Candalaria

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky.

While the titanic slabs of stones lay out in rings that dotted the landscape lit up as if in answer to those violet clouds

No one knew why the stones were there or how they came to be.

No one knew how they glowed or why their light was connected to the dancing cumuli.

All we knew is to not get too close to those stone rings when the lights went on...because no one came back from them once they were lit.

Candelaria was a world of mystery, danger, beauty, and things beyond imagination. It was supposed to be a new earth, but instead was something wild and magical with no explanations as to how anything came to be the way it turned out.

When we had come to this world, we had been enchanted by its beauty and had been heedless of its dangers..... the stone rings at midnight, the glass spiders, the shape changers, the death god from another world, the propensity for hyperbole to become reality, the plants that occasionally switched people’s consciousness arbitrarily, the living ships, the trees that granted wishes to the letter of the wish descriptions, or whenever we built a house it coming to life....and so much more.

We had no idea what made this beautiful world work, it would take millennia to find out...and many of us had already devoted our short lives to figuring out its mysteries.

We had also found that this world doubled our life expectancy, yet another Candelarian mystery.

I sat watching the sky, this world might be scary but it was lovely to behold and I always felt lucky to be here, my steaming mug of evening coffee in my hands.

I stood on the porch of my home, one of the living ships that I had mentioned earlier, my hands glowing......since coming here we had all developed odd abilities.

Back home they would be known as magic powers, but none of the government officials wanted to acknowledge that....so they called them a symptom of new world sickness and kept trying to get all of us to take suppressors for them, I snorted to myself when I thought about it.

Government....if they couldn't figure it out then they would try to control or destroy it.

The pinkish glow in my hands faded for a tic at that thought and then resurged as I took a sip of my coffee; they glowed when I was at my happiest.

Shya gave a happy little burble and glowed too...though her luminescence was violet in color ...much like the stones and the clouds.

Shya was my home, a living starship, a sentient creature that held a habitat within herself. All of the ships that we had found were female........some of our scientists had first postulated asexual reproduction but were unable to find evidence of this.

One more mystery that Candelaria held for us.

I had a feeling it was probably magical in nature. Just like everything else in this world.

I looked out over the cotton candy colored grassy hills and plains that shifted around when you weren't looking. I loved this world, truly, deeply loved it here down to my soul. I thought that I would miss earth but this place was home to me. My hands glowed brighter and I smiled, life was good.

Just then I heard Niles agitated cough. Niles had the demeanor of an English butler which was ridiculous due to him never having been to earth much less England and also him being a creature that was a cross between a lynx and a leopard. Niles was a native of Candelaria and he and many others like him acted as go-betweens for the less vocal native life forms. All Candelarians spoke the same language after all. Because that made so much sense, right?

"Yes, Niles?"

"Shyellara would appreciate it if you would come to the thought chamber; she needs to speak with you directly." Niles always used Shya's full name...he and his species seemed to hold the living ships in a regard almost akin to a high priestess of a major religion.

"Hmmm so I’m being summoned am I? You know Niles, on my world nobody could boss a cat around." I said it idly but couldn't help but chuckle.

"Yes, and this is as much your world as I am a cat.... Mum" He looked so stiff. Niles had taken to calling me Mum as a sort of honorific.

I snorted. Niles was right...he wasn't a cat but, boy did he have the attitude for it. A universal truth of all felines. So I decided to purposefully irritate him a little...just for fun “Speaking of YOUR world, you get the unicorns to talk to you yet?"

Niles's fur puffed out and he looked as though he had tripled in size "The creatures that you refer to are the stewards of our world as if having a glittery horn protruding from one's head makes one's above all other life forms. They are quite uppity and rude. Being unable to and unwilling to speak are two very different things, Mum." He groomed his flank a bit and peered at me with his yellow-green eyes, waiting for me to move from my spot on the porch and go talk to Shya.

Niles would stand there until I went in, so I took my time. I was being mean but Niles brought it out in me. I couldn't explain it, he just did. He was a good...cat?

