Chapter Two
Oct. 14th, 2015 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostsheep_inprogress“Shhh, hold still,” said a voice—a child? Leicho craned her head. Yes, a child, a humanic child (on a seed world?). She was much paler than Leicho’s people, but had brown hair in two messy braids, just like any child of Auvik. Leicho found that strangely comforting.
“It’s all good,” the child said, crouching in the tiny space beside the soft bench where Leicho had been lain. “Me and my dad totally got this. We’re taking you to the hospital and you’re gonna be just fine.”
Her translator strained over the word hospital for a moment. When its meaning penetrated, Leicho bolted upright, despite the pain and dizziness.
The translator gave her words, simple but unfamiliar; her tongue struggled with them. “No! No hospital! Please!”
“What? Why not?” In the cockpit of the vehicle sat the man who had tried to speak to her in the road, now turning to look at her in alarm.
Because I’ve read the reports of what happens when an alien turns up at a seed world hospital. Not that she could tell him that. “I—I can’t pay,” she stammered, then bit her lip—what if this was like the better worlds of the HWA, where no one would think of asking money for medical care? Did they even use a money system here? But she seemed to have said the right thing; the man winced in a sympathetic sort of way. “I’m not—ugly hurt,” she continued, encouraged. “Truth. Not hurt. Only...” She flipped frantically through choices from the translator. “Surpri—Stunned. And bruised.”
“But there’s blood all over you!” the child said—was it a girl? She thought it was a girl.
“Yes, my head. A little cut. Heads bleed very much!” She laughed, as if it were a trivial annoyance, but couldn’t stop a wince as she dabbed delicate fingertips at the wound.
“Look, you gotta tell us what happened,” the girl said. “The thing—the thing that exploded—what was it? It didn’t look like an airplane...”
It certainly didn’t, if the image her translator brought up was anything to go by. But their technology had surely advanced in the last 56 years—movement was generally swift once a society harnessed electricity—and the child did look uncertain. “Yes, airplane. Big airplane. Exploded?”
“Look.” The girl pointed over Leicho’s shoulder, and she turned to see, through a transparent viewport in the back of the vehicle, flames towering over the dark treeline. Something inside her seemed to go into freefall; she couldn’t look away. How many survivors might still be trapped in there? Surely no one was left alive by now...
“I don’t think that was an airplane,” the child said. “And you—you talk weird. And your clothes are weird.” Frowning, her face a study in mingled apprehension and excitement, she leaned in closer to Leicho. “Are you an alien?”
Leicho felt her jaw drop. For a moment they stared at each other, and Leicho saw suspicion blooming into belief on the girl’s face.
“Briana!” the father snapped, in a tone that made it clear this was both a rude and ridiculous thing to ask. The translator threw its hands up at the word Briana and declared it Untranslatable—probably the child’s name, then. “This is no time for your nonsense! The lady just lived through a plane crash. Look, ma’am—what’s your name?”
She was hoping to dodge that question until she had some idea what passed as a normal name here. Now she had no choice but to tell the truth and hope for the best. “Eleichononareyac.”
“...what?”
“Leicho, in brief. For short, I mean. For short.”
“Leicho. Right.” The man’s eyes, in the mirror above his seat, were sharp and wary. “Leicho, can we call somebody for you, when we pull over? I’m going to pull in at that gas station there and call the police.”
‘Call’ was a reference to a long-distance communication device, the translator assured her, but—“Police? Why?”
“Why? Did you miss the giant burning wreck? Of course we have to call the police!”
“No! No police!”
Again those sharp eyes in the mirror. “That accent of yours,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “Spanish?”
She frowned. Spanish was another Earth language the translator offered. “Is... Spanish bad?”
“No, not... bad.” He sighed, looking somehow both burdened and relieved by whatever conclusion he’d reached. “That explains a lot. An alien after all.”
