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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

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SecondFirst Draft?

For Hearth and Home

Attempt 2, second story. another really looooong post. For real.

An angry buzzing burned in rhythmic pulses through the trees, relentless and unfeeling in it’s insistence for attention. It echoed throughout the forest as if heralding some coming doom. Kimberly’s hair whipped about in the blasting wind, brown strands lashing at her face as she tried to peer between the natural columns standing in impassive majesty.

There!

In the darkness, a fading red light. It was beating like a heart in time with the sound ringing about her. Dread fell over her heart as she began a slow shuffle towards it. Then a walk. Then a run. She stretched out her hand as if she might reach the red light faster by doing so. She didn’t know what else she could do. She hadn’t expected this.

Expected what?

She wasn’t sure. But it was over, all over. The certainty of that settled like a lead weight in her stomach. Something horrible had just occured. Something she knew about, something that could be labeled under a single, awful word that seemed just barely beyond her grasp at the moment. Her gaze drifted up through the trees at a sky growing suddenly, unnaturally bright.

It was coming.

The end.

She heard a gunshot. Three more. Glass shattered. Then sky opened up, and in a deathly silence, began pouring down sheets of heavy rain.

Not rain. Those weren’t drops at all. Those were bodies. Winged bodies, falling from holes in the clouds, like cursed angels or abandoned ragdolls.

No. Not falling from clouds. Tumbling out of holes in a cliffside seeping out a sickly colored gas. Their homes. The bodies were falling out of homes dug into the cliff. They fell without the slightest wingbeat to save themselves, wave upon wave, all different sizes, all dark against the brightness in the sky, until the whole of the sky itself turned dark.

Everything vanished into blackness in the blink of an eye. For a moment, a horrid moment, it seemed nothing would exist again. Except the buzzing. That was still there. Buzz, buzz, buzzing louder than before and roaring through the blackness. It grew louder still, Buzz, Buzz, Buzz, until it filled her being with each repetition, hammering around her, somehow mocking her in her sorrow. She tried to turn away from it, tried to move away. But there was no ground to run on, no water to swim through.

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

She would be here forever. A tear formed at the cusp of her eyelid and flung itself off the precipice.

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

That sound would be her hell.

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

That sound was her alarm clock.

She was lying on her bed. She could feel it now. The familiar sagging in the middle of the uncovered mattress and the t-shirt cotton sheet she used for a blanket in the heat. The failing pillow under her head. She flung an arm out in the general direction of the offensive sound and felt her hand strike the nightstand much harder than she intended, eliciting a very impolite shout as her whole body cringed. She groaned ungratefully at the morning sun streaming into her room and blinked into the light, then looked over at the offending nightstand for her real target, her cell phone.

Fumbling clumsily, she eventually managed to slide the correct pattern across the smooth surface and deactivate the awful alarm. She glared at it moodily, set it down, then picked it up to look at it again and actually check the time.

5:34. Damn. Why had she set her clock so early? She tossed the phone aside in disgust and ran her hands over her face as she contemplated going back to sleep. She tried, in fact. She lay back into the cushy backdrop and tried to drift off again. But her legs twitched every time she thought she might actually make it. That happened sometimes. Her body deciding it was already awake now, thank you very much, and it wasn’t going to wait for her mind to catch up. She groaned again and tossed the thin blanket aside. “

“Fine” she grumbled as she swung her legs off the bed and half rolled, half stood onto her feet. She sighed. Life was hard. Stumbling, or stomping, she made her way down the narrow hall to the small kitchenette to make breakfast. Nothing fancy. She hated cooking, and despised long prep times, especially in the morning. Toast today, she figured as she took two slices of bread from the loaf and stuffed them unceremoniously in the toaster. She turned to start the coffee pot warming, then took five steps to the ‘living room’ to turn on the tv. Didn’t matter to what, she just like the noise.

A pair of electric yellow eyes watched her move across the room.

She returned to her kitchen corner where the toaster resided and waited impatiently for the machines around her to be ready. The coffee machine won the race and she reached for a mug to put it in place.

The yellow eyes followed the movement.

She put the mug down, then selected her brew for the morning and hit the appropriate buttons. In less than a minute she had a perfect hot morning beverage in front of her. Well, almost perfect.

The head that the yellow eyes belonged to make quick darting motions as it watched the human woman reach into the refrigerator, retrieving a small bottle of liquid. It made a soft hissing sound and reared back, readying muscles in a low crouch to jump forward.

She didn’t hear it. The quiet rumbling of the fridge muffled the warning. She poured the creamer and set it back in it’s home, stirred the coffee and took a sip.

Just as the creature launched from it’s hiding place “Kim, wait!”

Kim promptly gagged and spit her coffee out over the sink, coughing violently at the bitter taste the spoiled creamer left in her mouth.

“I am sorry, Kim. The cream is gone bad. I had thought that it would come to your senses sooner.” Said the creature, standing beside her. She looked at it, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her nightshirt.

“Notice. You thought i’d ‘notice’ sooner.”

“Just so, yes.”

The creature stood about four feet tall. It’s body was roughly reminiscent of dinosaurs, like velociraptor in the old sci-fi movies. It had similar leg posture, though it’s feet didn’t end with the same infamous ragged hook claw. Instead it’s feet were a weird mix of bird morphology and gecko toes. It was chest and hip heavy, with a tail that currently lay in a relaxed curve around the being’s feet. Slim shoulders led to slender arms that ended in four fingered, also vaguely gecko-like hands. It had a third set of limbs just above and behind this. Large wings, covered in something like scutes or semi flexible spines with a “hood” of skin over each of them. It had a strong ‘s’ shape curved neck that ended in a curious oval head with a muzzle and a large roman nose. Three horizontal slits broke the top center line of the muzzle, widening and narrowing as the creature drew breath. It’s ears were tiny curled fleshy rosettes on either side of it’s head.

A Dangri, a curious beast of alien origin, discovered recently on an expedition that Kimberly had come back from maybe five years ago, back when the wormhole had first appeared near Jupiter and humanity had first figured out how to harness it. She had been on one of the early visits. They had discovered a planet on the other side of the space-time rip, something of a godsend, really, since the Earth was in a growing state of crisis. Nobody argued about that anymore. They needed a new home. So Kimberly and the crew she belonged to had been sent to explore this one. And on it, they’d found the Dangri. It was Kim who discovered they were more than just animals. That they had intelligence and capability to learn language. She was still on the forefront of communications with them.

Especially after the rest of her expedition unfolded.

This one, neither a male nor female as most Dangri had proven to be hermaphrodites, went by Illoue. Kim and Illoue had something of a bond. So when the dangri came to spend time on earth, Kim had opened her home to the alien.

The dangri sniffed at the air, tossing it’s muzzle up. “Is there something that has been set to flame?”

“The toast!”

Kim turned and saw that the toaster had apparently jammed somehow. She yanked the plug from the wall and waved the curling smoke away as she checked the device. Oh. Not jammed. She had just turned the dial too far. She sighed and began to dig the remnants of blackened breakfast out of the machine. Illoue uttered a soft staccato of sounds from the throat, in a bird-like imitation of a chuckle before nudging Kim out of the way with ‘wrist’ of a wing. The alien easily fished the toast out with a small claw, and Kim wandered over to the living room to give her friend room to work.

“You don’t have to do that, you know.” She remarked helplessly. Illoue simply waved her off and she rolled her eyes as she turned her attention to the tv. On screen, a reporter was informing the audience on a brief history of the very expedition Kim had been on. She stared at it pensively.

“... lost their home to the actions of a single man, one Dr Whately, who officials now believe was suffering from a form of reactive psychosis due to the loss of his son and the stress of interstellar travel. Saved by the remaining crew, the refugees have since been sheltered among us, but some are beginning to question the wisdom of keeping yet more people on a planet already intensely overburdened....”

Kim rubbed the tanned bridge of her nose. It was too early for this kind of talk.

Dr. Whately. He’d been her friend and colleague on the expedition. The lead biologist working alongside her anthropological studies. She thought they’d been on the same page about discovering new species. But he found the dangri intelligence difficult to believe. When she and Illoue had finally proved it to him... he hadn’t taken it well.

Illoue’s facial expressions were hard to read sometimes, as different as they were from a humans, but Kim could see a stillness overtake the alien’s form as the news continued it’s rambling. Neck curving back into a tense shape, wings tucking tightly under arms, Illoue grunted a little.

“They feel we have perhaps stayed beyond our welcome?”

That wasn’t good. Kim reached for the remote and fumbled with it to change the channel. “There’s always idiots.” she answered, “Every population has them.”

“I’m just saying,” said a man on the tv with a mic shoved under his face, “How long does it take to dig some more holes in a cliff? These guys just need to get back up on their feet and-”

“Number 5 on our list of top post-extinction predators, the rat!” Ah, a nature show. Much better.

Illoue came into the living room and nodded toward the kitchen, indicating breakfast was ready. Kim scampered softly over, thanking her friend for helping her sleepy self out. She took a bit of her toast, a sip of the, thankfully delicious, coffee and glanced back at Illoue. Without being asked, she went ahead and pulled out one of the fruits from the fridge and began to peel and slice it. Not an Earthen fruit at all, but one of Illoue’s favorites. It had a tough exterior that was fairly resistant to dangri claws.

The dangri looked at her “Do you think there will be many of such thoughts at the conference today?”

“Conference?”

“The meeting of minds you are to make with ‘officials’ about the moving of your people.”

Kim stopped with her knife in mid slice, her eyes bulging wide, “That’s today?!”

Illoue‘s head bobbed and swung to one side as if trying to view Kim in better light. “It is why you set your alarm, friend.” “Ah damn it!”

She finished her breakfast in a blur, handing the fruit over to Illoue, who thanked her and watched Kim prepare. The alien was already ‘dressed’ in a sense. Dangri fashion wasn’t the same as a humans, predictably. They wore light garments, things that hung off the neck and attached again at belt around the waist, past the point where the bottom of their wings were. They often wore rings around the neck or neck scarves and sometimes wore leggings or wrist and tail bands with fabric that trailed in the wind while they flew. Illoue in particular wasn’t much for the trailing fabrics though. Just the shirt and the neck coils, and a pair of odd sandals that had come into fashion when dangri arrived on Earth, designed by a clever entrepreneur who overheard how unpleasant the hot pavements were to the dangrian’s sensitive footpads.

Kim, on the other hand, was less prepared, and had more to do. She showered quickly, towel squeegeed her hair, tossed on undergarments and a light grey dress shirt, lamenting that color dyes were so costly these days. She had to dig in her dresser for the folded brown slacks, then went on a hunt for her dressier shoes. It took her a while, but she found them, resting in a corner next to a small bookshelf by the door. Now dressed, she lassoed her hair back into a somewhat controlled ponytail and applied the little bit of makeup she felt comfortable with.

She glanced at the clock. 6:15.

“It’s at eight, yeah?” called Kim as she tried the collar button both clasped and undone.

“Seven thirty is when we are to arrive” Illoue replied, glancing through the window of the apartment down at the street. “That is not much time, is it?” Time ran slightly longer on Denke. Roughly fifteen hours of daylight on average, and of course the dangri used different units, so Illoue tended to be bad a measuring hours. There was concern in the musical tone though.

Kim strode out of the bedroom and immediately went for her purse “Uh... it’s enough. If we hurry. If the road is clear.”

“I can fly.”

Kimberly paused and actually considered it for a moment, then shook her head and opened the door, gesturing for Illoue to go by first. “I’m sure they’d cut us a bit of slack on that, but I don’t think they’d appreciate it. Besides, it’s a strain on you. You told me that last time.”

Illoue’s head turned to look at Kim over alien shoulders, teeth baring in a somewhat unnerving grin. “There is truth. Your people are heavy”

Kim faked a horrified gasp “How dare you?”

The door closed on a humor filled bird-like chuckle, and the two made their way down to street level.

Dangri initially flew everywhere in the city, much like they would have done at home. But they discovered quickly that the wind acted, in their words, ‘weird’ in the presence of the hot ground and tall buildings. They were often surprised by strong updrafts, and many complained of the air being ‘too thick’ and ‘not filling’. It took a while to work out what they meant. Earth in general had a less oxygen rich atmosphere than Denke, but in the cities the air quality was particularly bad. That, coupled with complaints from people about privacy concerns, led to a public ordinance of ‘no fly zones’ in most of the city. Some had tried to learn other methods, but bikes just weren’t made for dangri bodies, and motorcycles were worse, with the breeze catching in their wings. Dangri were incredibly lightweight for their size, and their wings were actually quite fragile. So most prefered to just walk where they needed to go, rather than try to squeeze onto group transport. Walking dangri looked amusing to most humans. They used exaggerated hip and leg movements like shore birds, and if they had to go at any speed it was often with slight hops and skips, a little like lightweight kangaroos.

Luckily for Illoue, Kimberly had a jeep, and while the alien didn’t exactly fit in the passenger side, the back area made for a comfortable resting place for traveling in style. Looking along the streets as they passed by, Illoue took notice of others on the street. “Faded colors,” the dangri commented, “there is much stress.” Kim glanced out the window herself, “We’re trying, Illoue. It hasn’t been easy, I know. Hopefully this conference can help bring up new ideas to make life easier for everyone.” If her voice sounded hollow, there wasn’t much she could do about it. After all, it was humans who had put the dangri in this position to begin with.

One human. One smart, bitter human, with access to materials toxic to the dangri. And someone to show him exactly where to place it.

“It will get better,” Kim continued hopefully, “We’ll work everything through. You’ll see.”

Illoue’s head bobbed again. They traveled in silence for a while. Kimberly drummed her

“You did not cause it.” Illoue’s somehow fluted voice sounded almost soothing. “The doctor tracked you like a hunter. You did not set the trap.”

“Doesn’t exactly make me feel any better.”

The dangri paused for a moment, thinking, then nodded once firmly “It is important.”

“You mean ‘it makes a difference’”

“No. It is important.” Illoue insisted. “What you say, 'doesn’t exactly make me feel better’. It is important that it does not. I would not be at rest if you felt better.”

Kimberly fell silent again. The dangri had a habit of being sharply honest. It was something Kim had seen before in other cultures, but not in many. Most of them had developed niceties, ways of cajoling and placating everyone around them. Saying 'it’s okay’ when someone offered apology, even if the initial offense was not, could not, be made right with words or gestures. Dangri, or at least, the ones she had met, tended to state things rather bluntly, finding expression of feeling important, including the feeling of acknowledged wrongs.

“You’re still letting me do most of the talking at the conference, right?” Kim checked as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears. The dangri chuckled again, “Yes. You will dance with the words. I would not be chosen for that task at home either.”

Traffic was, unfortunately, just as heavy as Kimberly had been afraid it would be. They did their best to weave through the maze of old model luxury vehicles and a large number of mass transporters, buses, etc, but it still placed them pulling up to the civic center, where the conference would take place, at exactly seven thirty. On time, but late.

The media was already gathered around, cameramen circled around reporters like wolves around buffalo, a cachophany of voices blending into something similar to a drumming river. Kim circled around to the relative refuge of the parking garage and found a spot. Almost as soon as wheels stopped turning she killed the engine and opened the door.

The sound of rustling came to Kimberly’s ears and she glanced in the rear view mirror to see what her friend was up to. The dangri was shifting around a little, reaching for the inside the vest-piece, where Kim knew the pockets of the garment were located.

“I have a gift to bring you, Kimberly. I did not want to hold you at the house, so I waited until now.”

Illoue pulled out a coil of strange material, the kind of coil that would normally be fitted around a dangrian neck, just like the one the alien was wearing now. “It is made for you. Out of the...” Illoue seemed to struggle for the word, “The tree-blood-stone. It is strong, like you.”

Amber. The whole thing, slender and frail feeling in her hands, was made and shaped from the Denke equivalent of amber. Similar in structure and color to the same fossilized tree sap on earth, though much younger by comparison. The trees of Denke went through a lot, and had developed a sap that hardened quickly. Dangri had become masters at harvesting and shaping it. But she hadn’t thought this kind of manipulation of the material was possible. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface, and still only just found the strange hinge in the back, and the spot in the front where the coils could hook together.

“It will bend enough to be placed,” Illoue continued, choosing now to take the coil from Kimberly’s hands and set it around her neck for her, “but it will not bend much more. Do not use much force to place it.”

It was indeed shaped to fit. It coiled and wound it’s way up and around the entirety of Kim’s neck, instead of resting at the collarbone like a necklace might. Intricate little swirls danced over olive skin. She looked in the side mirror of the jeep to see how the jewelry fit. It was very pretty. That meant very significant, usually. She looked back at her friend.

“You’re sure you want me to have it?”

The dangri’s head bobbed, then nodded, “You spoke for us before we could speak. You speak for us now. I do not know how to say it your way.” Illoue drifted into native language, full of rolling vowel sounds and sliding tones. Kimberly didn’t recognize the pattern. She could pick up parts of it very well, but this one remained a mystery. Her brows knitted together as she tried to puzzle it out, but Illoue didn’t give her time, pushing her along.

“I will try to find words later,” the alien replied, “Now you must talk.”

Chapter 2

So much hurry and hassle, just to sit and murmur for ages. Kimberly focused hard to resist leaning her head and shoulders over the back of her chair like an impatient child as she waited for people to arrive and find their seats. They were all supposed to be seated by now, right? Hadn’t she been worried about being late just a half an hour ago? Ridiculous.

Illoue sat beside her on a stool, since the chairs were ill-suited to people with wings and tails. The dangri didn’t look half as bored. Kim studied her friend. Most of Illoue’s hide was a smooth grey-blue, made up of something not quite like reptilian scales, exactly, but more like the soft delicate ones on butterfly wings. The base color was broken up by darker striping, which collected into black points around the hands, tailtip, and feet, as well as forming a solid bar down the nose. Both colors faded to almost a buckskin tan on the underside of Illoue’s neck and belly. Over the point of blackness on the tail, there was a spot of natural white pigment as well. Dangri tails were partially prehensile. Illoue had explained they had stories and lessons of the spot being used to help find each other in the dense forests. Dangri apparently came from a heavily arboreal lineage. They were remarkably good at hiding there, among the giant trees. The back of their wings were almost always drab blends of dark greens and blues, so when they clung to the bark and puffed up their ‘feathers’, they seemed to dissappear in the foliage. The ‘underside’ of their wings were much different. Kim could see hints of bright color from here. They varied fantastically from individual to individual. Illoue’s often reminded Kim of a brilliant tropical sunset, even with the giant eye-spots out towards the ends. Illoue’s own eyes were so intense. Strangely curled vertically slit pupils rested amid shades of yellow, from goldenrod through to weak sunbeam. The iris almost filled the entire eye. You could only just see the border of it when Illoue’s gaze flicked away. There was a rough patch on the neck. Right now it was the same color as the rest of the dangri’s skin, but Kim knew in moments of heightened emotion it would change colors. The ears would too, unfurling up and back as they pumped with blood. Fascinating creatures.

“You’re gonna make someone think you have a crush there, Ms. Dale.” The voice was heavy, male, and almost comically drawn out. Kimberly looked up towards it to find a tall man dressed in formal military wear with short dark hair smiling down at her through humor-filled green eyes, his well muscled arms crossed in front of his chest. .

“Tucker!” Kim lit up at the sight of her friend. “You’re here too?”

He laughed and tugged at his uniform, straightening imaginary wrinkles, “Apparently, I’m not allow to miss it. Commander Tamlison is here too,” he looked around the crowd, “Er... somewhere anyway.”

“Elise?” Kim followed his gaze, trying to pick out the ramrod straight form of the officer who had been in charge of her expedition. It didn’t take long. Elise Tamlison cut a distinctive figure, even among others with a military background. She was the definition of precise. Uniform expertly pressed, pins perfectly aligned, and shoes tied so that the laces were very evenly balanced. The only ‘frivolity’ she seemed to allow herself was her hairstyle, and even then Kim was fairly sure that if you were to take measurements, the tiny rows of braids would be almost mathematically even. Apparently her TI used to single her out for being too uptight. That’s what the rumors said anyway. Kim had never seen anyone say that to the dark woman’s face, not even Tucker.

“Ah, hey now....” Tucker lowered his voice to a murmur, “I know we all shared some history, but you know how these stuffed-shirts can be sometimes. You might want to stick with ‘Commander’ here.”

Kimberly scoffed and raised her eyebrow in mock accusation at the soldier “Then I better be hearing ‘Doctor Dale’ from you, mister.”

Tucker chuckled, then nodded in the Commander’s direction “You gonna go say hi or anything?” Kim’s eyes widened a little and she looked back to Elise. She suddenly became much more fidgety, shifting about in place as she looked at that imposing form and clearing her throat quietly "Er, no I don't think I should. It's almost time for the meeting to start right? I think i'll just wait until afterwards. You know?"

Tucker shrugged "suit yourself. I'm going to go grab a seat, but you have a good point. How about we all stop in somewhere afterwards? it's been a while since we've hung out."

"I'll think about it."

A man began walking through the crowds, encouraging everyone to get back into their seats and advising camera crews off to the sides. Hilariously, many of them crouched down in front, like school children gathering for story time in class, though some of them were facing the audience instead of the ring of committee leaders and the podium. "Ok guys, down in front, down in front, everyone take their seats. Come on, please."

Ah, the joys of coordinating people. Kim leaned back in her chair a little and waited, watching as the crowd eventually quieted down.

Eventually the room came to order, and the (guy who heads the committee and/or leads the meeting) sat up a little straighter in his seat and leaned forwards towards the mic.

"Thank you everyone for gathering today to discuss the current and future relations of today's humanity and our extraterrestrial neighbors. I would like to remind you...."

That was the start of a very very long day. Every person wanted a little bit of time to introduce themselves, explain why their point of view was important, thank the committee for hearing them out, etc etc. Kim could feel her knee bouncing almost on it's own under the desk as she waited to get into the hearts of things.

Some of these people shouldn't even be here, she thought to herself. And with a glace at Illoue, she could tell the alien thought the same. What did the CEO of a computer company have to do with how well the dangri were integrating with the human population?

Others were people she really wanted to hear from. The representative of the CDA, for example, began immediately delving into the worrying subject of cross contaminations, and whether or not any microorganisms might be a danger to the populations of earth, or vice versa. (mention minor health incidences here)

Something felt off though. She couldn’t put her finger on it as she listened to the droning on of voices trying to make themselves sound more important than the others, but it was definitely there. She felt a little behind the conversation somehow, as if there was something everyone else in the room was heading towards discussing but just hadn’t gotten around to yet.

When her turn finally came about, and the floor recognized her, she pushed the thought aside, and leaned in. “Thank you. As an anthropologist, I have studied many cultural interactions of our own past. The interactions of our own species with our nearest relatives, the Neanderthals; The people of the Roman Empire; the Monglian domination of almost the entire Eurasian landscape, and of course the worldwide colonization of the British Empire. Throughout history, our people have always sought to incorporate, assimilate, or decimate the peoples around us in an effort to expand, living like addicts to the drug of superiority. It is only in the last couple thousand years, a cosmic blink of an eye, that we have taken a moment to reflect and see what our drunken sprees have cost us, in culture, in historical records, in knowledge, and in the lives of the people we harmed. As nations, and then as a world we began to wake up from our stupor. We tried to hold our own intervention, and in the following decades worked to make amends.Afterwards we clapped ourselves on the back for making it through detox, thinking we had bested our former selves. That we had grown up and matured as a species. That we would never touch that drug again.”

She paused for effect.

“ I am sure we all remember the tragic events that led us to now. In our desperation to find a new home, we were too hasty and too rash. In our determination we forgot lessons taught to us again and again by our forbears, and in doing so we mistreated, objectified, and outright refused to acknowledge the sentience of an entire species. Then, when we might have corrected that, our appalling lack of grace and self awareness led to the allowance of one man to devastate an entire population.”

She paused again, though she didn’t intend to this time. Images floated up in her field of vision.

Rain. Not rain. Bodies falling from holes in the cliff. Homes. Curling, awful tendrils of smoke chasing them to the ground.

She shook her head to dispel the pictures, swallowed to open her tightened throat, then, covering the room in a measured gaze, she continued “We didn’t just get off on the wrong foot with the dangri. We amputated the leg.”

Beside her, she could feel Illoue tense up, wings plastered tightly against flanks, neck curling back as the alien lowered it’s gaze to the ground. Out of the corner of her eye, Kim saw the patch on Illoue’s neck seem to fade in color. She looked to her friend, then back to the crowd.

“Fortunately, we have been graced with the opportunity to redeem ourselves. While it is generally known that we will have to leave this planet, much sooner than our parents and grandparents might have thought, it is important that we offer the little we have left to those displaced and traumatized by our actions. I am proud to say that while there are certainly issues that must be corrected and improved, we have, as a whole welcomed the refugees with far more open arms than history might have taught us to expect. But we are not done, and we must remember, always, the reasons that have gathered us together today. It will always be our fault that this happened. But together, we have the chance to take that responsibility, and prove how much we have learned from our mistakes.”

She leaned back and took a deep breath. There. That was her opening statement. Then, realizing she forgot something, she leaned in quickly, “Uh, and with that, I yield the rest of my time back to the room."

The speech rang a little hollow in her own ears, but she hoped that was just because she’d been practicing it, repeating it to herself until the words sounded very rehearsed and ineffective. Her gaze swept the room for expressions of boredom or mockery, but most of those gathered here were very practiced at keeping closed expression.

Tucker, in his seat next to Elise and across the room from Kim, briefly set his hand on the desk in front of him and stuck his thumb up, before brushing it against the tip of his nose as if to fend off some minor irritation.

“Thank you, Doctor Dale.” Replied the chairman in even tones. He opened his mouth to say something else, probably to call on the next person. Elise, for example, had not been introduced yet, when someone cleared their throat and tapped thier mic, signaling a desire for attention.

A man on the far side of the room waved his hand, and the Chairman looked over at him for a moment, then spoke “The floor recognizes Senator Douchebag of the Department of Snobs. Senator, you wish to say something?”

The man, a older figure somewhere in his fifties with a blue suit, red tie, and wispy hair, nodded his thanks to the Chairman. “Yessir. While Dr. Dale is quite accomplished on the issue of our history, i’m sure, I’m afraid I see her words as rather harsh. The events on Denke were the results of one man and one man only. Now, he might have had authority over numerous others, but we can hardly blame them for trusting someone who, at the time of the incident, was a well respected biologist who had been deliberately sent to offer advice and observations on whatever life we might have found on the planet’s surface.” (puff this up)

Kim sat forward again quickly, a frown burrowing into her brow “I’m sorry, are you saying we weren’t in fact responsible for the collapse of the homes and culture of the entire tribe of the Newland Cliffs dangri?”

The man spread his hands wide “I’m only saying that those responsible for the oversight were summarily dealt with, and the survivors already offered the shelter of our homes. I think it’s safe to say we have more than made up for our mistakes. We have financial and educational aid programs set up to help support the refugees in adjusting to new homes and to help them learn to live in our society. We offer them jobs to earn wages. How many have been employed as expedition guides? As assistants to researchers?”

“So, you think we’re even?”

“More than that. I think we have spent almost a decade repaying for barely a month’s work of tragedy. Tell me, Dr. Dale, how long we are supposed to pay before the debt is considered even? As you know, the Earth is running dry. We have fewer and fewer resources every day. Our people are working to set up a new life for us on Denke, but as you, yourself, put it, we have to learn from the mistakes of our past.”

It was his turn to scan the room, and he somehow managed to make the motion dramatic and poignant “We once thought nature’s resources endless. That it was impossible to run through such bountiful supplies. But in the end, we did. We can not approach our new home with the same thought, or we will only repeat ourselves. So the question, my fellow people, is this: What resources can we afford to share, and for how long can we share them?”

