You're welcome
I see it in my local bookshop's catalogue - available to order. I've added to my Discover List.

Cliffhanger ending. Intriguing.🤔

Ha! Good one.

water that quickly crystalized.
"Here," I said, "I would stay awhile," amused that my face must appear as an animated boss.
I slipped back into the stone, back into my stone-bound ocean. No longer thirsting.

12/12

fabric and metal, liquid against flesh.
The nodules gave way against my nakedness, creating a stone-bound ocean about me the deeper I delved. Schools of creatures swam about me as if I were an island.
Need required me to seek out a wall where I could exchange gases, my breath expelling

11/12

began attacking the nodules as if it were some iced treat. And, like an ice treat, the stone began to melt under my touch. First my tongue, then my nose, then my forehead creased the stone, all revelling at the water bathing me.
Withdrawing, water became crystal again, remaining stone against
10/12

see the guts of some insect. Instead I saw my quickly drying skin.
"No! No!" I smeared my finger across my face mask. So near.
Now helmless, one finger at a time, I fed myself water, unaware of the mechanism that supplied me, only knowing I wasn't receiving water fast enough. Like a child, I

9/12

repeatedly, as I tracked one squeezing into a crack between two globules, too thin for my gauntlet.
Rashly, I removed my gauntlet and probed the crack with a finger.
I felt something. A sting. A bite. Something familiar. Liquid. Water.
"Oh water!"
I withdrew my finger, my brain expecting to

8/12

doubt it'd be rediscovered with my fossilized remains. Then, in anger, I chipped off another piece and hurled it down the shaft, striking the ceiling instead, and exploding in shards.
Something moved behind the dust. Translucent creatures like millipeds. "Not alone after all," I said

7/12

So be it, I entered. Nought but rocks and sand greeted me. Deeper I strove, finding the walls covered with milky-white globules, some type of mineral the instruments can't ID. I chipped off a sample and sealed it in a collection pouch. My great discovery after a lifetime of toil. I had no

6/12

my joke as I made my way to it. Not a rock but a wall of some kind; a cliff, or a shore containing the sand. Too high, too steep to surmount. A barrier. Left or right—what matter. I continued in the direction my feet are pointing; moving forward until I found a cleft. A tomb for a fool.

5/12

I heft a stone, imagining it's an umbrellaed drink slowly sipped under the eaves of a palm. I let it fall on my boot and it clatters away dryly.
We lost Davies to the dry. Four remain now.
My feet walk I don't know where, only that the Lander is behind me. A rock is before me. "Ha!" I laugh at

4/12

Some of the others say I'm a fool. That I should be conserving my energy. Maybe so. Maybe so. But I was compelled to continue. Maybe there's an ocean just below the surface. Just beyond reach mocking our instruments. Maybe each pebble held water sequestered in its mineral matrix.

3/12

There's an unspoken fear that the lander will become our grave markers. Several of the remaining crew have since recorded their epitaphs, in a slim hope our crash site will, one day, be discovered.
The instruments say there's water. When I'm not needed for repairs, I sought it out.

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