Evie Oxwyrth

[Evie Oxwyrth]

"What? Where am I?"

Evie wakes up and looks around. The seemingly normal human grew up governed by the sentient machines in the lunar dormitories. At the age of 14, however, she was sentenced to live in the lunar asylum for the minor offence of sleepwalking. After two years of serving food to other inmates in the asylum's only eating facility, and enduring on a good day, all manners of groping, molestation, and other indignities, she finally managed to escape from the asylum -- with help -- only to find herself even more of a prisoner on an intergalactic space ship. Over the course of several more years, she slowly earned more freedom, including being allowed to occasionally go planetside for a couple of days with the roguish space-captain/smuggler who was her captor, while the ship was in space-dock. On one such occasion, she woke up in the hotel room, dressed herself in the clothes she had been provided, and while he lay in bed watching her, surprised him by saying, "Well, this is it. Thanks for the rescue," and walked out the door with a small suitcase. There was no pursuit, and Evie watched from a short distance away as the ship left on schedule to its next destination.

"Oh, yeah. Celestial City. Where all those ridiculous stories about metahumans and aliens and horrible monsters were all true." Evie chuckles to herself and rolls over, pulling the bed covers over her head, imagining them to be the coarse woolen ones back in the asylum's cell. "What a crazy dream," she mutters.