An Alien Friendship Prose Contest! [Winners Announced!]

[GarGo0or]

Just came to bump and ask... if you can tell me how many entries you received till now?
I started mine but stopped because of my exams and so... I'll work on it again soon ^^

[Daceria]

Hmm I have never written about aliens and I think mine will be more human looking then alien looking but I will part take if I can get it done by the deadline.

So much to do in so little time. wahmbulance

[Laeriel Rhuilea]

I'd love to join! >w< I have something in mind. Wooh!

[Whispers of Wonderland]

Well, good news! I actually finished my story! W00t! It's a freaking huge story though. I can't really call it a "short" story anymore. It's pretty much a novella. razz *sigh* Sorry, hope you like stories that long, even though I'll have to post it on here in several different posts to get it all on here, haha.

I'll post it on here once I edit it, but I just wanted to let you know that I had it finished so you'd know you had something to look forward to. smile

[Local Oregonian]

I was wondering if u want it to be for children?

[Blue Day Book]

Kimmi1994

Not sure I'll enter this story, it's disgustingly turning itself into a romance.

Stories sometimes take strange turns without their author's permission or approval. :X

[Blue Day Book]

Reincarnated_Alphonse

Blue Day Book

Reincarnated_Alphonse

I'm about 3k words in! *gives self applause* That's the most I've written in a WHILE, haha. If this continues at this rate, you'll receive at least one entry. wink I hope it's as good as I'm hoping it'll be once I finish and edit it. We shall see I guess. *crosses fingers*

Yay! Keep going! biggrin

You can do it!

Lol, thanks. Hopefully I'll have it finished soon. I'm taking a lot longer to write a simple story than I used to take, but at least it's been going, which is an improvement over what I've BEEN doing. razz Weird though, writing a story that takes place in my home state, haha. Haven't done THAT in a while. I think I'm just homesick. wink

That's a pretty good way of dealing with homesickness! I've never thought of doing that before, but it makes lots of sense. I'm pretty homesick at the moment myself, so yay for a new idea!

And yay for improvements! You can do it! smile

[Blue Day Book]

fcking a

do you accept collaborated pieces?

Sure, I don't see why not. I'll need to know both and/or all authors, and if they Gaia-it-up then the prize should be split between each author. But yeah, collaborated pieces are acceptable. smile

[Blue Day Book]

GarGo0or

Just came to bump and ask... if you can tell me how many entries you received till now?
I started mine but stopped because of my exams and so... I'll work on it again soon ^^

None yet, officially. You'll know when entries are received because the first page will be updated and the entries will be posted here in the thread. smile

Pooh on exams. Those were always pretty annoying. Good luck with them!

[Blue Day Book]

Daceria

Hmm I have never written about aliens and I think mine will be more human looking then alien looking but I will part take if I can get it done by the deadline.

So much to do in so little time. wahmbulance

Good luck! Looking forward to reading some humanoid-alieny goodness!

[Blue Day Book]

Laeriel Rhuilea

I'd love to join! >w< I have something in mind. Wooh!

Something in mind is always the place to start! smile

[Blue Day Book]

Reincarnated_Alphonse

Well, good news! I actually finished my story! W00t! It's a freaking huge story though. I can't really call it a "short" story anymore. It's pretty much a novella. razz *sigh* Sorry, hope you like stories that long, even though I'll have to post it on here in several different posts to get it all on here, haha.

I'll post it on here once I edit it, but I just wanted to let you know that I had it finished so you'd know you had something to look forward to. smile

Ooh, well yay! You did it! biggrin

I'm so excited to read it! I love longer stories, so that sounds perfect! Haha, I've had to post stories in multiple posts on Gaia before, so I know how that goes.

I can't wait to read what you came up with!

[Blue Day Book]

Rainbow of Happiness

I was wondering if u want it to be for children?

It can be if you want it to be, but I hadn't really thought about children's stories when thinking about this contest. I usually prefer more mature works with more mature themes/relationships/emotions, but you can definitely submit a children's story.

[Whispers of Wonderland]

Okay, here's my submission. It will span over about five posts, because it's so large and I got carried away, haha. It's about someone from the fairy realm, which you said was okay, so hopefully you enjoy it! smile

In the Company of Elves Part 1

19,093 words

If fairies and things actually exist, what would be the point of living in Portland? Isn’t Portland the place people go when they get sick of adults telling them to grow up and stop believing in fairytales?

