with us since we left Earth is remarkable. How we got to where we are today, where we are heading. Media is the middle oasis, yes?” she asked.

  I nodded. Media—the middle oases in a line of green islands that spread across the equator of the desert sphere.

  “And this is the smallest development. When our ancestors settled here, they were diverse peoples, and they wanted to live in harmony with each other. It’s a beautiful story. It’s how this monastery came to be,” she paused, tugging the floater piled with books behind us.

  “Please, tell me! I don’t know anything about religions or monasteries other than stream shows, and I really don’t even know what this place is,” I begged, trying not to sound over eager for information from the one person who seemed to want to tell me Shurwinn’s heritage.

  She indulged me, “The founding nomads who colonized Media were people who didn’t share common history and cultures. They were from a variety of places and languages on Earth. So they decided to work together with a common goal: preserve knowledge of their Earth history while moving forward together into something new. They wanted to find what they called the Middle Way—‘Media’ is ‘Middle,’ see?"

  I nodded, imagining a bunch of refugees like me arriving here on a world where there was nothing, and I admired them.

  "They built the monastery and the library, particularly the Preservation Library as a repository of knowledge and as a communal space. Rather than adopting just one religion or one set of customs, they mingled all of their beliefs, practices, and differences into a family; blended everything together,” she paused to make sure I was following.

  "Obviously, they had to work together to survive in the desert. Media was too small of a community to be divided; they had to be unified in purpose. So, they used knowledge and preservation as the glue that could help bind them together.”

  Sorchen motioned to the racks surrounding us. I followed her direction, remembering my first day at the library and all the promise it seemed to hold.

  She continued, "We don’t have the largest library on Shurwinn, but we do have the largest collection of Ancient Earth books, and many are very rare. That’s why we get a lot of visitors here. People from all over the sphere come for the unique library and the experience of the monastery."

  I picked up another book, appreciating its history before sliding it onto its shelf.

  "This type of monastery caught on in other oases as well,” Sorchen explained, shifting the floater into a new row.

  "It’s a sort of common place for people who like to think, reflect, study, contemplate, and martial arts developed out of that and blended with it as well. The monasteries became desirable retreats for travelers—sound familiar, Ryst?"

  “Just like me! But how’s it different now, Sorchen? I mean, is Shurwinn exactly like it was five-hundred years ago?” I wondered.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  She went on, "It’s of particular interest to me to look back at the past, reflect on what I see around me, and speculate about the future. I see a lot of changes, and I know our people aren’t just one thing. We'll continue to blend and evolve. And I think that you, Ryst Nova, are a part of Shurwinn history that is going to be a very interesting chapter of our story,” she smirked.

  “What? You mean, because I’m an off sphere? I don’t know anything about Earth, and very little about the Shurwinn; just the public stories that are on the stream that the whole 9 Galaxies can read. What you’ve told me today is a gold mine I never expected to hear!”

  “We have a unique history, I think,” Sorchen leaned in. "I can’t claim to be an expert, but I have read widely. Each of us has our own stories, shaped by our parents and grandparents and those that came before."

  She paused, taking an excited breath, eyes intense. "But think about it, Ryst. How many separatist spheres are there in the Known Cosmos? Millions of Earthens spread out across the 9 Galaxies and blended with the peoples they found there. But the only sphere that isn’t a melting pot of Earthens and off spheres is Shurwinn!”

  That knowledge sank into my mind with finality, and I felt the truth of it. Where else in the Known Cosmos was there anything like my new home?

  Sorchen kept going, “Disgruntled from all over the sphere of Earth left. Groups of people who had different religions, languages, and customs. They shouldn’t have gotten along, should they?"

  I shrugged, “If they had a common reason, then they could try."

  “Exactly,” she said, waving her hands. "They banded together because of a common goal: they wanted to get away from Earth because they didn’t trust the leadership!"

  I felt as though I was being told a secret history, something that was worth knowing, but that had been forgotten to time.

  “Earth decided to end wars, but the Shurwinn settlers didn’t believe it would truly change anything. They thought the corruption would continue in other forms,” she went on. "So, they rejected the system everyone else had surrendered to and devised their own plan. They weren’t all vegetarians at first. That came later."

  I was starting to get an idea that what she was telling me was more a story of revolutionaries than a history lesson. “So, Sorchen, how did those various cultures form a colony in a far-off galaxy?” I asked, puzzled.

  She nodded, “From what I can piece together, it was any and every pacifist on Earth who didn’t trust leaders to make decisions for them who pooled together, invested in starliners, and colonized this sphere in Andromeda. And over time, their various cultures mixed and mingled, and you get what we are today,” she said pointedly.

  I could see it in my mind’s eye. Centuries ago, starliners full of people wanting a new life, just like me, and they’d arrived here with purpose and flourished. I suddenly found myself grateful for those Earthens and wished I could tell them, "Thanks."

  Unaware of my rising emotions, Sorchen kept talking. It was like once she’d started, there was no stopping her.

  “Take a sec to see how you’re changing since you’ve been here. See how you’re blending worlds? You wear Shurwinn clothing, but you have a tailor design things that are unique to your own style."

  She pointed to my hair. "You twist your hair, but instead of braids, you use the fashion from your home world. I won’t be surprised if people start mimicking you. That’s how cultures blend. And you’re bringing a lot of disparate pieces together, Ryst.”

  She waved her arms about like a stream show host, quoting me:

  “Known Cosmos citizens, listen to the voice of the prophet! Ryst Nova speaks! 'Medica may not work for everybody. Embrace your nightmares like a gentle lover! Don’t eat your food—experiment with it!'"

  I laughed at her theatrics, and she continued.

  "You’re putting forth ideas that challenge us, Ryst, and you aren’t doing it to be provocative. It’s coming from the core of your being; it’s just who you are. People are sitting up and taking notice, and that means something.”

  “I know you don’t see it because you’re too close to it, but the world is witnessing it, and that’s not the end of this story. We don’t know what the melting pot of Ryst Nova and Shurwinn will be because we will have to live it to find out, but something is shaking the very foundations we stand on, and I am glad I’m here to watch,” she finished.

  And I felt it, that gong. The one I seemed to be feeling rather than hearing from time to time. It was like a reverberation in my bones.

  All I could do was nod.

  Dream Journal

  Something prickled at me, bothering me, and I didn’t know what it was. I needed out. I needed space; to stretch out.

  I was walking. I didn’t know where. I needed to be up. To be out. To stretch out.

  There was a path. Behind a garden.

  It was stony and sandy and brown and hot. I kept walking. Going up. Not a mountain. Not like my home world, full of mountains and snow and cold and damp.

  Just a rise, a bit of height. So I could see out and stretch. I let go.

  There was a bench beneath two palm trees. Shade from the high sun above. Shade in the desert. Heat— and protection from it.

  I sat down, with my legs crossed and intertwined. Closing my eyes, I breathed. In. And out. In and out.

  I stretched. I was vast. I moved beyond. I loved the desert. It went on forever. And something inside me wanted out. It wanted to stretch and stretch and stretch across the desert.

  I was at home there in the desert. Home. I felt it pulling me. Home across the desert. Home. To the west. In the desert. But not the desert.

  Home. It was waiting for me.