Purple sand in her shoes and clothing, in every crack and crease of her body. Her eyes did their best to wash it away with tears – like a negative of running mascara the salty water ran out under her sun glasses and down her checks and made it possible to see the dark colour of her skin beneath. If you could see for that fucking dust that was.
Her black, curly hair was shining red and violet in the harsh light of the star because of the sand. She swore in her mother’s tongue to not annoy the company she was here with. All of them nice people. The natives moved in strange patterns on the ground, some sort of lizards if you judged them only by their appearance. She didn’t. As they sat in their bloody aprons the night before Doctor Makar had held a long speech to her about these creatures and their strange relationship with each other and with the planet. The creatures snuggled and touched each other because if one of them for some reason got away from the others it would within a minute explode. The dangerous chemical would build up inside it with catastrophic speed. The cuddling was really a race to secrete as much of the chemical onto the mucous membrane of the others. It was also how they reproduced.
“These fantastic creatures don’t need to eat,” the tourist guide told the little group of nurses, “they get energy from the star which, as you probably noticed, is rich in UV-light, and from the watery pools which you probably also noticed. Full of nutrition.”
Yesterday she had had her first shift at the field hospital. Mutilated bodies arriving in a torrent of blood and pain until she felt like crying. She never cried of course. Wouldn’t be any use anyway. The colonization of this planet was 98 years old and already there was a full scale war. She sort of envied the lusty, little fellow who lay there sunbathing and fornicating all day.
Nothing new. Back at Earth she had envied the trees.