Two Worlds: Land of Ice Ch. 01

Hey everyone!

This story is meant to be a sequel to Two Worlds but I believe that it can be read as a standalone story. I got an editor and he did a wonderful job. So thanks Peter!

I did add about two and a half pages in Word to this after he edited it so any mistakes are completely my fault.

Also anyone that wants me to email them when my chapters are up just go to the "contact" section of my members page and let me know!

I hope you enjoy and as always your comments are always welcome and appreciated!

~Vixen

*

Let me just say that Alaska is freaking cold. I did just come here from sunny and hot California so it's no wonder I'm freezing my ass off but still! The average summer temperature should not be 62 degrees anywhere in the world, that's winter weather damn it!

"It's not that cold." My long time best friend, Riz, said as we drove along the road towards her family's cabin. "It's actually pretty warm today."

"You call this warm?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. She laughed at that.

"Well I guess since I've been here a few years I've gotten used to it." She added.

"Yeah well I just touched down from Cali hon. I'm used to the hot summers and mildly cold winters. Remember that?"

"Yeah, yeah. I know... I miss that." She sighed a little wistfully, trying to search back half a decade.

"I bet you miss running around in just a swimsuit and getting a suntan." I said with a chuckle as I remembered the summers where we would do just that.

"Yeah..." Riz mumbled and I was sure she was thinking about those summers as well.

"Or sunburns in your case." She added with a chuckle. We continued to talk as we headed towards her family's cabin, catching up a bit on the things we missed the last five years. It wasn't much since we had texted and e-mailed each other almost every day, but talking about everything face to face made it seem more real and added the emotional touch that modern media just can't convey.

Riz's family had moved here five years ago when her father was transferred to another branch of the fishing company he worked at. It was heartbreaking to watch Riz and her family leave but thankfully with the world of technology we live in we had been able to keep in contact the whole time. I told her about what was going on with all our crazy friends and people at home and she told me about the new friends she had made. The plan was always for me to visit as soon as we graduated from high school, spend the summer together and then I would bring her back with me so we would move into the dorms of UCLA and start on the path to our careers, Riz as a playwright and me as an actress. We were so excited to be going and living on our own together.

The cabin coming into view as we turned onto their "road" pulled me out of my thoughts and I realized how much I was looking forward to seeing Riz's family. They had been like a second set of parents and siblings to me for most of my life so I missed them almost as much as I missed Riz. We slowed down and pulled into the garage before getting out and grabbing my bags. Before we got to the door leading into the house someone opened it and stepped out.

"Tristan!" I exclaimed happily and jumped into his arms. He laughed and hugged me before taking my bags, always having to be the gentleman.

"Hey Mini, how was the flight little one." He teased as if the five years I hadn't seen him hadn't passed by at all.

"I'm not so little anymore, I grew two more inches!" I said defensively. Granted it still left me at only 5' 3" but it was worth pointing out I had grown a bit. Tristan just chuckled though and I grumbled as I followed his six foot frame into the house. I saw the smile on Riz's face but she tried to hide it. She knew how sensitive I am about my height and also how her brother loved to tease me endlessly about it. It seemed like nothing had changed.

"Mina!" a female voice called from the kitchen.

"Momsy!" I said happily as I gave her a hug. One day back in Cali we were teasing around and I called her "Momsy dearest" and it kind of stuck.

"Oh my goodness Mina darling, how are you? Look at you! You've gotten so big and look at those curves! You look like a woman now honey." She said as she looked me over, getting a little teary eyed. I smiled and hugged her tightly, assuring her that I was great before letting her continue with making dinner and started to take off all my heavy outer clothes in the entryway. When I got back into the living room in just my jeans and long sleeve shirt, Sky was just wondering in.

"Little sis!" I said and ran to give her a hug. I hugged her tightly and she looked slightly surprised. She wasn't really all that little in truth. Riz and I were both 19 and she was about a year younger than us but we still called her "little sis" because we knew it bugged her sometimes no matter how endearing it was or how affectionately it was meant.