Sasha groaned as she held her head and pushed herself up. Her friends were idiots, and she was an idiot for listening to them. She was going to go home and put that D.A.R.E. bumper sticker on her car. Drinking while driving wasn’t worth it, especially when combined with how high she and her friends had been.

A sinking feeling in her stomach made her look around and realize just how stupid last night had been. Her car was in the river, and her friends were nowhere to be seen. She yelled and flopped onto her bed. This was no way to go on a camping trip.

She hoped her friends hadn’t eaten those berries they had found last night. Those berries had looked like nightshade berries. Even though her friends had gotten her into this mess, she didn’t want them dead. A sneeze interrupted her thoughts, which helped her to think.

Her friends were probably safe. Those berries had been translucent, so they were the bitter kind of nightshade berries, so one taste and her friends would have refused to touch them. She sighed and pushed herself to her feet.

Brushing pine needles from her makeshift bed off her pants, she examined her car. Part of it still poked out of the river, so she might be able to get someone to come in and pull it out, but there was no way that poor car would ever be able to get out of there on its own. She cursed her own stupidity and stomped on the car’s skid marks beside her.

Skid marks. How could she have forgotten? That awful game of Truth or Dare. She should have never played it on the highway, and she definitely shouldn’t have agreed to play along when her friends had pulled aside and told her to go skinny dipping in the river.

Why had she ever agreed to do that? Probably because she had been high and drunk, trying to impress her friends. That was stupid. That was beyond stupid. That was...

A flash crossed her mind. The car had been sliding toward her while she was in the water. Her friends went off to gorge themselves on poisonous berries, so they hadn’t seen it. The next thing she knew, she was saved by a green blur that pushed her out of the way onto dry land.

The green blur stopped moving once she was safe, so she saw her rescuer, but she had been so messed up at the time that she wasn’t sure if she remembered things correctly. For one thing, the guy was dressed like he had stepped out of an epic quest novel. For another thing, she was naked, and hadn’t been thinking straight.

A blush crept over her face, and her ears pounded. Had she... done it... with some random cosplayer?

A glance at her body revealed she was now clothed, which was a relief, but it didn’t answer the question that was now plagued her mind. How could she have gotten so stupid and let her judgment get impaired?

At least the guy had saved her life, but she hoped she would wake up the next morning and find this to be a dream. Maybe the guy himself was a dream. That could be it. He had been dressed weird anyway, so maybe he was just some sort of hallucinogenic fit of hers.

Trampling away from her slightly submerged car, she caught sight of her pine needle bed, and her stomach clenched. That strange guy had made her a bed out of pine needles so she could rest. There had been no way she’d have been able to think her way through that, or through getting her clothes back on. He must have been real. She felt more mortified by the minute.

She placed herself on a nearby rock and overlooked a burned out fire pit that had been erected beside her bed. That guy had been thorough, but he was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone?

Perhaps if she hadn’t asked that question, the Universe would never have seen fit to answer it. But what was done was done, and the strange guy charged into the campsite, a strange grin on his face, carrying a satchel full of whatever.

“Ah, the human child is awake!” He hopped over a log, plopped his satchel on the ground, then beckoned for Sasha to come sit next to him. “I bring victuals to aid in restoring your strength.”

Sasha tried to avoid laughing at the scene, but only ended up blowing spit out of her mouth and giggling anyway. What kind of person talked like this? She assumed he might be foreign with that strange accent of his since she didn’t know any Oregonian who rolled his R’s and pronounced his words overall like he was from Europe or something. His English was well put together though, a bit more than typical Americans attempt to do.

The strange person raised an eyebrow. “I see that you find amusement with something I have done. I am glad I have pleased you.” Sasha still convulsed with unspoken giggles, but she did her best to restrain herself. Laughing at someone’s accent just wasn’t nice. “Come, sit,” he said. “You must eat.”

There was no point in resisting the offer. The guy had been nice thus far, and she could make him regret it if he tried something on her, so she went and sat beside him.

He reached into his satchel and pulled various things out of it: random forest plants, mushrooms, and some juicy looking berries. He fished out a bowl, arranged the plants in an appealing fashion, and handed the whole thing to her.

Sasha was scared to take it. It looked like a bunch of weeds to her, and she wasn’t the sort of person to eat weeds. There were probably some people out there who liked eating weeds, but not her. She was a food-eating girl, not a weed-eating girl.

