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    The Harrowing
    The Harrowing
    The Harrowing
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    The Harrowing

    By Rita de Heer

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Harrowing is a tender love story from Seven Seas, a water planet, as well as a science fiction/fantasy meld. Most of the Nan are winged. They live on tall stone pillars rising from their sea. Only the brood-fathers return to the sea, there to raise the young.

    The aliens crash-landed, their ship is broken. They must gain a foothold. Their solution is Darwinian – they expect to overcome the Nan. They must, to live. When Fane, the greatest of the nanguy, fails to trap the invader, can Leery, nanny-guy and brood-father save his people?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRita de Heer
    Release dateFeb 18, 2013
    ISBN9780987517302
    The Harrowing
    Author

    Rita de Heer

    I’m a speculative fiction writer often flirting with a mash-up of science fiction and fantasy. I also write articles for the local Landcare Newsletter and try to keep three blogs up to date. I live in the Byron Shire, in Australia, in the same house as a big black-and-white cat, Maggy. In my real life I’m a volunteer working for Brunswick Valley Landcare. In between writing, I garden, knit, design-and-make-visual-artworks, read and read and read, in between socialising. Writing is nearly always first. The Harrowing will (soon) be my first-not-my-last foray into independent epublishing.

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      Book preview

      The Harrowing - Rita de Heer

      The Harrowing

      By Rita de Heer

      .

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 Rita de Heer

      License Notes: This ebook is licensed for you personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One: Nanny-guy

      Chapter Two: Nanguy

      Chapter Three: The Nanguy Roost

      Chapter Four: The Breeding

      Chapter Five: Leery, Afterwards

      Chapter Six: The Harrow

      Chapter Seven: Brood-father

      About Rita de Heer

      Connect with Rita de Heer Online

      Sample Read of Monster Moored, Up-Coming Title

      Chapter One: Nanny-guy

      Leery dug a hole in the beach of his island to surprise a sleeping sand-fish, he was that hungry. Scoop scoop twice with his two webbed hands and he had a bath big enough to sit in. The sea did not instantly leak in at the bottom. The hole wasn't deep enough. He leaned forward, deeper and deeper. Scoop scoop. He hauled out great arm-fuls of sand and shoved them between his dark green thighs.

      His breeder-arms in his pouch liked the friction of the sand along the outside of the pouch. Leery's heart quickened as the up-to-now stubbornly little grabbers engorged. His pouch bulged and he gasped from the pleasure flooding through him. He laughed at the electric blue blush flaming over his arms. Its heat over his face and throat. He plunged his fore-hands into his pouch and grappled and touched and stroked himself. He breathed hard and his mouth widened impossibly from the ecstasy. If only it was the change coming to him finally. He yearned to be a flyer.

      A shadow lazed over him. Enjoy it while you can, the nanguy said.

      By his wingspan he looked to be hardly bigger than Leery himself. Leery compared him to the rest of the nanguys sometimes flying over. This one was a dull black, not much darker than his shadow. He didn't smell attractive. The guy's studs weren't bright and his breeder-arms drooped. They swayed limp and bedraggled in the wind of his flight.

      Leery wanted beauty in his future. He seized his spear and with both hands strong on the driftwood stem, pointed it skyward.

      The flyer looked over his shoulder, not back to Leery, but up at the black shape flying high above Leery's island. The flyer here-and-now laughed. Why bother with the posturing when you are already spoken for?

      Leery let the spear fall. What was the droopy guy on about?

      The flyer exclaimed and sheered away.

      Leery peered up at the great nanguy swaying between him and the sun. For a heartbeat, that one's shadow covered Leery's whole island. He shuddered with admiration seeing the nanguy stay aloft so easily. It seemed to him that that nanguy swam through the air the way he imagined a cloud fish would swim in the deep ocean.

      The nanguy's black-feathered wings spangled glossily in the light of the yellow sun. His legs were as strong and thick as two-hundred-year-old kelp trunks and a four-feather crest fluttered among the wiry black hairs on his head. The great one never had his breeder-arms dangling. Leery dreamed he'd be as noble a guardian when he changed.

      Wishes are fishes, his brood-father used to say, and as quick to escape. After a last look, this time at the sea all around, Leery put his spear by the hole as before and continued digging.

      Early in the morning he'd trawled over his whole beach and crunched up all the soldier-crabs trundling their sand balls to the surface. They'd hardly touched the sides of his hunger. He'd started to dream about the sand-fish. How juicy one of them would be, going down his gullet barely chewed and still wriggling.

      He was so hungry - for something - that he couldn't stop his mouth working. Sometimes he licked his lips and laved them with smooth soft saliva and he sidled them over one another, like a pair of sea slugs at their mating.

      The hole grew. He scooped huge armloads of sand out, now carefully pulling the sand past his sides. But now the hot feeling in his pouch came and went and came without him even touching himself. Just looking down there made him flush blue. He felt hollow, ready for something to fill him. It had to be hunger.

      He remembered to look all around for danger. The first thing his brood-father taught him. Even down in the nursery sea there were dangers. His little gold-sand beach was rumpled from the day's work. Wavelets worked at the edge, smoothing the sand. The tide was on the way up. The grass in the centre of his island was grey-green and smooth and thick and springy. He'd sprayed it this morning with his pouch-scent. His island smelled as ready as he felt.

      He thrilled to see the great nanguy drifting much

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