CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CHARACTERS: Eli Nighthorse's Brief Interlude

I really don't have much part in this particular story, though later, Sin and Andi both played a greater part in mine. I grew up with Andi, was a childhood friend, and wanted to be much more than that. I gave Andi her first kiss behind her father's barn when she was thirteen, decided then and there that when we were both older, I'd ask her father to let us marry. Then that damned Tran beat me to it. He was the first alien I lost Andi to.

My name? Oh, I'm Eli Nighthorse, one of the Naturals. I'm a little different from the others because my mother is Astarte Nighthorse, from New Liberia on Mars, and still dresses as they do. My father was from the Valley as Vicente and his family. I don't look much different from the others...but I've been treated a little differently nevertheless. Perhaps that's why Andi and I became friends so soon, because neither of us was the usual type of Natural.

Anyway, I loved Andi Talltrees then, and I love her now, and between the time Tran was arrested and escaped, and Andi disappeared and returned, and I found her walking down that highway a year later, I didn't know what to think. I knew my Andi couldn't be the traitor the Fed said she was. Tran I wasn't so sure about. I had reason to hate him anyway. After all, he'd stolen the woman I loved. When I opened the truck door and she climbed in and put her head on my shoulder and began to cry, all I could think of was, Here's my chance. Now I can get Andi back! Selfish of me, but that's the way a man's mind thinks when confronted by the woman he loves.

Then, she told everyone she was having a baby--not Tran's but the child of the smuggler who'd helped her escape the Fed--and I was one of the few who didn't shun her. Oh, Andi, you're so brave--and so stupid! Now, of course, the whole story has changed. He showed up, and I've lost her again, to another alien.

Perhaps some things aren't really meant to be. Perhaps I'm always just going to be the good friend in the story, but it doesn't mean I can't keep hoping, does it? My mother says I should give up and start looking for a woman of my own, stop wasting my time.

Don't know if I can....

(Sinbad's Last Voyage is the first novel in the series The Adventures of Sinbad, released as an e-book and paperback by Double Dragon Publishers. It has also been made into an audio book in abridged form by Books in Motion. Sinbad's Wife is scheduled for publication in June, 2008.)