A murmur floated about the room, quiet voices discussing the situation among themselves. Kim sat in silence as she considered what she’d just heard. Across the room, Tucker closed his eyes and twined his fingers together, and Elise’s normally fierce but stony expression changed ever so slightly as the muscles along her chin tensed. Several other representatives spoke, each weighing in on their opinions, and Kimberly watched with a falling heart as the discussion slowly but surely turned from how to support the refugees to if they should support them at all.

Illoue began to shift about, becoming more and more restless as the conversation continued. Kimberly put her hand on the alien’s shoulder in a calming motion, but it didn’t seem to help much. She knew she was supposed to be the dangri’s voice at the committee, but the change in attitude left her speechless. They couldn’t really be talking about this could they? But they were. Someone, she wasn’t entirely sure who, even suggested that the dangri were becoming such a burden that it might be time to take alternative action. Nothing cruel, of course, just perhaps helping them seek aid from other dangri populations. Surely those populations would understand their fellow dangri more, and thus be able to take better care of them? Was it time to, perhaps, discuss deporting the dangri? Everyone was eventually going to have to leave earth anyway, right? So really it was just sending the dangri ahead on the time table a little bit. Much better use of resources to do that. Yes, much better use. Can’t waste those resources. THey’re important, you know. Resources, resources, resources. (drag the last part out more. Need more argument. Illoue’s interruption seems like an over reaction right now)

Illoue exploded from the seat beside Kim without warning, launching into the air on springlike tendons to land in a bodily thump on the desk with a fanning of wings, which shook and trembled as the scales raised and lowered, creating an astouding rattling sound like an army of rainsticks. Kimberly reached out to her friend, but the alien didn’t seem to notice. Illoue looked at the chairman “The floor will recognize a dangri.”

Not a question. Not a request.

The Chairman spoke into his mic “This is highly irregular, Illoue Cliff, I respectfully ask that you retake your seat and reframe your request.”

Illoue pointedly ignored him, looking around the room with a swivel of the neck. Yellow flame eyes landed on Senator Douchebag. “You speak of new resources. Of the wise spending of them” the dangri hopped down from the desk, refolding wings under arms while taking steps towards the open center of the room. “I ask a question of you. What amount was bought?”

The senator looked around at the others in the room, either to avoid Illoue’s gaze, or to look for answers. Eventually he leaned towards the mic, “I’m sorry... the cost?”

The dangri’s neck arched as ears unfurled, the patch under the neck beginning to shift colors. “What amount of resources did my people’s dying buy?” A reptilian tail slapped the ground in feline fashion, the end flaring out into a paddle like shape. “What is the worth of the life of a dangri? One meal for one dead? Two drinks for one hatchling? Maybe one house per Elder?”

The skin on the dangri’s throat and ears now burned with a bright and angry red, and it’s lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing the strange horse-like incisors, double fangs, and the front of the molar ‘plate’ towards the back of the throat. Illoue’s wings fanned out again and the alien’s voice rose, a strange background shrillness seeping into the tone. “You talk of saving these things for yourself. You say you are generous for sharing. These things, shelter, home, food, from Denke. They are not yours to give! They are not! They are dangri resources! It is you who should ask us for their use!”

Another wave of discussion. Elise winced visibly. Kim couldn’t blame her. In the low din, she could make out worrying phrases about ‘threats’ and ‘conflict’. Some people were taking Illoue’s statement as fighting words.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” came the critical response from Senator Douchebag, “We are asking dangri for the use of Denke resources.”

Illoue’s pupils dialated, as if to take in more light to see more clearly “You make this lie?”

“It’s not a lie. We’ve been communicating with other dangri tribes, besides yours, for the past five years. Wouldn’t dream of doing anything without discussing it with them first. They’re neighbors of yours in fact. Ah, have to admit I don’t have the same command over your language that you have of ours,” a chuckle, “But in english, we’ve been calling them Whirlwind tribe. Sounds similar enough anyway”

“Whlhlrii?!” Illoue’s wings flapped agitatedly, “It is not their place!”

“Now, now. They aren’t saying it is. They’re just.... well they’re just kind of looking after the place until you Newlanders can get back up on your feet. In fact, they’re the very people we were talking about sending you guys back to in order to get just the kind of aid you need pulling yourselves together.”

“You can’t do that!” Kim shouted from her seat, “They’re an entirely different people, you don’t know what relationship they’ve had with the Newland Cliff dangri! You can’t just hand them over to a different nation like that!” The gavel dropped, turning everyone away from the escalating argument. The chairman glared at everyone as members of security stepped forward, ready to deal with any problems. “Illoue, if you will please return to your seat. I will not allow this hearing to become a circus. I will remind all present that you must request your chance to speak and be recognized prior to offering your advice or opinions. Any further outbursts or... displays... will result in immediate dismissal from the hearing.” (less outbursty, or add in more discussion)

The meeting continued to drag on for hours. It never really got much better. At times Kimberly had to place a hand on Illoue’s wing, to remind the alien to sit still and not interrupt. The dangri seethed silently for the rest of the meeting, but gave no further outbursts. Not that it mattered. Kim could see the videos going viral already.

In the end, nothing seemed to be decided, and Kim couldn’t be sure where the whole of the room was leaning. Over time, vehement points of view seemed to dwindle in the face of a collective weariness until finally the meeting fizzled out and was mercifully declared over. Illoue didn’t wait for Kim to gather her things, storming out quickly, tail twitching like a dying fish in it’s struggle to not lash back and forth. (expand)

The car ride was uneasy. Kim touched her neck ring while she drove in silence, unsure of what to say. Logically, she knew she wasn’t being held responsible for the actions of those in the meeting, but she couldn’t help feeling... embarrassed? Yes, embarrassed for her people, her species even. She glanced in the rear view mirror. There wasn’t anything to say, really, was there? (expand. describe sights, etc)

“I’m sorry.” Illoue nodded in acknowledgment, but did not respond for almost five minutes. “It is not your actions.” the dangri said finally, gazing out the window.

Kimberly sighed. She tried to think of something that might lift her friend’s spirits. Normally Illoue loved exploring Kim’s culture, but she had a feeling that wouldn’t be appropriate right now. Fast food? Sure, lets scarf down human food and bastardized dishes from your home. Book store? Oh yes, please immerse yourself in our histories, our stories, our biographies. Everything seemed glaringly wrong. (go into this more. make it clearer this is Kim’s thoughts)

(they should go do something here. give time for Elise and Tucker to get to Kim’s place, also give Illoue some time to cool off)

The sound of her cell both startled both of them, and there was a split second of panicked confusion before Kim answered. “Hello?”

“Kim? Great, I was hoping you hadn’t changed your number”

“Hey, Tucker.” Kim sighed.

“How’s Illoue?”

Kim looked back at the dangri, who was now grooming and smoothing feathers and scales back into order like an otter on the shore. Illoue glanced up briefly and gave a nod.

“Not fantastic, but seems to be a bit better than before.” She manuevered her way around a slow moving car.

“Good, good.” said Tucker. He paused, then continued, “Hey, uh... you still live at the same place too right?”

Kim took a moment to glance at the phone as if by doing so she could figure out what Tucker was planning. Then she nestled it between her cheek and her shoulder as placed both hands on the wheel. “Would it be a problem if I had?”

“Not really. Although I guess it would be kind of awkward for whoever lives here now.”

“Here?.... Are you in my house?!”

“Elise sugges-” There was another voice in the background, clipped and sharp. “..... Ok, she suggested visiting. I tried the door. You really ought to be more careful, you know, anybody could have just waltzed in here. Or foxtrotted, I guess, I don’t judge. Do people still do those dances?”

Illoue looked away from the window and over to Kim, a new interest in those yellow eyes “Are we to have company?”

“I don’t know why,” Kim answered, in a pointed tone as she spoke to both parties at once “Considering the day we all just had, I would think we would all be too tired for a party.” “Ahhh, Kim,” Tucker’s grin was an audible thing in his voice, “Are you starting to get old on me? That’s not the voice of the woman who insisted on trying every experience she heard about first hand for ‘research and immersion’ purposes.” (mention wild child or dormroom life. Tucker’s description is pretty technical)

“Don’t say it like that, it was for immersion! You can’t really know the experience of any local people without trying out their lives.”

“Uh-huh. Their lives, their parties, their illegal substances....”

“...I’m diligent, that’s all.” But she could feel the grin tugging at her mouth as well.

“Sure. Well, we’re ‘diligently’ (?). To be honest, we’re concerned for you and Illoue. We thought it might do you both some good to have a relaxing evening. I brought games....”

“No one plays board games anymore, Tuck.”

“Tabletop games. And tell that bit of breaking news to the game store and my personal collection. But if you don’t feel like (insert game experience here) then maybe Elise’s brew can convince you otherwise.”

“Wait.... Elise brought booze? Our Elise?” (you can extend this conversation, it’s alright)

“Yeah! Just get here, will ya? It’ll be good for you.”

----

Tucker and Elise were indeed waiting when Kim and Illoue arrived. Elise was sitting on the couch across from the tv, still dressed in her uniform, jacket and shoes still on, and she stood when Kimberly entered the room.

(From here I will go on to describe the party. I think Tucker will be pretty relaxed, he’s probably chilling by the fridge when Kim walks in, his jacket already thrown over a chair and his shoes kicked off by the door. He’ll probably just be popping a beer open as she sees him, maybe even his second one as he looks over the board he’s got set up at the table. I’ll have to pick a board game. Zombicide or something. figure out a way to refer to it. Maybe just use the name? Can’t be that big a deal.

Illoue will be pleased to see them and grateful they have come to visit.

They’talk and hang out, maybe reminisce about the expedition, maybe mention the victory party. They’ll bring up why Illoue doesn’t have more dangri friends.

Ok, now go back and do it.)

At about the same time, the sound of a bottle cap popping came from the direction of the kitchen, and out strode Tucker, much more relaxed and natural looking without his jacket on and his dress shirt unbuttoned at the top. He grinned at the both of them and raised his bottle in greeting “Hey, it’s about time. I’ve got the game set up, but Elise wanted to wait for you to get all comfy. I told her you wouldn’t mind, but, well, you know.”

“No, that’s fine,” answered Kim, “

((Further notes. Go back and fix dangri wings. You made them spines/scales on purpose. sound, display, aerodynamics. remember this. Also, go back and go over what daily life is like for dangri. or write it ahead. ))

She looked at Elise again, was there a warmth in that smile? It would only make sense, Kim reminded herself. They were friends after all. The imposing commander finally moved back towards the door to kick her shoes off. Belatedly Kim realized she could be a bit of a better host or something and held her arm out to Elise “I’ll, uh... I’ll take that jacket for you.” She tried to ignore Tucker’s snort of laughter, though she felt her ears turning red. Elise paused for a minute, then slipped out of the jacket and handed it to the shorter girl “Sure. Thank you.”

Kim nodded awkwardly, then turned to put the jacket up on a hook... right beside where she and Elise were standing. Elise grinned and gave Kim a pat on the shoulder, “Thanks for going through the trouble.” and strode over to the kitchen. Tucker followed her in, “I call Frank Chainsaw”

“Isn’t that who you always play?” Replied the commander

“Yeah, just making sure you don’t try to swipe him.”

Illoue approached the poor party host as she too made herself more comfortable. Alien eyes scanned her expression. “You are being nervous.” the dangri spoke in neutral tones, “you did the meeting well and I am proud for you. I am sure they are too. They come in support for you and for me. They are good friends” (Explain why Kim’s insecure)

Kim sighed, “Yeah, I know.”

“Elise also shows interest. You should have no problems flirting with her.”

Kimberly’s eyes bulged out of her head and she made a move to clap her hand over the dangri’s muzzle. Illoue bufetted her with a wing and chirped in a very self satisfied way before moving into the kitchen as well, leaving Kim to wonder what kind of day she was about to be in for.

((Have her do something else in the morning. Go to breakfast because the one she made went bad. then you can show examples of dangri life in human city. Save committee meeting for later. Then this whole scene can happen in the evening. It won’t seem as out of place then.))

They played through the evening, working together to take on the horror of a zombie apocalypse. There were daring saves and reckless gambits, punctuated with the thrill of drawing cards to discover what new enemy was arriving on the scene. As a team, they made their way around the map, found their objective, and tried to make it to the exit. Kim nearly died twice, but for the healing she got from Elise and the distraction Tucker and Illoue provided. Elise almost made the ultimate sacrifice for her team at the end, but Illoue got her out safe and sound while Tucker took the fall for her. They mourned the loss of his little red miniature figure as he went down, holding his chainsaw aloft amid a horde of green and grey and brown undead figures, then congratulated themselves on getting the objective, whatever it was. No one really seemed to agree on exactly what it was they were retrieving.

Amid all this they reminisced and poked fun at each other, and Kim felt herself begin to unwind a little. The tension of the meeting seemed to be banished by the good mood, and Illoue too looked more at ease. Gradually, it began to seem more like a bad dream than the catastrophe it had been at the time. (SHOW this)

Tucker led them in another round, much shorter this time, but they weren’t as focused now, three or four beers in each. Illoue drank as well, ((mention something about alcohol consumption and its effects on Dangri. Remember, dangri are super lightweight and have very fast metabolism. It might affect Illoue very strongly, but need les time to go through the poor thing’s system))

Illoue and Tucker got into a play scuffle, both being careful with muscle and claw as they played around. They even made fun of the meeting, with Tucker playing Offended Senator and crying out melodramatically at the ((no no don’t do that. Remember, that’s a deep subject that affects Illoue, and Illoue would probably not find it very amusing. expand on play a little maybe? just use what’s below?))

The scuffle devolved into a running discussion on how each side might win against the other, with Tucker demonstrating a number of holds or leverage breaks he might achieve, and Illoue explaining, with all the tone of a teacher, how the dangri would slip this hold or that and always pointing out that once in the trees and the sky, Tucker would have no chance.

“Well, said Tucker jokingly, “That’s just when I’d have to disable that though. What if I had grabbed your wings? They’re pretty fragile in my big ol’ human hands”

The dangri snorted out of the three nostril slits “You would first have to dodge the cut of my claws and the strike of my quick dangri feet, slow lumbering creature of ground.”

Ground creatures. Soil-crawlers. Landbound. Those were all terms the dangri had for humans. Illoue used them in tender, joking fashion, but not everyone did. There existed among the Earth-living dangri a population that was more and more outspoken against the history they shared. Individuals growing angry and restless. They hadn’t done much more than talk yet, but some people occasionally talked about them becoming a problem. (find a different way to introduce this concept. Either earlier in a longer discussion. show it, don’t just mention it)

Elise tapped Kim’s arm gently with the end of her beer bottle to get her attention, and Kim turned away from the conversation to look at her. The commander gestured to another room “mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

The anthropologist looked back to the arguing pair for a moment, but Tucker and Illoue seemed rather caught up in their conversation. She glanced back again and found Elise waiting patiently. Well... why not? Kim shrugged and rose to her feet “Sure, no problem.” And with that she led the way to her room, Elise following behind.

((figure out what Kimberly’s room looks like here, probably filled with books on one side, maybe a walk in closet, one side devoted to a desk set up, and the bed taking up the last side.))

“Sorry, the place isn’t that big,” Kim apologized, even though she knew Elise was familiar with it. “So if you wanna talk alone, it’s gotta be here or Illoue’s room.”

“That’s fine,” Elise answered, her voice rich and clear and deep. It seemed to capture Kim’s attention more here, away from the chatter of the party. To her surprise, she watched as Elise closed the door, then moved to sit on the bed, leaving the office chair for Kim. (she would take the office chair. Kim takes bed)

“Kimberly,” She began, the name tumbling off her lips, “about the meeting today....”

Kim winced “hey, I thought the idea was to forget about that tonight.”

Elise just looked at her, and Kim sighed as she took her seat, throwing her arm over the back of the chair. “Alright. I know it didn’t go as well as it could have.” (change seating)

“It’s not that.” Answered Elise. Even sitting on the bed, her back was ramrod straight, ever the professional. “I don’t blame you or Illoue for your reactions. I just want to make sure you know what they mean.” (change seating)

“I’m not new to meetings, you know. I get that they weren’t exactly diplomatic.”

“I don’t think you realize how undiplomatic they were” Elise said shortly. Her gaze softened. “Kim, You’ve been spending so much time getting to know the dangri, learning from Illoue about their customs and traditions, learning about the way they used to do things. I think, maybe, you’ve spent so much time with them that you’re a little out of the loop.(hmm.... I need to display this more. in the morning? during trip?)

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard people talking about sending the dangri to live with others. There’s been a push to find a longer term solution that will ease tensions.”

Kim shook her head “Only time will do that. We didn’t overcome the differences between each other for a long time. It will take just as long for us to get used to the dangri. And for them to get comfortable here.”

“That’s the problem,” Elise’s tone grew more firm, “We didn’t overcome the differences between us, and you think we have. You’ve always looked at things that way, like all the problems we’ve experienced were issues of the past, like it’s all better now. It’s not. It never really got to where you think it is.”

“What do you mean?” Kim answered, her mind going blank for a minute as she grappled with the idea. It wasn’t a tough one, just hard to believe. “My whole life has been about different cultures and how we all interact.” Elise began to gesture as she talked “How we interacted. All you do is read and study about each place, learn it’s history, it’s traditions, what they’re doing now, learn whatever is left over for you to learn from. You see what different peoples and nations have done in the past, and somehow think we’ve moved on from it. You miss all the things going on around you today.”

“But...”

“Kim, it wasn’t that long ago when the New Confederate took up arms. Back before then, lots of people thought we were all starting to get along too.”

Kim winced at the fact. There was a time, she remembered, when America was just America, and had only the one president to look to. Just before the New Confederate became a driving force there had been an entire generation that thought things like ‘racism’ were winding down, distant horrors of the past only fretted about by the conspiracy theorists and those with a flair for drama. Actually, now that she thought about it, racism had only taken a back seat to other issues, and only for a short time. It had reared it’s ugly head again with renewed vengence soon after the laws against gay living had been relaxed. Or had it been with the election of the first black president? Those had happened fairly close to each other, right? The alcohol in her system smeared the history notes like wet ink and she rubbed her face to try and clear it.

That had been so long ago though, right?

Not really, she thought. Not relatively.

She looked back at Elise, shifted in her seat, and said nothing. She didn’t want to doubt her, but she jut didn’t see it. “It’s not that bad though, right?” She finally expressed, lamely.

“Depends on your point of view I suppose,” the commander said dryly, “but as far as the Dangri are concerned, it’s not going well. And Illoue might have pushed things into a much more difficult situation. Again, not without cause, but...” she sighed and fixed her eyes on Kim’s as if she might transfer her thoughts across directly, “People didn’t take Illoue’s outburst well. They’re calling it rude and wild and threatening. There are people starting to say the dangri might try something, and worse, there are dangri saying that maybe they should. This is going to heat up, really fast. Do you understand me?”

Kim seemed unsure, glancing towards the window first, then out the door towards the kitchen, where Tucker and Illoue were probably still having fun. “Well,” she said finally, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, if that’s true, but I imagine you might have an idea if you’re bringing this up, right?”

“Just... be prepared to go on the run,” Elise said shortly, “I don’t know how things are gonna blow up, but it’s going to happen soon. When they do, you don’t want to stick around here.” She reached for Kim’s hand, cupping it gently in her own as she slipped a neatly folded bit of paper over into it. “I know you don’t have my number yet, so here’s a useful one, if you need it. Remember, you and Illoue have been in the public eye way more than pretty much any other dangri. If they do anything, you’ll probably feel it first. Understand?”

She hadn’t let go of Kim’s hand yet, a fact that Kimberly was acutely aware of. She felt a small thrill skitter over her skin at the touch, which distracted her for a moment away from Elise’s words. The commander had to call her name to break the momentary spell, and when she did Kimberly reluctantly pulled her hand back and looked at the note resting in her palm.

“Yeah...” she whispered, still half enchanted as she pocketed the slip of paper, “Yeah, no problem,” she added. Things became more focused after a moment, and with that, she realized was staring. She cleared her throat and patted her knees “Ah.. Thanks, ahead of time, and stuff. Hopefully, you know, I won’t have to use it. Er.. I mean, like, for trouble. If there’s trouble. I could still call for fun. Talking, I mean. Not pranks or anything. If... I mean if that’s okay, talking. Just shooting the breeze and all.” she chuckled, although on the inside she was screaming at herself to shut up already.

Elise leaned back a little, her face impassive as Kim struggled with words, a faint touch of a grin on her lips as she nodded, leaving her friend to squirm for the right words for a minute or two, until finally she stood and made for the door, stopping only to give one slow wink, “I hope you will.”

And with that she left Kim, dumbfounded, in her own room.

(wait, should I go back and add a sex scene here? Or would that ruin the romantic tension for later? Would Elise be the sort to allow or instigate that, even under the influence? It seems unlikely, but it also seems like it’s kind of happening. I kind of like that she’s showing restraint, but then again a sex scene would eat up a lot of words....)

----------

It was less than a month later that a new decision hit the morning news. That was how Kim found out about it, over a bowl of cereal, sitting with Illoue while the tv quietly droned on about traffice and weather and new presidential hopefuls. They had just finished talking about some politician that had made a speech about “the united days” and switched over to a new story.

“In other news, the (whatever committee or group is responsible for immigration and refuge efforts) has made the startling announcement today that they will begin implementing what they are calling the Rehabilitation Effort. This program, they say, is designed to help both humans and dangri alike in the effort to speed up the move to new homes on Denke, the planet scientists are calling humanity’s second chance.”

Illoue’s head turned like a hawk’s as the dangri stared intensely at the screen. With a growing sense of trouble, Kim got up from the table and moved to the living room, turning up the volume to hear it more clearly.

“Some detractors are saying that this effort is little more than a cover up for a forced deportation of the dangri refugees brought in some years ago, but (head of the organization) Mr Sanderson explains otherwise.”

They switched to a clip of the interview. Mr Sanderson was a tall, thin figure that looked like he might blow away in a stiff breeze. “Our mission is not to toss the dangri out to the cold,” he began earnestly, “but to work with them for both of our sakes. It’s well known that we need more people willing to build and secure our first cities on Denke, and who better than those that are already familiar with the environment. We’re providing job opportunities for dangri willing to work, and for those that can’t, we have other options in place. The Whirlwind tribe has been kind and generous enough to take on those dangri in the community that need additional homes. It’s not something out of the oridinary, they state this is actually done all the time in dangri culture, so in actuality we’re just doing what’s normal. And in return, the Whirlwind tribe has promised to help keep us supplied, and teach us how to remained supplied with the least amount of harm to the surrounding area.”

The pins of the scales on Illoue’s wings began to rattle softly as the dangri stood, stepping slowly towards the tv. The news show cut back to the announcer, who was saying something about the program rolling out slowly over the rest of the month, but Kim’s eyes were on the reddening throat and gorging ears of her friend.

“Illoue...”

“It is a lie,” the word 'lie’ left the dangri’s lips in a spit, as if it were a particularly bad tasting bit of food, “all of it.”

Kim shuffled uncomfortably, “It’s got enough truth in it to stand up, though. You told me yourself how when dangri grow up they’re encouraged to live in a different tribe. You said it was almost like trading favors.” (this seems weird. maybe... have them discuss a little more about why people believe it)

A clawed foot stamped the floor, “Not the same,” Illoue growled, “They choose the leaving and tribe to leave to. We tell them the tribes that gave more people, and encourage them to go there. Trade. Exchange. It keeps friends and mixes bloods. We help tribes who take in our own.”

A slap of the dangri’s tail against a counter punctuated the words, “Whlwhlrii has not followed this. Our people go to them, and they send no one back. Some time ago they made a change in their plan. It is not a wrong thing. It is their choosing. But they now say they do as we do, so they will take us.” The dangri looked back at Kim, “They will take us, with no tribe to give back to. All who hatch in Whlwhlrii become Whlwhlrii, not ’Newland Cliff’ as you call us.We will lose ourselves. My tribe will vanish.”

Kim frowned and opened her mouth to ask why they couldn’t just work with the humans then. (then it hit her) But she knew why. They had done it before. When humans had first arrived on Denke, they had discovered very quickly that the dangri could be captured and used as this world’s proverbial work horses. Not as strong, but easier to manipulate and ‘train’ than the other native animals they’d seen. They had, to Kim’s shame, worked like that, under Kim’s own expedition in fact, until she had realized how far their intelligence went.

“Maybe...” the anthropologist tried to grasp for some hint of better news, “I mean... this time will be different,” she began, “we know you and your people better. They know you’re not animals, they’ll have to treat you fairly.” (need some more demonstrations of Kim’s optimisim at the beginning. Maybe change her speech. This seems like a sudden shift here)

Illoue let her sentence sit in silence and wither in it’s own falseness. “You know your people.” The dangri finally allowed.

The tension sat between them as they finished breakfast. Or poked at it, at least. Kim kept looking for something to say hidden in her cereal, watching the flakes grow soggy as she stirred them into tiny vortices. ((go into some of kimberely’s thoughts here. I don’t want her realizing Elise and Illoue are right just yet. Maybe have her go over the increase in compassion she’s observed through history, or the differences in tolerance between some ‘less developed’ peoples. Maybe talk about historical events. She has to start doubting what she’s always thought here. Resisting it, etc.))

As she was rinsing her bowl out, she heard a knock at the door. Illoue heard it too and immediately drew taut and alert. Kim waved calmingly towards her friend as she dried her hands off and approached the door, wondering if Tucker had decided to drop by unexpectedly again. She had, since then, been a little paranoid about keeping the door locked at all times.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“(would this be the police? Whatever authority whos job it is to ‘round up’ the dangri), ma’am. This is the Dales residence, is it not?”

The situation hit Kim like a bucket of ice dropped over her head, and she looked back to Illoue in horror to find the dangri staring back at her in panic. She mouthed the word “Shit!” to her friend, then “Go!" and flung her arm out repeatedly pointing towards her room. Illoue got the message and sprinted as quietly as possible into the room. Unfortunately, dangri had a terrible habit of spreading their wings a little when running, and said wings caught on the doorway, ellicting a shocked cry from the alien throat.

“Ma’am?” said the voice outside the door, “Is everything okay? If you could please open the door...”

“Ah, one minute!” Kim called, and immediately regretted it. Her voice sounded nothing like Illoue’s. The dangri looked back at her, then did a double take, back into the room, then to Kim again, and head bobbed a few times in reassurance before dissappearing into the room. Illoue had a plan, apparently. Kim wished she knew what it was, especially when she heard the sound fo the shower running. What the hell? There was no way to hide that someone else was in here now!

“Ma’am, open the door.”

Her gaze flew about the room for some kind of excuse, but the only thing she could find was an old snapshot of herself and Tucker over by the kitchen countertop, taken some time during the expedition. What... That was it. Quickly she ran her fingers through her hair and yank the collar of her shirt over one shoulder to expose it, disheveling her clothes as she reached for the doorknob. When she opened it, it was with a haggard expression, as if she’d been through a lot of trouble today already.

“Officer? Hi, look if you’re here about Michael...”

The officer and his obligatory assisstant looked confused, “I’m afraid we don’t know a Michael, Ms. Dales. If you could please-”

“Oh!” she gasped and placed her palm against her cheekbone, “crap, well, ah...” she looked out of the door into the hallway, then lowered her voice “look if you could just pretend I didn’t say anything then, that would be awesome.”

The partners looked at each other for a moment, then gazed at her dubiously. The taller one (she mentally gave them the designators Talls and Smalls) put his arm against the doorjam and leaned in a little, lowering his own voice to match Kim’s “Is there a problem Ms. Dales?”

