Stolen By the Alien by Ashlyn Hawkes

13

Hannah

It’s a freefall. I can tell it is. Omur is muttering to himself, his hands flying over the buttons and levers, and he seems to know what he wants the ship or module or whatever to do, but it’s not listening to him.

Even so, I'm not nervous or worried about dying. In the time we've been together, I felt a peace and acceptance I've never felt in all of my life. I thought Brea accepted me. That's why I kept taking her back again despite her using and abusing me. Maybe it's because of her that I couldn't let Luca in entirely. Or maybe that's all on me and my own insecurities.

Everyone has issues. I know I do, but with Omur, I feel as if he understands me and accepts me for who I am without wanting to change me.

Well, he wants to change my mind about the mating thing.

And maybe it has been changed already, and I'm just too scared to accept that.

I grab a hold of the arms of the chair and close my eyes. The planet—purple and blue—is rushing up toward us, and the red light hasn’t stopped blinking, and I don’t know if I want to see when we make impact.

There’s a heavy jolt, and I’m rocked to the side. The belt pulls tight across my chest, and then the module is still.

I crack an eye open and then the other. Omur is frowning.

“That could’ve been a lot worse,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Where are we?”

“We’re on the planet Harrock.”

“Oh, right. You said that already. Sorry.” I stare out the windshield. “Um, we have company.”

Omur unbuckles himself, comes over to me, unbuckles me, and holds my hand. He guides me to a door. As soon as he touches it, the door is sucked into the wall, and a ramp descends to touch the purple grass.

A crowd of short people is there. Their ears are pointed, and they remind me of fairies, although they lack wings.

“Greetings,” Omur says easily. “Hello, Rockians.”

The Rockians stare at him. Rockians? They don't look like rocks at all. Their skin is a light orange color. The whites of their eyes are orange too. Their hair is all different kinds of shades, at least for the females. At least, I assume the ones with hair are females. The others are all bald.

“I am Omur, a—”

“Garrux,” a female says. Her hair is so long it reaches her knees. It’s a blue and purple ombre that looks amazing.

I never dyed my hair. Working in a professional setting meant that was forbidden.

“And this is Hannah, an—”

“Earthling,” a male says.

The Rockians all take a step back.

Seriously? They think all Earthlings are warmongers too? Hmm. Maybe that explains why none of them have ever gone to Earth. Maybe they’re the smart ones.

"She is my mate." Omur gives me a pained expression, but I nod. I know why he made that claim. It's to protect me.

“We are having a bit of engine trouble,” I tell them. “We hope to fix the problem and be on our way to Garrus. Don’t worry. We won’t be in your hair long.”

The females all grab their hair as if afraid I’ll take it from their heads.

“No, no, it’s just an expression,” I mumble lamely.

“I should return to work,” Omur says.

“If you require assistance,” a male offers.

Omur nods. “Thank you.”

He goes to turn around. I release his hand and nod to him. He lifts his eyebrows, but I shoo him away.

Of course, he doesn’t go. Nosy. But I beam at him before addressing the female with the amazing hair.

"I would love to walk around a bit, if that's all right. I… Garrus would've been my second planet, but now, the, ah, the universe has settled that I should be here."

A slow smile spreads on Omur’s face. He nods to me and heads back into the module.

The Rockians talk among themselves. Most of them shake their heads, but they drift away as if they’re washing their hands of me. Eventually, only the one with the amazing hair remains.

She flitters up to me. Even the way she walks and jumps reminds me of a fairy.

“I’m Rosina,” she declares. “Come, Hannah. I will show you around.”

She takes my hand and leads me down the ramp.

“Our grass is edible,” she says. “We call it krill, though.”

“Why did you say grass then?” I ask. “And I can understand you, like I can understand Omur…”

“We Rockians live so close to Earth,” she says. “We actually had lived on Earth for a time.”

“When?” I gape at her.

“Until the great flood. Well, until before the great flood. We knew from the stars the flood would come, so we prepared our ships, and we flew away before the flooding started. The thickest raindrops you ever saw fell just as we launched into the air.”

My jaw hangs open even lower. “You were…”

“We were never Earthlings,” she says. “It’s not often for there to be two humanoid species on one planet, but that was the case for a time with us.”

I just shake my head.

“We did breed with the Earthlings for a time. Our progeny were known as the Mayans, but eventually, they opted to follow us here and abandoned Earth. I often wonder if they had stayed if the Earthlings would not have faced as many hardships and war, but we cannot be held accountable for the acts of others.”

“Certainly not,” I murmur, my mind reeling. “You said the… What do you call grass?”

“Krill.”

“Isn’t that a kind of fish?” I mumble to myself.

She ignores me.

“The krill is edible?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Can I try some?”

“Of course, but let us walk a bit more. Depending on the nutrients within the soil, the taste of krill changes, and my favorite is over by the water.”

“Are you speaking English then?”

“We are fluent in over a thousand languages from the Earth,” she says, “although Earthlings do not continue to speak some of the ones we know.”

