Rain of Tears Read Free Page B

thinking about death?”
    “Alcohol may have been involved.” She waved off that line of discussion and kept working. “I was on Jurla and hanging around with friends when one of them brought me some paper and a pen, and I began to design her. I left the designs with Redmiril for safekeeping, and while I was gone off to Jatkil, there was a coup and his home was seized by the new government. My plans were left in their archives for years until a visiting Jarko scientist discovered them, and he bought them, taking them back to his home and promising to replicate the experiment for the new Jurla government if it was successful. He lied.”
    The bolt came undone, and she whirled it loose with her hands as she had its predecessors.
    She pressed icons on the wall, and as a dolly popped out and slid across the floor, she rubbed her hands together. She locked the wheels and looked to her new friend. “Will you help me lift? It’s a little fused to the block.”
    “Of course.” He positioned himself on the opposite side of the weather machine, and when she gave a three count, the machine popped loose and she heard the tearing of fabric.
    “Did you just rip your shirt?”
    “Keep moving. This thing is heavy.” He muttered it quietly, but his face was bright pink with embarrassment, not exertion.
    “It isn’t, it’s just bulky.” The urge to defend her design wasn’t lost on her. This was her child, and it was finally going to get the home it deserved.
    With the weather machine settled on the dolly, she unlocked the wheels and smiled. “Shall we start the walk to the pick-up site? It is going to take a while.”
    “I thought that they were coming to meet us.”
    “They are, but it will be easier for them if we are not within the city limits.” She grinned and started to push her creation back the way they had come. “You might want to inform the populace what we are doing. They might get nervous otherwise.”
    He blinked and looked through the doors they were approaching to the crowd outside. His cursing lingered in the air as he ran forward to explain what was happening as she pushed her beloved creation out into the public eye for the first time since it was assembled.
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    The crowd parted for her, and she had to admit that Unrik was a fast talker. No wonder they had made him mayor.
    She kept a bubble of dry air around her with absent attention as she pushed the weather machine toward the city limits with a crowd following her every move. It felt good to have her creation back in her grip. When she had replaced the missing piece of the puzzle that made up the weather machine, she would be so happy to watch it do her job.
    Pride in her ability had long since faded. Her sisters were lucky that they had been given the programming to go dormant. It hadn’t been a consideration when Reyan Ikali Mar had been created since she was supposed to be perennially active, and she lived each day from dawn to dusk just like everyone else, only her count of days never ended.
    Her first days were on Ichadra, mastering her skills until they realised the mess that she was making of their eco system. She was sent to an unnamed world that was being bio-formed, and there, she mastered the power that the Ichadra had imbued her with.
    Once she was under control of her abilities, she was returned home, and she spent a few decades helping to improve the output of the farms of Ichadra before she asked to be set free.
    The Elemental was alredy off on Ki, the Destroyer was in the design stages and the researchers saw nothing wrong with allowing their goddess of nature to leave. It wasn’t like they could really stop her, but she wanted to abide by their wishes.
    She had bumped around the sector for a while until she ended up in this system, and she hadn’t left since. It was occasionally fun to be an urban legend in most of the cities in the system. She came when she was needed, and if it weren’t for