He just always seemed to make me want to irritate him.

The unicorns were a huge sore spot for Niles and the rest of his species......Niles people were the only native Candelarian species who were capable of speech in the way that we humans are. All of the rest communicated in wildly different ways.

Apparently, the Stewards or unicorns as they had been termed when we got here. They looked like the classic unicorn, outside of being varying colors and shades. They were gorgeous and unbelievably antisocial. Were able to communicate in any way that they pleased. They just refused to, even to other Candelarians.

Niles's people had tried to open talks with the Stewards so many times over the years and all attempts had been rebuffed. They hated those rebuffs, and so a bit of species enmity had grown up between the two species; which made it wonderful fodder to mess with Niles over.

I was about to walk inside when I spied Mon Marth across the fields, I held my hand up to wave to her and watched her move her staff in a few circles in front of a rock face on one of our hills. Mon Marth was one of the gnome like species on Candelaria, she was amazing and had the best teas and tinctures. She and I had struck up a bit of a friendship and I loved having tea with her every week. So you can imagine my shock when the rock face opened in front of her and she just picked up her skirts and hurried inside. I caught sight of lush forests and crystals glowing within the rock face. I could also smell the fresh stream from my porch. What the holy hell?????????

I shouldn't really be surprised, Candelaria was a world of mystery, but all of our scans had determined that the world had a core much the same as earths.

I whipped my head back to Niles, who was casually grooming his other flank "What, did you think this world didn't have a second world within it??"

"What? What the hell? Niles?" my voice had raised three octaves at this point.

Niles sighed, groomed his paw for a few seconds then dispensed with his normal stiffness "Where do you think all of the Candelarians were when your people landed here? Did you think we just appeared?"

"I...We...we never understood what happened. We just thought it was magic. Just like everything else here."

"In a way, it is magic; it's also a way for us to defend ourselves. Your people are not the first extraterrestrials to come here and attempt to live here. They all died off within the first rotations."

A rotation was 100 Candelarian years “So what happened with us?"

"I assumed that Candelaria likes you" Niles shrugged "Your people have adapted to multiple challenges and have made a sort of peace with this world. It appears to like you, even though Humans are impossibly chaotic. Too chaotic to hear this world's rhythm. All Candelarians hear the rhythm of their birth world. You, people, are either deaf or just tone deaf to a planetary rhythm."

"Planetary rhythm???"

Niles rolled his eyes and grumped “The song that ALL worlds have. Your world has one too. Humans are impossible. I don't even understand why Candelaria likes your people. Gaaahhhhh!" He slunk off after that. Not waiting for me any longer.

I chased after him and caught up to him in Shya's kitchen.

"What is on the other side of that rock face, Niles?"

Niles looked so unhappy "What do you mean? There is our world within the outer world of Candelaria. It is Candelaria's heart."

I had heard the locals refer to something called Candelaria's heart and Candelaria's song before, but I had thought it was some sort of anthem for their people.

"It is a world within a world...what the hell. Second question, why aren’t you trying to dissuade me from it?"

"Because Shiellara was going to speak with you about it this evening anyway. Mon Marth merely sped up the process."

"Why?"

"Because the song has changed and it grows more erratic with each time that those clouds roll in and the stones light up."

"I thought that the clouds were just part of Candelaria"

"No, the clouds came shortly before your people landed here. At first they were harmless, now they are somehow affecting the rhythm of this world. We don’t know how and we need your help to fix it before things get worse."

This was serious "I will get my people on it immediately."

"No Lena, Just you. No one else. Only you are trusted."

"What, why me?"

"Because what I said earlier isn’t exactly true. This IS your world. You have truly merged with the song of Candelaria...your hands will tell you that. They glow when you are happy, do they not? You are merging with this world, becoming part of it. It is as much your home as it is mine and Shiellarra's. We need your help to figure out what is wrong with Candelaria."

I stood at the kitchen island and stared at Niles. What was I going to do with all of this information........I was going to go ask Shiellarra, that’s what I was going to do!