She laughed nervously, “Well, honestly I thought... no, that would have been pretty drastic of him I guess. I... here, why don’t you come inside?” She opened the door wider for them to get in and went to the kitchen, praying they weren’t the type to immediately begin rummaging around. “Would either of you like anything to drink?”

“No, ma’am, we’re fine,” said Smalls, stepping around carefully and glancing about. Kim knew what they would see here. Usually Illoue lived fairly minimally, so there wasn’t much in the way of signs that someone else resided here. Dangri did shed, their butterfly like scales drifting off and scattering across the floor, but Illoue was very fastidious about cleaning up and grooming regularly to keep such mess to a minimum. The result was that, although this did indeed look like a shared home, it wasn’t screaming with signs of alien residents.

“Ms Dales,” Talls this time, “You may have heard the reports come in already on the news, about the new policy regarding the dangri refugees?”

“I did,” Kim replied guardedly. “I think it’s a bit of a hasty move, to be honest.”

Talls nodded, “Yes, well, some of the higher ups were hoping you might help set an example, show others what we had in mind. We’re hoping your friend, the one called Il... Eeel... Eye...”

“Illoue,” she corrected, “Like ‘ill’, sick, then ‘low’, and ‘way’. Illoue.”

“Right. Illoue.” Talls cleared his throat, “Well, we want to extend an invitation to Illoue to be the first in the program to head on back to Denke. Now, it’s Illoue’s decision to work or move in with the tribe, but I think once he gets a look at the set up we’ve got, he’ll see it’s not so bad.”

“Oh, Illoue isn’t a ‘he’,” Kim added, unable to help herself, “None of them are. They’re hermaphrodites. Not male or female.”

Silence. Awkward.

Smalls took up the conversation, “Ms Dales, do you know where Illoue is right now? Doesn’t... ah... Illoue live with you?”

Damn. She’d forgotten just how much she was in the public eye. Of course they’d know. The shower drummed in the background. So much for the old ‘no that‘s just my boyfriend‘ routine. “Um... usually.” She admitted. She gestured over to the dangri’s room, “Normally there, in the guest room. But I... I haven’t seen Illoue for a few days now. I was starting to get worried myself.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Kim mumbled, “Illoue wanders sometimes, it’s.. it’s a dangri thing or something,” she gestured as if it were something she didn’t quite get, “some kind of free spirit deal, you know? Not usually this long, but hey, what can ya do, you know?”

Talls didn’t look impressed. He gestured back to Kim’s room. “Your shower’s running. You always leave it like that.?”

She tried to find an explanation that didn’t sound patently stupid, painfully aware when she had already paused too long. Talls nodded to himself, then went towards the room. Kim moved to go after him, but Smalls was suddenly right beside her with an arm drawn out across her path. Her mouth went dry as she watched the officer continue forward, his boots clunking on the uncarpetted floor and a hand casually moving toward the baton at his hip. She had no way to warn Illoue that the plan wasn’t working. No way to tell the dangri to shut off the shower or leap out the bathroom window.

But maybe this was good for the dangri, she told herself. Maybe it would be alright. Maybe things would be ok, like the officer said...

His hand drew past the baton. It rested on the gun.

Kim’s thought’s froze. In the absence of thinking, she took action and shouted “Wait! Don’t!” as she tried to push against the smaller officer, who moved now to bodily block her path. The taller man stopped in the doorway, looking towards her bathroom. The shower was off to the side, she knew, probably out of view, but he would see soon. He would see..

“Honey? Do we have guests?”

The voice was deep and very clearly masculine as it echoed out of the shower. The two officers paused and looked back at Kim with puzzled expressions. Illoue’s voice was well known in media. The soft tones were reminiscent of wooden windchimes. This was nothing like that.

“Ah....” Kim shuffled a little in place, nervously put her hands on her hips, then combed through her hair again. “Yeah. That would be Michael. You remember Michael? The guy I mentioned before? Well, that’s him.”

The officers looked at each other, wordlessly debating the quandry between them. They had come to take an alien into custody, not interrupt a man in mid-shower. Minutes passed, it felt like.

“Hon?” came the voice again.

“He’s uh.... he’s not supposed to be here, if you know what I mean,” Kim continued, glancing at the clock as if worried about running out of time. “In fact, this whole situation will just get really super awkward if you guys are here when,” she nodded to the picture on the counter, Tucker’s face beaming up at them, “I mean, we can still all sit and talk, of course, but....” Now she drew her arms about her, trying to look insecure.

The two officers shared another glance. This really wasn’t something they wanted to be in the middle of. Eventually Talls cleared his throat and stepped away from Kim’s room. She tried to hide her sigh of relief as he returned to the living room. “We’ve uh... we’ve clearly come at an inconvenient time for you, Ms. Dales. We’ll come back another time. You’ll let us know if Illoue stops by, won’t you? We will, of course, be back to check in.”

“Absolutely,” answered Kim, “and you can send official deportation orders to this address too, if it comes to that. Do you have a number I can reach you at?”

The officers gave her the information she needed and did their best not to look like they were scurrying out of the apartment. Just before they got out the door, Kim cleared her throat to stop them. “Ah..... you... will keep this discreet, won’t you?”

Smalls offered a quick nod and mumbled a “none of our business ma’am.” Then they left. Kimberly watched them jaunt down the hallway, waiting until they turned the corner to retreat back into her apartment, closing and locking the door. She made her way over to her room and stood next to the restroom.

“Illoue? We’re good, you’re safe now.”

The shower sound stopped almost immediately, and the dangri’s head poked out around the shower curtain, water running over tiny scales. Wings hung heavily into the tub, and even though the shower was turned off, the water dripping off wing scutes drummed a pattern all their own. Illoue shook all over, like a dog might, and Kim glared while she pointedly reached for a towel and handed it to the alien.

Illoue looked her in the eyes “There is not ‘safe’ anymore.” (weird juxtaposition. humor to immedate tagline is not so great) --------

(okay, they’re going to hae to pack and go on the run from here. Kim’s used to roughing it, so she knows how to take only what’s nessecary -I WILL learn to spell that one day- and Illoue was a spirit quest guide so that’s solved too. But where might they go? I keep getting an image of them at a fast food joint, but that seems stupid and impractical. maybe fit that in somewhere earlier showing off modern life.

The smartest place to go would be the nearest park. like, national park. Maybe if they’re in New York they could dive straight into Central Park in fact. People get lost there sometimes. but would central park still be a lush, green place if Earth is running out of resources? Maybe they’re synthetic? planted in a lame attempt to help calm people. That would solve two problems. The government could still track them, and they would eventually have to leave. The wormhole is guarded, so then they’d have to go to a safehouse like the one Elise wrote down. Or would Kim go to Elise first? Probably not. she probably doesn’t want to drag Elise into it. Besides, that would mean Elise was right and she had misjudged things -again?-. There ARE other dangri, but with all of them being rounded up, blending in isn’t going to do much good.

Remember, dangri metabolism is FAST, so unless they have a good amount of food supplies that are compatible with dangri biology, they won’t be able to stay out forever. I imagine not many of the trees are fruiting either. Remember, this world is on it’s last legs.

I think I want them to get into at least one situation before heading to the safehouse, maybe two.

Okay, I’m stuck. Time to go silly)

“No.”

“Please?”

“No”

“It is probably the last time I will taste it!”

“Weren’t you the one that insisted we had to lie low?”

Kim glared at her rearview mirror at Illoue riding in the back, a large tarp half covering the alien’s back. Illoue looked back at her, trying hard to imitate something like a begging puppy’s expression. It was actually ridiculously successful. Kim didn’t know dangri could look ‘adorable’ before. But she had to hold out. She had to be strong.

“We are not stopping at Pizza Shack. We’re not.” she insisted.

Illoue somehow managed to intensify the level of cute by a factor of three with little more than a slight muzzle tilt. “I will be still and quiet. They will not know”

Kim sighed, she seemed to be doing that a lot lately, and switched lanes to follow the gaudy logo in the sky. Illoue let out a whoop of joy, then pulled the tarp up to hide. Kim drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she made the turn into the parking lot and pulled into the line for the drive-thru before checking on her friend.

“Tuck your wings in more, they’re popping out of the sides” She quipped shortly.

“Can you help?” came the response as the dangri shuffled, succeeding only in revealing the wings more.

With a grumble, Kim reached back with one hand and tried to keep her attention on the slowly puttering line as she adjusted the tarp “Ugh, I can barely reach back there....” She turned her head to see better, finally got Illoue covered up, got honked at, and had to jump forward quickly to close the gap between her and the car ahead of her. She pulled up to the speaker hunched over with embarassment.

The speaker crackled to life “Welcome to Pizza Shack, may I take your order?”

Kim opened her mouth to answer and was promptly cut off by an entirely different, obviously prerecorded, voice proudly announcing over the speakers that the ‘Tower of Pizza’ had returned and wouldn’t you like to order one? Clearly the company had a tremendous amount of faith in their employee’s ability to upsell. Kim rolled her eyes and waited for the message to end before ordering.

“Uh...” why did everyone always start with that, she wondered distantly, “I’ll have a.... number three and a number eight please.”

“Natural or regular pepperoni, ma’am?” came the original crackly voice.

Kim blinked, “That’s an option?”

“It is for a limited time!” said the speaker proudly, “it’s a dollar ninety upcharge for natural.”

A muffled voice came from the back of the Jeep, “I have not tried that..”

“Shh!” hissed Kim. She coughed and turned her attention back to the board, “Regular is fine.”

“Drinks?”

“One iced coffee and a regular coke, please.”

The voice on the speaker read out the tally, Kim checked it against the screen, hit the payment button, and rolled forward. Behind her, she heard shuffling sounds.

“Stay down! I don’t have the food yet”

“I can catch it’s scent already... I am very hungered.” Illoue replied, but settled back down.

The food was handed over after only a mild wait, which felt like forever to Kim, and the pair were off down the road again. Illoue waited until they at least cleared the parking lot before extending a serpentine neck and a long gecko hand out to sort out t he combos, placing Kim’s helpfully into the passenger seat.

Kim sighed, staring at the road stretching out before them. Already the streets seemed quieter than before. Or was that just her imagination? She tapped the steering wheel nervously as she glanced back through the rearview mirror again. Was that a cop back there? No, just one of those lincoln models that always looked like cop cars. She found herself glancing warily around at intersections and stop lights.

“You know, I’ve done a lot of things in my life” she spoke with forced nonchalance into the silence. “I mean, I always get really into my studies. Like... really into them”

Illoue unboxed the fast food and stared at it for a moment, inhaling through all three nostril grooves deeply. The dangri said nothing, presumably waiting for Kim to continue.

“I mean, I’m not opposed to trying some substances that certain authorities would find... questionable...”

The dangri lifted the vaguely triangular food shape full of processed cheeses and synthetic pepperoni into a maw filled with horse like teeth, trilling happily at the taste and leaning back gleefully while chewing. “But... I’ve got to say I’ve never been on the run quite like this.” She glanced around a corner as best she could before taking a left.

She heard the sound of the dangri chewing and glanced again at the mirror to find herself looking into yellow eyes. Her eyes flicked back and forth as she found herself unable to hold the gaze for very long.

Illoue chirpped softly “Do you regret?”

Instead of answering directly, Kim reached for her drink and took a long sip from it. To be honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt. Yelling at the meeting had certainly seemed like the right thing to do. So did helping Illoue hide from the cops. But what if she had things wrong? What if things weren’t as messed up as Illoue thought.

(keep this line of thought in mind. having them overcome this difference in opinion is interesting. maybe things really aren’t as bad as illoue thinks?)

“Illoue...” she began slowly, “Why would the Whirlwind dangri be so bad? (did I explain this? I forgot) I know you said it would wipe out your culture, but.... well... culture lives in the people, not the land.”

“You do not know what has passed between us.”

“Well... what would force you to become part of their tribe then? Why couldn’t you leave after getting re-established? Could they stop you? Would there be conflict?”

The dangri’s wings rattled under the blanket. “For us to leave after agreeing to merge with them would be shameful on our part. We would have to actively reject them and their people. I was told we did this before when we and they were both a very small tribe. It is... not a nice thing to do.”

“Just leaving?”

“It is not leaving in our view. It is betraying. You know our names come from our homes, and our... parent peoples home.”

“Right, your full names give information about what groups your parents belonged to up to about three generations back, yeah?”

The dangri’s head bobbed in agreement. “When we left, there was a disagreement.”

“What kind of disagreement?”

“I am not sure. I was told this story a long time ago in my (kresh). But it was fierce. When we left, we left behind our names as well. Many of us were from the same (kresh). We are raised thus.”

“So... almost an entire generation left at once?”

“Which left Whirlwind without many children.”

“Which left them unable to uh.. ‘trade’ children back and forth, right?”

Illoue grunted “We left them without a lot of things, I think. It left us without many things too, but we thought we were the better for it. In any case, when we tried to make friends with them again, they were very... reluctant. But we thought things were okay. Then they stopped exchanging. They took our children and kept them, without sending any of their hatchlings to us. After many many years, they are still trying to reclaim us. If we return to them, it would be to admit we were wrong about leaving in the first place. If we then left, we would be twice the betrayers.”

(UGH THIS SOUNDS LIKE BULLSHIT WHAT EVEN IS THIS BABBLE)

------------------ A shrill noise pierced the windows of the car, and grabbed both occupants attention. Illoue’s ears and wings flared in unison “A child” ------------------ “I think this is the place” Kim said breathlessly as they ducked down another alley and found a half rusted door, a steel employees only entrance to somewhere. --------------------

They arrived at the address sooner than Kim expected, and they both had to look back and around to make sure no one else was coming. "THis is it?" Illoue chirpped softly. It wasn't much to look at. A rundown abandoned kmart or some box store that had gone defunct. Probably replaced buty the last online craze. Nobody really went to stores anymore. Not for daily goods. Places only stocked stuff you might have accidentally run out of or large items that cost more to ship than to buy in person. The stucco was pealing off the walls in some places and the blanks space where the sign used to hang looked like an echo of another time. "This is the place she gave me." Kim murmured back. Looking around her, she didn't see a whole lot of cars. She frowned. "I think... we should probbably hide the jeep" she said quietly

The dangri follow her gaze, looking about the parking lot at the lack of other cars. "I feel perhaps we should have thought of that before."

Kim grumbled and put the car back in gear. "Well, I thought of it now. So we'll just... I guess we'll drive around the block a bit?"

"Yes, this could be wise."

Oh for the world to be like video games, Kim thought as she wdrove around. Pull into a garage, a five second new coat of paint and all suspiciou about her car and similarities to twhat was on film already would be gone. Unfortunately Tthat wasn't much of an option at the moment.

They pulled around the block, driving through a residental area Kim had never seen before. She. It looked normal enough. neat little houses lined up with the odd lawn ornament or so out front, cars in driveways, that sort of thing. The road didn't go straight through like she thought, though. It turned right and headed away from the building. Then ti led into some other left and a t intersection she wasn't sure about.

"I wonder" said the dangri breifly "why don't you humans find another way to travel? It seems being stuck on the roads is pretty limiting"

"Tell me about it. "

They were driving by an old, smallish church building, when a cry rang out . Illoue jolted upright in the seat , and Kim couldn't help pushing on the breake. "That is a dangri voice" stressed her alien friend.

She debated getting out of the car, but Illoue took that decision from her, leaping forward and heading towards the church building, then around the back with powerful strides. Kim heaved a sigh, and guiltily pulled the car off to the side of the road, looking around as she parked abnd scrambled out of the seat.

She didn't like this situation at all. They were both pretty recognizable, she thought. With all the discussion around the dangri and the press coverage...

But a youngster was in trouble and she mentally bullied herself as she took off after her friend.

When she turned the corner, what she wasaw made her trfreeze in her tracks.

Illoue was crouched over a smaller dangri, a youngling, not old enough to fly yet (?), or at least, that's what kim thought at first. On a second looke, the kid was maybe a year or two old, but it's wings were horribly mangled, so that she had at first thought they weren't fully formed. Illoue was in a fury, screeching hotly with wings flared wide and rattling like a basket of rainmakers. The Dangri's mouth was open, with lips stretched back tight ly to reveal teeth. The ears were flared open fully as well, and the throat patch burned a bright angry red.

Around her stood a group of teenagers, or young adults. Some younger kids too, looking up to them like the children do. Illoue was staring at a girl in particular, a deep hiss echoing from the back of an alien throat.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

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Short Fairytale Version

A summary, written as a fairytale

Once upon a time there were a fleet of spaceships. It was filled with the people of earth. They had made a mess of their home, and needed a new one to go to. So they packed as many people into the spaceships as possible and sent them to find a planet like earth to start living on. The ships were massive, often called arks by the humans. They were built to come apart, panelled and layered so that each section of the ship could be broken down into buildings and homes once they landed in a suitable place. Each ‘apartment’ or ‘cubicle’ was in fact a room designed to fit with others and become houses, the walls could become beams of support structures, etc. They took all they could with them. The fleets departed in different directions, each one carrying what was determined to be a ‘healthy sustainable population’ to better the chances of finding a new home. They were supposed to call each other through relays if they ever found a place to stay,but most felt like they would never see the other ships again. While they traveled, they often took long naps in cryosleep. They couldn’t stay asleep forever or their blood would pool and their muscles shrink, so they slept in ‘shifts’. They would be unfrozen for four months, then sleep until their shift came around again. The ones who were awake cared for the ones that were asleep and made sure the ship did not crash. Like this they weathered the journey of ages and lived much longer than people used to. At least a hundred years passed without much aging! Sadly, we don’t know how many years they traveled exactly, because at the digital clocks occasionally failed, and as they got further from their home stars and sun, they lost the ability to calibrate the time. So no one is sure how long the journey was. One day one of the ships, the ELH Atrahasis came across a planet two and a half times the size of earth. They called it Deng, after the first human in the myth of the Dinka people of Africa. It looked greenish/blue, just like home, and they sent probes and satellites to it to find out if they could live there. On the planet they found trees and water and earth and oxygen. They also detected life. This was it! A New Home! They could hardly wait to go visit it, and sent down scientists to study it with soldiers to protect them. Shortly after the scientists arrived, they determined it was safe to bring the main ship down. The main ship landed, and people began to work on tearing it apart to make their houses and homes as the scientists continued to study new life. The scientists came across a curious creature. At first they thought it was a dragon! But it was too small, and dragons don’t exist. They called the winged lizardy beings with oil slick looking blood Dengri, and then Dangri. The dangri were surprisingly strong for their size and very colorful, lively animals. They quickly became a favorite of the humans. They caught them and, surprisingly, found them fairly trainable, after a fashion. They hunted them too, and kept them as alert animals, as the Dangri always made noise if a large creature was nearby. But the animals sometimes got too wild or violent and had to be set aside in lexan sided cages to keep them from hurting themselves and so the human scientists could study them better. Two of the scientists, Kimberly and Whately, had taken charge of the study. One day, Kimberly began to suspect something was wrong with the Dangri. She watched it carefully. As she did, a startling notion began to creep into her mind. Were the Dangri intelligent? Were they human-like? She listened to their sounds and studied their movements. One of the dangri began to take notice of her in return. It was an unusually large one. She began to suggest what she thought to Whately, who thought the idea was very silly. She also began mentioning it to the commander, and her friend Tucker, but while Tucker trusted ‘what she thinks she sees��, Elise, the commander, said that Whately, the biologist, technically was the one that had to agree. So Kimberly continued studying, looking for undeniable truth. Then one day, one of the dangri, a smaller one SPOKE to the larger one. There was no mistaking it. And Kimberly realized in that moment that it was exactly as she had suspected. The dangri weren’t just animals. They were a sentient race! At first Kim was excited. But then she began to think about the way they had been treating the dangri. It hadn’t been very nice. She also realized that the ones they’d been taking before were children. She had to let them go. So she did. She released the dangri all at once. Thats when one of them grabbed her. It was the one that had noticed her before! It (and a friend?) carried her off, sweeping her away into the sky and into the forest beyond the dry river bank where the ship had landed. After a long trip, Kimberly found herself at the edge of a very large cliff. As they flew over, Kim looked down to see the entire side of the cliff dotted with holes and structures built directly into the cliff face. In and out of these structures poured hundreds of dangri, all big like the one carrying her! It brought her among them, placing her on a length of terraced platform in front of one of the holes. There they left her for a long time. She watched as they flew around her, delivering food on and off, gesturing at her in agitated and insistent ways, speaking a language she only heard them use once before. Gradually she began to learn about them. Then understand them. They worked out a way to talk to her, even though she was not very good at speaking the words of their language. One day the large dangri that had originally captured her approached her and told her that she either needed to help them or resign herself to being a hostage. If it cannot be handled peacefully, it will be handled violently, because they cannot permit such a danger to stay so close to their children. She agreed to try and help. The dangri move to watch the camp and sneak Kim back in. By this time, the camp is more a city. She tried to find her friends and convince them the dangri were smart and still willing to negotiate. But Whately once again told her that she was wrong. That she’d been living in the wilds and the shock had probably made her start seeing patterns that weren’t there. She confronted him and they had a fight. But most of the other people around believed Whately over her, until she told them that the dangri were willing to fight. Whately listened then, and admitted that perhaps she had observed increased agitation among the species. He still believed they were animals, but also admitted that if they were all larger than originally though and showing signs of aggression, that people might best prepare a defense. Elise agreed cautious defense was best. She began readying troops. Kim followed her. She tried to convince Elise about the truth. Kim made a desperate plea to show Elise herself how smart the dangri were, and because it was Kim who asked, Elise went with her, leaving Tucker in charge of organizing defense. Elise met the dangri outside the city’s edge. They hid at first, then eventually crept out and said hello. Elise was amazed by what she found, and one of the dangri even spoke to her with an english word! They offered to show her their city, and she agreed. She had no choice then, but to accept that the dangri were indeed sentient. When they got back in range, Tucker radioed them, having not been able to do so while they were so near the strange trees that cause electrical disturbance. He seemed very upset. He told them that he discovered Whately had a plan that would ‘eliminate the threat’ as quickly as possible. They tried to head back towards him, but he was quite a ways away. (??? what happens on way back? exciting action? How does whately eliminate them? I say landslide. Preston says chemical, but how did chemical reach all the homes?) They finally got to a room Whately had hidden in. It took them a moment, but they broke down the door. They found Whately beside a computer, it’s screen black. He was praying. When he looked up at them, there were tears in his eyes. “God in heaven, forgive me” he said before he face the group and added “it’s the only way” he spoke for a long time about people and dangri not getting along. Kim thinks talking would have helped. Whately disagrees. He hits a button and around the room screens turn on to show dangri dying, falling out of their homes. He explains that this is how history works. That even if we came with good intentions, our very nature does not suffer competition to dwell too near. “How could we hope to get along? We dont get along with different skin shades on our own species, let alone an entirely alien one. And we can’t go back. We can’t leave them alone. Because this is out last hope. We will live here, or we will die. I can not let these people die. Not to wild monsters.” Tucker runs to the computer to try and stop whatever is being done. He shouts that he can’t get in. Tragically, in awful hilarity, it’s sealed by a simple password. Kim gets very upset and grabs Tucker’s gun, aiming it at Whately. He looks ready, and nods. She pauses for a long time, the gun shaking in her hands. Elise pulls her gun and demands the password. Whately remains silent. Kim shoots out the screens, then drops the gun and runs like she’s going to leave the room. She’s going back to them. Elise grabs her and holds her close, preventing her from running into danger. “Kim, I can’t let you do it, it’s deadly out there” She begins to cry and scream in frustration. Whately grabs for Tucker’s gun as Tucker desperately smashes at the keyboard. Whately holds the gun to his head. He pulls the trigger. In the echoing silence, Elise holds Kim. Tucker stares at the dead scientist... then kicks the body, growling about the bastard turning himself into a martyr. Kim mumbles about searching him for the computer passcode. Fumbling through the dead man’s pockets. She finds a notepad and shuffles through it, running to the computer screen and typing random words. “I have to fix it, I have to fix it, some of them had to make it, I have to make things right with them” Elise comes up behind her and puts a hand on her shoulder. Elises own eyes are sad, but she remains steady, voice thick with emotion “Kim..... We can’t fix this. It’s done. What we just did.... they will never forgive.”(Epilogue?) The End. Sad.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

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FirstDraft (Long Post)

No, Really. This is a long post. For real.

Chapter One

“Space... is boring. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” -Kimberly Dale

When the crew of the spaceship Shacklebolt first set off on their mission to find and investigate a new, unspoiled, habitable planet to call home, they were placed into a near-coma state in cold chambers of cryosleep. Knowing this ahead of time, Kimberly had always been under the impression that the mission and travel time would feel quite quick. She would go to bed one night, and wake up at a new planet, with no memory of the time that passed between.

Or maybe it would be exciting, like in the old space shows she used to watch. Maybe they would encounter many different species and planets, growing into part of an intergalactic neighborhood with all of the interpersonal issued that that entailed. She could learn dozens of new cultures on many different worlds, some of them hostile, some of them not.

Unfortunately, neither scenario turned out to be the case. If she’d paid more attention during the readying process, she would have known that the immense crew were to work in cycles of four shifts, rising from cryosleep in turns to watch over the other crewmates and the ship’s navigation. Technology simply wasn’t at the point where they could be left undisturbed in cryo for more than a few months without biological problems springing up. Muscle atrophy, blood pooling, loss of mental acuity, and nutrition deficiencies were all issues, even with the cryo slowing the body’s functions to a crawl. Falling into cryo was easy enough, but waking was always a process in and of itself. It took time to return to the world of concious thought and become aware again. Time to remind the body it hadn’t in fact calcified in it’s long interim of inaction. Even the electric muscle stimulation machines didn’t keep all atrophy away. Nor did it lessen the ‘morning’ cramps much. The three month long shift cycles were arranged with a week’s overlap so the new crew could recover and fully 'wake up’ before the old crew let them take over. A strict nutrition and exercise regimen was implemented, with minimal variety to help keep everyone’s interest. It didn’t work, in Kim’s opinion. Ages seemed to simply drift by in a miasma of daily grinds and dull dreams.

It seemed if their galaxy was any type of neighborhood, it was a very rural one, where humans lived back on the outskirts shunned by the higher class. Months were spent ‘on cycle’, with nothing eventful happening on entire shifts. Nothing to report, nothing to see, except the vast speckled emptiness of space. For someone who was never happy unless she was doing something she found meaningful, it meant a long, long, unhappy journey of purposeless wandering about the ship.

She wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Many of the crew were highly specialized, top of their field scientists. Highly inquisitive men and women that always kept themselves busy. Forced now to stay in relative inaction. The organization had provided them with movies and games and the like of course, but the journey they had been on had taken them years. The movies had all been watched. The books read and traded, repeatedly, the music on endless loops. All so very routine.

Kim made her way down one of the many hallways, to the large cafeteria/lounge that had been set up somewhere midship among all the labs and bunks. She made her way to the ‘coffee’ dispenser, filled a bag, then wandered her way over to the large chart on the western wall. She sighed softly as she looked over the daily schedules. There were no chores for the crewmates. Most of the system was automated. No one worked a cafeteria line, because each persons food was rolled out in MRE packages into their ‘food locker’. So generally the schedule simply read the wake up times, meal dispension times, and curfews. all lined up in a neat time chart, occasionally interspersed with things like ‘annual psych evaluation, shift 1, A-H, 2100 hours’ and reminders to exercise both mind and body for an hour a day.

A soldier came up beside her, looking at the wall with an exaggerated expresion and began speaking in a narrative tone into Kim’s ear ‘And here we have specialist Kimberly Dale, looking over the days schedule with the same glazed look we all share. Oh to have fun again. Oh to frolic in the fields. When shall her day come to play again?’

