Chapter 1 of Book Three

I thought I would start off my blogs with an excerpt of my next book. Tuball:The Lost City was the first, and The Sanctuary was the second. I'm still working on the title for book number three. Enjoy!

Chapter 1---The Beginning of the End


Shem’s breathing was labored as he reached the summit of the ridge. He was older now and his body didn’t work the way he wanted it to. He found a boulder with a nice flat surface to rest upon. From the highest point on the plateau, the land and water, east to west, north to south, were clearly visible.
“I will spend the night here and inspect the waters in the morning,” he noted to a crow that had followed him on the trail. “This will be my last task before I return home. I can do no more.”
In the distance, Shem spotted the large channel of water that connected the great western sea to the black sea. “So this is where people of the valley say the salty water mixes with the sweet. Tomorrow I will find out the truth.”
The sun had set and the dark-blue twilight was laid out in splendor above a deep-red horizon. With no moon present, the stars quickly began to brighten. Shem gazed upward and couldn’t help but notice a large and long, bright light. He was struck by its size and luminescence. I have never seen such a star before. It has a tail and runs across the sky as if it fears something. Was this what Father worried of? Is this the time of mankind’s doom?
***
Millions of miles above Shem, among the celestial lights, lurked the wandering star. However, this was no ordinary star. It was a gigantic comet of loosely-packed chunks of ice, mud, and ore. It was like a small ocean, frozen around house-sized boulders and mucky soil, with snow and ice so loose, only its local sphere of influence kept it from flying apart.
An eon in time had passed since its inception, and the comet crept methodically throughout the heavens, on a trajectory determined by the gravitational forces of interstellar bodies. Thousands and thousands of years drifting through space were finally coming to an end. It raced passed the Sun’s outer planets, and then through the solar system’s asteroid belt, shedding fragments of its mass as it collided with cosmic debris. This comet could have easily been destroyed by a distant planet, or even a rogue asteroid. Instead, it would either fall to its destruction in the Sun’s fiery, hydrogen furnace, or to a nearby planet…Earth.