Close Encounters 07: of the 10th Kind

When I was in college - back on Earth, in the good old gravity days - I had a crush on a classmate of mine. His name was Jimmy White and he looked like Andrew Keegan's even dreamier brother, intelligent glasses and all. I may or may not have picked him partially because his last name was also a color, just like mine, it's a sign, y'all! Plus, he sat next to the person who sat next to the person who sat in front of the person who sat next to me in Mr. Newcomb's history class. We were real close, is what I'm saying. (I may or may not have obsessively studied the occipital side of his head a lot instead of learning history.) (He had great hair. In that area of his head at least.) (Sorry, Mr. Newcomb. Your history never stood a chance.) (Not sorry.)

In order to turn my nerdy, bushy-haired heartthrob into little old, unspectacular me's boyfriend, I made a foolproof plan. Straightforward, really. It had one step: Make senpai notice me. Strut. Parade. Advertise, like the ladies in the Brontë novels, except in a modern way if you will. Think Jane Eyre, starring Beyoncé.

If there's one thing that the late pop culture of my youth taught me, it was that the only way to attract a boy was to have a certain type of body. Which put me into a bit of a pickle. You see, I was about as curvy as a loaf of naan bread when I was in college, and maybe half as confident.

So, I took the logical step and... enhanced my assets (haha, ass!) a little - the only way that a sheltered sophomore on a budget would. I went to the store, bought a pair of spongy seat cushions - you know, the ones that you put on your deck chairs, a pack of four for a dollar fifty - cut, sewed, safety-pinned, and stapled them into shape(ish), and then strategically sellotaped them to my butt.

Then, I stuffed myself into my jeans and went to class. Looking like that.

I looked like the average Pixar mom, dump truck and all. Sitting was rather pleasant, getting up was problematic, and going to the toilet was out of the question - but I sure attracted attention, and that was the entire point.

Just before history class started, I dropped an exercise book on the floor right in front of poor, unsuspecting Jimmy White, so that I'd have to bend dooown and pick it up. Bend and Snap. Easy-peasy.

Long story short: I went down into my would-be alluring forward fold, my jeans split lengthwise at the middle seam with a loud riiip, and a frayed corner of the flowery seat cushions escaped through the hole - along with a healthy fart that apparently took the sound of my trousers splitting as some sort of a musical cue. (I'd been nervous, okay? And there had been beans for lunch.)

It was not my best day.

(Unfortunately, not the worst day, either, but I digress.)

My brilliant machinations, in sum, earned me a whole host of new nicknames and a letter to my mom requiring her to "foster more appropriate social behavior" in her post-pubertal daughter - because of course administration immediately caught wind (ba-dum tss!) of the whole thing and made it into An Issue.

(Also, nary a month later, Jimmy White left our normie institution to join a religious school and eventually became a priest. One of the celibate ones. Total coincidence, I'm sure. I hope they didn't give him that tonsure haircut because that would be a crime against humanity.)

The point of the whole story: relatively simple plans spectacularly backfiring on me is a time-honored tradition in my life, and the outcome I predict in my brain and the actual outcome of things are often quite unrelated.

Case in point: When I invited Kay to join our little love group, I wanted a foursome. A simple ménage a... quattro.

(Hang on, that's Spanish, isn't it? How do you say "four" in French? Anyway.)

One me, plus three. Easy arithmetic, really. We already were three, and I just meant to add one more. Optionally.

The logistics were not too complex, either... theoretically. If push came to shove (and man, I hoped it would! Repeatedly!), I had two hands and one mouth. One mouth and two equally fun nether holes. Two nipples, one clit. I'd have everyone covered and everyone would have me covered and there would generally be a satisfying amount of coverage for everyone. It was imminently, conceivably doable. Not rocket science.

All that Kay had to do was come out of the figurative bushes and into the light and join us. Alternatively, she could say 'No'. She certainly had the head movement down, and "No, Val" was also firmly part of her verbal vocabulary. I wouldn't have minded either way. Hence my open invitation.

Straightforward, really. Easy-peasy!

Famous last words.

I didn't realize that my desire to add to my intergalactic harem would stir the entire pot up and leave both my boys and my girl to vie for some weird sort of... primacy. Like they were waiting for me to pick a Royal Favourite before any tag team action could happen...??

