The piece below features two of the main characters, Ember and Bishop, at Tian Lake.

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For the cycles before his death, it seemed endless words poured from my grandfather’s mouth in a slow trickle. I lapped up his brine-soaked legends of translucent, tentacled beings, and of underwater civilizations filled with intelligent, bottle-nosed, flippered people who spoke in song.

My soles have always been red with the blood of this place— its loam and clay— but water ran in my veins.

… Now, there was only desert beyond the shields of the city. Vast, rolling dunes and sand-laced wind hostile enough to shred flesh. They said the air out there was poison.

I know people tend to be fairly surprised that the extraterrestrials in Unidentified aren’t exactly small, contrary to popular ideas about “little” grey men. Gabi did a great job with character proportions relative to each other in this piece. There’s a lot in the novel taken from classic abduction/ET contact reports, but I chose to turn those tropes on their heads to create something different.

The background in this piece is also quite significant, and I love the way she painted it! Thank you, Gabi, for a beautiful rendition of the characters I’ve spent so much time with.

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