The guy must’ve seen her look of disgust, because he breathed out a laugh through his nose and said, “I believe this would be similar to what you refer to as a salad. It is not what you will find in your ‘stores’, but it is superior as all the ingredients have been foraged from these woods.”

Was this guy serious? She side glanced at him to see if he had a mocking face, but his expression was calm, not jovial. He thought this was a good meal, but was it? Could she trust him to know which mushrooms and berries were safe to eat?

Since she had refused to take the bowl from him, he set the bowl beside her, then arranged a bowl of his own. He started eating from his own bowl, not saying a word, the solemn expression on his face betraying how he enjoyed the food.

Sasha edged closer to her bowl and peered in at the mixed fruits and vegetables, wondering if maybe it was alright to eat it despite it looking strange. She had to admit she was hungry, and this guy seemed to be fine thus far. Maybe he knew how to forage in the woods.

“What’s this?” she said as she fished a blue berry out of the bowl.

“That is…” the guy paused in his speech, trying to think. “I believe you call them huckleberries?”

“Oh.” She felt stupid. Huckleberries were known to grow in Oregon, and this did look kind of like one. She squeezed the berry between her fingers until it exploded and brought it close to her nose so she could sniff it. It smelled like a huckleberry. Pausing another moment, she then licked at the juice on her hand. It tasted like a huckleberry. It must be a huckleberry. She was an idiot, thinking it was anything else.

“You do not have to fear what is in that bowl,” he said, “I have not selected anything harmful for you to consume.”

Another glance into the bowl revealed she was getting hungrier, but she was still hesitant. Would it taste good? He was enjoying it, but he was a freak who went around in long white hair and a green dress and talked like he had never heard of America before. Of course he’d enjoy it. Freaks enjoyed freaky things.

Wait a second, she was supposed to be the freak! She was from Portland. What was the use of living in Portland if she ran into someone who was more of a freak than her? That wasn’t right. She grabbed the bowl and sighed.

“It doesn’t have any dressing.”

“Dressing? What is this dressing?”

“You know,” she said, “Vinegar and oil and stuff?”

“Vinegar…” She chuckled at the way he said the word. It was adorable how he pronounced a simple word like “vinegar” as “veen-ah-gair”. She would have to ask him where he was from after they finished eating. There was no way around it. Her curiosity got the better of her.

“I have oil, but I do not believe I have vinegar.” He pulled out a flask from his satchel. “However, I do carry a little wine if you desire.”

A snort escaped, but she decided to accept the wine since that was the best she was going to get. She’d seen nice salad dressings made of oil and wine before, but she was not going to have much after last night.

A quick pouring of ingredients, and she finally took a bite of salad. It had a surprising flavor, partly because the plants that went into it each had their own flavor, but also because it didn’t taste bad. It was an acquired taste, but once she had gotten into it, she started enjoying it. She wouldn’t mind eating this way more often.

She handed her empty bowl to the guy, who took it and smiled. “Do you approve of your forest fare?”

She lost her breath with another laugh. Couldn’t this guy stop being funny long enough so she could stop seeming rude? “It was very… interesting. Thank you.” Thinking a moment, she added, “The sour grass was a nice touch, though I don’t know where you found it around here.”

“I travel,” he said as he stuffed the dishes back in his satchel, and turned back to her. “Now, where do you wish to go from here?”

Sasha wasn’t entirely sure what the guy meant, whether he was asking about where she literally wanted to go, or if he was trying to insinuate something about a relationship, so she felt it safest to just ignore the question altogether. “Actually, what’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes, your name. You know, that thing everyone calls you?” She stuck out her tongue at the guy. “You know, it’s kind of nice to share it with someone you meet so they don’t feel like they’re talking to a complete stranger. Just saying.”

This time, he chuckled in response. “Maybe if you ask me, I will not tell you.” He turned away from her, smiling, while she was slightly annoyed at his refusal to answer to a simple request. “But you are called Sasha, are you not?”

“Yeah.” She huffed. “Now, you see, that’s unfair, because you know my name, but I don’t know yours. How do you know mine?”

“Because your friends used it repeatedly without concern for whether one overheard it.”

Her arms crossed over her chest and she stuck out her tongue again. “Eavesdropper.”

The guy smirked at her, honestly smirked, rather than having that calm smile or that solemn expression of his. He must have been in a mischievous mood, though only slightly. One couldn’t get too wild now, could he? That would be too extreme to smirk, chuckle, and snicker in one day. The calmness of this guy was infuriating.