My renewed timetable now presented itself thusly:

6:00 a.m. to 6:12 a.m. - wake up, potty, quick breakfast.

6:13 a.m. to 6:19 a.m. - oral with Rune.

6:20 a.m. to 6:24 a.m. - being abducted across the ship by Bane, Rune in pursuit.

6:25 a.m. to 6:31 a.m. - unusually aggressive oral with Bane in some dark nook.

6:32 a.m. to 6:33 a.m. - being found by Rune, followed by a tomcat fight. With some legit hissing.

6:34 a.m to 6:36 a.m. - watching the fight some more cuz daaamn.

6:37 a.m. - 6:41 a.m. - hunting for second breakfast, being spotted by Kay in the galley.

6:42 a.m. - 6:48 a.m. - becoming breakfast for Kay. (You got a license for that tongue, girl?)

6:49 a.m. - 6:53 a.m. - yelling at Kay and Bane to stop fighting in the FUCKING galley.

6:54 a.m. - 6:59 a.m. - being abducted by Rune into yet another dark nook.

And round and round we go. By the time noon rolls around, I have seen more of the ship than in the weeks and months before that. (Scouted out a whole hand full of new spots to brood in, and I finally have an idea about where the exit is, yay!) Also, I've had my tonsils massaged and my butt groped extra-possessively, so that's awesome.

However, I'm also getting a bit footsore, am nil-to-nothing on orgasms, and I'm feeling that slight bloat that you get when you eat in a haste.

All three of my lovers are extra-maggoty virtually all of the time, and it's seriously starting to feel like it's my fault.

Towards the end of the afternoon, they look more and more like street cats that had a go in a tumble dryer, sporting new scrapes on sweat-gleaming skin, wild hair-and-feelers, and that shifty, grasping ready-to-cut-a-bitch look of ferals in the middle of a serious competition.

Serious. Not deadly.

So far.

I nibble my lip, worried, and watch them circle each other. We're on the plane outside of the forest - or maybe it's just a big clearing, depending on how you look at it - and I'm sitting on my ass in the dirt, arms slung over my knees (which are a little bruised from all the servicing I've done... badges of honor, really), watching, sighing. Increasingly concerned.

It's Groundhog Day number eight of this new, less-than-ideal, strife-filled phase of life on this ship.

Bane has a little line of blood bisecting his chin. Rune is holding his left shoulder weirdly, and it makes me wonder if Dryth have ball-and-socket-joints like humans do that can be dislocated. Kay, low on the ground like a comodo dragon, is missing one of her claws on her left hand and her tail seems to have a little kink in it.

I understand that this - the fighting, the snarling, the aggression - is probably normal for aliens in general, and this species in particular. Since I've seen them go at it full tilt before, I know they're actually holding back quite a bit. Moreover, all three of them have a certain twinkle in their eyes, and there is a hint of glee wafting through the ether in my head that tells me that at least Rune is having a little bit of a blast exerting his energy like this.

But I'm still concerned. And annoyed. And... sad.

It's clear that my suggestion has caused upheaval. For egoistical reasons, I have destroyed a delicate balance - unwittingly and unaware of the fact that it was, in fact, delicate, mistakenly thinking that nothing would ever change - and I'm clueless as to how to get it back.

Or if it can be restored at all.

As though my dire mood affected the ship around me, the lights suddenly dim noticeably and a lowing sound rolls through the air, moving it enough to rustle the trees. I get up onto my feet instinctively and look up and around as though to locate the source of the sound, even though the noise comes from any and every direction all at once.

"Guys?" I look over at them. Kay, still crouched, is easily visible in her chalky skin, but the boys are both half-swallowed by the semidarkness that has quickly fallen as all the light sources seem to power down. "Bane? What's going on?" I ask over the bass roar around us even as I move towards Kay just because she's the easiest target due to her coloring. The second I reach her and sling an arm around her slim shoulders - half for protection (even though there's actually fuck-all I could do for her in case of emergency) and half for my own comfort (because when the world around you starts to groan and darkness falls, you tend to need some cuddles) - there's a large, strong hand around my upper arm that pulls me into some direction.

"Bane!" I call at the back of the shadow that's leading the way. "What's happening?!" I stumble over my own two feet and latch on to the arm in front of me for balance. All the while, I pull Kay with me.