"I thought you weren't supposed to be here until the 8^th." She said in confusion.

"Today is the 8^th silly." I said as I ruffled her raven hair. She grumbled slightly and fixed it like she always used to do and I laughed. I went into the kitchen after that to see if Momsy needed any help but she seemed good so I sat down at the table with Riz, Tristan, and Sky to catch up a bit more.

"I'm home!" Riz's father called as he came in through the garage door. "You wouldn't believe the disaster at work today. It took five of us- Mina! Hey kiddo!" He gave me a huge hug, still in most of his warm clothes.

"I'm not really a kid anymore Dave!" I said with a smile as I hugged him back.

"I know! You've gotten so big! It's been too long. What have you been up to?" I sat down and started talking about my life recently and how the plans for college were coming along while he took off his outer clothes.

"Riz honey! Why don't you show Mina to your room and help her get settled in while I finish up dinner. It should only be about ten more minutes." Momsy called out a few minutes later and Dave waved me away, there would be plenty of time to catch up over dinner and the coming summer.

"Alright. Come on Mina. Wait until you see it! I've got all of it set up in my favorite colors of course and my bed has a roll out bed under it where you'll be sleeping!" Riz said as she got up and pulled me up. I followed her to her room, smiling and grabbing my bags as we went.

"Whoops! Sorry! I got so excited I forgot about your stuff!" She said before helping me carry them.

We got to her room and I smiled as I saw that almost everything was purple and light blue. Her bed was in the far right hand corner of the room and had purple sheets with blue and silver trim. There was a small desk in the far left corner across from the door that had her computer and a few papers scattered around on it. There was also a closet filled with clothes to my left and a book shelf and dresser to my right. The hide-a-way bed was rolled out from under her bed and set up all nicely.

I set the bag down and looked around more carefully, taking in the details of the room that was to be my home for the next few months. There were posters on the walls of a few fairies and some beautiful forest scenes and a corkboard hanging on the wall with tons of pictures, most of them the two of us, frozen memories that made me smile as I went over and looked at them more closely.

"I was thinking about making a collage." Riz said with a smile. "Remember this time at the beach? You nearly killed James!"

"Only because he put a crab in my sand bucket!" I said before laughing quietly at the memory.

"Have you talked to that boy lately?" she asked with an eyebrow wiggle. I rolled my eyes at her before going to my bag and opening it up.

"Honestly since he broke up with me, for no good reason, he hasn't really been hanging around our group. I think he thought there was a better piece of ass to chase elsewhere." I said, slightly frustrated as I started to unpack a bit.

"And here I thought he would come around and realize what a great girl you are and beg you to take him back."

"And I would have said no." I said firmly.

"That's my girl." Riz smiled and I couldn't help but laugh a bit.

"What about you? Any guys you're crushing on that you haven't told me about?" I asked knowingly.

"Wellll. Maybe there's this one guy I ran into that's really super hot, I mean melting the snow away around him kind of hot." We both giggled and I was about to ask her for more information but we were interrupted.

"Girl's! Dinner's ready!" Momsy called from the dining room.

"Hmm... Think it's a scam to get us to set up the table?" I asked with a grin.

"Nope. We have a system now. It's Tristan's turn tonight." Riz said before leading me out into the kitchen.

~

After a lively dinner we all sat down in the living room and turned on the TV. No one was really paying attention to it though as we all were still talking and catching up. All except Sky, who seemed to be staring off into space and hadn't really been talking a lot at all, which seemed rather weird to me.

"What's up with Sky?" I whispered to Riz when the others started debating something that we were not really interested in.

"I don't know, it's been really weird. She hasn't really been very social or anything lately and she's even gone missing a few times. She always shows up a few hours later but we are all getting really worried about her to be honest. I think she might be messing around with dru-"

"Everyone be quiet for a moment." Sky suddenly said, her eyes locked on the TV. We all glanced at her weirdly before looking at the TV, seeing the news on. Dave turned it up a bit and we all watched in shock at what unfolded.