“If you must refer to me by a title, you may refer to me as Lily if you wish. It is what my name translates to in your language.”

“Lily?” She clutched her sides and rolled off the log, plopping onto the ground from laughing so hard. This poor guy didn’t understand American ways, did he? It was all well and good he had a name that meant “lily”, but didn’t he realize “Lily” was a girl’s name in English?

“I don’t think that’ll work, dude,” she said after a couple moments of striving for control of her insatiable laughter. “Lily is a girl’s name.”

“I am aware that the word ‘lily’ embodies feminine qualities in the context of your language.”

“And what?” said Sasha, “You don’t care?”

“Why must I care? It is the name of a flower that is equally beautiful in any language. Must I be ashamed simply because some languages deem it not to be a word fit for a certain gender and I happen to be in the one they deemed to be unfit for it?”

Sasha opened her mouth to protest, then clamped it shut. This “Lily” guy had a way of making her feel stupid for reacting in ways anybody would react. So no, she wasn’t going to respond to that. She might as well just go with it. If the guy wanted to be called Lily, she might as well just let him be called Lily. It was easier to go with it.

Regaining what dignity she had in the face of this marvelously logical being, she stood up and dusted off her pants, then planted her hands on her hips and said, “I want to go home.”

The gentle smile came back to Lily’s face. “And where is it that you call ‘home’?”

Sasha rolled her eyes, but decided that retaliating to that strange way of talking would just be another fruitless endeavor, even if he was getting on her nerves. He would just make her feel stupid if she tried anyway.

“I live in Portland,” she said.

“Portland,” he said, and he rubbed at his chin as his eyes drifted up to wherever his thoughts were stored. “I believe that is the large human city nearby.”

She snorted. “Yes.” This guy was getting on her last nerve, and she stamped her foot. “Just who do you think you are? Do you think you can just distance yourself from the human race and live out here with all the fairies?”

He smiled that infuriating smile at her again. “It is good to see you believe in the fae.” Before she could respond, he stood up, threw his satchel over his shoulder, and said. “If I am to return you to your ‘Portland’, I will need to gather provisions for a small journey, which I do not have here. Will you travel with me back to my home so I may gather these things?”

Sasha sighed and crossed her arms as though to protect herself from the cold. She would rather not be stuck with this strange guy that long. Something told her he didn’t have a car and would probably walk everywhere. He looked fit enough to make such a trip by walking. Not to mention, he was just plain strange, and she wasn’t sure she could deal with that level of weird.

But she couldn’t help but be a bit curious about this forest dweller and his family life. Maybe it’d be worth it just to satisfy her curiosity. Hopefully she wouldn’t regret the decision.

“Alright,” she said, “I’ll go with you, but only if you let me leave a note for my friends, just in case they come back.”

“Do what you wish.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen and scrawled a quick note to her friends about the situation she was in. She told them a friendly stranger had come and helped her, so she wanted them not to worry and just rescue her poor car.

It would have been much easier if she could call her friends and tell them what was going on, but alas, her phone had no signal in this part of the woods. She fished it out of her pocket and turned it off to save battery life so it would last until she got to a more civilized area and could call for help.

Now the big question was how she was going to attach her note to the car. It would probably be best to attach it to the inside of of the car, but that would mean finding a somewhat safe door to open and climbing inside. With the car half submerged in the river, that thought was intimidating.

“Lily…” she called. There it was. She’d said it. She had given in and called him Lily. What was this planet coming to if random men could ask to be called girly names and people like her would give in?

“Yes,” he said, turning to look at her.

“Would you… never mind.” She had planned to ask him for help with leveraging the car a bit while she crawled in through the back door, but one look at that annoyingly calm face of his, and she decided otherwise, though she couldn’t say why that had turned her off of asking him. She would have to be careful if she were to not ask for help.

Since the back door was still above the level of the water, it wasn’t difficult to push the button and pull it open. She climbed in, being careful to check her balance since she was climbing in at an angle. What could she use to stick this note to the window? She saw a sticky substance on the side of her car, next to the back door. A pine tree had dripped onto her car while she hadn’t been paying attention to it. She supposed that would work as well as anything.

She grabbed some sap with her finger and spread it on the note, then affixed the note to the back window, since it was still dry and would be easiest for her friends to see the note if they came back.