She stiffened, opened her mouth for a frantic denial, but the little girl touched her arm. “He means, like,
“Oh.” That might work in her favor, then. A handy excuse for talking strangely, being unfamiliar with local custom—assuming this people tolerated foreigners among them. But the man didn’t seem to be flying into a xenophobic rage so far.
An island of light was fast approaching, a building with several vehicles outside—the ‘gas station’ he had spoken of? Where he would summon police. Leicho’s breath froze to think of seed-world government forces crawling over the transport, making discoveries they were in no way ready for. What if Summer Blossom was still there?
But it was impossible to keep locals from investigating the scene somehow, and she was in no condition to take on Summer Blossom even if she found him. The best she could hope for right now was to keep herself out of government hands.
***
Briana could not believe her dad was being this big a jerk.
"Bree, get out of the car."
"We can't just leave her alone out here!" Briana tried to hang onto the armrest but Dad pulled her hand free.
"I'm not leaving you alone with her," he hissed under his breath. "You're coming inside with me if I have to carry you over my shoulder like a sack of beans."
He would, too, Briana could see it in his eyes. All she could do was let out a weird throat-noise of whyyy and get out of the car. "You just sit tight," she told Leicho. "We'll be right back."
The alien lady smiled at her, painful and sad—ugh, it was such BS that Dad thought she might hurt anybody—and made a funny gesture with her hands, cupping them together. Something about it made Bree think of Vijay in her class who was always putting his hands together and saying Namaste. Was Leicho trying to say goodbye?
"We'll be back really soon," Briana repeated, so she'd understand she wasn't being abandoned, then Dad put a hand on her shoulder and steered her to the door of the gas station.
Once inside, Briana was torn between watching Leicho through the window, deciding which snack food to beg for, or listening to Dad's phone call, 'cause she'd never heard anyone call 911 before. First he had to argue with the clerk about using the phone, 'cause the guy didn't seem to speak English very well, and it looked like he couldn't decide whether to believe Dad about the huge flaming wreck in the middle of the swamp but was pretty freaked out either way.
Reese's Cups, maybe. Or, no, Circus Peanuts! They were cheaper so Dad was more likely to get them and there was more of them in a package.
The clerk had finally maneuvered the phone up onto the counter, some kind of ancient grandma landline that was probably as old as Dad.
"Yes, hi, I need to report some kind of accident, it's huge—I think it must be a downed airplane," Dad was saying into the phone. "It's on fire, out in the middle of—yes, exactly! Oh, good."
They already knew where it was, meaning someone else already called, meaning this was a massive waste of time, of course.
"I have a survivor from the crash in my car—"
"Dad!" Briana hissed, because if he told the police about Leicho they were going to put her in a lab and dissect her or at least try to deport her to
"—she's hurt and she needs an ambulance—hello? Hello? Oh, geez, I think it disconnected."
Briana craned her head away from Dad's hand to look out the window at their car—and saw Leicho creeping out of the backseat, barely holding herself up.
Bree managed not too gasp too loudly. Instead, while Dad was tapping on the little hang-up button and Not Quite Yelling at the clerk about his phone line, she eased away, back down the snack aisle at first, then sneaking around to the door and outside.
"Leicho! Leicho, wait!" She kept her voice as low as she could, but Leicho heard her, 'cause she stopped and looked over her shoulder, grimacing. "Leicho, you can't just wander off into the dark," Briana said, panting as she caught up with her. "Okay? You're hurt and you're lost and you need to stay with us, okay?"
"Police," Leicho said.
"Yeah, police, I get it, so we need to hide you—ah!" She dashed around to the driver's door and pulled the little lever at the bottom to pop the trunk. "Climb in here!"
Leicho didn't look very happy at all, but she glanced toward Dad inside the gas station and then out into the dark swamp around them, and let Briana help her into the trunk.
