Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter One

Announcement

I have decided to release The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons license – Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA). To celebrate that, I am going to publish it here serially, one chapter at a time.

Today’s post will have the front matter and chapter one.

About a 10 minute read.

The Plainsrunner

© 2018 by Jim Bowering

Creative Commons Attribution and Share-Alike 2025

ISBN 978-1-9995123-0-9

Cover image from a photograph by Angela de Paula
under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license

Other novels by Jim Bowering

The Green Comet trilogy
Green Comet
Parasite Puppeteers
The Francesians

The rest of the Plainsrunner trilogy
The Prime
Sunward

The Vin Stone series
Vin Stone – Freelance Accountant
Vin Stone – Not a Detective
Vin Stone – The Detective’s Car
Vin Stone – Night Soil

Acknowledgements

As always, my thanks go first to Carolyn Bowering, my life partner, best friend and most reliable proofreader. Writing for Carolyn encourages me to keep writing more, and to keep writing better.

Close behind are all the people who have been supporting and encouraging me since I began publishing these books. They read Green Comet when I asked them to, and they stuck with me step-by-step as I pushed on through the second one, and through the third one when I realized it was becoming a trilogy.

As well I want to acknowledge the readers who joined me for the original serialization of The Plainsrunner. You gave me an audience to write for, not to mention a series of deadlines.

Finally I must mention the software I used to create this book. I try to use Free Software wherever possible. People who publish their software under open source licenses make creativity possible. So thank you LibreOffice, which I used to type it. Thank you Calibre, which I used to create a presentable copy for electronic readers. And thank you Audacity, which I used to process the recording.

https://greencomet.org
arjaybe@greencomet.org

Chapter One – Sage

Sage was waiting outside while the elders met inside. They’d all had very stern looks as they went past her on the way in, but that didn’t worry her. They always looked at her that way, and they had as long as she could remember. It seemed as if every time she did something it ended with them frowning at her.
Like just last month when she stayed out on the plains alone until late in the evening, when she was supposed to be inside the compound under shelter. Supposedly it was for protection from the predatory night fliers, but she thought it was because they were old and fussy. Or those times when she was younger and she led the other children on adventures over the plains and up the Scarp. They’d punished her severely for that. For endangering the children and leading them astray. Could she help it if she liked to lead and they liked to follow? But that was when she was a child, and now she was just beginning adulthood.

And now this. Not that she’d done anything wrong this time. When she found the artifact, she brought it straight back to the village and showed them. She was shocked and stunned by their violent reaction. She’d been expecting praise, or at least excitement, but here she was pacing the packed earth of the compound while they were inside deciding.

Sage was out for a morning run when she saw it. The night fliers were in their aeries for the day, and it was still too cool for the day fliers. It would be a few hours before the thermals were strong enough for them to take to the air. This was her favorite time of day. The night stalkers were asleep in their dens and all there was to worry about was the day runners. She laughed. The day runners were slow and stupid. Compared to her, anyway. They might be able to catch someone who was old or sick, or a small child, but they’d never catch her. Not unless she broke a leg or something. She laughed again. She was sure she could outrun a day runner on three legs anyway.

She was running with the Sun behind her, breathing easily as she cantered across the shortgrass prairie. She looked back over her shoulder, as Plainsrunners instinctively did, but she wasn’t expecting to see any pursuers. More than anything, she was admiring her haunches in the low sunlight. She liked the way the muscles rhythmically bunched and relaxed under her skin. She liked the way the tiny scales of her skin gleamed like burnished copper in this light. It was vanity and self-pride, which were both deeply frowned upon in the village. Everyone was supposed to be humble and dutiful and respectful and obedient, and it made her feel as if she couldn’t get enough air.

She caught a flicker of movement in one of her side eyes and her head snapped up and around, searching for it with her front eyes. She had two side-looking eyes exposed on the sides of her skull, sensitive to the least bits of movement that might be predators, either on the ground or in the air. And she had two forward-facing eyes under a protective brow on the front. The wide-field eyes of prey, and the bifocal eyes of a predator.

Her heart rate was up, and not just from the running. Her breathing, which had been easy, was now shallow as she focused her senses on the sky. She slowed and stopped, searching the way she’d been taught. Look at a spot and relax your vision. Move your gaze and repeat. The peripheral vision in her front eyes overlapped with the wide-field vision in her side eyes, and anything that moved and was large enough to resolve would soon appear.

She was alert and ready, but she didn’t expect to find anything. Her instincts told her that it might be a flier, so she went with her reflexive scans. Her species didn’t survive this long by ignoring possible danger. But her reason told her that it was too late for night fliers and too early for day fliers. The flicker she had seen was probably an insect. More often than not these things turned out to be nothing.
She was about to give up and continue her interrupted run when she caught it again. It was just a flash of light, but there was something up there. She focused her front eyes and relaxed her side eyes. Her prey eyes would keep her out of trouble while she concentrated on this. Whatever it was, she had never seen anything like it before.

The flash came again in almost the same place, but she still couldn’t make out what it was. It was possible that it might be a day flier. Their scales could catch the light like that. But it was still too early, and Sage felt that she should be able to see more. The fliers were huge and she should have been able to see its wings dark against the light blue sky. Unless maybe it was soaring too high. Higher than she had ever heard of. She shook her head, almost as if there were a fly in her ear. It was too early. How could a flier get that high without strong thermals?