‘When will she stop being pestered by grunts?” finished Kim, grinning at the man who’d spoken. Tucker looked hurt for all of two seconds before he recovered

“I seem to recall you pestering me...”

“shh!”

Kim looked carefully around the room, but no one seemed to be staring her way. She punched the soldier in the arm, harder than she may have meant to. “You said you wouldn’t bring it up!” she hissed.

He looked around too, befroe making a show of stretching out “what, your marathon of losses at scrabble? Your last attempt at Shacklebolt Idol?”

When the first reports came in that the ship was nearing the third of the suspected 'earth-like’ planets in the ship’s preprogrammed database, it hardly captured her attention at all. Having visited two other dissapointing planets, one far too cold and one covered in malevolent toxins of some sort, Kim had begun tuning out the overhead messages. She wasn’t alone in this. Barely anyone looked up, expecting this find to be like the others and prove to be too chemically different, to battered by meteors, too drought ridden, or just plain unfitting in some other fashion. Another dud.

Once she did process the message, it still didn’t spur her into action like it should have. It was like hearing the lookout in the crows nest shouting ‘land ho!' only to find not an island, but another speck of cloud. At length, though she eventually decided it was at least something to break the monotony, and went to have a look at it herself by going up to the main bridge. Officially she, as an anthropologist and part of the research or 'planetside crew,’ wasn’t supposed to spend much time up on the bridge with the 'space crew’, but the long days had made most of the commanding officers perhaps a shade hungry for more varied conversations and familiarity with everyone on their ship then they ought to be. Most were glad to have company from time to time. Some looked for more, leading to some tense situations aboard the open space vessel. Kim was glad nothing like that had happened yet with her boss. There were rumors, of course, of other members of the ship’s crew pairing up, and gossip spread fast in the ship, but the commander on her shift seemed to stay out of it. Or at least, the gossip chain hadn’t said anything to Kim about it.

The person usually overseeing Kim’s 'shift’ was standing at the center of the bridge before an array of pilots and engineers and astronaut specialists, all bustling at their panels and glancing up at the screen before them. Commander Elise Tamlison was a tall, lean, dark woman with a proud and almost regal stature. She stood straight-backed, with an impassive look on her angular face, despite whatever thoughts might be going through her mind.

“Enjoy the view?” Asked Kim as she approached Elise. The commander looked back at her and smirked a little before turning back to the view screen.

“It’s very promising.”

Kim looked at it. The green-blue gem reminded her of earth far more than any of the other planets they’d seen. “What’s this one’s name?”

“Denke” Elise quipped in her sharp British accent, “This system is named after a small pantheon. Only a few planets.” She gestured to the bright sun point on the star map, “The sun there is named after a Sudanese god of life, thanks to an internet raffle. Aren’t as many Life Gods as you would think actually.”

“Fitting,” said Kim solemnly. “What’s it’s stats?”

“Roughly twice the size of Earth. Depending on your opinion, that’s twice as long for us to mangle it, so it should have some staying power. A little farther away from the sun, but considering it’s size, it’s still in that 'goldilocks zone’. Higher oxygen than we would expect, but it should still be breathable. Might even do us some good. Sensors indicate high mineral deposits, and we can already the most important part from here.” Elise turned to Kim with a light glinting in her eyes for the first time in their journey.

“There’s life down there, Dr. Dale”

The lights came on in Kim’s mind. Finally, something to be awake for! “Intelligent?” She asked hopefully. A culture would give her something to study.

Elise grinned, “Won’t know 'til we get there.”

-----------------

The Shacklebolt was equipped with dozens of drop ships, each ready to take a small crew to the surface of any interesting planets for exploration and colonization. They would 'anchor’ the Shacklebolt in the gravity field of the planet, and send routine missions down from there. Only one at a time, just in case something went wrong. After all, on a truly habitable planet things were bound to get... unpredictable.

During the approach, Kimberly’s crew woke the shift scheduled after them. It had been agreed early on that whoever discovered the planet would get 'dibs’ on exploring it. Only fair after all. The next shift would take over caring for the ship and be on alert to wake up the rest of the crew members if they got word. It was a ready-made floating city, on the alert to drop in at a moments notice if this planet proved to be the new home they needed.

Everyone moved quickly, eager to be off the spaceship, to see theories and dreams become reality before their eyes. Eager to simply touch ground again. On her way to gather up her share of supplies and tools, Kimberly almost broke into a skip before remembering she was a professional with a doctorate and should be more collected than that would allow. Still, she hummed a little as she gathered everything she needed.

“Is that (Song Title) I hear?” Said a deep voice behind her.

She whirled around in surprise, finding one of the other scientists standing behind her. Whately, an older man with a near white blanket of fuzz on his chin and his greying hair pulled back into a short stub of a ponytail. He laughed at her surprise, his grey-green eyes twinkling with an easy humor.

“Only the best,” Kimberly replied, recovering quickly. “Did you hear? The planet’s crawling with life!”

“Of course I heard,” he said excitedly, “It’s imperative to my field after all. Just think of all the new species we’ll find!” For a moment, he seemed like a small schoolboy, “Why, there will be hundreds of new discoveries as soon as we open the doors and lay eyes on everything. It’s a brand new environment.” He said, “A new home.”

They headed for the drop ship together, still babbling in their excitement as they joined the flow of people ready to get to work. At the doorway, they saw Captain Tucker Davis standing there waving people through like a carnie at a state fair.

“Come one, come all! Step right up and see the amazing new planet, that’s right the planet everyone’s talking about, the one you’ll want to write the folks about. It’s got water, it’s got air, it’s got plants and rocks and trees and creatures galore!” He gestured to Kim and Whately next, “How 'bout the mister and the missus, care to see a living planet the likes of which you’ve never seen before?”

“You mean aside from Earth, genius?” said Kim good-naturedly.

“If you could call that living anymore, Doc.” shot back Tucker, “That’s why we took off on this crazy duck hunt.”

Whately’s smile wavered for a moment, and he nodded, “Touche. What’s the price?”

“Oh, a couple years of boredom and contact with extended family. The gate price, you know. It’s included with entry.”

Kim shook her head and grabbed Whately’s arm “Come on 'da’, I want to see the freakshow.”

When they were finally all in, the drop ship took off, heading for the biggest discovery in human history.

--------------

The ship landed perfectly, everything going according to plan. No hiccups, no glitches, no near disasters. They settled down near what sensors told them was some kind of dry riverbed in a wide plain or valley. After much preparation and probing with remote devices, it was deemed safe to disembark from the ship and explore the new world. Commander Tamlison was the first to set calm, confident foot out onto alien soil. She stood on the surface, examining the landscape as people filed out behind her, taking careful readings of the atmosphere.

They had landed in what appeared to be evening, and in the darkening shadows there wasn’t much to make out of the planet yet. They had landed in a field or valley of some sort, a large swath of flat land between what seemed to be two forests, with a river running through the center for miles to the south before curving into the dark distant walls of the ‘trees’ and for many more miles north until it disappeared on the horizon. Immediately around their feet were strange plants, almost like lily pads, growing against each other and over each other, lying like scales across the ground in a quiet struggle for elbow room. From between some of these specimens grew long thin stalks here and there. Strong, stiff things that slowly turned into lazy looping tendrils at the top of their structure. At first, the lilypad-carpet was hard to navigate and uncomfortable, but once she learned to move her legs through the plants instead of up and over them, Elise managed alright.

At length, the Commander reached up to the clasps on her helmet, slowly releasing the pressurized gasket.

She pulled the headpiece up and off.

And breathed in the crisp, clean air.

“It’s safe everyone. We’ve officially found homebase.”

------------

Naturally, the successful discovery and landing called for a party. People spilled out of the ship, tossing helmets off in glee, unloading food supplies and drink, spreading tarp over cargo boxes in a very rough facsimile of a banquet. Various 'contraband’ items found their way into the mix. A wine bottle, a pack of cigars, etc. Kim pulled out her music player and soon the whole operation was reminiscent of a huge tailgate party instead of a scientific expedition.

Tucker took point as the 'life of the party,’ checking in on everyone, stirring up conversation, running drinks, and so on. Kim led roughly half of the crew in a rousing rendition of 'Final Countdown’ while Whately rocked out the air guitar. Elise watched over them all like a mother hen over her chicks, quietly sipping on her own glass of purified water. Let them celebrate for now. Tomorrow would be all work.

----------------

The sun rose in splendid yellow hues, sparkling across rich green grasses in the heavily dewed morning. It could almost be some kind of high contrast painting instead of a landscape. Dappled sunlight danced over the shining metallics of the drop ship and mission supplies strewn across the landscape. Tent walls rustled in the morning wind like leaves in the fall. Gradually, like blossoming morning glories, people began to stir, emerging sleepily from their tents. Some appeared to be weathering the aftereffects of the party better than others. It was no surprise, therefore, when some people missed the pair of impeccablly neat booted feet striding in front of their sleeping places.

“Come on, people, time to get up!” The boots paused at tents and zippers were unzipped, letting in spears of annoyingly bright light. Groans of undead sounding things answered the loud, insistent voice, protesting in wordless oration the need to pull away from pleasant dreams and the first real, natural sleep to be had in years.

“Get up! Up! We’ve got history to make today!” Elise made no apologies, though neither did she raise her voice any louder than needed to pierce through foggy minds. She made her way like a relentless force, unyielding and calm, through the base camp, her stiff and frozen armed silhouette unmistakable even to the most drowsy onlooker.

Gradually, figures filed out of their miniature fortresses and faced the strange light from a strange sun on a strange land. Like moles dug fresh from their burrows they stumbled about, clumsily getting to work with robotic movements and automatic purpose, setting up something resembling a breakfast. No one said a word, though multiple noises were made. Elise gracefully refrained from telling them that they had done this to themselves. That having gone without all their restricted items for years would naturally make them feel the effects much more harshly than before. Their bodies had become used to freeze dried MREs and dehydrated foods and juices and water. Everything else they had been used to consuming read as foreign to their systems. It was one of the prices they paid. Getting used to relatively ‘natural’ foods again.

But the effects didn’t seem to last long at all, certaintly not as long as they feared. By mid-breakfast everyone seemed fairly alert once more, clear eyed and concious of themselves. In fact, they seemed almost doubly rejuvenated by the time breakfast was finished, chattering excitedly amongst one another and fidgeting in their seats. Some even broke away to do morning stretches and excercises as a light mood seemed to overtake the whole crew. Elise watched the change, shaking her head at the transformation of her crew’s additude from sleeping adults to bleary-eyed dreary unprofessional teenagers to playful and endlessly energetic children.

Whately approached her then, nodding as if he understood her bewilderment completely, “Oxygen,” he stated simply, adding a gesture towards his fellows, “This is probably the largest oxygen-to-air ratio we’ve experienced in generations. In larger doses, it can lead to slightly energizing and euphoric effects.”

Elise raised an eyebrow skeptically, and Whately only chuckled in return, “Oh come now, don’t tell me you can’t feel it, Commander.”

The woman’s face remained stoic as she replied “I, for one, know how to control myself, Dr Whately. Regardless of how I actually feel.” With that she called an end to chow time and began to gather the crew together, calling them to attention, or at least a close approximation of it.

“You all know why we’re here.” She began, “We need a home. A new one. And you know why.” there was a sobering pause among the crew. A moment of silence before Elise continued. “We were slow on the uptake last time. We didn’t learn out lessons until it was too late to change. It was only by our smarts and the grace of God that found a second chance in the rubble of it all. Possibly, the last chance we’ll ever get. We can’t waste it.

“That’s why we have to make sure we do things right this time around. We have to be sure what we’re dealing with.” She looked to the mission specialists, the scientists brought along to evaluate the life of the planet, “We need to know the resources available to us, the obstacles we’ll face, and the dangers that threaten us. Cataloging those so that we’re prepared to act in a balanced, safe, and thoughtful way is your job.” She gestured to the special military team now standing rank and file, provided by the collective forces of the U.N. “Their job is to protect you as you do that. So make sure you stick with them. Listen to them. Follow the grid we laid out. If they pause to check your trackers, you pause too. If you need to slow up, make sure you tell them so you don’t fall behind. They may be used as assistants, but always be aware that their primary objective is to keep you safe, despite whatever trouble your curious minds lead you into.”

She addressed the group as a whole once again, “We don’t expect much trouble, but we want to be prepared. This is not a vacation. This is not a dream. It is not a game, a comedy, or a picnic. Henceforth, I expect all the professionalism and thorough methods that you were hired for to be in action at all times. Do I make myself clear?”

Salutes and sharp, serious nods. They were ready.

“Alright then. Here are the teams you’ll be divided into.” She began to call out names, sorting people into groups in numbered order. Each team consisted of a mission leader to coordinate the walk, three scientists, and two guards. Kimberly found herself teamed up with Tucker as the mission leader, which suited her fine as he was a more familiar face to her than some of the others. Also in her group was a young biologist named Tanaka Serizawa, a top ranked doctor in his field from Japan, his eagerness shone in his eyes as brightly as Kim figured it was shining in hers. Then there was the geologist, Idina Williams, an excitable woman who had the distinction of looking the most ‘nerdy’ of any of the other scientists in the crew. She had problems remembering all of the military crew by name, but she was pretty sure the girl on the team was ‘something Agard’ and the guy was ‘someone Sung’. Oh well, she’d get to know them eventually, she was sure.

Before she could join her group, however, Elise gave her a look to pull her aside.

“Dale,” the commander began. Kim knew that tone. The ‘I need to talk to you in particular’ tone. “Look, I know you and everyone on your team are eager little kids in a candy store today, but make sure you don’t pull anything reckless. You’re all already a part of history. Just by being here you’ve proved yourselves the best in your fields. You’ll probably all get your own species named after you. I just don’t want it to be in memoriam, you get me?”

Kim looked at her as if she were acting weird, but kept the question out of her voice as she replied “Absolutely.”

Elise pointed at her with a piercing look, “Not under my watch.”

Kim nodded once slowly, then went to join her group as Tucker gestured forward.

“Alright, let’s move out.”

Chapter Two

With a holographic HUD of the topography before them and a clear grid laid out, the group set off smoothly, and began documenting new features about the land around them immediately. Within a few yards of bas camp they had already found plenty of new specimens, both flora and fauna. Pictures were taken and smaples were collected where possible by the whole crew. Whenever they stopped to examine a new creepy crawler of some sort or new plant, the biologist seemed to light up. The geologist gushed about the make-up of the soil and landscape, commenting that many minerals they were comming across seemed entirely unfamiliar and new. Kim stopped each time the others did, and took time to draw quick study sketches of whatever they were studying.

The tenth time she did this, Tucker chuckled “That’s so old-fashioned,” he mentioned as he gestured to her drawing pad, “Why not stick with pictures?”

Kim shrugged as she finished the sketch, then brushed back a lock of her long brown hair behind her ears “Pictures can be hard to interpret with the distraction of light and enviroment. Sometimes sketches just.... pick up the detail better. I can control the lines and put down what I really see.”

Tucker pondered this for a while, but didn’t seem to have a response at first. “I guess that makes sense,” he said at last, “you’ve got some strange hobbies for an anthropologist.”

She laughed “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know.... boring stuff.”

“Boring stuff, hmm? Like the Mountains&Monsters game you play?”

He bristled playfully, “How’d you know about that!”

Kim shrugged “You keep those weird game dice in your left front pocket. I see you mess with them sometimes.”

He held his hand over his heart, and pocket, as if he’d just been shot, gasping in affronted shock before grinning, “8th edition was best. They got everything right in that one.”

The day carried on as the sun rose, highlighting all the life around them from varying angles, as if proudly showing off a paradise. Everything seemed brighter than on Earth somehow. Sunnier, more yellow in hue. The sky seemed less full of colors, but somehow healthier, more pure. Something nagged faintly in everyones mind as they carried on. Something comforting and unsettling at the same time. No one voiced it, but there seemed to be an unspoken agreement about it. After a few hours of being mired in the feeling, it was Agard that eventually identified it.

“It’s weird,” she said, examining one of the lilypad-like plants that had been determined to be some form of this planet’s ‘grasses’.

“What’s weird?” replied Kim automatically as she checked her outfit to make sure no openings existed for bugs to get into.

“The whole.... planet, I guess. I mean, take the plants for example. At first glance, they seem green and... and earthy and familiar. Then you get up close and look at them a bit more, and you see that they’re all wrong. I didn’t expect it to be like that.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know.... purple skies and pink grass and blue soil. Things like that. More... alien.”

“Well,” answered Dr. Serizawa, looking up from containing a strange ‘crawly’ of some kind that strummed along on multiple rows of lengthy little legs and appeared to have eye stalks, “It’s possible that what we’re seeing is convergent evolution in action.” He gestured to the plants, “Some designs work so well for life that they spring up in different places, completely independant of one another. It’s just a system that really works. So take plant life, for example. Using some sort of pho-”

“Do you see that?!” Dr Williams pointed out towards what appeared to be a rocky outcropping in the distance. Everyone, except for Dr Serizawa who looked distinctly injured by the interruption, immediately went on full alert, half anticipating and half fearing what they might see. Kim shaded her eyes and tried to get a good look, studying the outlines of the rocks, the border of the lilypad-grass, looking for signs of disturbance. Everyone fell quiet, listening to the sounds of the wind and the chittering of creatures yet to be identified. The lilypad-grass moved in ways that distracted the eye, rolling like cotton sheets instead of waving like normal grass. The stalk-plants reached upwards in relaxed stretches. But nothing else seemed to move.

“What-” Kim began; but then she saw it.

There, just beside the outcropping, looking almost like the rock itself had suddenly decided to separate and become a living thing, strode the first ‘large’ sample of life anyone had ever encountered on Denke.

It moved in slow, hesitating, cautious steps. stilted and ever-pausing, like a deer slowly making it’s way out onto a meadow for the first time. Like a deer, it had slender forelimbs, though even from here, the group could see that those legs were covered in some kind of imitation of the rock the creature had been hiding beside. Between and behind the forelimbs came a deep chested torso, and attached to it a very long, almost outlandish looking narrow neck, seemingly defying normal standards of Earth-gravity in it’s support of a surprisingly craggy looking head that swiveled to and fro, evidently on the lookout. It only got stranger from there. Behind it’s chest and forelimbs sprouted another pair of limbs, leg-like as well, but smooth and more... springy somehow. Then came it’s rear legs which moved behind it in the ugly, graceful gait of some slender legged rabbit, all of it’s bulk up towards the rear of the animal. It had no tail to speak of.

Pictures were taken immediately, and a camera was mounted quickly by the biologist. They watched as the creature slowly explored it's surroundings, occasionally lowering it's strange heavy-looking head to the lilypad-grass and rooting around beneath it. Everyone seemed to hold their breath in fear of accidentally driving the thing off.

"What is it?" whispered Agard curiously into the extreme silence, earning a dry look from the rest of the group. "I mean... what are we going to call it?"

Serizawa turned back to the creature, watching it’s movements and behaviors closely. “If I had to guess, I would say it’s definitely some form of grazer. Likely a prey animal. See how alert it is? It’s looking for predators.” He pulled out a pair of binoculars to get a closer image. Kim, in the meantime, began to draw as quickly and quietly as she could while the biologist listed off details.

“Six limbs. Possibly a chordate, built on a central running spine like ours. Long legs, look like they’re built for speed or possibly leaping....”

It leapt then, as if highlighting Serizawa’s words. It jumped with such power and grace that it almost seemed like it would take off into the air, all the while letting out what could only be described as a scream as it began racing across the plains, all six limbs working in amazing synchronization, propelling it in wide zig-zaging motions through the grasses. Focused of the grazing creature itself, the group almost missed what it was running from.

Another creature followed behind it. Something large, low to the ground. Fast. It barreled through the grasses like a rolling boulder, always seeming to be just a step ahead of the grazer, as if knowing where it intended to zig next and cutting it off. The beast wasn’t directly following the steps of it’s prey. It was anticipating them, working a solo strategy that seemed extremely effective. It wasn’t long before the deer-like being’s path took it directly to the hunter. It leapt to avoid it’s fate, curling it’s forelegs up as the remaining two pairs of legs shoved off from the ground in a massive leap that would shame the best attempts of any gazelle. It’s hunter lunged up as well, for the first time revealing a large wedge-shaped head with two shovel like protrusions on either side of it’s nose. It reared up on two thick, massive hind legs as it’s own remaining four limbs reached for it’s prey. The middle limbs gripped the grazer’s thin hind legs, and the forearms, each ending in two massive hooks, sliced into the grazer’s side and neck.

The grazer howled an eerie shriek that crawled up the spines of the entire group as they observed the hunter bring it down. It whirled it’s head around to smash the craggy protrusions into the predators side in a desperate attempt at defense, but the hunter lunged again, grabbing the slender neck in it’s mouth and slicing with front hooks.

Muscled severed.

The grazer fell limp.

Silence deafened the landscape.

“Shit.” commented Sung.

As quietly as possibly, they slunk away from the scene, leaving the hunter to it’s meal as they chose to give it the widest berth possible. Dr Serizawa made careful note about the unfolding ecology and potential threats in the area and suggested that the guards radio back to warn the basecamp that at least one large predator was in the area.

Compared to the hunt, the rest of the day seemed to continue uneventfully. They uncovered a few more small species, plenty of insect appearing individuals, and dozens more plant types. They stopped every so often though to look around for larger signs. Signs of the grazer’s species. And the thing that hunted it. Eventually, with no sightings, everyone began to relax. They unfolded a compact built wagon of sorts to carry all of their samples on and began to worry less about the things around them than with trying to drag the wagon about without damaging the plants too much. Despite their caution they still left a trail behind them of disturbed grasses, but they felt after much discussion that they had done their best to avoid harming the plants any more than what was unavoidable. They had a nice lunch out in the field, discussing all of the exciting things they’d seen so far. This area was rich in many things. Hopefully many of the plants would prove edible. As it stood now, all of the group were wearing long sleeves and pants, and shirts with high collars, in an effort to avoid contact poisons and the like. It made for warm work, but it was generally agreed that a sweaty day was better than falling ill with alien toxins. The biggest topic was, naturally the hunt.

“Did you see it?” Dr Williams near-shouted again for possibly the tenth time, “A large carnivore, on day one! It’s like... stepping out on safari and seeing a lion in the first few yards or something! Incredible creature.”

Dr Serizawa nodded enthusiastically, “Yes, and clearly a being of predatory intelligence to boot. But I wonder...” he took a couple more mouthfuls of his MRE as he thought, and still a few more before finishing with “we don’t really know where these two creatures fit in the grand scope of things in this environment. The hunter beast could very well be the apex predator around here, or it could be one of many species vying for the title.”

Kim looked at him as she shoveled a spoonful of food sideways into her mouth, then moved her hand in front of her lips before she spoke, trying to at least attempt some degree of polite conversation, “You think there’s other things like that out there?”

“I don’t think. I know. For this to be a working ecological system, it has to have more than just one predator in this biome, and certainly more across the entire planet. Who knows what other shapes we’ll come across.”

Halfway through lunch, as an experiment, the geologist and biologist worked together to clear a small area of grass clean through down to the soil, digging out a fire pit. There they lit a very small, controlled fire with a tiny match in the oxygen rich air. Unsurprisingly, it proved to burn bright and vigorously, though it seemed to do so on half the fuel it might have needed back on earth. They sampled the water in test vials carefully to study it’s properties later. Everything about them seemed to reveal thousands of new things. A fruitful day indeed.

Kim stretched out and lay back among the flat grasses. They proved to be very pillow-like, cushioning her remarkably well. “I can’t believe I’m here.” She said quietly. She didn’t think anyone else heard her, but a soft chorus of assenting ‘mmhmms’ filled the air. She paused before deciding to take the sounds as encouragement and spoke up again. “It’s like a dream. Some beautiful fantasy that I don’t want to wake up from. I mean, I always felt like I was struggling for something, and for once it... it kind of feels like this might be it."

Sung’s voice reached her ears, “A beautiful, unmarred landscape, dorky friends, and life. Vivid, healthy, life. It’s... vaugely like being where are supposed to be.”

Above them, clouds began to gather, scooting across the sky like serpents. At first there were only a few, tentatively probing through the bright blue of the atmosphere and leading behind them a parade of their siblings, until the sky was full of the white masses. As it gradually became clearer that the clouds were gathering to stick around for a while, and that the sun was thinking about settling down, the group of explorers began to stretch lazily, gather their things, and head off again.

They we’re turning to head back home after the first day of exploration, when Tucker brought them to a halt. At the edge of the treeline they waited, peering around. That was when they spotted the hunter again.

Lying down almost cat-like in the space where they had made their firepit, it stretched lazily across their path. It seemed be relaxed and content, if one could hope to read alien body language. It showed no signs of spotting the group, or at least no signs of caring if it did. A quick check of the wind proved they weren’t in danger of being sniffed out at least. It was undeniable, however, that the beast was going to pose an obstacle in getting back home.

“Look at it’s build,” muttered Kim softly, “All of it’s bulk is in the middle. Near the ah... grabbing limbs.”

“That’s all it needs,” Dr Serizawa answered back just as softly, “I’d imagine with hooks on it’s forelimbs like that it doesn’t need much force to pierce the hide of it’s prey. Centralized body weight, probably makes it easier to turn on a dime if it needs to. It’s like gluing knives to a fighting dog.”

Tucker turned to him, “How wide around it do you think we need to go?”

“Hard to say.... it’s a large solitary predator, so I wouldn’t recommend very close at all. But it’s also just fed. That might make it more docile... still not worth approaching too carefully. We don’t know how territorial it might be. I’d suggest avoiding going near it at all costs.”

“Sounds good to me,” said one of the guards.

Following the tree line, they skirted south, trying to leave the beast to it’s own devices. It seemed to work at first, even if it did send them a little off their planned path. They radioed base camp to let the commander know they would be returning a little bit late. When they felt that they were sufficiently distanced from the beast, they turned and began a return course that would take them back to camp in a roughly half-circle route. A few feet into their return journey, they began to feel twinges of dread touch at their hearts.

Someone spotted the beast again.

It was sitting nonchalantly in the middle of the field, much closer to them than it ought to be after all their hiking. This close, the group could make out that it seemed to have two eyes, one on either side of the head, though they were relatively small. It had three horizontal ‘v’ shaped slits along the center of it’s head as well, though what they were for, no one could say. No external earflaps, but a series of deep holes in front of it’s eyes. Everything about it’s posture still suggested it was relaxed.

Except that this time, it was clearly facing the group of explorers.

Chapter Three

It cleaned the wicked arsenal on it’s forelimbs almost casually. It used a hind leg to scratch at a spot on it’s flank. It tilted it’s head toward the sky, watching the gathering, twisting, mutating clouds as if pondering their intentions. It seemed completely uninterested in the new and alien creatures before it.

But it faced them all the same. And when Kimberly gathered her courage and stepped a few feet from the group, the predator became focused, alert. It stopped it’s charade of complacency and zeroed in on Kim like a hawk and it’s body became tense and still. Kimberly returned to the group quickly, and in a matter of minutes the the predator began to relax again.

“It... it’s hunting us, isn’t it?” Kimberly asked in a half-awed, half-shaken tone, “It waited for one of us to leave the group.”

The biologist nodded, “it would appear so. That’s.... oddly brazen of it, actually. We’re unfamiliar beings. It should be cautious of us. It doesn’t know what we can do yet.”

“...maybe it thinks it can handle us just fine.”

Tucker gestured to the guards, who unslung their rifles slowly, aiming them at the beast. This is what they were here for. The guns were loaded with rubber bullets by default. It wouldn’t kill the beast, they hoped, but in theory the pain would be enough of a deterrent. It didn’t respond, seemingly unimpressed with the strange creature’s sticks.

