Jena of Atlantis, Rangers Quest II

Chapter 1   Flying Attractions

The fly wouldn’t talk.  No spits, grunts or groans.  No melodies or bad jokes.  It just sat there.  It was one of those green bottle flies, with the metallic color of moss, long spidery legs covered in spiny black hair, and those mysterious orb eyes that saw all and knew none.  The wings didn’t look used much.  The way the fly sat there, it looked like he never flew at all, not at all like the ragged winged dragonflies or worn out moths.  He was perched on Jena’s knee, as she sat hunched up in the aircraft.

Jena had been flying for about an hour now.  Well, then.  This is the year of 62,977b.c., which is putting it back some.  This is Atlantis, the early years in the province of Ibu, the northwest portion of that old long gone continent.  What a lot of color not to have around now.  And species!  Plants! Animals!  Some of these still live now, but what an explosion of life forms then. She could look over the edges of the tiny aircraft and only imagine what sort of crawly smelly things were inching along in the jungled greenery down below.  All kinds of things trying themselves out in their peculiar breathless beauty.  Knocking around, eating each other, winning out in the root race wars for water, and finding love in all it’s varieties.  Plants and animals both, vying for each others attentions, and personal glory.

What an arena.

The times were every bit as much exciting.  The weather was unstable and often dangerous.  The larger animals could be a definite problem at dinnertime.  The earthquakes and volcanoes were more than just color on the horizon, they often invited themselves right into your bed at night.  And the meteor showers were more than just entertainment, they were sometimes tickets to the afterlife and all your passed on relatives.  Happy times for all, except maybe the meteors themselves, which tended to end at their destinations.

There were plenty of typhoons to please even the crustiest old guys, and hammering rain storms to tickle the most finicky grandmothers. Little children might delight at the large pointy insects that found their way onto the windows, and the endless pampered pets people owned might laugh their shampoos off watching the human owners fight the sort of petty wars we still fight now.  There weren’t many ‘idle moments’.  Those times were packed to the gills with events jumping over each other to get into the big picture.

There were ten provinces to do it in.  Each had a leader, and the kinds of councilors and endless circles of strange little offices that deaden the functions of governments even today.  The titles of the leaders changed throughout the eras of Atlantis, as did some of their functions, but there was never any lack of titles, peoples, or events to fill them.

There were five basic color races of people, although this was very diluted even this far back.  There was some challenge into marrying outside of your race, because each had it’s own attributes.  Strengths, skills, weaknesses and defects.  But it worked out, and could be a lot of fun. The province of Ibu was mostly the ‘Brown Race’, just like Jena.