Free Sands of Sorrow by Viola Grace Page B

and her body vibrated with the touch of the sound waves.
    The dirt and sand left her body to be whisked away by an air current near her feet. In a minute, she was cleaner than she had been in her entire life.
    Saluk was watching her from the spot outside the small section of floor allocated for the sonic shower. The foolish grin on his face was highly amusing.
    “Don’t smirk too much; you are going in here after me.”
    He gave her a slow blink from his amber eyes, and when she moved to trade places with him, he went in without a whimper.
    He stood on his hind legs and took up the entire height of the shower. She reached out and activated the pulses. He let out a happy growl and ruffled his scales. It seemed he had a lot more sand under his scales than she imagined.
    She admired the gleaming rich green of his scales when he was clean. “You are definitely a handsome boy.”
    Salika rapped twice on the door, and a hand carefully opened it, handing her a bodysuit.
    She stepped into the suit and shimmied it upward, sealing it over her breasts after she had everything in the right place.
    Salika left the small lavatory, and Saluk followed her. She got a bag of water from the kitchen area and gave Saluk a few drops before sipping herself.
    Sand dogs didn’t need much food and didn’t need much water. If they had an opportunity to eat, they did so, but they could go months without a meal.
    Salika settled in the spare seat at the front of the ship. “So, what do you think I am able to do?”
    Demnan chuckled. “That is up to placement. I am merely recruitment. I can find talents; I just don’t know what they are. I didn’t even know there was a world there until I felt the pull of a talent.”
    Salika smiled. “It is a strange place for a colony, but that was the purpose. Pilgrims who wished to find a purity of spirit in a hostile environment set out in a series of ships from Luthan three hundred years ago. The city, the people, is what was left of nine thousand colonists. The world did indeed purify them. It pared them down to nothing.”
    “And you are the result.”
    “I was an accident. The colony has a no-fault policy for unwanted babies. I was raised until I could fend for myself, and then, I was turned out and ignored by their society, to live or die as the gods pleased.”
    “How did you survive?”
    “I learned how to beg when I was small and steal as soon as I could. I made sure to not get caught.”
    “Did they ever catch you?”
    She looked out toward the stars. “Twice when I was too young to know better and before Saluk. Once I had him, I was much more careful.”
    “Why?”
    “No sand dogs inside the city limits. It is a rule begun in the early days. It attracts the pack to the interior and that is dangerous to our food supply, not to mention the population.”
    “If you are in a walled city, how do they get in?”
    “They come through the walls. It is something best seen than described.”
    “Your sand dog didn’t attract them?”
    “His name is Saluk. No. He was born to an albino mother. She was left to pup in the deep sands and without assistance from the others; she died.”
    “If she was in the deep sands at the time, how did you know to go out there?”
    “He called me. I got some water and dressed for the sands, and I went out in the morning sun to find something twice the size of one hand.”
    “You found him.”
    “I did. He was tiny and covered in his mother’s blood and stuck with sand. I wiped him off, gave him a few drops of water and carried him back through the crack in the wall, into my tiny shelter. He curled in a corner of my bed, and I set out to find food for him. He has grown a lot in the last ten years.”
    “So, you risked everything for him. He is a bonded beast.”
    “He called me. I am more his than he is mine.” Salika chuckled and put her hand down on the wide green head. He was at her side, like he always was.
    “Do you wish to eat something?”
    Salika