After a few moments Kim began to get restless, uncomfortable with the whole scene and wanting something more to do, something besides play prey to an alien predator. “Well, we can’t sit here standing off with it forever. Tucker, what’s your call?”

The mission leader gulped, just a little, before checking the tracker on his wrist. They were already technically off course. Above them light was fading, and clouds continued to gather into the unmistakeable shapes of a building storm. His crew needed to get back to camp. They had gear for overnighting, but the idea of of trying to settle in for an evening of storms with an overly curious predatory species didn’t exactly fit comfortably with him. He looked at the trees of the forest, massive things, tall, branching out high into thick crowns of branches and leaves that dripped down like curtains. Maybe...

“It hunts here on the plains right? It, uh.... it probably doesn’t like to get into the trees. Or at least, it probably doesn’t like climbing, right docs?”

The scientists looked at each other, considering the idea between them before the biologist spoke up, “there’s no real reason to think it wouldn’t be comfortable in the forest. That would limit it’s hunting grounds considerably. But the thought that it might not climb trees could be a solid one.” He look into the trees uncomfortably, “Much as I’d rather stay on the ground.... we don’t know whats in the trees yet. It’s possible some other predator rules that territory.”

Tucker grunted unhappily, “It’s better than nothing. We’ll try to get some distance between it and us. Give ourselves some time to unpack the gear we need to make it up there. With any luck, it’ll lose interest in us and we’ll be on our way back to camp in no time.”

Both guards continued to train their guns on the beast, who had gone back to apparent disinterest in the group. The rest of the team double-checked their equipment, radioed once more to camp to let them know what was going on, and began to trek into the forest. The guards walked backwards, facing the hunter as they moved. Tucker took point up ahead. The scientists formed an uneasy cluster in the center, watching on all sides as they crept into the trees.

It was dark in the forest. Between the clouds overhead, the fading light, and the dense masses of foliage, stepping into the maze of hanging leaf curtains was like stepping from day into night. Around them, new sounds echoed, alien animals in a strange chorus of voices. It was like stepping into a high class party you werent invited to, and we’re hilariously ill dressed for. The creatures whispered to and fro, and to Kim it felt like they were being watched on all sides.

As for the beast, it seemed at first to let them enter the forest without following them. They navigated the hanging mazes without seeing it follow. For a while, it seemed Tucker might have been right about it not wanting to enter the forest at all.

It didn’t take long until they felt their hearts sink as the truth of the matter revealed itself.

Each time they stopped at a likely tree and began to rummage for equipment they could turn into climbing gear, the beast felt obliged to make an appearance. Always, it appeared behind them, in the narrow paths they had just navigated through the tree mazes. Always it seemed relaxed and calm, unconcerned with the group, yet also always facing it. Each time, the group would pack things back up and carry on, at which point they seemed to leave the predator behind. It was only the next time they stopped that it showed itself again, as if to remind them it was still there. They tried going in different angles, through the leafy walls of the maze instead of following what narrow paths they could find. They criss-crossed and doubled back, trying to gain distance from the creature following their steps. But it always seemed to know where they had headed, and appeared again when they stopped without fail. Now sometimes behind them. Now to their left.

Above and around them, the voices began to die down. Retreating from the casual chatter of people at a party to the whispers of an anticipating crowd. Before long, even those voices slipped away, until there was nothing in the air but the tense silence of watching. Every step the group took, every rustle of their clothing or resettling of their packs seemed unnaturally loud. The quieter everyone tried to move, the louder they felt they were being. If any among them had doubted it before, the situation was painfully clear to them now.

They weren’t just being hunted. They were being driven. Herded.

Worse, when they now checked their trackers, they received confusing messages. Their coordinations and distances from the ship varied in startling degrees, or the display turned into a loading screen and would move off of it. Other electronic equipment began to malfunction as well.

“Interference, possibly geographical in nature.” said the geologist nervously.

Frustration vented itself through Kim with a sigh, “Let’s just... shoot the damn thing. They’re rubber bullets right? Wouldn’t that drive it off?”

Tucker’s response was automatic, repeating words that had been drilled into his mind, “We’re supposed to avoid impacting the wildlife at all cost unless we are in immediate danger and have no other option. Since we don’t know the effect of the rubber bullets on the creature yet, we can’t shoot it. Not unless it actually attacks us.”

Kim snorted in derision, “Then lets pick a tree and climb it. I’m sick of this.”

“It’s not that simple. If that thing is waiting for us to separate, and we start climbing a tree one at a time, whoever’s left on the ground last is going to be in the most danger. I can’t let that happen. It’s my job to lead you all safely.”

A few moments of silence went by before Kimberly spoke next, “...what if the last person on the ground... isn’t a person?”

After revealing her plan, Kim and the two other scientists got to work immediately at the base of a tree, while Tucker and the guards kept a lookout. A thrumming sound filled the forest, and after a minute or two water began dripping through the canopy above to splash it’s way down to the ground in tiny waterfalls. In a few moments the team was ready, and stood back to take a look at their handy work.

“Needs our scent,” Kim said at last before removing her jacket and putting it in place. “There. with any luck, it’ll be good enough.”

They pulled out their gear. Predictably, the beast showed itself, reminding them it was still there, and not put off by a little rain. The guards kept an eye on it as Tucker rigged the equipment. One by one, they began to ascend into the tree, up into the safety of the branches. The predator watched each one as they climbed, separating from the group. Each time, they waited for the predator to relax again before sending the next person. The scientists went up first, splitting the party in half. Once they had climbed up safely, Tucker gestured to the guards to climb next. They were reluctant to leave him, but followed his orders anyway.

As the first of the two ascended, the predator followed it’s usual behavior. But once the guard had dissappeared into the trees, it didn’t calm down like it had before. It stayed alert, watching the remaining figures on the ground. It seemed to know. Shifting it’s position, it no longer sat like a patient house cat. Now it’s body was more tense. It’s head ducked lower to the ground. The ‘v’ marks on it’s snout flared and opened. The next guard needed reassurance from Tucker to leave the ground, and a command to make sure she kept climbing.

There were only two left. Tucker stared down the beast as it crouched down, gathering all six limbs beneath it. It was ready for the next move, on the edge of action and set to strike in a moment’s notice. Waiting for it’s invitation. Insisting the prey take the first move in it’s own dance of death. For a just a moment, a long, eternal moment, everything was quiet and still.

Then everything moved at once.

The human leapt for the ropes as the beast leapt for it, striking without a roar or growl, going after it’s prey with one efficient leap, faster than the human could anticipate. Hooks tore into clothing, ripping through the thick forest air. The human went to climb faster, but a heavy, muscled arm grabbed his foot. He struggled, legs flailing in awkward kicks as the beast attempted to get a better hold on it’s quarry. Tucker was in trouble. His world shrank to just himself, the rope, and the beast on his foot as his blood rushed in his ears, as if reminding him what he stood to lose if the beast pulled him away from his literal lifeline. Shots rang out around his head as the beast clung on with astounding strength. His teammates tugged at the rope, trying to haul him upward in a vertical tug’o’war with his body as the flag. He thought they might be calling out to him.

‘I have to climb’ he thought desperately, ‘I have to. I can do it. Just. One hand over the other. Just like gym class.’ He tried to slide his hands up at first, unwilling to put any slack on the rope, but that only succeeded in sliding him closer to the monster. He tried to let go with one hand, but his body seemed to rebel against the idea, clinging tighter until he could have sworn his hand was bleeding. The creature did it for him, thrashing in frustration and forcing a hand loose from the rope. For a perilous moment he swing about, crashing into the tree trunk. The hooks struck again, and this time he felt lines of fire-hot pain run along his leg, dragging an agonized shout from his throat. The others pulled on the rope harder, shot at the beast more, but though it turned it’s head and let out it’s own cry, it didn’t let go of Tucker’s foot. The captain struggled and made another bid for freedom. Moving his free leg, he kicked at the heel of his trapped foot, until he managed to work the shoe loose. With a sudden tug, it fell free, and the monster with it, as Tucker scramble up the rope as fast as he could. The beast lunged again almost immediately, but missed it’s chance. It turned it’s rage instead on the only other figure on the ground, ripping through jacket and figure alike in a horrendous display of power. The mass fell apart silently, and shattered on the ground, releasing many tiny creatures out into the forest. The decoy the group had built gave Tucker enough time to climb up and be gone into the crown of branches before the beast looked up again. Now safe, the guards tended to their leader as the others watched the beast.

It sat confused, watching the scattering little creatures, wondering how one being had turned into many. When it finally looked around for it’s prey again it found itself woefully alone, all the more confused at losing it’s dinner. It paced around restlessly, sniffing at tree trunks and along pathways in the ground. It clawed at the tree the humans had huddled in, walked around it, looked up into it. For a frightening moment it reared up and put it’s grabbing limbs on the tree, it’s hooks reaching up and clawing at the trunk. But it didn’t climb. Like a dog with a squirrel it sat and watched, bewildered by the change of events.

Tucker’s wounds proved to not be deep. They ran the length of his legs shallowly, and required most of the bandages and antibiotics they packed to cover them, but he seemed to still be able to move them fine, all the way down to all ten toes.

“Guess the decoy was a bust, huh?" He said as they patched him up. Kim looked at him apologetically, but he just chuckled, “don’t worry about it. It was worth a shot at least."

After treating him, everyone set about securing themselves to the branches with the rope they had used to climb in the first place. Each then secured another lead to each other, forming a stabilized web structure of the group that would keep any one individual from falling out of the tree while they slept. They stretched out a tarp uncomfortably above them, settled down, and, exhausted, tried to sleep as they waited out their hunter.

-------------------

Chapter Four

-------------------

An icy chill washed over Kim’s spine and wrenched her out of her sleep with the force of a mac truck. Then it fell over her face.

“AiuuughhH!” She jerked out of her sleep and would have fallen if it weren’t for the web she and her group had established. Unfortunately that same web held her in place under the stream of water falling off the tarp above everyone’s head. She gasped and shoved the edge of the tarp up to try and get the water out of her face as the others jerked awake.

“For the love of...” she continued, fading into a string of grumbled curses.

After carefully moving the tarp to dump all the water off the top of it without any more undue showers, they group rolled it up and packed it away. It had rained through the night, but the storm seemed to have passed by now. A quick check below proved that the predator seemed to have moved off as well, at least from the immediate area. Still, they all figured it would be best to wait a bit before climbing down to check things out on foot. They passed out MRE meals for a meager, but nutritionally satisfying breakfast as the checked their gear.

“We’re still getting bad readings,” Tucker commented, tapping on the equipment and, when that failed, tapping it against the tree.

The geologist nodded, “I’m more and more convinced it’s geographical. For one, we don’t have as clear a line between us and the ship. Second...” she examined the tree closer, taking a small chisel and breaking off part of the ‘bark’. “Do you see this? It’s some sort of amber. Some secretion the whole tree covers itself in.” She waved the bit of transluscent material directly over the sensors of her gear and watched it utterly fail, “It has some kind of disruptive property about it. That’s the main reason our gear is screwing up.”

“So what do we do then?” asked one of the guards.

The geologist looked around before continuing. “Well, I’d say we’re a good ways off the path we were supposed to follow, and honestly.... I don’t know how to track in this forest, or any other forest on this planet. I don’t know what side moss grows on or what signs to follow or anything like that. Does anyone here?”

No one spoke for a while.

“There’s the drones.” Said Tucker finally. “The drones are mostly mechanical in nature, and don’t rely on signals to get started. We all have one. We’ll send them directly up, above the treeline. It gets a read on where we are, takes a picture pointing in the right direction, and comes down still facing that direction. We’d have to stop every few feet or so to make sure we don’t go off track, but it should work.”

They decided to test it before making a descent. To be perfectly honest, no one felt in much of a hurry to get back on the ground where the hunter-beast might be, despite the biologist’s assurances that it should have wandered off by now.

Tucker unpacked his drone, a small, circular disc with a helicopter-like fan blade system, several small vacuums around the edges to push air along, a stabilizing tail blade, and a small camera attached to it’s ‘front’. Relatively low-tech, the drones were hardly more than modified childrens toys, but it should suit them fine here. He switched it on and the little thing whirred to life, lifting out of his hands and slowly moving up into the higher reaches of the canopy. Occasionally it bumped into branches, correcting it’s flight pattern then and continuing on. It was supposed to travel as straight as possible, but it seemed to be affected by the properties of the trees as well, wobbling drunkenly as it continued on its way. It dissappeared above the trees for several minutes as the group waited in anticipation.

For just a second, they began to fear it wouldn’t come back down at all.

But then they heard it’s little motor again and watched it descend in it’s own wibbly-wobble fashion, again having to correct it’s path every once in a while. When it reached a few feet above Tucker’s head, it seemed to tire of it’s draining expedition and inexplicably simply turned itself off. Luckily, the Captain was a pretty good catch.

“Thousands of dollars per unit!” He grinned, “Glad to see it’s working hard.”

“Great.” said Kim dryly, “Our navigation is in the hands of a cat toy. Well, let’s get going. We need to collect the samples that are still intact and get back to camp ASAP.”

One of the guards looked at her quizzically, “We’re still taking the samples?”

The horrified look in Kim’s russet brown eyes shouted her indignation without words, “Those samples are what we came out here for! We can’t just leave them behind. Besides, it a whole wagon of misplaced animal and plant life. We can’t just leave it out here. Now let’s go.” The guard cleared her throat and set to work, having properly been told off. The others got to work as well, and soon they began to repel down the tree they way they’d gone up, one by one, in reverse order. Tucker first, guards second, scientists last.

Upon landing, further examination of the ground around them revealed that their predator seemed to have left after all. It also seemed it had taken it upon itself to dispose of a few of the samples they had collected, judging by the strewn about collection kits and remains. Most of what was left wasn’t fleshy at all. Scales, something like fur or feather, spindly insect legs. In all, they’d lost about %80 of their gathered collection of living things. The plants, on the other hand, seemed to be fine, except for the few that had escaped their containers only to be trodden on by the beast’s heavy feet. The wagon was still useable, but bent at the edges, and didn’t move as smoothly as it had before.

“Damn.” said Tucker quietly.

After gathering everything up, the group began trekking in the direction the drone had indicated. As they had planned, they stopped once in a while to send up another drone and check their direction and location. Each time it had to be someone elses drone. The little devices seemed to only maintain control over themselves for limited amounts of time, and needed ‘naps’ as the group began calling them, to reconfigure enough to try again. Fortunately the crew soon discovered they weren’t actually all that far away from the camp. A lot of their movement had taken them in parallel or diagonal paths instead of just directly away. They ought to be back home well before the sun started setting again. Especially since they weren’t collecting things on the way back.

Because they were on a more direct route home, they saw new parts of the forest, but no one at the moment was terribly inclined to stop. Being chased up a tree and spending a rainy night up there seemed to have dampened a little of the high spirits they’d had before hand.

At lunch they stopped and ate again, before the biologist sent up his drone. They were patiently waiting for it’s return, getting ready to judge where to catch it at once it got halfway down the tree level. But this time it seemed to stay up much longer. People started fidgeting nervously. The guards played with the straps of their guns anxiously, already winding up in case of another animal encounter. They all grew quiet.

Screeching through the foliage, the drone came crashing down at an angle, like a small comet colliding with the earth. The group ducked as one as the flying projectile flew past them and buried its front into the ground, flipping once or twice before finally coming to a rest in a tangle of metal.

“Check the file!” Tucker demanded at once. Someone opened a playback machine and plugged the information from the mangled drone in. They watched from it’s point of view as it drifted upward away from the team, passing level after level of branches. Then it seemed to buckle, jerking to a halt, before the camera was shaken and the motors of the drone whirred in protest. It shuddered, seemed to impact something multiple times, and turned its view in unexpected directions. Some.... Thing, some scaled limb or extremity of sorts flashed by and for a half-second a massive eye appeared in the viewfinder. Then the whole thing whirled around again and went black.

Five pairs of eyes turned upwards to gaze through the trees. Straining they tried to pick out shapes, looking for a glimpse of the creature that must surely still be up there, finding patterns in shadows and outlines in groupings of leaves that were nothing more than tricks on the eye. Try as they might, no one seemed able to spot much of anything in the canopy.

“Think we can set some camera traps?” asked the biologist in a hopeful whisper.

Tucker shook his head “I think we have enough to report for one day. Lets just get out of here.”

They began to move off, and had barely managed to get more than a few feet in when it fell on them.

It was a ball of limbs, sharp things, and screeching. An explosion of chaos in the middle of an already tense grouping, throwing shrapnel of fear and panic in every direction. It gripped and slashed wildly, pulling some nearer to it’s horrid whirlwind and repeling others with no sense of consistancy about it’s choices. The forest all around burst into frenzied life as nearby creatures fled.

Someone shouted for help.

Someone else started shooting.

The thing screamed it’s rage and fury, redoubling it’s efforts.

Sharp appedages tore flesh

Scales filled human vision

There was more shooting

Silence.

Stillness.

Lungs heaving in the aftermath, each of the humans tried to gather their scattered wits, feeling the wild thrumming of their hearts. No one spoke, and then everyone did.

“What the hell-”

“Nope, nope, I’m calling a nope on this planet.”

“Is everyone-”

“How are the sam-”

“Why us, man’

“Who cares about the samples a-”

“You’re gonna toss in the mission just beca-”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Hell yeah, we’re not wel-”

“Can we just head ba-”

“HEY!”

Tucker grabbed their attention and everyone quieted down. “We’re the best of the best, remember? Act like it.” He took in a deep breath, “First thing’s first. Is anyone hurt?”

Flesh wounds were reported, but nobody had anything serious. As the guards began patching up everyone with more of the supplies, Tucker gestured to the biologist. Naturally, when they could, the others all approached too, taking their first up-close look at a large lifeform of this planet.

“What do you think?” the captain asked, gesturing down at the creature lying motionless on the ground before him.

It was thin, almost ostrichlike in shape, though smaller, maybe about three or four feet in total length, from the tip of it’s elongated, rounded snout to the end of it’s long serpentine tail. Like the hunter beast it had three slits arranged in a line running up the arcing shape of the top of the snout, and two eyes, now closed, swollen, and appearing to be bruised heavily on the left. Two fleshy rosettes grew behind the eyes. It seemed to be covered in very fine scales, it’s skin supple and soft. Like the other creatures discovered before, it had six limbs. Two forelimbs that almost looked like grasping tools of some kind, hindlegs that any large bird would be proud to possess, and in the middle the unmistakable shape of extremely large, albeit crumpled, wings. Wings, not made of feathers, but of some sort of modified scaling. Kimberly help to stretch one out, amazed by it’s span.

“It’s.... it can’t be.” She whispered softly. “This thing... it doesn’t... it can’t really... fly... can it?”

The biologist lifted one of the creatures eyelids, “I’d say that’s under some debate.... considering it fell on us. Either way, it’s not going to fly anymore. Not for a while. This thing is knocked out cold. In fact,” he pointed at the bruising on the eye, “I daresay we may have narrowly avoided killing it.”

Serizawa stood and looked at the others “This may be the best opportunity we have for a live, large species sample. I say we get the rope and lash it to the wagon. Securely, of course.”

“Won’t we be pushing ourselves too much, doctor? I mean...”

“If it’s a flying creature like we suspect, it should be light. Here, help me out.”

Working quickly, they moved other samples out of the way and carefully strapped the birdlike creature onto the wagon. Then they continued on, weighed down by animals and thought. Before long they reached a river, the sight of which lifted some of the tension from their shoulders.

“We shouldn’t have to check the drones anymore. This river ought to lead right back to camp.”

They all began hoping they would finally get back to camp without further incident. This was a mistake. No sooner had they started following the river, when they were attacked again. Another creature fell upon them, much like the last, but bigger, stronger, and more focused. It was Sung who spotted it first, and the cry he might have let out was shortened by his impact with the ground. The creature stood atop him, a clawed forelimb on his head, digging and drawing blood from his scalp. It looked down at him, and a deep growl crawled from somewhere deep in it’s chest as it slowly swung it’s long neck up to look at the others, lips peeling up from the sides of it’s mouth to expose a great variety of teeth, including the slanted, guilotine front ones and the fangs on the side. It shook in it’s fury.

Agard drew her rifle, pointing it at the beast, who seemed to take the motion as a threat. It screeched horrifically and fanned out it’s massive wing span. As both wings stretched out, they shook and flared, producing a prodigious rattling sound. The rosettes on the sides of it’s head flared into blood red ears as it’s gaze darted from one person to another, and it’s hind claws dug deep into Sung’s chest. It hissed in a long, steady voice as Sung groaned beneath it.

Agard shot

Tucker lunged.

The shot struck the animal somewhere in the torso, and it’s left wing crumpled immediately as it let out a shriek of surprise. Tucker was on it before it could react, grabbing it about it’s neck and shoulders and heaving to one side, hoping to get it off of his partner before too much damage was done. The others rushed in to help when they saw it struggling, trying to pin down all six limbs at once. It writhed and twisted furiously, lashing out with it’s tail and buffeting with it’s wings as it screeched out again and again. Sung rolled away from the fight as best he could, trying to stay out of the way. Dr Williams rushed to his side, dragging him to further safety.

Gradually the creature began to quiet down, until it seemed they might have it captured. Then it bounded up and kicked out with both hind legs like a kangaroo. It’s powerful feet caught Kim in the chest, sending her half stumbling-half flying back away from the others. With only two people holding onto it now, it redoubled its efforts, biting and kicking with wild abandon. It’s gaze flicked repeatedly over to the smaller creature in the cart and only by being forced out of the struggle did Kim have the distance she needed to notice it. She ran to the smaller creature, not sure whether she should protect it or bring it to the larger one. This set something off in the larger animal, which in a display of tremendous strength managed to burst free from it’s captors and surge towards Kim. She backed, turned, and was running before she knew it, but the beast was faster as it leapt. Now it was her turn to flail in desperation as the thing gripped at her, trying to pin her to the ground. They bucked and brawled around each other, and more shots rang into the forest, more screeches filled the air. Tucker tried to join the fray again, but was buffeted out of the way. Then Kim experienced the slight drop in her stomach that told her she had jsut made a horrible mistake.

Her foot slipped.

She missed-stepped over the edge of the river and fell in, dragging the creature with her. Kim and the creature were washed along almost immediately in the swift current.

“Kim!” Tucker began to chase after them, but Dr Serizawa held him back with a firm grip on his arm, “Sir! We can’t!”

“What?”

“It’s Sung.”

Tucker looked over at his fallen comrade, who by this time was covered in blood. Dr Williams crouched over him with Agard, both trying to treat him and stop his bleeding.

Serizawa stressed each of his words, “ Agard shot the thing before it hit the water. Kim will be washed downriver, but she has a drone of her own, and we need to get Sung to the infirmary now or he will die.”

The captain looked back at the river. Kim was already gone. He sighed and kicked the soil, “Damnit! Let’s go”

Under Tucker’s command, they tossed out most of the samples to make room for Sung in the wagon. They kept the small beast. “Kim would never forgive us” the captain mused. Then they took off. Agard kept her gun at the ready. The two remaining scientists kept a sharp look out. Other than that they just kept moving, as fast as they could, blindly shoving their way through and past all kinds of different foliage and scattering small animals under their feet. The land flew by under them, and they only paused once, at the edge of the field, to check for the hunter-beast before dashing across. When the perimeter and guards around the camp came into sight, they all started yelling at once.

The guards squinted at them, then came alive with alarm, swarming towards them. They took the wagon and immediately began carrying it like a makeshift gurney towards the infirmary tent as others escorted the walking survivors, peppering them with a slew of quickfire questions. Tucker ignored them. He had to get treated. Then he had to go back. He couldn’t leave Kim out there.

Stepping into the tent, he just managed to spot the Commander approaching with her stiff walk, locked arms, and an ashen, stony expression on her face. He didn’t have to see the question to know it was there.

His gaze faltered. He looked away.

Chapter Five – the river/memories Turbulent waters swept around Kim as she lashed out for some kind of handhold, a steady roaring pummeling her ears. She tried desperately to hold her head above the surface. Maybe she could find a ledge, a tree branch, or a rock or something. She thought she saw the alien once or twice, but it didn't seem at home in the rapid river either. The water was cold. It moved fast.

Chapter Six- the rescue

Through the droning of longwinded, prattling discourse of a world of grey waterfalls, two distinct voices carried in force, running gauntlets of sound as they relayed their messages.

“We have to go out and look for her! The longer we wait..."

“Don’t tell me things I already know, Captain!"

Commander Elise Tamlison stared down her subordinate with sharp focus in the foggy air. The rain had hit base camp hard. They had managed to get all the supplies safely inside before the real storm hit, but now the deluge hammered down on them relentlessly. The ground seemed unwilling to soak it in, turning both sides of the river into shallow, expanding lakes that quickly climbed up to the crew’s ankles. Most of the crew had taken shelter, moving from feeble tents into the hull of the drop ship itself.

Discuss dangers of running out to rescue Kim

Chapter Seven

(quote from kim)

Pain.

That was the first thing to burst into Kim's life through the dark and the cold. Immense pain washed over all consciousness, so overwhelming it didn’t even seem to have a source. It just was. It seemed an eternity before her world expanded to include her other senses. Until she could recognize the feeling of the weight of her own body resting against a solid surface. The cold and the wet of the water she was mired in. The spinning sensation of her mind, now roaring back so strong that she didn’t dare open her eyes for the fear of getting sick. For the longest time she just stayed put, feeling and recognizing sensations, cataloging everything to keep her mind awake. Somehow she knew that was important. She had to stay awake. Her fingers grasped at the silt or mud she lay in, drawing her attention to the feeling to keep her alert. Lungs drank deeply of the air around her, expanding under sore, protesting ribs.

She had to stay awake.

Had to.

Ultimately, she wasn’t sure how long she lay in the mud before her eyelids finally cracked open. When she did, her eyes were assaulted by shining daggers of sunlight, piercing through to the back of her head somewhere. She closed her eyes tight, then gave looking around another try.

Her mind seemed to continue to swim as the details of the land around her seemed to work themselves out. She was on a silty, smooth bank, with trees and brush right up near her, within maybe a couple strides away. Behind her, a river slowly and persistently ran it’s way in a wide channel past her, catching in little eddies near the edge where she lay.

Slowly she tried to gather her arms under her, moving against the wet, sticky, chaffing of her clothing. Arms shook like leaves in an autumn wind when she pushed against the planet’s surface, almost failing her twice before she found the strength to push herself upright. Then her head swam violently and her leg moved in a way that felt distinctly wrong, shooting electrical tendrils of pain up her body. She almost fell over again. Or puked. Or passed out. She wasn’t entirely sure which one she felt like doing. Maybe all at once. She ended up leaning against a tree weakly, holding the offending foot a little off the ground.

'Come on , Kim...’ she thought to herself, repeating facts in her head to clear her mind. She was Kimberly Ann Dale. She was an anthropologist. She was on the planet Denke, looking for a new Earth. Her group had been attacked. She had fallen in the river. She was Kimberly Ann Dale...

A sound overcame her thoughts. A grunting, snuffling, groaning sound, mixed with occassional whimpers and hisses. It was beside her, just out of her field of vision. Fear seemed to wash through pain and dizziness, jerking the world into a sort of hyper clarity at astonishing speed. Memories of the earlier attack whispered of immediate danger, freezing her to the spot. She turned, afraid to look, but more afraid of the unknown.

There, on the bank, maybe a yard or two from her, was the very thing that had attacked her. The beast lurched out of the water, flaring and flailing one of it’s wings. It’s forelimbs pawed repeatedly at it’s head as tried to stand on unsteady hind legs. It’s tail whipped aggresively from side to side, and it move erratically, staying still, then suddenly stumbling off in one direction. It would wheel about, then fall on it’s back, it’s snout pushing deep into the ground, almost as if it’s neck was a chain and the head a wrecking ball. It flopped, wimpered, then tried the whole process over again.