She caught another glint, and this time she thought it was lower. Her feet moved a little in a nervous dance. If it was a flier, then it was getting closer. Maybe she should be thinking about getting home. Maybe running as fast as she could. Her feet skittered in that direction, as if they had already decided, but she stopped them and planted them firmly. This couldn’t be a flier. Reason and logic told her that. She didn’t know what it was or whether it might be even more dangerous, but she wasn’t going to run away before she found out.

There it was again, and this time it was more than a flash of light. There was some bulk to it. Some shape. A glimpse and it was gone, leaving a tantalizing afterimage of its substance. It was nothing like the vast spreading wings of a flier. It didn’t look as if it had any wings at all. But without wings, how was it staying up there? Why hadn’t it plummeted straight to the ground by now?

Suddenly she had it. The image snapped clear in her mind and she knew what was happening. This thing, whatever it was, was gliding. Like the seeds of the tall sentinel trees on the plains. Or the little glider toys that children played with. It wasn’t falling because it was gliding. But from where? There was no place high enough for it to have come from. Even the Scarp was nowhere near that high.

This time when she saw it she got a good idea of its form. There were definitely no wings. It looked like a simple, solid shape. Kind of like a wedge. Or maybe an arrowhead. It certainly didn’t look as if it should fly, or even glide. Now she was more curious than ever. She really had to see what this was. She still didn’t know if it was dangerous or not, but she was going to stay and find out.

Now it was continuously visible. She could see that it was gliding in a circle. No, it was spiraling down, getting lower at each revolution. But not a spiral. The radius of the circle wasn’t changing. It was coming down in a helix, and if it continued with that trajectory, then it would land about a kilometer away.

Her feet began to move in that direction. Moments ago they were skittering toward home, and now they wanted to go toward the very thing that had frightened her. She shook her head again and let her feet carry her toward the object’s projected landing site. As she watched the glider she could see that it was tilted slightly, banking into its constant-radius turn. The front of it, the pointy end of the wedge, was slightly higher than the rear, too. She could recall seeing fliers, the smaller ones that weren’t dangerous, doing that. Tipping back as they approached to land. She had an instinctive sense that it was to catch more air, to slow down.

She lost sight of the glider just as it landed. The prairie was pretty flat on the whole, but up close it was textured with hillocks and depressions, and even the short grass was tall enough to hide something this size. She didn’t see it land, but she saw the small puff of dust that it kicked up, and she started to run in that direction before she caught herself. She realized that she no longer believed that it was something to be feared. She also realized that she had been focused so much on the glider that she’d forgotten to stay alert for other threats. She stopped and did a complete scan, both sky and ground. There were still day runners to worry about. She knew she could outrun them if it came to that, but if one ambushed her she might not have time to run. Even though day runners, and all other predators, were afraid of Plainsrunners and their weapons, they would still take one given the chance.

Her scan done, she approached the landing site more cautiously. As she craned her neck over a small rise, she saw it. There was a small divot where it must have landed, then about ten meters of scuffed dirt and broken grass. At the end of it was the artifact, resting on its rounded bottom, canted over to one side. It was shaped somewhat like an arrowhead after all. The front came to a point, which widened smoothly to the squared off back end. While the bottom was rounded from side to side, the top was flat. The point at the front, the corners at the back and all the edges in between were also rounded. She found it surprisingly small. It was only a little over a meter long.

She lifted her head for a quick look around, then crept slowly forward. Her ears were pointing at it, while occasionally swiveling, singly or together, all around. The thing was a dull gray color. She thought it might be metallic, but she couldn’t be sure. It was making no sound. She couldn’t smell anything. It was just lying there, apparently inert.

She warily circled it, her head popping up regularly to look for danger. When she got to the other side, where it had been canted away from her, she could see that there was something on the top. Some markings, it looked like. She was close enough now to tell if it was hot or cold, and she could feel nothing, so she edged up to it and reached out a hand. Slowly, stopping and starting, she extended her hand, while keeping her body as far away as possible. Holding her breath, she touched it and jumped back, her head snapping up as she tried to look in every direction at once.

She thought she saw the grass move about a hundred meters away, near where she’d been when the artifact landed. She stared, ears pointed, but nothing happened, so she turned back to the thing. She snorted. She couldn’t keep calling it that. “Thing.” Or “artifact.” She had to come up with a proper name for it.
She heard the faintest of thumps, the slightest of whispers in the grass, and she looked up to see a day runner coming toward her at full speed. Without thinking, she grabbed the nameless thing. It looked heavy enough to make a good weapon, if worse came to worst. She was surprised to find that it was nearly weightless. Since it was useless for defense, she bolted.

The runner was almost on her by the time she got up to speed, and it was a close thing, but she got away cleanly, leaving the runner cuffing the ground and howling its frustration. Sage cantered lightly across the prairie toward home, buoyed by her escape and by the exotic treasure she held in her arms.

What a disappointment when she tried to show them. They screamed at her and told her to take it out of the village and throw it away. They wouldn’t listen to her when she tried to tell her story. She even thought some of them looked disappointed that the runner hadn’t got her. She told herself that couldn’t be true; she was overreacting. But now the elders were in there deciding what to do about her. Her parents were in there with them, and she was out here alone, pacing the beaten earth of the compound, with small children peering fearfully at her from inside their huts.

Finally the elders came out and stood facing her. With her mother frowning sternly and her father looking at her with tears in his eyes, she listened in numb shock as she was banished from the village.

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