There is - guess what! - no answer from him as we trek to the nearest exit, crawl through a hatch, walk (or in my case, jog) down a corridor that I've walked down dozens and dozens of times before but have never seen in twilight mode like this, and end up in the control room/cockpit of the ship.

The moment we enter, I have to shield my eyes against the green-white glare emanating from the LED-like screen that covers the entire length of the wall.

It's a horizon. Above it, the vantablack darkness of space; below it, the shallow curve of a planet, illuminated by a big white sun and startlingly bright. Both are separated by a hazy, fuzzy line. An atmosphere, I'm guessing, which is what's causing the noise. We are breaching the atmosphere and the friction is ringing the ship like a bell.

Bane leads me, and Kay by default, to a couple of handholds that protrude from the side wall and wordlessly commands us to wedge our bodies between them and hook our elbows into them. Just then, the jostling starts making it hard to stay on my feet.

The next couple of long minutes are filled with sounds and vibrations so loud and profound that they go into my bones. My teeth rattle and tingle. I'm having flashbacks to reading about 'brown noise' and momentarily worry about major accidents as my belly rumbles, cramps, and gurgles while the deck below me heaves.

Gradually, the volume of it decreases, but the motion does not. The picture on the screens flickers erratically. In the stroboscopic light, the two shapes of Bane and Rune appear and vanish. They are standing side by side at the controls, seemingly unaffected by the turbulence, watching the display in front of them.

The light show and the rocking are making me dizzy and nauseous. I screw my eyes closed. There's an electronic sound - a kind of claxon, a beep-and-wail - and the ship's bucking gets significantly worse.

(Oh shit oh shit oh shit we're going down.)

A crow gives a coo-and-rattle in my brain and settles deeper into a tree branch, its feathers puffy and relaxed. The tree around it shakes, but it is unbothered.

We're flying down. Towards the surface of this planet.

The ship's movement hammers my shoulder into the metal-like wall panel. I barely register the dull pain of it.

(Awfully fast... Who was it that said, "Speed never killed anyone, it's abruptly getting stationary that gets you"?)

The rattling around me - and inside the tender sack of meat that constitutes my entire substance, which I am suddenly very aware of - changes in pitch, and all at once, there's a heaviness and a feeling of tilt to everything. I grasp the handholds so tightly that my palms are throbbing.

We're landing. We're landing. We're landing. I'm thinking it and possibly mouthing it like a prayer.

(A crash is technically a landing.)

A shrill caw.

Yeah, what he said. Fuck you.

There's a small touch on my shoulder. I turn my head and peel my eyes open to see Kay's tail slither up and over and then forwards and down into my armpit and out the back. Looping around my limb. Hugging it.

It's ticklish, and I can't help the huff of laughter escaping my tense throat. Her little marsupilami-tail is warm and smooth against my skin, and I think she's returning my earlier gesture of comfort...? Her face is blank and fixed on the too-bright screen whose light is fully reflecting in her eyes, making her look like a slightly creepy, angelic doll. I notice a sheen of sweat on her brow and for some reason, I really want to touch it. Wipe it away for her.

And then, quite abruptly, it's all over.

Everything dies down, becomes calm and smooth, and, in comparison to earlier, almost deathly quiet.

My intestines settle back into their designated spots. The adrenaline loses its death grip on me and my brain whirrs. I tentatively let go of the handhold I've been clinging to these last couple of decades (at least) and slide down into my ass with a thump.

Bane has turned his face to me. I give him a weak thumbs-up and cradle my forehead for a bit. "Let's all get together real soon and not ever do that again, shall we?" I mumble to no one in particular. Grudgingly, I have to admit that the frumpy woman at Career Orientation in 10th grade was right: I would have made a lousy flight attendant and an even worse astronaut. It wasn't about my height or my weight or my hate of physics after all.

I feel like I've barely calmed down and caught my breath when Kay's tail unwinds from my shoulder and all three aliens walk out of the control room.

They're just... walking away.

Without me. Leaving me behind.

That stings.

To be fair, all three of them look back at me out of the corner of their eyes, but still. They're just... leaving me sitting there, huh? After what just went down (ba-dum, tss)?

"Where're you going?" I ask and yes, I sound somewhat pathetic. And then, as my thoughts start to collect and click back together, I repeat, "Where're you going? Bane? Rune? Kay?", the words tinged with panic. Something big is going on and I'm not in the loop at all. They were fighting before, and then we (almost-)landed on some planet for some reason nobody shared with me, and now they're all headed out together as a team, and I apparently am not invited?