‘It’s hurt’ She thought as the fear began to ebb from her. Even on this strange planet, with it’s strange creatures, she could tell this one wasn’t acting right. It was uncoordinated, clumsy, seemingly unaware of anything happening around it. One of it’s wings dragged uselessly on the ground, like a sail half-torn from the mast of a ship.

She stood transfixed by it, this creature’s curious struggle, watching as the being that had been so terrifying now only seemed pathetic and broken. Somewhere within her, a small voice began to suggest trying to aid the poor thing. But then it’s movements began to slow, it’s straining and lurching grew weaker. Until finally it seemed to pause, all of it’s body trembling as it seemed to finally become aware of her.

It turned it’s eyes on her. It’s brilliant, deep, yellow eyes, the likes of which Kim had never seen before. Gold was an ill term for the color she observed. Electric not vivacious enough. It was such a rich, expressive set of eyes that they held Kim’s attention for an age. Then, within the brightness, two dark pools, one thin and vertically slitted, the other wide and round, dimmed before her, and the creature slowly sank to the ground, and closed it’s beautiful eyes.

Kim debated leaving for a while. Just wandering away from the vicious creature and leaving it to it’s fate. But something about the look in the animal’s eyes stuck with her, tethering her to the beast and it’s plight. She sank from her position against the tree and sat considering her options. Her pack was missing, and thus her survival equipment and navigational drone. Her leg was hurting too much to put pressure on it. She suspected it might be broken. And she was sitting beside a dead or dying alien species that had already proven itself dangerous.

“....I guess first thing’s first.” She muttered to herself as she checked out her leg wound, tenderly pressing along it’s length, checking for broken bones. Thankfully she didn’t seem to have any visible fractures. She could still wiggle her toes. But something felt stiff and.... there. Her knee was hot and swollen beneath her fingertips, wobbling in a very unsettling way as she felt around it. Every touch brought a new lightning strike of pain, which she grimaced and braced against as she tried to gauge the injury. Partially dislocated was her best guess. She leaned back against the tree behind her with a frustrated sigh.

“Damn....” She’d be lucky if this didn’t follow her the rest of her life.

Brown eyes looked over the landscape for... anything really. Tools, a brace, maybe a cane. There was plenty of foliage and branches about, but getting to them was going to be hard. Gradually she ended up half crawling, half dragging herself over to the brush, picking out the best sticks for the job. Then she set to work tearing ragged uneven strips of cloth from her pants, both to expose the knee and in preparation for making a splint. Her first good look at her knee told her how screwed she was. Her kneecap was sickly twisted off to one side, and he stomach churned at the sight of the swelling and discoloration. She grunted, grit her teeth, and reached for it, feeling at it gently at first, but every single light touch brought more pain. She had to just do it.

One hand cupped the out of place kneecap as her other braced against the other side of her leg. She took in a couple deep breaths to prepare herself..... failed to make her self move the first time. And the second time.

Then she went for it, shoving it forcefully back into place with an audible ‘pop’.

Light exploded in her eyes and she shrieked helplessly, rolling over onto her side as she cradled her knee, tears streaming down her face in the wake of the shock and pain. The dizziness returned and her vision shrank to a pinpoint in a tunnel of darkness. She nearly passed out again. Her breath drew in through her teeth for a while, hissing in the lonely air as the agony began to subside. When it was bearable again, Kim looked up, grabbing some of the nearby branches she’d gathered and the torn cloth, and fashioned a very crude splint, making sure to wrap it as tightly as possible. Then she sat back, recovering from the ordeal for a minute before looking back to the brush for a branch that would work as a cane or walking stick.

She looked back at the creature lying in the silt. Was it still alive? Should she try to find out? The thought kept pestering her as she made it to her feet. Her gaze kept shifting to the alien form while she considered her next task. The sun was already starting to go down in the distance, and blinds of clouds were being drawn. Daylight ought to be fading soon. She needed a shelter of some kind. A fire. Fire was next. Water... she was by a river. Granted, she didn’t know the make-up of the water, but having just recently been flung around in it, she figured it should be safe to drink. She reckoned she could follow the river back to camp, but she would have to wait through the night before she felt she might be well enough to travel. Well enough....

The creature again. It caught her eye. For a moment she tried to tell herself it was because there was the chance it would make a good, if exotic, food source in a pinch, but that wasn’t quite it. It was time, Kim decided, to check on her companion in closer detail.

She approached it carefully, another stick in her hands reaching out like a long antenna to feel out the animal. Getting closer to it, she could tell now that it was in fact still breathing. Not dead. Just in some kind of unconscious state. Poking and prodding brought no reaction at first, and only a grunt when she poked particularly hard. Stepping closer still she could see the injuries it had sustained. It’s wing was at some bizarre angle that didn’t match the wing on the other side. It’s arm on that same side joined the body awkwardly as well, and a laceration of some kind over it’s eye oozed a strange liquid, dark greyish in color, with swirls of other colors in it, almost like an oil slick, or the streak of color on soapy bubbles, a liquid, muddled opalescent soup. The creature’s blood? The cut was deep, and still trickling freshly.

She couldn’t leave it there like this. It was alive, still. It wouldn’t even be in this situation if it weren’t for herself and the explorers. They were supposed to be having a minimal impact on the environment. She sighed, gathered up some of the spare rags she’d made, and began to get to work the best she could, trying to stabilize it’s limbs and wrap the cut on it’s head. The wrapping ended up having to cover one eye, and the wing had to be set with her shoelaces and still more sticks and branches. With any luck, the bindings would still hold when the animal woke up. She discovered the wing folded up nicely and neatly into a nook under the creature’s forelimb. She also discovered a perfectly round, ring shaped bruise at the base of it’s wing where it met the creature’s back. It must have been shot. She felt the site. Some strange nodule rested between the animal’s wings in the middle of it’s back. Injury or some natural part of it’s anatomy, she couldn’t tell.

Natural curiousity filled her, and she began examining the rest of the creature. The three slits on it’s head looked to be some kind of respiratory system, as far as she could tell. The rosettes on the side of it’s head were bundled up tissue. It’s neck was long, though no match for the grazer-beast from the plains. Narrow shoulders, located beneath the location of the wing joint. A deep chest, with a possible keel bone? She couldn’t be sure. It’s forelimbs ended in three long digits and a shorter, more flexible one. A thumb? Surely not. Each digit ended in short, but wickedly sharp claws, and the pads at each tip were ridged deeply into linear grooves far more pronounced than in humans. It’s teeth weren’t as frightening up close. They reminded Kimberly of a horse’s actually. A stallion maybe, with fighting canines. The legs were impressive, clearly powerful, all the muscle up towards the hip, with long, thick shanks. Digitigrade, she presumed at first, like a dog or cats hind legs, but as she got down to the foot it seemed to have a second heel or ankle. Four toes, each also ending in padded ridges and sharp claws. Closer to talons really. It’s tail was long and serpentine, but clearly muscled as well. And it’s skin... covered as it was in scales, she had expected it to be more or less ectothermic, controlling it’s temperature by moving from one hot environment to a cool one. But a warm heat radiated from it’s body, chasing away the cool from her fingers. She stroked the long hooded scute-like scales on it’s wings. Absolutely fascinating.

“Pull through, big guy.... I want to learn more about you.”

She felt the first tickles of rain then, sprinkling invisibly in a fine dropping mist. Time to get back to work before she and the creature were both left out in the rain.

One of the large areas of rock bordering the river could serve as her shelter, she decided. She found one with a somewhat decent, if very shallow overhang. If she pulled some of the curtain-branches off the trees, she might be able to make something she could hide in. Fire might prove hard. The test match they’d lit during the first day of their expedition had burned well, but the wood here was covered with that amber-like quality. She wondered if it would light....

No, she decided. No it wouldn’t. Hours passed and all she had to show for it was sore arms and a pile of wood. She could have kicked something if it weren’t for her injury. “Fireproof trees,” she grumbled in disgust, “of course.” At least her clothing had somewhat dried by now. Maybe by the time she settled down to bed she’d be dry. It hadn’t gotten that cold last night up in the trees... But without fire, she couldn’t boil the water. Without that, she was opening herself up to all sorts of alien life. Who knew what kind of bacterium swam in these rivers? Sure, she had probably swallowed a fairly large sample in her journey downstream, but that didn’t mean she should throw all caution to the wind and intentionally inoculate herself. She threw a piece of the amberwood in frustration, wiping sweat from her forehead. The rain was growing from light mist to distinct droplets. If the storm hit before she figured out her basic needs it was going to make for a rough night. Maybe she just needed a break for a minute. Time to rethink things.

She looked back towards the creature

Found it staring back at her.

It hadn’t moved, but it’s eyes were most definitely open, watching Kim with an intensity she could almost reach out and touch. It was alert and on edge, the fleshy rosettes suddenly flaring out into vageuly triangular ears that cupped towards her. She froze too. Now what?

It moved it’s head in jerky, bird-like motions from side to side, seeming to study her like it was waiting for something. She chose to remain still.

It crouched low.

She felt a knot tie in her stomach as she watched it behave. If it was hunting her, there was no way out. She had no hope of out running it. She didn’t have time to get herself up a tree. The rain began to pick up as the two stared at each other, as if vying for their attentions. It soon formed it’s own flimsy barrier between and around them, cutting out details of everything else until it was just Kim and the creature in a grey fog.

The animal bobbed it’s head a little bit, golden eyes open wide, pupils still unmatching and oddly shaped. A hind leg stepped forward. Froze. Stepped back. It shook it’s head, then fixed it’s vision again. It’s tail fixed itself into the air, swinging back and forth slowly, like a door on a loose hinge.

“Ok....” Kim spoke softly and flatly, in the hope she might come across calming. “Alright Big Guy... I know you’re scared.... I know I am. God I wish I were better at the whole animal whispering thing right now. I’m no good with animals. Or people, really...” Distant thunder rolled overhead.

It flared one wing and shook the scutes in that loud rattling fashion.

“Ah! Alright, alright, I’m rambling, I know.” said Kim, trying to press against the rock behind her. “Oh, damn it.... look... ah... I come in peace?”

Brilliant lightning peeled in the sky and the creature suddenly jumped forward, it’s jaw dropping open as it hissed loudly, closing the gap between them by half. A moment or two later the thunder burst into the scene with a sky shattering crack and a massive roar that made both human and animal flinch.

Kim cried out again and growled in frustration “look, if you’re going to eat me, just do it already, alright? What, you like playing with your food? You think i’ll be tastier with lots of adrenaline goodness in my blood? Go for it.”

It didn’t answer. It crept forward as Kim closed her eyes, waiting for the end. At least this time, the trouble she was in wouldn’t nessecarily be her fault. She hadn’t been reckless after all... and hey, someone was eventually going to have the distinction of first human death on the planet, right?

She waited for the attack.

Waited.

Heard loud strange snuffling.

She opened her eyes.

The wounded creature was pawing and scraping at a tree. With one hand it would grab into the trunk, claws piercing the amber bark with such ease it made Kim uncomfortable watching it. Then it would leap upwards. It’s feet would hit the tree, hold, and it’s good arm would try to grab higher on the trunk. It’s good wing flared out a little bit, and she could tell the other wing was trying to do the same. But only half equipped, it slid back down, where it would grunt, claw at the ground with it’s hind feet, look up, and attempt the climb again. She sighed.

“Hey, big guy.... you’re going to hurt yourself if you keep that up.”

It didn’t seem to listen, suddenly much more interested in trying to climb than in one crippled human woman. Another flicker of lightning paraded over head, this time not as forceful as the last, but it seemed to spur the creature on further to try and climb, as it’s jumps became more frantic in nature. Kim watched with a sinking feeling in her gut as the binds she’d so carefully wrapped around the creature’s wing began to come undone.

“Look, I’m serious... you need to stop..."

No change in behavior, naturally. The creature wasn’t focused on Kim at all, but she couldn’t let it keep trying to hurt itself like this. She bit her lip as a crazy idea came to her. Hobbling as slowly as she could, she made her way properly under the overhang she’d picked out. Like she’d hoped, it was drier here, though without the branches laid across yet, it wasn’t perfect by any means. Steeling herself against all the possible outcomes of her decision, she cupped one hand around her mouth.

“HEY!"

Now it looked at her, startled and perplexed. As it watched her, Kim did her best to ease her way down into a sitting, hopefully non-threatening position. ‘Look’, she tried to say with the gesture, ‘I’m not dangerous. it’s dry here.' She hoped it would be intelligent enough to at least take note of the lack of rain under the rock. It made it’s head movements again, slowly assessing the situation. Kim tried not to make eye contact. She heard somewhere that helped with horses. She held up her hand too, that was a thing right? Hand up, eyes averted? It felt disturbingly like the way helpless damsels in distress would act in early films about monsters. Maybe it was supposed to be some universal plea bargain? Was that why it worked? She scolded her overactive mind privately, trying to stay in the moment.

Something moved near her.

She turned her gaze to find the creature still with it’s eyes trained on her, but much closer, settling warily under the overhang as far as it could manage while still being sheltered. It picked out a spot and folded it’s long legs beneath itself, for all the world like a giant chicken as it flared and flattened its wings a few times and shuffled it’s weight. It’s eyes stayed fixed on Kim, but at least it was staying still now. In respect, she scooted away too, until they were both at the very edges of the overhang with a few feet of space between them.

“See?" said Kim in soft, friendly tones. “Not so bad, right? Not so bad...."

Silence on the creature’s end.

Rain thrummed around them. Kim licked her lips. “Well... I guess there’s not much for us to do but wait out the storm. Um... if you don’t mind, I’ll take first watch, yeah?"

The animal gave no contested opinions on the matter.

“Right... um.... yeah...."

Kim didn’t think she’d get much sleep that night. But as the rain drummed on and all immediate dangers faded, the edges of sleep began to tug at her mind. She found herself closing her eyes ‘just to rest them for a minute’ on numerous occassions, or zoning out with the sound of the rain. The creature seemed to give up it’s guard on her and tucked it’s head under it’s wing in a pose that looked unreasonably comfortable to a tired gaze. ‘I’ll just keep myself awake by making plans’ Kim thought to herself, ‘I’ll sort out all the things I need to do tomorrow. Get a good strategy going’. In the morning maybe she’d feel good enough to start heading home even. A bit of rest would do her good first though. She’d be really refreshed then. Just a tiny little nap. Then she could plan things out and sleep for the rest of the night. Just a power nap. A little sleep.

She slept.

Chapter Eight

(quote from Elise)

Whately gets in on conversation after they finish fighting. Asks for the commander and the captain to come take a closer look at the specimen they brought in

Sung is watching too. The drop ship has two or three containment units for large animals in it. They expected to bring back samples.

The little creature is very obviously in a panic, calling out continuously and ramming itself into the walls.

Whately discusses what they’ve been able to figure out about the species so far.

Need more to fill in here.

Tucker makes the dragon comparison

Whately gives the creature a rough scientific name.

Whately’s conclusion is that the creature is a juvenile form of a dangerous omnivorous species.

This could bode ill for Kim if there’s more of them out there.

Chapter Nine

(Quote from Kim)

When she awoke the rain had stopped, at least for the moment. The sky was still dark out though, with herds of clouds making some mass migration through the atmosphere. It was cold. She looked around. The creature wasn’t where it had settled down last night. After a startled moment she found it again. It was pawing and snuffling at her failed firepit, nosing at the wood and seeming to study it, though it continued to look up at Kim frequently. At great length it let out a heavy breath from it’s three nostrils with a great ‘whumph!’ and look around. With repeated glances back at Kim, it bounced over to the surrounding foliage, grabbing at leaves and thin twigs, holding bundles of them in it’s mouth. It carried them over to it’s own space under the overhang, making it’s own little pile of brush.

“Huh,” Kim muttered, “imitative behavior.”

She watched the creature, a smile tugging at one corner of her lips as she observed. It even dug a channel around the brush pile with it’s feet. Then something about the brush caught Kim’s eye. None of the pile consisted of the strange bark of the tree. It was all leaves and greenery. Little scraps that should be nothing more than kindle, useless for sustaining a flame. Unless....

Slowly, slowly, she eased herself up, resting her weight on her makeshift walking stick. The creature noticed her and froze again, dropping what brush it had collected. She took a step forward. It stepped back, weaving and lowering it’s head again. She held her hand out in what she hoped was a calming fashion as she carefully approached, looking from creature to brush pil and back again. After a couple of tense moments, the animal made an unusual gesture. It backed up a few more paces without taking it’s eyes off of Kim and sat down, watching her still, but less intensely than before. She watched it for a minute again, trying to read it’s intentions. But the only thing it did was lift a forelimb to scratch lazily at a spot at the base of it’s neck. It seemed to be waiting somehow.

Turning her attention back to the brush, Kim fished out two of the driest pieces of foliage, some long, feather-like things that vaguely reminded her of the individual leaves of palm fronds. She rolled them up into studier stick like structures she could actually work with, then began the long, tedious process of trying to start fire after a hard rain. It didn’t seem to work at first, but as time dragged on, she began to see what was either her mind playing tricks on her, or a very small, delicate tendril of smoke fading into being. She looked up at the creature. It didn’t seem surprised or alarmed at all. It just cocked it’s head to one side and blinked.

“You didn’t know this would happen.... did you?”

The animal yawned and gazed up at the trees for a while.

“Hm....”

Once the smoke started to form, it was only a matter of time before the tiniest flicker of bright orange-yellow flame came to life. Feeling proud of herself, Kim leaned forward to feed the tiny little flame. That’s when the creature moved, so lightning fast that Kim had no time to react to it. It lunged forward and grabbed her, then heaved her off to one side of the brush just as the teenie-tiny flame burst into a lively, full bonfire, grabbing hungrily at all of the brush around it like some ravenous dog. Kim watched in horror as the flames licked the open space where her head had been moments before. She heard and felt the creature taking deep rapid breaths as if it too had been frightened. They looked at each other in the same moment.

That was the moment Kim knew.

“You’re.... you’re intelligent, aren’t you?” the words tumbled out of her lips as she stared into those electric eyes, searching for some understanding, for what she already knew was there. “I mean... you’re a sentient species.....”

It stared back at her, it’s gaze shifting back and forth as if trying to read Kim’s expression. It let out a soft sound, like a whirring chirpping purr of some sort. Then it retreated from Kim and turned back to the fire, stepping carefully around it, inspecting it like a professor checking a students work. Evidently satisfied, it walked back around and stared at Kim again, then stuck it’s head out from under the overhang and looked up at the sky. Kimberly followed it’s lead. The sky looked ready to drop on them again.

“Is it always like this around here?” Kim asked

The creature, as usual, didn’t answer, but began to stride out into the forest in smooth steps

“Leaving already?” Kim felt a little lonely at the idea.

It looked back at her, seeming to consider her yet again. Then it slunk into the brush. In moments, it was gone.

“That would figure.” mumbled Kimberly as she fumbled with her walking stick, “I find the first signs of intelligent life, and I have no way to tell anyone about it and no way to follow it.” She sighed. “Well... shelter’s not going to build itself.”

She spent the day hobbling around, gathering all the supplies she thought she might need through the day piece by piece. It hurt. Her knee, despite the bracing and splinting, still wobbled and burned in pain when she walked farther than she ought to. The rain began again not long into her work. She had to take breaks often. But at length she had gathered up enough brush in easy reach to keep the fire going and some of the curtain-leaves to block off the overhang from outside views. Briefly, she thought about sending smoke signals up. Surely someone from the camp ought to notice it.... but the way the fire had reacted left her feeling shy of the idea. The last thing she needed was to set fire to her surroundings. Besides, the rain was starting to fall harder now. It looked to be another downpour tonight.

Not too much later, Kimberly heard the rustling of the foliage around her again. Before she could get too worried about it though, the injured creature she’d helped before came striding quickly through the brush. In it’s good arm was a bundle of strange shapes, which it carried to the middle of the overhang and dropped on the ground. Then it retreated a little back to ‘it’s side’ and looked back at Kim.

“Hey, big guy, what’d you bring me?”

It bobbed it’s head, looked at the shapes, looked back to Kim.

“Is this...food? Some kind of fruit? You’re herbivorous?”

It blinked and cocked it’s head.

She moved to check the shapes out. They did appear to be strange bulbs and fruiting portions of plants, or at least, that was Kim’s best guess. Like everything else on this planet, it was vaguely reminescent of fruits at home, and yet entirely strange.

“I don’t know if I can eat this, buddy.”

It looked at her in seeming confusion for a moment. Then it moved forward slowly, keeping it’s eyes on her, and snatched up one of the fruits before retreating a little again. It then began to nibble at the fruit like a squirrel with an acorn, appearing to exaggerate it’s movements almost as if trying to teach Kim how to eat.

She chuckled a little, “Thanks.”

Returning to her examination, Kim pondered her options. She was going to need food. But eating strange food was ill-advised at best and dangerous at worst even back home. Having seen the strange colored blood in her companion’s veins, Kim also knew it’s biological chemistry had to be different from hers. That meant the fruit that it seemed to be fine with could be deadly toxic for her. Best to take it slow.

The testing of the fruit goes here. Look up process for testing edible plants in the wild. Will there be things she can’t eat?

Rain picks up again

Begin developing ways of silent communication. Research this?

Next day they find the river has spilled over near them. It’s still raining, but they have no choice but to move. So they spend the day trying to see if Kim can walk. She struggles, and eventually they have to take a break at camp. Kim questions why the creature isn’t leaving. No answer.

Kim tries to walk again. She falls.... creature catches her. Kim tries to walk again. Creature hovers beside her nervously.

“together we can do this”

They begin to hobble their way around camp.

after practicing, they rest. dry off again, then they pack what they can. Kim weaves the leaves together into a crude tarp. creature carries a pack of kindling and fruits over it’s hips.

The creature pauses every so often to call out. Kim can’t figure out why. They walk as far as they can until the rain and their injuries force them to find new shelter. To Kim’s dismay, it’s not all that far from their first.

Chapter Ten

(quote from Tucker)

It’s two days later. It’s still raining, but not as bad. The flooding has gotten worse. It’s now up to mid calf. Tucker and Elise discuss the rescue again. Decide that they can’t wait any longer. It’s the first let up in the rain in days and if they don’t go now they might not get a second chance. Elise wants to go. Tucker knows she cant. They argue about it. Tucker makes Elise a promise to find and protect Kim.

Tucker, Agard, and others (?) head out. All guards this time.

Eventually meet up with Kim again. Think she’s in danger at first, but quickly realize she’s not. The creature doesn’t put up a fight when they surround it with guns, but watches them very closely. They praise Kim for ‘taming’ one of the creatures so quickly. She claims it’s intelligent. A new sentient species. Says she’s been talking to it. They reassure her they’re glad she’s safe and that if the animal she found is intelligent Whately will want to know about it.

Elise is one of the first out of camp to greet them as they come back in. Whately’s right behind her. He’s very very glad Kim is not only safe, but has proved herself an ‘alien wrangler’ by bringing back the adult. Kim begins to introduce everyone to the alien, when Whately has the guards escort it to a confinement area. Kim protests, but Whately and Elise agree the creature is unpredictable and must be segregated from the human crew since it was the one that attacked Sung. Kim is not happy with this. Neither is the creature. It grows more distressed when it’s placed, not into the same containment unit as the young dangri, but in one beside it.

They can see each other, and appear to have some kind of bond, almost seeming to comfort each other as best as they can in the separated units.

Kim complains to Elise. She calls this cruel and unfair. Elise argues that they don’t even know what they’re dealing with yet. Kim disagrees. This is a sentient species just like humans are. She knows it. And so does Elise.

Chapter Eleven

(quote from Whately)

Will need to fill the beginning of this with more interactions. Come up with arcs for character plots. How do their relationships develop over the previous chapter and this one? Is the rain still there? What are they doing about it? The rain is the reason the aliens didn’t settle in the field, remember.

Maybe some of the crew getting sick? Their supplies aren’t lasting as long as they’d hoped?

Kimberly demands to be involved in the process of studying the creatures. she plays music while she looks over the paperwork daily.

Adult begins to imitate music sounds. Kim reports this. Whately likens the behavior to a parrot. Kim increasingly displeased with Tucker. Tucker asks why she’s so insistent about it’s intelligence. She reinforces that if the species is as intelligent as she thinks they are, then they were on par with humans

Tucker points out the lack of technology on the Dangri’s person. Kim has no answer for this.

Elise deep in thought, recording her thoughts on the whole expedition thus far. She’s beginning to think about pulling out of this location and going elsewhere on the planet, but such a move would be heavy undertaking. The flooding might force their hand though.

Days pass like this. Kim apologizes daily to the creature. It stops communicating with her, sullenly lying still in the containment unit. The young one has grown tired too, but still cries out.

Out in the field, reports are coming in of more encounters with the creatures. They seem to be skulking and stalking the forests on one side of the river. Calls can be heard. They almost appear to be gathering

Chapter Twelve

(quote from Kim)

Then one day Kim comes into work with her headphones on and a stack of papers in hand. She doesn’t notice at first, but when she looks up from the stack, her creature is pawing and kicking at the containment unit, ramming against it, roaring out, more mad than Kim has ever seen it. Then she notices the young creature isn’t in it’s cage. She gets the distinct feeling of something being very wrong.

She calls up whately, who doesn’t answer. She sticks her head out of the room and grabs a passing aide, questioning him/her. They say that the young creature has been taken in for a procedure. The report on it and the request to view the procedure ought to be in Kim’s files. Kim starts looking for the file, eventually scattering her stack of papers everywhere as the files seem to be pointing in a very bad direction. Finally, she finds the procedure outline and request form. Her fingers tremble as she reads it aloud. There’s a planned disection on the young creature.

She rushes to the operating 'tent’ (room?) to find Whately in operation. Tucker is standing by outside the tent. Kim pushes past Tucker, despite his request to see her form. When she gets inside she discovers, to her horror, that Whately isn’t just doing a dissection. The creature is alive, awake, but delirious. Whately is vivisecting it.

Chapter Thirteen

(quote from Elise)

Kim demands an explanation. Whately states simply that they were afraid what administering anesthesia to an unkown species like this might do. He says they’ve been feeding it the gas in very miniscule amounts, which were so far keeping it sedated, but that he didn’t want to risk going farther with it. He says he needed to see the internal organs in action. That nothing compares to vivisection, watching various internal systems interact with each other. It was the fastest way to learn.

Tucker steps in hearing the commotion. he looks stupefied as kim snaps an explanation. His eyes narrow in grim determination and he steps behind Kim. He gives kim the 'you’re making a mistake’ speech, explaining they need to know everything about this animal as fast as possible, because if it were as clever as Kim believes, it, in groups, would be a great danger to the crew. Kim says it’s a person, and individual, with sentience that matches humans. Whately denies it, calling it an agressive beast.

“IT CAN’T BE LIKE US!” he shouts

“Are you that arrogant?”

“WE NEED A HOME” cue dr whately’s desperate, emotional claims about how they need a home, and if the creatures are smart it means that they have the rights to this land. That means that humans can’t just move in. it slows the whole process down. More people die waiting as more and more red tape is spun. If they’re just animals, then it doesn’t matter. Humans can just move in. They can start over. Doesn’t Kim understand?

Some witty comeback line from Kim. She’s stalling for time. Whately is too smart for that.

Fight? Dialogue exchange? What does kim do about the fact that the young creature is open and exposed?

Somewhere in here, the young creature awakens more. it cries out shrilly as it becomes aware of the pain and what’s being done to it. Whately deals a fatal blow to the creature.