"Hope you're not afraid of the dark," Briana said. "And I really hope you don't bleed out on the way home 'cause then Dad'll have a body in his trunk and that's not good at all. But just stay in there and I'll come let you out when we get home, and put you in the other side of the duplex—no one lives there right now. You'll be safe and we can get you cleaned up and first aid and all that jazz, okay?"
"Okay," Leicho said, very carefully, like she was actually saying the letters O-K. Briana gave her a big, reassuring smile and double thumbs-up before she closed the trunk.
Briana's dad reached for her hand after the third time the car hit a bump and she winced. What…. Oh. He must think she was still scared after seeing the wreck and the explosion. Which she kind of was, she guessed—she was trying not to think about it—but mostly she was just worried about Leicho in the trunk. She was hurt pretty bad, after all, and getting knocked around couldn't be helping at all.
Briana managed to get her hand away subtly by reaching for her circus peanuts. "So now what, we just go home and act like we never saw Area 51?"
Dad sighed heavily and rubbed at his face. "There's no need to pretend anything, honey, we saw something awful and it's okay to be upset about that. Anyway I imagine the police will want to talk to us, get a witness statement."
"Will they be mad that we let Leicho get away?"
"We didn't let her do anything, she snuck off while we weren't looking, and anyway we didn't have any authority to hold her." He pulled his mouth into a funny shape. "They might be annoyed that we left the gas station, but I'm not sitting around for hours when my baby girl needs to be in bed."
Briana sighed. "I'm not a baby, Dad."
"Well, I need to be in bed, how about that?"
"I know you're really tired, Dad, so if you need me to drive—"
Dad laughed. "Nice try, kiddo."
"One day, Dad. One day."
"It'll be a terrifying day."
Briana laughed and ate another circus peanut, trying not to wince as they hit a pothole.
The clock on the dash said 3:02 when they pulled into the driveway, and the neighborhood was quiet as the ocean floor. Their headlights against the white porch rail and baby-yellow walls made the house seem to glow in the darkness. Their house didn’t look like a duplex right away, until you realized the front door was two doors and that there was a “For Rent” sign in the right-hand window. Briana hoped the next renters would be cool people and maybe have a kid her age; either that or Dad ought to knock out the wall between them and they could each have half a house with their own living room and kitchen and everything. That was a perfect idea and she would absolutely convince Dad of that in the morning. Or… after Leicho went back to Qo'nos or wherever.
Dad, meanwhile, was trying to open their door with the other side's key, leaning his forehead against the peephole with his eyes closed.
"Dad," Briana said, taking the keyring gently from his hand and unlocking the door, "go lay down before you hurt yourself."
"No, I gotta… I gotta brush my teeth…"
"Not sure you could do that tonight without poking your eye out. Come on." She took his hand and pulled him down the hallway toward bed—slipping the keys into her pocket.
Dad threw himself down on his bed, burrowing into his pillow with a desperate happy noise, like it was his best friend and he'd thought it was dead. He didn't even open his eyes while Briana took off his shoes and—unable to get the covers out from under him—folded them up over him like a taco. He did, however, react when she started singing the Lawrence Welk lullaby to him.
"Goodnight, sleep tight, and pleasant dreeeeeams to you—"
"Okay, no. Go 'way. Go to bed, you little adrenaline junkie." He gasped and suddenly struggled halfway upright. "Watson!"
She let out a sharp, exasperated breath and shoved him back down, facefirst in the pillow. "I'll take care of Watson."
Dad groaned. "Lookit this kid. 'Leven going on thirty. I'll have you know I'm the parent round these parts!"
"Yes, Daddy. Goodnight, Daddy." She kissed the back of his head, turned out the light, and closed the door behind her. She listened intently for just a moment, until she heard him snore, then dropped some blueberries in Watson's terrarium on her way out the door.
***
Leicho thought she might weep with relief when the lid of the storage compartment opened. The ride had not been comfortable, but more importantly, if she had realized how similar it would feel to being trapped in the wreckage of the transport, she doubted she would have had the courage to crawl inside.
