Asmale met death in the MorD'Moth. For a moment the twisted glassen towers of Bal'Horbir filled with the sweet smell of blood, and then the plague-daemon Gilgar, with eyes of a million stars and hide like an



In the sixth milleneum I was borne, or so they tell me. The sun was hot that year, a huge mass of red on the eastern rim. They named me Asmael, after my mother. The vax which brought my fathers body home three years later said that I had not cried during birth, yet had only looked around as though thoughtful, and when my mother had let Azer cleanse me of my birth cloak I had giggled, delightedly. Azer is all I have now that mother was taken. I suspect a beast from the sky had eaten her, a wally or a malbir. I remember seeing her balloon set off at noon, her white hands waving goodbye. She was supposed to have come back by sunset, before the bigger monsters came out, but she didn't. Alec, the server robot, found the balloon in Poison the next day, a grash busy cutting and laying out strips on the ground. Her body was never found, nor was it expected to be. I didn't cry when we burned a tree for her. Death is expected in this world of ours, and to be afraid of it would be foolish. Don't get me wrong. I was sad That was a year ago. Now i'm 10, living

Bella bella are you there?
The nebulii burn dark in midnight hair
the jewel of stars around your neck
are softly softly calling beck
and come to serve in mighty fires
Mans great ships shall hold wide pyres
and regal trails of embers glowing
across the stars with man-a-stowing
knowledge power fear and greed
riding riding on one great steed
a thousand mile trailing wake
stab heavens heart with one great stake
a driveflare here and there and there
oh where oh where o bella dear?
shall man go now that earth is gone
and heavens fools shout Amethon
that cursed world of darkly bellows
churning churning in the mellows
we don't want and have no need
for short men of staturous greed
Bright Mal'Gomir! came the cry
the apple in dear heavens eye
the world who knows no dark
and whose countenance is hardly stark
whose orbit follows drion 3
and four more suns of same degree
the gardens there are quite amazing
but your mind will soon be blazing
no dark soon brings insanity
Fine, the masses cry,
what of warm Kalma Ty?
The world of dark and light is sane
one sun blazes through a window pane
the natives cool and calm and grey
with backs of leather and silicon prey?
Hold hold! I gave a cry,
do you not forget the tale of Meleme Dry?
Who went to Kalma Ty with brightest hopes
and crashed among the moldy slopes?
His ship they cast into the sun
his frame they detoxed till he was done
That planet is too dangerous to bear
i'd rather sleep in a cavecats lair
For a final blow
they suggested fine Amalgamo
The puters ticked and hummed
and my fingers they were drummed
until a paper bright and clean
flashed from the heart of great machine
theres nothing wrong with Amalgamo
said the heart that knew no slow
so venture there and we shall see
it should only take us two weeks three
The fires lit in mighty forges
flames cast down the metal gorges
the C/E drive which we designed
soon cast our dead world far behind
we drifted along perhaps a week
before the helmsman took a peek
out heavens door
and hit the floor
for man is strangely weak
and if you dare to see or speak
of what you glimpse in bella's plight
when traveling faster than quick light
the mind shall twist and turn in knots
and require transferal to many pots.
Lost!, we cried, without a man
to hear or see in Bella's plan
we drifted blindly to and fro
until we happened upon gentle Gwinneflow
the air is fine the sand is warm
all that bothers is a swarm
of pseudo-insects large and small
but gravity is not at all
so float and fly
among the sky
all we have behind us is yet another lullaby