No. Just no. To all of that.

"Wait for me!" I fight myself onto my feet. All the bones in my legs seem to be hollow and brittle as if I've turned into a little bird. Something ungainly, like a drunken chicken. "Bane! Please!"

As if by a miracle, he does stop and look over his shoulder. I gasp with relief and hurry to catch up with him while Rune and Kay are quickly walking ahead and vanishing behind a bend.

"What's going on? Please! Talk to me!" I entreat him as I power-walk two strides behind him. Long legs are so unfair. "Why are we landing? What's happening? Where are we?"

I'm not even expecting any sort of answer out of him, really.

Which is why his answer shocks me twice as deeply.

"Na'kh Y'Dryth-sa," he says without looking at me.

And the translator tickles the synapses in my brain to make them spell it out for me in English.

"Home."

***

Take every Claude Monet painting, add a couple of photographs of craggy rockscapes - the white cliffs of Dover, the South Dakota Badlands, some abandoned diamond mines -, cover it all in that thick Gorillas-in-the-Mist type of majestic fog, and lastly run everything gently through Google's DeepDream... voilà, Y'Dryth.

The home planet of the Dryth race.

While I was busy hurrying after Bane (and Rune and Kay), our ship touched down on some sort of plateau and extended the opening hatch like a ramp/red carpet hybrid (except it's not red, duh), down which I padded after everybody. The higher vantage point affords us a look down onto a sprawling, thoroughly scifi-to-the-max, utterly alien landscape.

Well, alien to me, anyway.

One step outside and some coughing later - the air is weird, it has a consistency in my mouth - I'm standing there and can't help but gape at my surroundings for a full minute (as much as my somewhat watering eyes allow).

This is the third non-Earth planet I've ever been on. Vurn X'lora, KV4022, and now this. This... it's very different. It's obvious within the first seconds. While the other two places were strange, this one is surreal. Heightened. The taste and smell are foreign to human tongues and noses; colors and shapes I cannot name; the feeling of the too-viscous wind in my hair that reminds me very much of my haphazard half-shorn hairdo; the odd direction of the heaviness of gravity - not quite straight down, but a little to the side? (Is that even possible?)

I look up and see that the sky, which has a turquoise tinge, is bisected by a pale red planetary ring within which four, no, five moons are visible. I lower my chin again and see that below and to the right, far in the distance, an ocean glitters like a softly rippling mirror - except that the water seems to go on for just a bit too long, like the curvature of the place is wrong. On the shore, an onyx-colored settlement or city is sprawled, reaching beyond the curve of the weird horizon... except my brain notes that none of the architecture makes physical sense, though I can't put my finger on why. I turn right and see nothing but endless, dense vegetation in green-blues and blue-greys and black and brown, forest and mountains, half-hooded by low-hanging clouds and mist.

This planet, much like its original inhabitants, is utterly, completely, devastatingly amazing.

And hostile to little old me.

I cough again. The breaths go down a bit like hairspray now, and the air settles too far down in my lungs for comfort.

"K'tur," I hear Rune say.

And my translator tells me, "Go. Leave. Depart."

I whirl around to find the addressee of that order. My eyes find Kay's. Hers slide from mine, to Rune's, to Bane's, back to me, then into the distance, to the mighty forest below us.

It hits me all at once.

This is home.

Kay is home.

This is it. This is goodbye.

My heart squeezes as it thuds.

"Kay," I start, and repeat, "Kay" to get her attention. She pulls herself away from the landscape. "Do you... Are you— Is this your place?"

The question is so dumb that I almost feel like I deserve the stab of pain through the chest I get as she nods confirmation. I've been with her for weeks now - I know better than to ask vague questions that imply (hide) the actual questions I have. So I suck in a somewhat halting breath and ask the real question.

"Are you going to stay on this planet?" I sound so strange and small to my own ears. There is too much room around me. I'm not used to moving air anymore. It seems to carry my words away much more than it should. "Kay. Are you going to stay here?"

She stands there, her wiry-but-strong gypsum-colored body so easy and natural against this backdrop. The angle of her shoulder echoes the rolling hills.

"Kay...?" I press out when she doesn't reply. "Are you leaving me?"