"It has been confirmed that these creatures are in fact an entirely new species and not a hoax." The news woman said as we all stared at the picture of what was clearly a human/cat hybrid. It reminded me of the nekos from Japanese animes. "They were originally found by Jessica Baker when she fell through a hole in the mountain five years ago. However they were finally revealed to the general public on a live broadcast where Charles Wesley was chased out of a cave by three of them. The government decided to then send a group of armed forces to inspect the cave after the three originally found tried to attack the news crew. Here is an exclusive video that one of the armed forces himself managed to catch of what happened that day. A warning to parents: This does contain some rather graphic images."

I couldn't take my eyes off the screen as the video came on. It wasn't the best of quality and it started off rather dark but after a few moments it got brighter as they seemed to go from dark caves to a forest. Soon a crudely made wall appeared and the team followed it to the entrance of a village of these creatures. Almost all of the nekos stopped and looked at the people around them and a few started to back away a bit.

"Please get on the ground now!" One of the men called out to the nekos. A few of them seemed to call out something and it was obvious that they didn't understand English at all. One of the male looking ones started to slowly approach them with what looked like an amazed expression on his face. He was looking at something off screen and he smiled and reached for whatever it was.

"I said get on the ground!" The nekos still didn't seem to understand what was going on and the one male kept slowly moving towards whatever was off camera, talking in a language, that's sounded completely alien and unlike anything I had heard before, and smiling. A few moments later a few male nekos approached with spears and started talking to the others in their "clicks and purrs".

"Put the weapons down or we will fire!" someone called. One of the males with spears looked at them curiously before slowly approaching.

"Don't move!" but the neko obviously didn't understand.

"Wait!" a female voice shouted right before a shot was fired and hit the neko in the chest. From that point on it was chaos, spears were thrown and more shots rang out, the cameraman tried to follow it but the screen was a blur of muzzle flashes and shadows and the sound filled with gunshots and screams. We were watching a massacre until a woman suddenly appeared on the tape dressed like the nekos with a baby in her arms and a young neko on her leg.

"Please don't hurt them! They mean you no harm! They just want peace! Please!" She pleaded with the armed forces.

"I'm sorry Ma'am but this is for your own good." A man said before pulling her away as someone else pulled the neko child off her leg.

"No! Please! He's my son! Please not my son! Zeezu!" She screamed out.

"Eene! Mommy!" the little neko child cried out. The rest of the video was rather blurred and shaking as they gathered up the nekos and found three other humans among them. Soon the video ended and it went back to the news woman.

"We do not know what has happened to these creatures however it seems that every member of every branch of the government is discussing their point of view on it."

"We should study these creatures. Find out if they have any relation to our own species." "These creatures are a threat! They need to be eliminated!" "They seem to have intelligence. Perhaps we can live with them. Integrate them into society." The talking heads kept coming but not one of them seemed to agree with the other and there were more than a few platitudes and soundbites for the next news cycle.

"We are inspecting the cave system and a few others like it to see if we can find any other species like these. It has yet to be decided what to do about them however and for now they are located in an undisclosed area for safe keeping." The President said briefly.

"Well no matter what happens to these creatures, one thing is certain: We are not alone on this planet."

It went to commercial but I was still staring at the screen in shock and disbelief. It was like I was just frozen there, trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. It was almost impossible to believe and if it hadn't been on a reliable national news network I don't know if I would have believed it at all.

After a few minutes of just staring at the TV, Tristan voiced the question that I'm sure was running through all of our minds.

"What the hell?!"

~

"This is crazy." Riz said for probably the fifteenth time in the last hour as we lay in bed. I stared at the ceiling and thought about the last hour or so.