Kim is outraged. She begins to tell whately...something? Tucker tries to get everyone to calm down....

Outside they can hear a massive commotion. None of them dare to move, all watching each other. They hear people outside shouting about an incoming attack. Tucker breaks the stalemate first, looking outside the tent.

A whole troop of the creatures are coming, flying over the plains towards the camp! As bullets ring through the air, some of the creatures are hit, but a whole slew of them continue.

Chapter Fourteen

“You’ve led them right to us!”

Elise arrives! She and Tucker take over fight with Whately, which quickly becomes physical. Kim hurries to the dropship to free the adult creature.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

Text

Story Shard

"RFID BADGE NOT RECOGNIZED"

The machine's voice was calm and plesant as it issued its error message. Kim was not. She set her teeth in a grimace and tried to swipe the badge against the sensor again as she growled softly "you've got to be kidding me" "RFID BADGE NOT RECOGNIZED" Kim flicked her coffee colored ponytail over her shoulder and gave the scanner a sharp glare "What do you mean 'not recognized', My badge has been just fine for this entire trip, you want to just act like you don't recognize me now?" Swipe "RFID BADGE NOT RECOGNIZED" "Ugh! You're doing this on purpose aren't you?" Swipe "RFID BADGE-" "Come ON!" "-NOT RECOGNIZED" She was about ready to give it a little 'gentle encouragement' when she heard a laugh echo down the makeshift hall. Booted footfalls echoed in the sketched out, hastily constructed walkway as the familar, ever-grinning form of Sr. Master Sgt. Tucker Davis approached. He stopped a few feet away from her and crossed his toned arms, his hazel eyes twinkling in glee "Remember, Kim, you're supposed to be smarter than the machine." She turned her dark gaze up at him, pointing an accusing finger at the offending device "Well, that''s not hard to accomplish when the machine is too dumb to function" "What's that people say, 'it's only as smart as it's operator?" "I'm not it's operator, i'm it's user, and apparently i'm a stranger." Swipe "RFID BADGE NOT RECOGNIZED" "Kimberly! My name is Kimberly Dales, you little-" "Hey, hey...." Tucker touched her shoulder "don't be mean to the poor thing. Here, lemme look." He took her badge and examined it. "Where do you keep it when you're working?" Kim ran her hand through her hair and sighed noisily "On it's lanyard, around my neck" "While you're in the lab?" "Of course. It's easier to keep it there instead of in those little boxes." He gave her a knowing look and raised an eyebrow "You know the box is to protect the card, right? From say....getting wiped by being too close to computers." She bristled and blushed "it's just easier to wear it around my neck instead of having to get it out everytime I want in or out of the lab. Lots of us do it." "Lots of us aren't in and out of the labs as much as you." Tucker noted as he took out his badge and took a turn with the scanner. "RFID BADGE ACCEPTED. WELCOME SR MASTER SERGENT TUCKER DAVIS" The security door slid open easily, leaving Kim biting the inside of her cheek as she stared at the soldier. "You say it like it's a bad thing." "I did." She gave an indelicate little snort as she started off walking again, nodding her thanks briefly to the soldier. Her shoes clicked in staccato rhythm as she hurried through the entryway. The lab looked exactly as it had before they'd landed here, on this miracle planet. Which made sense because it was, quite literally, the same set of rooms that had been on the ship. They had built it that way, the massive ELH ____, in order to make the most effective migration possible. Everything on board was built in module form, able to be taken apart and set down as independent buildings on the surface of the new world. As a result, though they were now minus a ship, they had a ready made town of sorts with (among other things) a cafeteria, hospital wing, dorms, command center, and central lab to study the area from. So it was all the same. The same clean walls and simple desk stations. Nothing particularly fancy, which Kim had always been a little disappointed with, considering it was part of a massive interstellar transport system. Wasn't space supposed to be high tech and full of strange and amazing gadgetry? All of the simplicity was kind of depressing when Kim took rare moments to notice it. No fancy space chairs or massive consoles or touchscreen walls. There hadn't been the time or the budget. The chairs and tables anchored to the room's frame reminded Kim of the ones she'd seen in some prison shows. In fact, she was fairly sure that's what they were. Kind of fitting, really.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

Text

Story Shard

Rain fell in obscuring heavy sheets in the darkness. Loud, felt, but unseen except for where it crossed in front of the stark l.e.d. beams of wide construction lights that blazed over the backs of angled metal tents and one-story buildings. Half hidden in the darkness lay the massive bulk of some behemoth craft, slowly being disassembled by a team of automated drones. They teamed over the ship like deep-sea crabs at the rotting body of a whale carcass while a small troop of people supervised the work, walking alongside the mechanical work-horses as they neatly sectioned apart the hull and carried the materials to other sites, constructing new buildings and structures out of the husk of the ship.

Henry tugged at the edges of his hood as he waited for his four assigned drones to finish gathering their parts. He hated rain. Technically there wasn’t even a reason for him to be out here in it. The drones worked mostly on their own, following programming set deep in their cortex to transform the ship into a settlement. They balanced with intuitive internal systems, communicated with each other via short range signals, welded on their own and lined up all the materials perfectly. Anything they built would be rock solid. But there was always the chance of a glitch when it came to computers. Tiny snags and problems that needed a slight human adjustment, like getting a mechanical leg stuck between two parts. The machines were supposed to avoid that with sensors, but they didn’t always. They needed babysitters to fix such minor upsets. That was Henry’s job. Robot babysitter. Had been his job since he’d been woken up from the long sleep. It wasn’t so much different from working with the deconstruction and recycling crews back home, really, except for the non-stop rain.Granted, at least this rain was clean. It just hadn’t stopped. The four drones finished their collecting and stepped around towards him. He felt himself squirm a little at the sight. Couldn’t the damn things have been built with heads at least? The strange moving platforms, officially called Mules looked only vaguely like their name-sakes. Four stabilizing legs, a core body, and something like a truck bed on top to carry things. One arm to lift objects to place into the bed. But no neck or head. No face. Just a blank object ready to follow in his footsteps. It was creepy. He’d never gotten used to it.“Yeah, alright,” he said after a moment of awkward staring. “Let’s go.”He didn’t need to talk to them. They followed the signal beacon on his belt. They didn’t even have an audio input. But it felt better to talk. As he strode off, the drones followed behind him, their group signal keeping them from bumping into one another as they headed for the latest construction site, where still more drones, small light hovering ones this time, would take individual pieces up past the foundation where the Mules couldn’t reach and continue to build the roofing. Or was it the floor of the next level? Henry couldn’t remember. Didn’t really matter. He wasn’t the one with the blueprint after all.He kept to the edges of camp for the most part. It kept the drones from getting in anyone’s way and vice-versa. The new building was at the edge of camp anyway, near the biological studies building. It had to be kept at the edges of the settlement in case some new find proved dangerous to people. So far they’d been lucky, he heard. Despite the world not being made for them, it didn’t seem inherently deadly. Anymore so than Earth anyway. But the science teams were always sending crews out, at all hours of the 30 hour cycle. Henry still hadn’t gotten used to that. Lots of people hadn’t. Probably why the scientists worked all these odd times. They didn’t go alone of course. The chances of finding some weird new predator were always on everyone’s mind. Generations of monster stories and sci-fi movies weighed in the back of conscious thought. So the crews that went out were often half scientists, half militarized troops, just in case.He’d seen these groups come and go past the borders of the settlement plenty of times in his work. Enough so that he’d gotten familiar with some of the teams. So when he saw wavering lights appear in the distance, he knew what they were, even before the six figures in varying types of ‘field dress’ began to separate themselves from the dark torrent of rain. No, not six figures.Seven. Six humans and a Mule drone whirring steadily in the midst of them. They must be bringing more samples in. More critters and plants for study. Whatever it was, it looked bigger than normal. He could see the strange lump of it in the flatbed now, not even in a container or anything. So far, there had only been a few larger species like that discovered in the immediate area. Henry stopped to watch the troop come in, his drones obediently halting behind him. The crew kept coming, stepping over and through the wavering blanket of strange, flat, lily-pad type grass that covered this planet as they made their way forward. Once they got close enough, one of the crew members at the head of the group hailed him over the sound of the rain.He waved back, “Tucker!”The tall, somewhat lanky soldier broke from the main party a little to jog towards Henry, a smile broadening under the fogged lenses of his goggles. “Hey man, they still have you workin’?” Henry made a good-natured noise of complaint, “You know it. Damn these extra hours, feels like the shifts never end. Thought more time would be a good thing, you know?” Tucker chuckled, “Better than sleeping through all of it though, right?” Henry shrugged, “It’s somethin’." He nodded towards the rest of the group. “Bringing in a bio?” “Yep, whole point of the mission this time. Had to go with one of your buddies instead of the others.” Tucker ran a hand over his rain-slicked hair. “They ah.... act up if you ask them to carry one of their own. Don’t worry, your Mule will be back to work as soon as we drop this fella off.” Henry gave a shrug as the rest of the crew drew closer, passing by while he chatted. “Don’t matter much to me none. I got a full unit already,” he gestured back to the drones behind him, “Still, more the merrier. Would be nice to get this done and get where it’s dry for a... Jesus, thats a big one.” The unconscious figure in the Mule’s flatbed was familiar in shape to Henry by now. Two legged things with weird arms and a pair of wings. Long tail, head like a dinosaur or something. But most of the ones he’d seen around the camp were maybe two to three feet tall at most. This one looked like it had about a foot and a half on the others, with a larger wingspan and a stockier body to match.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

Text

Story Shard: Sawgrass

Run, boy, run

Hazy waves of heat rose up from the thick grasses and weeds of the Floridian landscape, the high noon sun drawing up moisture into thick blankets of humidity that lay smothering over the backs of every creature. It muffled most sounds, for which the boy running through the grasses was thankful, but it lay heavy in his lungs as he breathed it in and sapped away his energy, forcing him to throw extra effort into each stride. Bare feet pounded in dull rhythm against the sand-and-clay ground, finding hidden patches of prickling burrs beneath the greenery. He barely missed stride at each sting though, not daring to pause and tend to the minor injuries. He tried to hear over his own ragged breathing, over the rustling of the grass. Were there footsteps behind him yet? Hunters? Dogs? He wanted to look back, to stop running, to rest, but he knew he shouldn't. Blood mingled with sweat in trailing rivulets down his dark skin, seeping stains into his soiled clothing, stinging the cuts on his back, falling into his eyes as he blinked through the burning.

Don't stop. There's nothing for you in stopping.

He dove into the wooded areas, praying he might find protection in the clawing branches and tangling vines. Tree limbs reached out to him, feeling over his face and body like blind folk, almost as if evaluating him. In silence he prayed that whatever spirits might linger here would let him pass unharmed. He had to keep moving. Even as the ground began to turn wet and soft.

Snakes, he remembered. What about snakes?

RUN. If you are fast enough, maybe they can not strike you.

An terrible ache creeped it's way up his side, his body screaming at him, begging him to stop.

Don't stop. They will catch you.

His feet began to sink into the ground with each step, as if the land itself were trying to slow him down. He pulled against it, heart pounding in his chest as he forged his way through the tricker spots, brushing through palmetto leaves and sawgrass that struck stiffly against his legs. The buzzing of insects grew loud and unavoidable, and he was sure he felt some land upon his arms and back despite his speed, attracted by warmth and sweat and blood. He heaved hard as the ground beneath him suddenly dipped downward, stumbling and narrowly avoiding a fall into what was slowly becoming marshy swampland.

Good. The water will hide you. Keep going.

His lungs burned. His legs slowed in the water. Terrifying legends of the swamps flickered in his mind, battling with equally terrifying imagery of what would happen if he tried to turn back.

He kept going, the water reaching up at unpredictable times as he found gullies and sandbars, pits, hidden vines, holes, tree stumps, and roots. He thought he might have brushed against something living in the water.

Alligator! His mind cried.

Do. Not. Stop.

But his heaving lungs and the ache in his side screamed harder, and his legs began to try to seize as he ran. The wounds on his back felt afire as he slipped and plunged into a deep spot, drenching them with the murky silted dark waters. He recovered, kept going, but fell again soon after. His strength was leaving him.

No! No, not yet!

His body begged him to stop. He had been running since early morning. Sprinting. Couldn't he stop now?

No, you keep running.

So tired. No strength left in the legs.

Don't need strength. Just keep moving. One leg in front of the other.

One leg, then another. Just keep running...

I'll die, he thought. If I don't stop, I'll die.

If you stop, you better be dead.

He shouted, trying to summon up some hidden reserve of strength. 

The last thing he remembered was striking a tree root with his shin.

Hichi stumbled sideways into a tree, laughing as he steadied himself against the smooth bark, then shook his head at his assailant, which in this case was also his best friend. "Don't get mad at me for saying something true! You would've hit your mark if you weren't so concerned with looking good while you did it."

His friend, Yeeola tried to loom over him and look menacing, which was difficult to do, considering Hichi was a little famous for his height among his peers. "That's your fault too though. You said I have a crooked elbow when i'm drawng back."

"Is it rabbit's fault when panther gets tricked?"

"YES, it is. He's the one playing the trick."

"Oh, whine whine whine. It ended up alright in the end."

"She said I looked 'cute'."

"Which is better than 'repulsive', isn't it"

"Well, yeah, but she wasn't talking about you, so..."

They were supposed to be hunting, in theory. And they were! Kind of. They were following a game trail anyways. It was still midday though, and most of the game would be avoiding the heat, so until the two young hunters spotted some fresh sign, they were mostly goofing off. Today the conversation lingered over a friendly competition the boys had held the previous evening, trying to see who the best archer was. It had been a rambunctious, loud competition, staged precisely in the perfect location to catch the eye of a rather lovely woman that Hichi's friend had long admired. It hadn't gone very well. Yeeola had taken a long time to aim, and for all the care he took, the arrow went zipping through air to bury itself proudly into the earth and nothing else. The squirrel he had been aiming for bolted, surprisingly straight for him. It had been quite the sight, and brought joy to the whole village for a while, but wasn't the result he had been hoping for. 

Hichi clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder and looked seriously into his eyes "At least you know one thing, friend" 

"What's that?"

"You can make her laugh." 

"Augh!"

Hichi was pushed again, and the two boys fell into a minor bout of roughhousing, which lasted right up until the distant sound of baying dogs reach their ears. They both looked in the direction of the sound, smiles fading from their faces as they listened to the chilling barking moan. 

"Hounds" said Yeeola

The tribe had not settled very near to the lands of the white man, but the hunting dogs had long carrying voices, particularly if a long hunt carried on towards the swamplands. 

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

Text

A Bao A Qu

I knew what I’d be facing before I ever bought the plane ticket. I went anyway. The challange was part of the journey. I had been preparing my whole life, it seemed, to attempt to climb the tower. I knew that wasn’t true. I didn’t even know about the tower until a last minute college library trip led me to discover the legend. The Tower of Chitor. Only the purest and most enlightened people to climb make it to the top.

But there was always something more fascinating to me than being the purest and most enlightened.

I stood before the tower, alone and sizing up the climb. I’d brought a small pack with me and I clutched at this for a moment while I readied myself for my journey.

I took a few deep breaths.

Felt the air around me.

The quiet.

Then I stepped forward.

As I entered the tower, I looked around carefully, despite knowing I’d see nothing. “Hello?” I called out in a soft, hesitant tone. “I know you’re here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to climb your tower. We can climb together, if you like.”

I reached into the pack and pulled out a little bowl, which I filled with water from my water bottle “Here,” I said, “I even brought you something.”

I lay the bowl down on the bottom of the first step. Took a breath, slowly calmed my nerves of their anticipation, then began walking.

Up and up I walked, taking my time, examining the walls. As I expected, it wasn’t so hard at first. It was like climbing any set of steps.

But slowly I began to feel the monotony of the surroundings, the ache in my calves and along the sides of my thighs. More, I began to feel my breath become shallow.

I came to a pause on the steps and sat down for a minute, feeling almost drawn down by an outside power. I sighed, catching my breath, and smiled, looking around. Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw something. A dustmote perhaps Or perhaps not.

“More water, my friend?” I asked cordially. I took out another small bowl from my pack and filled it with water, also sipping from it myself. “You’ve lived here for a long time, I understand.” I said to the air, “And I know how you live. but perhaps if you just sip a little at a time, I can free you?”

I rested a little bit longer before taking off upward again. The thing in the corner of my eye remained. Always just out of sight. But I could feel it get ever more thirsty as it accompanied me. My legs began to ache again, more quickly than before. My lips turned dry, and I licked them repeatedly to wet them. Sweat wicked it’s way down my skin, only to dry up again. I tried to breathe slowly, deeply, and evenly, but my lungs seemed unhappy with me for my efforts. My heart pounded heavily.

Every time I felt I could not go on, I stopped for a break. I also spoke to the air around me, and offered another bowl of water, sometimes with a little precious honey from a tiny bottle I had with me. I never recieved an answer I could hear, but I felt comforted nonetheless.

It took me forever, it seemed, to reach the halfway point. I was dying, or at least faltering quite badly. I lay down on the steps and looked around myself hopefully, peering into the dark, anxious to see what I had read about ages before.

Darkness was everywhere. Shadows and light from windows playing across the nooks and ridges of the tower’s surfaces. Everytime I thought I might have seen something, it could be waived as a trick of light and dark on my eyes. Of a tired mind willing this to not be a wasted trip.

My heart began to fall.

When I realized, all of a sudden, that what I was looking for was there! In front of me!

It was so hard to see, the edges of it’s shape the colors you might see on your eyelids when you close them. Blending in and out of the dark. I could make out the shape of long arms or tentacles waving in a somehow neutral fashion as it existed before me on the steps. If I focused too hard, it seemed to fade away, so I tried to just let my eyes see.

“Hello, my friend,” I whispered at the being. I went to raise my hand to feel it, or greet it, or do something, when I realized that one of it’s tentacles was there, on my hand, fading into it somehow.

I breathed deeply, slowly, calming my heart. Steadying myself, I formed a grin on my dry lips. “We’ve climbed all this way together, haven’t we? Did you enjoy the water I left for you? I do hope so, even if it wasn’t what sustains you.”

The colorful, faded, invisible creature seemed to consider me, without eyes. It remained mostly still, wavering only a little. Eventually I thought I could detect curiosity. I smiled

“I came here to see you. I read all about you and wanted to find you.”

It remained silent. Wondering, questioning. And feeding.

“You see, my friend, I felt so sorry for you. You who exist here alone, with no one to see you unless they have another quest in mind. You that is ignored here, whose existence would seem to serve none. The tester, the reward. The lonely. I came here for you.”

Uncertainty seemed to fill the air. Then a point of clarity.

I nodded as I sat up a little and filled another bowl. “I do feel for you. I too exist alone. You see, I have lived a long time when I should not have. I am ill, and no one is left to care for me. I am old beyond my years. And I am lonely. I live off my medicines, these days. Much as you are currently living off of me. But I don’t mind.” I set the bowl on the steps “You see, I don’t think I’ll ever finish climbing these stairs. I just thought I’d keep you company for a while.”

The creature, the a bao a qu, as it is known, seemed to contemplate me as I drank of my own water. There was nothing but silence in the cave-like tower. A pondering, curious silence.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it draw closer. And, while I wasn’t quite looking, I do believe the water in the bowl began to dissapear. I felt lighter, and slowly, my energy began to recover, just a little better than before.

I sat in silence a while longer, just breathing.

Then I turned to the creature, the lovely, lonely creature, and smiled, just a little hesitant to ask it what I wanted to ask, “Will you walk with me, as far as I can? And I will walk with you?”

It seemed to take it’s time answering. Not out of any malicious feeling, but in a quiet sort of way. Then I felt a presence. Like arms around me.

Like a hug.

And for the first time since my diagnosis, I felt warm and at ease.

I sighed in relief and carefully got to my feet

“Then let us finish our climb, my friend. Together”

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

Text

DNA Chapter 2

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10022068/2/DNA

“No, no, you don’t understand…. it’s not from a battle, it’s, well… you’d have to see it for yourself.”

Bo’s mother was on the phone with the pokemon center immediately after breakfast, arranging a barn visit to examine Blaise. To her frustration, the center naturally wanted to know what the symptoms were, and were having trouble believing what they were hearing. Bo was nearby, washing the dishes from breakfast. She made a soft snorting sound, not unlike the sound a ponyta might make, as she listened in to the conversation.

“I’ve never seen a seed attack do this,” Bo’s mother said insistently, “I’m telling you, he grew vines! …..I know that’s not normal. Listen, could you just… send Nurse Joy up here as soon as possible? When? No…no that won’t work.”

Bo could tell where this conversation was going already. She let her mom continue talking as she dried her hands and went to fetch her boots. Then she went out to the stables.

Juniper was there already. She was adjusting the bandages they had hastily applied over Blaise’s new vines to try and control them. Blaise pawed the ground and tossed his head restlessly. “Shhh, it’s okay Blaise… we know it’s not your fault,” Juniper said over and over in comforting tones. She looked up as Bo strode in, watching her sister begin to saddle up Kindle.

“The pokemon center is too busy to see us right now,” said Bo tersely, “So it looks like I’m going to have to go to them.”

“You’re not going by yourself are you?” asked Juniper

Bo nodded, “It shouldn’t be a problem, really. As long as we keep those bandages on, it’ll be like a daytrip out. I’ll ride Kindle, carry Blaise by pokeball. Let them see what’s going on here.”

Juniper seemed to think it over before she nodded in return, “Okay then. But let me get you some supplies for the trip, okay? You always forget to eat when you go riding.” With that she scampered back to the house.

Bo grinned a little, then reached for the rack of pokeballs that coresponded to each of the ponyta. Taking Blaise’s in her hand she walked up to the skittish colt and pushed the button to recall him. The light shone, enveloped Blaise…

…then dissapeared.

Bo pursed her lips, cocked an eyebrow, and tried again. With the same results. Blaise whickered nervously. One more try. Nothing. Bo sighed, her tongue in her cheek as she considered the predicament. “Okay… let’s try the catch you method.” She threw the ball this time, expecting it to scoop the ponyta up into it like it always did. Instead, it bounced off the colt’s flank and Blaise looked at her as if a little surprised at being hit. He bumped the open pokeball with his nose, snuffling at the inside of it. Then he looked at Bo blankly.

“What, don’t look at me like that, it was always good enough for you before” she said exasperatedly.

Blank silence answered.

She sighed, “guess I’m leading you over there. Let’s get your lead line.”

She grabbed the length of rope used to lead ponyta and had Blaise hooked up and next to a wary looking Kindle by the time Juniper returned with a pack of sandwiches and a bedroll. “Just in case,” said the younger sister. Bo tossled Juniper’s hair before hoping up onto Kindle’s back smoothly “Be back soon, Jun” She clucked her tongue and Kindle started forward at a clipped walk, Blaise following along at the end of his lead.

The sun slowly climbed into the sky as Bo rode on, clouds drifting lazily across the sky. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Bo couldn’t help but feel a bit at peace while on the road. She loved riding. It gave her time to think in peace and quiet. She took off her hat and let the wind tug gently at her hair. “Blaise, how are you doing back there?” She looked back to Blaise, who neighed in response, then shook his mane. “We’ll get there in no time,” she said reassuringly, “You know Nurse Joy will know what to do.”

They were still about an hour out of the city when Kindle began to slow down and drift a little to one side of the road. Despite Bo’s attempts to correct her, Kindle soon came to a full stop, Blaise beside her, the both of them looking out over the grass on either side of the roads. They were nervous.

Bo’s senses went on high alert, but she tried to nudge Kindle forward anyway. Kindle shuffled forward a step or two, then turned sideways, ears pricked forward, body tense. Blaise snorted and danced about fractiously. As both ponyta started acting up more, Bo dismounted, taking hold of Kindle’s reins and trying to lead on foot “Lets go girl. Keep moving. Whatever it is, we’ll get past it sooner if we keep moving.”

Reluctantly, Kindle and Blaise began to step forward, ears swiveling back and forth as they listened to their surroundings. Bo lead them slowly, tension creeping into her back and neck. The day seemed bright and colorful still, but suddenly much less friendly. Much more quiet. The back of her neck tingled uncomfortably as she walked, as if expecting something, though she wasn’t sure what.

Slowly, slowly, they walked, taking so much longer than Bo would have liked.

It was almost a relief when the first hiss sung through the air.

The ponyta reared suddenly as the serpent shaped thing lunged out of the grasses, a blue and gold bolt of blurred motion that snapped at anything close to it. Bo was nearly pulled off her feet as she kept a hold on the reins and tried to avoid the thrashing set of teeth at the same time. Before she could recover, a hard blast of liquid struck her full in the face. Immediately her eyes began to sting and burn, and she fell back with a cry. Poison! As she rubbed fiercely at her eyes, she heard Kindle neigh shrilly, hooves stomping, hissing, and a pokemon call she couldn’t quite make out. More splashing, sounds of liquid. The sound of tearing cloth and another loud neigh. She backed up away from the sounds, still rubbing her eyes as the distinct sharp sound of a whip sung in the air.

All fell silent.

Finally, Bo found her vision returning, as she stared at the blurred shapes before her until they came into focus once more. There stood Kindle, tossing her head, her mane flickering low and her tail diminished. There was the serpent shape on the ground, lifeless and limp.

And there was Blaise, his bandages lying in shreds at either side of him, fully grown vines swaying from his shoulders, his flames…. no… not flames.

Leaves.

Bo rubbed her eyes again, thinking the poison was still affecting her. But the sight stayed the same. In place of the fire that usually trailed down Blaise’s back from ears to tail, a path of golden, russet, and orange leaves blossomed, waving on their own as if a small breeze played over them.

Blaise turned to face her, and Bo could see then that his eyes had turned a brilliant green, and were glowing. Fearing an attack like the one in the barn, Bo reached for her knife. Blaise stood still. Trembling, Bo circled around the leafy ponyta, unsure what to think. Blaise remained quiet as Bo made her way to Kindle, gathering the reins in her hand like a lifeline to reality. Then she approached the blue and gold shape.

An ekans?

She nudged it with her boot. It was the right shape, but the wrong color. She had heard of rare mutations of course, but they had been described as a greenish gold. Not this. Not a deep, pure blue. Bo nudged the strange thing with her boot, checking it for signs of life, then knelt down to take a closer look. She noticed a pool of water under the thing’s jaw and carefully avoided it, fearing poison in it. It couldn’t be…. could it? Ekans wasn’t a water type, as far as she remembered.

With careful hands she picked it up and stood slowly, as if in a dream. She turned.

And was face to face with Blaise.

A startled cry escaped her lips as she jumped back, but this time Blaise only stretched out his neck and nosed her pocket. What he usually did when he was looking for treats. He seemed proud of himself somehow. It was a moment or two before Bo finally caught her breath again, and she gave a sigh of relief to see Blaise didn’t seem likely to attack her.

She moved around to Kindle, retrieving her pack and emptying out the sandwiches to place the ekans body in it instead. Taking a deep breath, she turned and took hold of Blaise’s lead once more “Okay… I don’t have more bandages so… er… no funny business with the vines. Got it?”

Blaise snorted.

Bo ran her free hand over her face “oh boy….. let’s… let’s get going.”

She mounted back up onto Kindle’s back, gave the mare a reassuring stroke on the neck, then clucked her tongue again. They took off again, faster than before.

It wasn’t long before Bo’s nerves urged her and her ponyta into a run.

They reached the city in the afternoon, hooves clattering over cobblestone roads as they made their way straight to the pokemon center. Startled bystanders dove out of the way, pulling double takes at the strange sight before them. They skidded up to the pokemon center, where Bo dismounted and immediately returned Kindle to her pokeball.