“That is… Wow. That’s incredible. I’m jealous. I know a bit of Spanish, but that is it. You make me feel wholly inadequate.”

"You cannot be if you are a mate of a Garrux. They are good people."

“And Earthlings aren’t?” I ask with a scowl.

I can hear that water before we see it. The trees are blue, the trunks a deeper shade of blue than the leaves on top, making them look almost like colorful mushrooms. The water itself is a light purple color, a lavender.

Rosina kneels beside the bank, and she dips her hands into the water. As she lifts, the water in her palm looks bluer.

She takes a sip and smiles at me. “The krill in the center of the water here is delicious,” she says.

“Hmm. You first.”

She laughs. “You do not trust me? There is no current here.”

“What about sea monsters?”

“Oh, no. No monsters here.”

“Okay…”

“You are not very trusting, are you?”

“I… There’s so much about the world that I don’t know,” I say slowly. “Not just about the existence of other humanoids, but all of the planets, and the flora and fauna… I just feel so ignorant, like I said.”

“There is time for you to learn.”

I nod.

“And part of learning is trust.”

“Yes, yes.”

I hesitantly approach the bank. Mimicking what she did, I cup the water, but it remains a purplish color.

“Why did it change color for you and not for me?” I ask.

“The oils in my hand.” She holds out her palm toward me. “Did you not feel them when we held hands?”

“I, ah, didn’t notice.”

She laughs. "There are more than a few things here to distract you from boring old me."

“You aren’t boring,” I protest. “I love your hair. It’s so beautiful.”

“I love yours,” she says wistfully. “Do you dye your hair to have the darker color underneath?”

“No.”

“No? I was hoping you could tell me what you used to dye your hair so that I could do something similar.”

“Do not dye your hair!” I’m horrified.

She laughs and spins around, her long hair fanning out almost like a spinning skirt. “My hair is dyed. All of the Rockians are born with white hair. Once the men reach puberty, their hair all falls out. Once the females reach puberty, we start to dye our hair as we see fit.”

“Wow.”

She nods to my hands. “Drink.”

But I hesitate. “I’m glad I can walk around without any helmet or anything like what I would need on the moon, but there are places on Earth where I can’t risk drinking the water because I’ll become sick from it.”

“You don’t have to worry,” she assures me.

“I can trust you?”

She nods.

I’m not sure if I can, but I drink. And slurp up every drop and drink some more. It’s the best-tasting water I’ve ever had.

Rosina points to the tall grass growing in the middle of the water. I step into the water. The temperature is a bit cool, perfect for drinking, and the water by the grass comes up to my waist.

I glance back at her. She mimes bending and breaking off some of the grass, so I do so and pop the grass into my mouth. The texture is a bit weird, and I have to try to forget that I’m eating grass, but the more I chew, the more I can taste the grass. It’s strange, but it tastes delicious, but I can’t really decide what exactly it reminds me of. It’s like nothing I’ve ever had before.

“Do you like it?” Rosina asks.

“I do.”

“I’m so glad.”

“What else is there to see here?”

"So much. You want to go for a fly-by?"

“A fly by?”

She grins and hovers a bit off the ground, holding out her arms.

I blink a few times. “You can fly?”

“It’s more like gliding, but yes, we can fly.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“Oh, right. I’m sorry.”

“We can walk, right?”

“Sure. It’ll take us a long time to get there, but the mountains here are beautiful. Let’s go.”

I grin and hurry out of the water. She claps her hands rapidly, and my clothes are magically dry again.

“How did you do that?” I gape at her.

“It’s easy.”

“For you. I can’t… How did that work?”

“It’s something we picked up.”

“Picked up where?”

“Well, we evolved.”

“On Earth?”

“We started to on Earth, yes.”

“But it’s something that took generations to happen, didn’t it?” I ask.

“If you’re wondering if you can learn what we can do? I honestly don’t know.”

“What all can you do?” I ask.

Rosina giggles. “Why do I have a feeling you would rather spending time talking with me instead of heading to the mountain?”

“Oh, the mountain will be there tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere.” I pause. “Or will it? This whole place seems a bit mysterious and magical to me.”

“It’s not magic,” she says. “It’s just the way we are. You can dream, right?”

I nod.

“We can’t anymore.”

“You don’t have dreams? Why not?”

“Our brains and our bodies are capable of doing so very much that when we sleep, our minds need to shut off entirely outside of breathing and other necessary functions on a cellular level. We don’t have the capacity to dream anymore.”

“That’s…”

“Do you enjoy your dreams?” she asks.

"Not lately. Lately, they've been nightmares."

“But since you’ve mated with Omur…”

I swallow hard.

“The dreams we have are just the goals that we make for the future.”

“Those are the best kind of dreams,” I inform her. “Those are the kind of dreams that you can control, and once you’ve achieved them, you can come up with new dreams and keep growing and… that’s precisely what happened to you all so that you could develop new abilities, isn’t it?”

Rosina just smiles. “What do you want to see first?”