After Tristan's outburst we all started to talk about what we had just seen, trying to wrap all our heads around the idea that there had been another intelligent creature on our planet that we hadn't known about. Almost all of us agreed that if we had thought there had been anything intelligent besides human beings out there we thought it would have come from outer space. We talked about what we thought it would mean for the future.

The only person who didn't join in on the conversation had been Sky. She stayed strangely quiet and after only a few minutes she left the room.

"Do you think they'll find other species?" Riz asked suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"What do you mean?" I replied, not sure what she was talking about.

"Well you heard what the President said, right? He said he had people looking in other caves and stuff to see if there is anything else out there. Do you think they'll find anything?"

I blinked, having forgotten about that part. I bit my lip and thought about it for a moment.

"I don't know. I mean normally I would say no but since they actually found something in caves that we never knew about... I really don't know." I said with a shrug. We both sat there in silence for a few minutes before Riz spoke again.

"What do you think is wrong with Sky?"

"Huh?"

"She acted really weird after seeing the news. And she was the one who pointed it out. I mean things have just been so weird with her lately anyways but she acted really weirdly about this."

"Well she seemed like she was just thinking it over. We were all kind of shocked by it."

"But you didn't look at her while the news was playing. She started to almost looked panicked at some point. I swear she's hiding something."

I shrugged my shoulders and continued to look up at the ceiling, feeling a bit weird wearing long sleeve pajamas. I thought about how everyone was taking the news at home and thought about calling my mom tomorrow. I was about to fall asleep when I heard a light noise outside the room.

"What was that?" Riz whispered, sitting up. I sat up as well and we looked at each other before bother getting up and creeping silently to the door. Riz opened it silently before peeking out into the hall way. She opened it more and I followed her down the hall and into the living room. We saw the light of the refrigerator come on and quickly hid behind the couch. We looked over the couch and looked into the kitchen.

Sky was there with a bag and was filling it with food. She looked slightly panicked and like she was in a hurry. She finished filling the bag and then started to put on her coat and boots and everything. Riz and I looked at each other before ducking as Sky passed by and went to the door. She opened it quietly and slipped out into the freezing weather.

"Where is she going at this time of night?" I whispered in confusion. Riz got up and looked out the window before starting to grab her coat.

"There's no car out there so she has to be walking somewhere. Come on. We need to go after her." She said, handing me my coat. I groaned, having hoped that I wouldn't have to go outside into that cold for awhile. I slipped on my coat though and all the other heavy warm clothes as Riz did the same. She grabbed a flashlight and then opened the door silently and we walked out.

"Let's get this over with please." I said, my teeth chattering a bit. Riz nodded before starting to head towards where we had seen Sky's light disappear to, hoping to find it again. Thankfully it wasn't snowing or windy, so we moved at a pretty decent speed. I looked around and saw nothing but darkness in front of us.

"Where did she go?" I asked, my teeth still chattering a bit. Riz stopped and looked around, trying to find any sign of light anywhere.

"She couldn't have gone far. And we would have seen a car if she had gotten in one..." she said, sounding a bit frustrated. "Let's go that way a bit."

We walked off in the direction she pointed, still looking around for a light or any sign of Sky anywhere. After what felt like hours we still couldn't find any sign of her. We were both freezing and starting to get worried since it was very easy to get hurt and die of cold and such out here.

"What is she slipped and broke her leg or something?" I asked.

"We'll continue looking for a few minutes and then head back. It's only going to be dark for a couple more hours anyways since it's summer. If nothing else it will be easier to find her once the sun comes out." Riz responded as she continued moving forward.

"Do you think we'll need a search par-" I started to say before hearing a cracking noise and freezing in place. Riz froze too and we both heard a bit more cracking.

"Move very slowly back the way we came." Riz whispered. We both started to very slowly and carefully move backwards, praying that the ice holding us was strong enough to hold us until we got out of there.

But just as we started to think we were safe, we heard a huge crack and the ground gave out underneath us.

We both screamed as we fell.