"Sorry it took so long," the Earth child said, reaching out to help Leicho climb free of the vehicle. "My dad should be asleep now and will probably stay that way until lunchtime tomorrow. Plenty of time to get you set up. Look, I brought a first aid kit and my Avengers sheets and my Princess Jasmine comforter because the Avengers comforter is dirty, I'm totally on top of that though in case Dad asks, anyway we better keep our voices down 'cause the walls are kinda thin." With a jingle of metal, she opened a door into the house, and turned on electric lights with—how quaint—a manual switch.
"It's pretty much a shotgun house," Briana said, "everything in a straight line from the front door. Living room, through there is the kitchen…" She tugged Leicho through the rooms as she spoke. "That's the big bedroom—this middle part here has the bathroom, see, and a littler bedroom through that door. Here, sit down." She pointed Leicho toward a cold, hard seat in the bathroom—the translator seemed to think it was where people relieved themselves. How odd to use that as furniture.
"Sorry about the smell," Briana said as she opened the 'first aid kit,' pulling out bandages and some little capped tubes. "Your face is really adorable when you wrinkle your nose like that, though."
"Smell is fine," Leicho said quickly, horrified that she might have implied this kind girl's house stank—though it sort of did.
Briana only laughed. "Me and Dad have scrubbed and scrubbed this place and aired it out and threw out so much trash and yucky old clothes, but it still smells like patchouli and cats. What can you do."
"You threw out… your clothes?"
"Oh, not ours! We don't live here—we're next door, on the other side of the wall. Gosh, you are covered in mud."
"No, stop," Leicho said when the child would have cleaned the mud off her wounds. "I will bleed again. You ought to sleep, little one. I can care for myself."
"You need a doctor," Briana sighed. "I took a first aid class but they didn't even let us practice on dummies, much less real people. Much less aliens. So I guess I ought to let you take care of it yourself. All right then, let's at least get you a bed to sleep in."
They took the bedclothes Briana had brought to the big bedroom, which held a mattress on a sort of stand to keep it off the floor. Safe from pests? They quickly discovered, though, that the mattress was a different size than the sheets brought for it, or perhaps they were simply both too tired to make sense of the elastic that curled the edges of one sheet. In the end, Leicho simply made a sort of nest in the middle and curled up in it, the way she’d slept as a child, before the efficient standardized beds of Transport 989.
No, she told herself, don’t think about the transport, or home, or anything. Just sleep. Think about all that in the morning.
"Huh, I guess that works," Briana said, smiling at Leicho's nest. "In fact, that looks super comfortable." She yawned widely, sat down on the edge of the bed—and before Leicho knew what was happening, was fast asleep in one corner of the nest.
Leicho let the child stay there, pulling a corner of blanket over her head to block the light that she did not know how to extinguish.
She slept, and knew she slept, but in her sleep relived the blare of alarms—
—We’re under attack—
—the shifting gravity and temperature as the ship took damage—
Reill’s voice, arguing for an emergency landing, which the captain refused because the only planet in range was a seed world.
(Who would attack a prison transport? What did they want and what had become of the attackers?)
Interspersed with sensory impressions of the wreckage were the faces of her rescuers—the sharp-eyed father who did not trust her but carried her away from certain death at the roadside, the bold little girl who had given her shelter and aid. Were all the people of Earth so kind?
(Earth. Dirt. How strange to name your world Dirt. The translator gave different names, of course, depending on the language. What was this planet called in the HWA? Surely it had to be the seed world the captain had tried so hard to avoid, but if so, how were there humanics here?)
She woke with a jolt, and the translator whispered in her brain, answering the question she’d only half-meant to ask it. What is this planet called in the HWA?
Humana. The world from which the humanics were first taken, and spread throughout the entire Harmony Wheel, as slaves and pets and hardy workers. Of course. Of course.
In a peculiar way, Leicho thought as she smothered hysterical laughter in the pillow, she’d come home.