The doors to the center fairly blew open as Bo rushed in, leading a prancing, pawing Blaise into the center of the room and up to the desk. The receptionist there gaped in an open mouth stare at the freakish sight before her eyes.

“What- Wh-…what?!” she stammered over and over.

“This,” Bo said as she leaned over the desk, “Is what my mom was trying to tell you. Where’s Nurse Joy?”

The receptionist continued to blubber fruitlessly as visitors and chanseys crowded into the room.

“I’m right here,” called a stern but friendly voice from behind the crowd. They made way for her as she strode through, making her way directly to the ponyta’s side. She checked his eyes, the vines, the leaves, all with an unreadable expression, then gestured for Bo to give her the lead. “This just became our most urgent patient,” she said to the chanseys, who fidgeted about, a little unsure of their patient.

Before Bo could ask any questions, Nurse Joy led Blaise through the doors to the back of the center, leaving a crowd of questions and stunned expressions in her wake.

With nothing else to do, Bo took a seat and began the lonely wait for answers.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

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D.N.A (in progress. Chapter one)

“I’m not a trainer,” Bo said patiently for the third time. She leaned against a post along the fence to her pastures and looked the visitor she had been talking to in the eye “I’m a breeder. I have no interest in fighting you, or trading with you. You want one of our ponyta, you have to be able to pay.”

The visitor, a young pre-teen boy, groaned impatiently. “but my feet are so tired from traveling and your ponyta are supposed to be really good for riding, aren’t they?” He made a pleading gesture, “Please? I’ll even trade you two pokemon! I have a zubat and a bidoof….”

Bo held the bridge of her nose between her fingers, “Look, kid, I know you’re just starting out, but I’m afraid I can’t be of any help to you even if I did accept trades. There’s just no room for those pokemon here on the farm. If you head down the road and into the city, there might be someone that can help you out there. Set you up with a bike or roller skates or something.” She shrugged and tipped her flared cowboy hat back a touch, smiling in a good natured way “I wish you the best, really. It’s a tough road out there.”

The kid looked like he might cry, his bottom lip jutting out and his brow furrowing for a moment as he shoved his hands into his pockets. Shoulders sullenly pulled up, he turned and gave a huge sigh. Then he relaxed, gave a reluctant half smile, and nodded “Thanks anyway. Hope your business goes well.” With that, he started off down the dirt road leading towards the city proper.

“Come on back when you get the cash!” Bo said after him, “I’ll have a prize steed waiting for you!”

The kid seemed to cheer up a little and waved back before breaking into a jog. Bo smiled. ‘Kids’, she thought, turning back to her work checking the fence for damage. She remembered wanting to be a trainer at that age. All full of adventurous fire and dreams. She was 24 now. A little late, she thought, to be heading out into the big world. She’d missed her chance already, and now she was engrossed in the family business of raising ponyta and rapidash. It wasn’t something she regretted, but she often thought about what it might have been like to be a trainer.

Even with her own ponyta, Kindle, to help her carry supplies, her work took most of the day. A storm had blown in recently and had done more damage to the fences than the usual wear and tear. By the time she was done, the sun was setting, and as she made her way back to the barn, she discovered she had some company.

A herd of ponyta, watching her with wide, hungry eyes. Some stretching their necks forward to sniff at her pockets. She laughed and wiped her brow with the back of her arm “I know, I know. Gimme a minute and you’ll get your grub.”

She hurried about filling the feed buckets with pellets, a bit of coal, and hay before opening the doors to the stalls and letting her charges in. They didn’t need to be led during supper time. They marched in obediently, if perhaps a bit eagerly, and began to chow down. She counted heads.

“Flint, Mars, Adan, Kindle, Brigid, Spark….” She ticked off their names in her head as she went until she got to the last one, “And Ember…. hmm. I’m missing one. Hey, you guys know where Blaise is?” Expectedly, the ponyta remained silent on the subject as they ate. Bo sighed. “Alright then. Out I go.”

She strode off back out into the field, leaving Kindle behind to eat. Unfortunately for her search efforts, the setting sun was bright enough to make the usual glow of a ponyta’s mane and tail harder to see in the field. She had to squint often and peer through the firey light carefully, but it still wasn’t until the sun had gone down further that she spotted the stray foal.

Her mood set much faster than the sun.

It was that kid again! Only this time he was inside the fence, blocking off the ponyta using his other pokemon. It didn’t look like a fight, but it could easily become one. Especially if Bo had anything to say about it.

“You!” she shouted accusingly, “What are you doing here?!”

He looked up at her in shock as she approached, clearly stunned at being caught red handed. “I was.. I just thought… I thought if I convinced it to be my friend-”

“That I would just let you leave with it in the spirit of friendship or something?!” She stopped outside the ring of pokemon, some of whom growled at her, some of whom whimpered and looked back at their trainer, unsure of what to do.

The boy trembled, “Well… I.. er… this one is sick anyway so…”

Bo growled, “The answer is no. If Blaise is sick, I’ll take care of it. Just like I’ll take care of you if you don’t get off my property and leave my ponyta alone!”

He seemed to find a bit of courage in the face of the threat. He stood up straight and tall, declaring “You can’t just say that to me!”

“If you don’t leave, I’m calling the police. How’s that for things I can’t say?”

The boy gulped, licked his lips, then looked around. “Whatever. I don’t want your stupid sick ponyta anyway. Come on guys!” He recalled his pokemon and ran off, hopping the fence she’d just repaired earlier that day. She watched him this time, keeping an eye on him until he disappeared over the horizon.

“Punk.” She grumbled, before turning to take a look at Blaise, “Let’s see how you’re doing, Blaisey. You don’t look sick…. little gremlin was probably just looking for an excuse to… hold on. What’s this?” What she thought was a leaf that had landed on Blaise’s flank didn’t seem to be brushing off. She frowned a little. Usually leaves and the like just burned off quickly. She pulled at it to remove it, only discover that it seemed firmly implanted into Blaise’s hide. When she tugged harder, Blaise twitched his muscles and he whickered a little in protest. When she tugged harder still, he tossed his head back toward her as if to say ‘ouch!’.

“That’s really stuck in there, huh?” Bo said, looking quizzically at the pokemon, “well, come on anyway, we’ll sort it out in the daytime.” After leading Blaise back into the stables and making sure he got his dinner, Bo went inside the main house. Her mother was there, just setting dinner out on the table with the help of her sister. Her father was absent, but that was normal. Her father was a trainer, still chasing his dream. It was the reason Bo felt she’d missed her own chance to train. With her father gone, she’d stepped up to care for the farm.

Over dinner, Bo discussed the days happenings. She turned to her sister first. “Hey Jun, in the morning can you give Blaise a good brushing? He’s gotten some brush stuck in his fur pretty good.”

“No problem,” said her younger sister, Juniper, “how’d things go with that kid that dropped by?”

Bo scoffed a bit, “not good. Little brat left, then tried to sneak into the fields and take Blaise.”

Her mother’s jaw fell slack and she spoke in quiet outrage “He tried to steal one of the ponyta?”

At Bo’s nod, her mother frowned, “We probably ought to start looking into more security measures then. Between kids like that and the Team Rocket rumors, we’ll be looking at losing stock if we don’t.”

“Mom, we have Bruno.” Juniper said. The whole family looked over at the aging arcanine in the corner, gnawing on a bone. Bo’s mom sighed “I’m afraid Bruno is getting a bit old for guard duty, honey. If we could afford a younger brother or sister for him, that would be great, but…”

“That reminds me,” Bo said around a mouthful of potatoes “Did we get the money back from the Durgens?”

Her mom gave her a gently scolding look “They didn’t owe us money. They owed us a favor. Which they repaid with the potatoes you’re eating now.”

“Would rather it have been money,” Bo grumbled, “Or feed.”

Juniper shook her head, “no one has much lately,” she said, “it’s been a hard season.”

There was silence in response. It had indeed been a hard season. The frequent storms were making it hard to work the fields, and thus keep the crops thriving like they should. And, despite the occasional overeager trainer, there weren’t as many people eager to take a ponyta out into stormy weather where the fire might go out, or the ponyta itself panic. There just wasn’t much business lately.

Bo finished her meal with bits of small talk here and there. When she finished, she helped her family do the dishes, then went upstairs to bed, thinking about tight finances and ponyta-thieves. ————-

A shriek jerked her awake. It was Juniper’s job to do the morning chores. What had happened? Bo was up and running in her night shirt and pjs before she was even really awake. Her mother met her on the way out and both of them hurried to the barn where the shout had come from.

Juniper stood there, a bucket of feed spilled around her feet, staring into the barn with eyes wide and jaw slack.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound echoed in the barn, sickly accented by hoarse coughing and whickering. Blaise was backing into a wall, tossing his head silently, eyes wide open. From his shoulders sprouted two huge green vines which were stretched forward…

and were wrapped around another ponyta’s neck, hoisting it upwards. Choking it. The other ponyta were cowering in their stalls, backed into corners.

For a moment, no one could move. No one spoke. The sight didn’t make sense!

Bo’s mother recovered first, and she ran up to Blaise, tugging at the vines, only to back off a second later “His flame’s hot, I can’t get close!”

Her voice brought her daughters to action. Juniper ran to the tack room, while Bo ran to the choking ponyta and pulled at the vines there, trying to save the poor thing. Juniper was out a second later in a fire suit, running over to help her mom. She tried to calm Blaise, hoping that would stop the monster vines, but he seemed inconsolable, the fire from his mane glowing brighter by the minute as he panicked. Bo finally worked an arm under one of the vines, but the strength of them overwhelmed her, and she ended up trapped next to the dying ponyta. They shared a look. Its time was almost up.

Desperate, Bo used her free hand to reach for her pocket knife. She fumbled awkwardly with it, trying to get the blade open one handedly. Normally she would never use it on a pokemon but she had no other choice. She slashed at the vines, hoping the pain would make Blaise release his hold.

It wasn’t until she had fully slashed through both vines that they retreated, leaving shortened, flailing stumps sprouting from Blaise’s shoulders.

Juniper and her mom took over calming Blaise down as Bo checked on the freed ponyta, who was coughing and sputter as it stood in it’s stall, it’s legs splayed out and it’s head down. Everyone was breathing heavily. But the danger was, for the moment, over.

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ponywithquill · 9 years ago

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Virthel's Story by Preston and Jordan

The village of Mylta, though fearful for its safety so close to the Warpwood, is preparing for an annual festival as our hero’s arrive. Perhaps you see the young couple, giggling and holding hands as they return from the river, parting with a kiss on the way into town - and later one or the other writing something on a small scrap of paper which they carry to the small temple. Or perhaps you see the man, eyes full of regret, scribbling something at the bar, sighing as he tucks it away. Its not hard to learn what this holiday is, if you are curious. The townsfolk tell you simply that it is a simple harvest festival, Hopes Harvest, where all the townsfolk write down their hopes, regrets, and wishes and they are added together into a wooden frame shaped like a man. When the man is burned, the ashes are carried to the gods, and like seeds perhaps your dreams will find root and you can harvest your hearts desire later in the year. The only inn in town is the Dancing Golem, run by one Amnete Ghersyna - a portly woman of good spirits (though, she balks at what must surely be the appetites of so many hearty adventurers! As each of you arrive, in ones or twos, her fretting gets worse as she tried to make meals worthy of such heroes as yourselves!) With wringing hands she apologizes for the accommodations “We aren’t used to so many strangers here at once, and all so big too, oh dear. Maggy! Did Farmer Joss bring that sow by yet…” she wanders off to tend to getting dinner. Should any of you seek out the priest Pyam Ulfar you find him an old man, sad that he no longer has the strength to fight the menace of the Warpwood. He is kind though, and says that you, and the others who arrive, are the answer to his prayers. “The task is simple” he sighs “yet fraught with peril. Enter Al'thair, find the source or sources of the corruption, and destroy them. Soon, a courier will arrive from the Grand Temple with a weapon to use against the shards of madness that twist the forest. Until then please, enjoy our towns hospitality. And please, if you could…I fear for the safety of Hopes Harvest…” he coughs loudly buckling in two, but waves you off if you try to assist “I ask all of you that come to help us - stand vigil for us, lest some evil from the wood taint our holiday.”

It takes the tall dragonborn longer than she would have liked to reach the town of Mylta. In no small part because provisioning herself had become more difficult and time consuming the closer she got. The local wildlife in the general area proved more skilled at hiding and more wary. She made do, of course, just not quite as comfortably as she would have prefered. Thus, by the time she reached the town she was quite….quite ready for a filling meal. Her stomach asserted itself with an undisciplined growl, and she lay a clawed hand over the neatly hide-wrapped surface of her abdomen. Hungry as she might be, she had more important things to do first. She studied the town from a distance to begin with, getting a feel for the place. It was a mild surprise to find happiness and bustling activity. The message she’d recieved had her under the impression of town under seige for a long time, and in her mind she had painted an image of stressed and beaten down folk. Perhaps these people were so acclimatized to thier situation that it become something of a normality? That would fit, actually. The sun warmed her odd greencopper scales as she made her way into town, interacting little with the locals. She glanced at the people and buildings in much the same way a scholar might study an interesting specimen. There seemed to be some event going on of some kind, but she wasn’t too inclined to learn much about the simple rituals of these people at the moment. Perhaps sometime later she would ask, if the answer didn’t become obvious in the time she spent here. She made for the temple and looked for the priest inside. Once running into him, she inquried about the mission and listened as he spoke. Her ears twitched on a word or two. She frowned a little when she heard that he was reccomending waiting here until the weapons from the Grand Temple arrived. The warden was anxious to get into that forest. The change in expression was minor, but the coolness in her eyes (and a slight imptience sharpened by hunger) couldn’t be missed “The messenger sent to me insisted you needed help quickly. I was not under the impression I was being called from my home forests to act as law enforcement for your festival.” She spoke with him a little further, inquiring as to the nature of the woods, what the tainting might be doing, how creatures were behaving and if they had been twisted, what had changed. Had sentient beings been twisted as well? She needed all the information she could get.

The priest sighs and nods “We are indeed in desperate need, but what good would it do for you to wander off into the woods and come across a shard of this accursed meteor only to find your weapons and prayers had no effect? Killing any monsters you happen across would only slow the attacks on the outlying farms, many of which have been abandoned.” he stops only to cough, shuddering as he catches his breath “There are orphans here, like little Tessa, who only survived by hiding. They described creatures out of nightmare, who may once have been elves or halflings. But now…” he shakes his head “None of the villagers have braved the forest and lived, the few elves that remain have either been driven mad, spending their last dies ranting and howling, or simply refuse to look at their despoiled home." He shakes as he moves to sit down, his age (and the stress) showing "The weapon is simple, a vial of water blessed by both priests and shamans, each more powerful than I. I loathe the wait, but it is necessary. The comet shards are the source of the vile mist, only by destroying those will Mylta be safe and Al'thair be returned to all of us. As for the festival…I have had evil dreams of late, omens from Ioun. Just as we prepare to strike at evils heart I fear it may try to strike at us, to cripple us before we can truly fight back. I would see no more of my people die to this foulness.”

The dragonborn listened to the priest’s reasoning, and quietly ground her teeth as she grudgingly accepted his points. She watched as he coughed and sat down, and crouched before him to keep on a level eye. Of course, one could interpret this as condescending, but it wasn’t (totally) meant that way. “Your Grand Temple should send you assistance, as you are on the front line. It’s clear enough that you need it.” Her tone was blunt, but sincere. “Since you did send a messenger to me, I presume that you know something of me. It is my calling to do more than simply kill any monster I come across. I will do what is in my power to cleanse the forest. You’ll understand my impatience to get started. However, it would be a good opportunity to stock some supplies. In a forest like this, I doubt food and water will be entirely reliable. I will stay then, for your festival, and depart as soon as possible afterwards." It wasn’t… quite… an apology, but probably as close to one as the father was likely to get. She stood, and reiterated her earlier advice. "You should take more rest. You’ll do no good to your fellows if you shut yourself down." Once done speaking with the priest, the warden, following her nose with little sutble bobs of her head much like a house cat, made for the tavern and thus, food. On her way, she noticed another dragonborn, and eyed him for a moment. A local? Was there, perhaps, a population of her race here? Likely not, if the way villagers were glancing at him meant anything. Another thing to think over. She turned away after a moment, and strode into the tavern, in time to hear a girl near the bar finish what seemed to be a public oration with ”-slew a dragon?“ She looked to the girl inquisitively.

The crowd hardly noticed the entrance of Virthel, but Amnete attended to her herself, content to let her barmaids enjoy a story from one of their own people. Mindy glanced at the warden, granting her a small nod even as a few of the villagers nodded or called out for her to continue her story. “Well then. Where to begin.” Mindy said, getting comfortable on her barstool once again, her fingers began to pick at the strings of her lute, the music light and hopeful. “I left here 3 years ago to see more of the world, to learn more, and yes to come back and one day help Mylta regain lost Al’thair.” The music took a sudden down turn to sadness as she sighed, head bowed. It slowly picked back up as she continued, notes becoming more cheerful “I wandered the road to Fallcrest and beyond, even saw Jim Darkmagic perform his amazing show.” A few of the townsfolk nodded. “It was beyond Fallcrest that I found new friends. Thalnar, a surprise really. A tiefling in service to Avandra, his sword and shield ever there to protect the weak.” There was a dangerous muttering in the crowd, murmers of devilspawn and worse. Mindy frowned and plucked a discordant note on her lute hushing the crowd with her glare “Yes a tiefling, with a good heart. If it wasn’t for his effort I wouldn’t still be standing today. And also the twins Ayissa and Syanvaras, wild elves. Ayissa was a hunter, her bow true and strong. Syanvara danced with her swords with such grace. We four journeyed through the wilds to another small town like this one, and there we learned of their plight. The tribe of violent spitefilled kobolds had taken up a lair in the rocky hills, and had grown more bold and greedy. Traders had been robbed and murdered, they were scared. Surely, the four of us were enough to take care of their small problem?” The lutes music mocks her words, then turns ominous as her voice drops low, making the room lean forward “Small problem indeed. Kobolds, yes there were kobolds. Dozens of them. And we fought through them all. Thalnar with his long sword high, protecting us with the blessings of Avandra. Ayissa’s arrows striking swiftly even as her sister leapt and spun, her blades a blur as they spilt kobold blood.” “What did you do?” Called out Marthin, his voice a little mocking. Mindy locked him down with a stare. “Me? Oh, not much. I just used magic to rattle and distract and to knit together my friends wounds. Not much at all really.” Her lute lets out a few notes that seem, different somehow, each one seems full of power and the crowd lets out a small gasp, each person feeling more relaxed and peaceful all at once, as the aches of a days worth of toil and work vanish in a few seconds. A small mischievous smile tugs at the corner of Mindy’s lips as she continues with her story “The kobolds were dangerous, yes. But we weren’t prepared for the driving force behind their raiding. A young red dragon, hungry and greedy and full of fury and fire.” The music takes on an urgent tone “We were tired, and sore from the kobolds spears and traps, but we had no time to retreat and regroup. With a roar that shook us to our core the beast charged us as we entered its lair. Thalnar barely managed to deflect its jaws with his shield, his voice calling out to Avandra for her blessings as he challenged it to face him or feel his wrath. Syanvara circled around, but her swords swept too high as the beast lowered its haunches, its tail whipping about to knock her against the wall. Ayissa’s shout of fear for her sister echoed in my very soul as I reached out with my magic to distract the dragon. Thalnar pushed the beast back, through sheer force of will it seemed as we scrambled into its lair, surrounding it. Syanvara regained her feet. The dragons chest expanded as it turned, and the room filled with fire even as Avandra’s fury burned it on behalf of our paladin. Syanvara dove and pulled me to my feet just in time to avoid the worst of the dragons breath, and Ayissa managed to duck behind a bit of rock.” The music is tense as the bard talks, her eyes are half closed as she remembers her voice low and filled with emotion. The room is silent “The fight was desperate; we came close to defeat so many times. The arrows and blades of the twins whittled away at the dragons scales, tiny rivulets of blood from a dozen wounds, my magic twisted its mind, Thalnar keeping the beasts rage focused on him as best as he could with the magic of the gods.” She sighs and the music turns even darker “The beast was almost dead, my magic waning, when it lunged at me. It had almost killed Ayissa with a vicious bite and it recognized my hand in her survival. It sought to remove me from the fight so it could more easily slay my friends. Its claws almost ripped me in half, and as I fell the world went black. I thought I was going to die, but I opened my eyes to see Thalnar standing over my body, he had granted me some of his life in order to keep me from deaths door. As it tried to bite down on his shield I used the last of my magic to attack its mind and it fell, unmoving, to the floor. We took no chances; we made sure it was dead before we did anything else.” The music ends slowly, as her fingers caress the wood of her lute, remembering the fight. Remembering how gentle Thalnar’s fingers had been when he bound her wounds later. And how gentle his hand was when she had taken it in hers, whispering to him that he would never tame her. And his reply that he would not think to try. She loses herself in reverie for a moment. “We parted ways at the grand temple, Thalnar and the twins had to head north, I was needed here.” She says sadly.

________________________-

The screams of the villagers as the flames of the effigy turned a baleful green echoed down the streets of Mylta. Father Ulfar whispered "No…” before he fell to his knees, clutching his chest, tears on his face as he watched the gathered prayers of the townsfolk burn in unholy fire. Tessa let out a shrill scream, prayers fallen from her lips. As one, the crowd of villagers turn to flee, our heroes jostled as they run past in a panic. At least, those villages swift enough to flee as tiny motes of cast off fire turned to impish creatures. The beasts cackled with mad glee as they lept upon the back of fleeing villagers, claws burning deep and mortal wounds. The heroes, though, stood resolute. Enraged, the half-orc rogue charged the flaming effigy and plunged his sword into the fire, ignoring the heat. The force of his blow undoing the magic of the perversion it crumbled to naught but timber and ash, the wisps of smoke still taking prayers up to the gods, or so we can only hope. ********************************** The next day our heroes set forth for the Warpwood. Either very foolish, or very brave indeed. The great round trees of the forest were ancient, and their roots hidden by thick mist (natural or perhaps not, it is hard to tell). The trees nearest the river are thick boughed and ancient. But something is not right. The forest is deathly quiet, no birds sing. Nothing moves. It is an unnatural stillness, even to those not used to the forest paths. As the heroes looked closer, it became clear that something had changed even the trees, small cracks in the bark leak thick red sap that smelled of foulness, the fungi so normal on the sides of trees glowed with a damp purple light, or was arranged in patterns reminiscent of screaming faces. Before dusk our heroes happened upon a lone halfling near an abandoned camp. He looked hungry, starving, all bones and skin. His eyes were desperate as he rasped out “Please, feed me…I need food…” Akra, the dragonborn monk, took pity on the emaciated halfling. As he aproached food in hand the halflings eyes took on a mad cast as its lower jaw split open, revealing a maw dripping with thick yellow drool. Its tongue shot from its mouth like a chameleons, thick and muscular, tipped with 4 barbed finger like tentacles that grabbed the monks neck, barbs rasping noisily against his thin scales and drawing a thin bead of blood. At this point the trees around the party erupted into life, as 3 more of the once halflings climed down from the trees like spiders, each intent on its own prey. The noise of the fighting soon disturbed swarms of bats, changed also by the fell presence of the meteor that struck in once Al'thair. The swarmed over the combatants, getting into eyes, around weapons, nipping at every inch of vulnerable flesh.

Our heroes prevailed, but not unbloodied. An examination of the bat corpses was disturbing, each one sported a horrid mutation, tentacles for legs, eye stalks, lamprey like mouths, each different and each a horrifying indication of what waited in the Warpwood. Here, any living thing could become a monstrosity.

Sitting ‘on watch’ at the edge of camp, in the dubious shelter of the great roots of the large trees in this forest, the dragonborn warden examined the remains of one of the bat-creatures. Her face stone still and her expression frozen in a grim shade of concern. She handled the grotesque creature with delicate care for a long while, apparently deep in thought. She had known the forest was twisted, even felt it when she first came near it. But seeing the extent of it in physical form was another matter. So twisted was the poor thing that she couldn’t pick out what species of bat it might have been at one time. She looked deeper into the forest, scanning the trees and the shadows they threw across the woodland floor, pondering, perhaps a little darkly. Her tail twitching in an almost oddly feline irritation. This forest set her ill at ease.

The spirits of the forest are barely a whisper for the Warden. Only those that stay with her, the ones that fuel her powers seem to have any strength here, and even then their presence seems muted. The spirits are there though, but it is as if they are being smothered under the corruption of the comet shards. The animals are silent. The spirits are silent. The only sound is the movement of Virthel’s party and the shallow strumming of a lute. And night is coming soon, very soon.

It disturbs her. The silence, that is. Even in darkness, there are noises to be heard in the forests. Scurrying of mouse feet. The squeaking staccato of bats. A rustle of a fox pouncing it’s prey. Or the short flurry of a startled deer. At dusk, it should be moreso. Predators often are more active at dusk and dawn. Where were the signs of it? The absolute silence seems to denote terror. The stillness of animals when a great predator is among them. It’s not the normal occasional pocket of silence of a single hunter about to strike. This is much bigger. It’s the entire forest that seems frozen. If she'd had hackles or hair on the back of her neck, they’d be raised. More disturbing is the silence of the spirits. Even with every animal and plant absolutely still, there should be whisperings of the spirits. And her ancestors should be able to reach her. The fact that they can’t seem to makes her skin crawl and leaves her feeling cut off and distinctly vulnerable. There’s only one note of hope she draws from this. That she may be following the right trail… She ground her teeth and looked back to the party, at the bard strumming away, and considered approaching. Part of her wanted to move in closer to warmth, company, and the comforting tones of music. Life. Another part wanted to scold the bard for making such noise in a place where the animals themselves didn’t dare make a sound. Standing, she made a big production of stretching her limbs… and took up watch once more. Closer to the camp this time.

Setting up camp passes without incidence. The mist that clings to the forest floor rests there, swirling around the feet of the party, as if tasting them for weakness. The worst only comes after the party begins to doze off. Your dreams are full of nightmares, dead family members rot in front of you, staring at you with accusing eyes as they die over and over again. Anyone on watch can see their friends and allies twisting in their sleep, mumbling or crying out in sadness, unable to wake them. You may try to steel your mind, but the dreams are insidious, and they find their way in. Loved ones appear only to die, their blood on your hands. Spiders crawl down your throat to choke you, demons appear to pull out your intestines - or worse. Your nightmares are you own, and what evils they conjure to torture you depends on what you fear the most. The mist swirls around the camp. Dawn comes, and the party breaks camp. It is apparent that everyone shared a night of horror in this evil wood. Do you talk about what nightmares plagued you? Or will you suffer in silence, even as you make your way closer to a shard of this evil comet?

The day of hard travel finds the party at an abandoned inn near the river, guarded by elves and halflings twisted by the comets malevolent influence. As the monk, cleric, and others fight off an attack from the rear the warden and her other compatriots battled their way through the inns defenders. The rogue nearly dies at the hands of waxy melting elves and murderous halflings, but the bards magic kept him away from deaths door. The party explored the inn, finding a tunnel in the cellar that leads to a fleshy, damp cave. The air here was thick with the foul presence of one of the comets shards and its guardian, a massive creature made of ice laced with madness and rot. Angry, the half orc rogue charged forward only to be met with a pounding fist from the hulking creature, once again the bards magic kept him from death. The battle was hard, but eventually our heroes won out. With a shaking hand Mindy pulled the vial of blessed water from her pouch, and the party chanted the words to the sacred ritual. Nearly 30 minutes later, with a shudder and a peal of thunder the comet shards light dims and then it vaporizes. Its destruction sends a shock wave through the mist, which begins to dissipate from the immediate area.

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