Satisfied with her work, she moved to get out of her car, but her foot made contact with her laptop, which slipped under her weight. She reached out and grabbed the closest thing she could, which happened to be the back door. It slammed shut with enough of a bang for the car to advance forward, and before she knew it, she could see a line of water rising around the car, and she was stuck inside.

“Lily!” Calling him was the first thing and the best thing she could think of, but it probably hadn’t been necessary for her to do anything, as he had jumped into the water as soon as the car had started rolling. His confusion over how the car opened didn’t make her feel good about the situation, though she supposed if he had cut himself off from civilization as much as it seemed, he might not understand how cars worked.

She pantomimed how the car opened as best she could, and Lily grabbed the handle on the back door and pulled with all his might, but it didn’t do any good. The water pressure was too high. These doors weren’t going to open unless the pressure could be equalized somehow.

Lily pulled and pulled at the door, but the car sank deeper into the mud, and the water level rose outside of the car. Something had to be done quickly. Sasha looked around the car, trying to get an idea. Maybe she could break a window?

She lunged at a nearby window, avoiding the one Lily was working on so as not to get in his way, but all she got in return for her efforts was a jarred nervous system and a bruised elbow. She tried again, using more force, but that just made her head feel woozy. Why was it so hard to break a window when one needed to?

It seemed Lily had gotten an idea from her action, as he motioned for her to get away from the back of the car, and he ran off. Sasha sighed in disbelief, but went and did as he said, just in case he planned to come back. He would come back, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t leave her here to die when he had already saved her life once, would he?

After what seemed like a small eternity inside that sinking car, she heard what sounded like a primal yell, and saw a fast approaching shadow from outside the car. Instinctively, she covered her face with her hands. It turned out to be the right move, as a large branch smashed through the back window at top speed, sending shards of safety glass in every direction.

“Are you alright?”

She looked up from her hunched over position and saw Lily peering in while clinging to the crazy, homicidal branch that had just bashed out her car’s back window. The adrenaline of the moment began to wear off then, and she shivered, but she still managed to nod to him.

Lily released his grip on the branch, and it sprung out of the car on its own momentum. Had he actually swung in on that branch? What was he, some kind of Tarzan? He was definitely some kind of crazy, but he was a crazy man who liked to save lives. Perhaps that was the best kind of crazy.

As soon as the branch left, the water from the river started pouring in. Lily reached his hand out and beckoned for Sasha to take it, which she did readily. She stumbled out of the car and let him pull her to shore.

Catching her breath was difficult, but at least she was now safe on the land. She turned to look at her car. The poor car only had a few inches left before the water reached the roof. It was anyone’s guess whether it could be saved by this point. Her laptop and some other important things had been in there too. That really sucked, and her friends were going to pay for this once she got back to Portland, but at least she was alive.

She turned to look at her rescuer, who was positively glowing after that ordeal. It seemed the adrenaline from being such a badass wasn’t going to wear off of him for a while. She shook her head. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I am crazy? I did not realize this.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “Not that it’s a bad thing.” She paused, then added. “Thank you.”

[Whispers of Wonderland]

In the Company of Elves Part 2

A few more minutes of resting, and she felt ready to go. All the possessions she had brought with her on this camping trip had been lost to the car except for what she had on her person, so she grabbed Lily’s satchel and threw it over her shoulder. It felt interesting to the touch. It was spun together out of sagebrush.

“So, you ready to go?” she asked.

He smiled serenely. “I am ready.” And he led the way out of the campsite.


If Lily’s home had been nearby like she had assumed, Sasha would have been more accepting of the whole ordeal, but they had been walking for several hours and there was still no home in sight, so Sasha found herself getting irritable.

“How much longer?”

“Not much farther,” he said.

She threw her hands by her sides and looked toward the heavens while emitting a primal yell. Couldn’t someone save her already and not make her work her a** off for it? She wouldn’t mind having a Prince Charming show up by now. At least he would give her a ride on his trusty steed and not expect her to walk the whole way.

“What is the matter?” said Lily.

“When you say ‘not much farther’, it really means ‘farther than you would like’. I’m sick of walking, Lily! When are we going to get there?”

Lily sighed, then stopped walking and turned to face Sasha. He placed his hands on her shoulders and gazed into her eyes. “You are not accustomed to this lifestyle.”

What lifestyle was he referring to? The lifestyle of walking for hours every day and being a lunatic? She tore one of her shoulders out of his hands and looked away into the distance. “No, I’m not!”

He nodded sympathetically. “I apologize. I forget you are weak. Let us rest.”

Weak? Weak? How dare he say she was weak! He must have been one of those awful male chauvinists who belittled every woman he saw and thought they all belonged at home in the kitchen. Well, she would show him. She was going to turn around right now and head back to the campsite and wait for her friends and…


Lily pulled out a handful of huckleberries from his satchel. Those huckleberries did look good. She could always march off after she had eaten some. It wouldn’t do her any good to run off and walk for several hours without eating anything.

She plopped on the ground across from him, refusing to sit next to him and snatched the berries from Lily’s outstretched hand. “I’m not weak.”

There was a pause in conversation while she ate the first few berries, and she wondered if he was going to snap at her and start an argument over the situation. But he didn’t. After a moment, he asked, “Have I offended you somehow?”

Her eyes snapped back up to his, and her emotions welled up into a little ball of fury that exploded into his face. “Yes! I’m not some little weakling simply because I can’t traverse vast distances in a single bound like some kind of superhuman. I handled traipsing all this way through the woods with you today and dealt with it like a trooper, which the vast majority of people could not have handled. I’ve been lost and afraid and thrown into trusting a complete stranger because I don’t even know this area well enough to have a prayer of getting out of here without getting lost. And then on top of all of that, this freak who can walk twenty miles before breakfast and not break a sweat calls me weak.”

Lily blinked a couple times as though waiting for something, then said, “Are you finished?”

Sasha hadn’t expected that response, and so racked her brain trying to come up with a decent answer. She couldn’t find one, and the crazy guy was waiting for her to say something, so she spat out the first thing she could think of. “Yes!” That was too simplistic of an answer. Now she felt stupid.

Lily got up from where he had seated himself and knelt in front of her. Sasha wasn’t sure what he was going to try to do now, and she braced herself for whatever it was, but she wasn’t sure what she should be bracing herself for.

“Child,” he said, “I was in no way trying to insult you or insinuate that you are not the best you can be. You are very right, you have accomplished much today, much more than your kind is normally capable of.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow at the words he said, but continued listening, hoping he’d explain himself. What did he qualify as “her kind”? Did he think of Portlanders as a different breed or something? Portlanders were a different breed by most people’s speculations, but this guy almost sounded like he believed the difference was literal and not cultural.

“I am sorry for using an offensive word to describe your kind’s inability to keep pace with mine. It was not intended to be insulting. You are strong in many ways where I am weak.” He paused and opened his hands so she was able to see them. “I would not be able to rescue most humans from a sinking car.”

Her jaw seemed to lose its strength and sag under its own weight as she stared at Lily’s hands. They were red and blistered. How could she have not noticed that? How long had he been suffering from whatever had caused that?

“Wh-What happened to your hands?”

He sighed and pulled his hands away so she wouldn’t have to look at them any longer, which was simultaneously relieving and scary, since she still didn’t know what that rash was. Was it contagious? Maybe he had gotten into some poison oak or something. She hadn’t seen any around, but one never knew. Did it grow in this part of the state?

“I react this way when I come into contact with certain kinds of metal.”

Her eyes darted up toward his face. His expression was serious. He wasn’t lying. Lily was allergic to metal? Who in the world had a metal allergy?

“My car,” she said. “You hurt yourself when you grabbed my car.” She paused to think on that, and Lily said nothing. She must have hit the nail right on the head, and he saw no reason to comment on it further. “Did you know it was going to hurt you before you saved me?”

“Yes,” he said.

Now she felt guilty for having lashed out at him. He wasn’t kidding when he said she was strong in ways he wasn’t if he couldn’t even touch a car without getting hurt, but he had dealt with it anyway to save her life. This guy wasn’t like the people she had met before. She couldn’t place what was different about him, but there was definitely something different.

“I-I’m sorry,” she said, her voice wobbling. “I’m delaying us from getting where we need to go. Let’s keep walking.”

Lily nodded and stood up, then held out his hand to help her to her feet. She hesitated a moment before taking his hand. His hand had been so nice and clean when she had first met him, and now it was blistered and raw and looked painful. She didn’t want to make it worse by grabbing it wrong.

She took his hand anyway to avoid being rude, but grabbed it as carefully as she knew how so as not to cause pain. They set off once again toward Lily’s home, picking up the pace to make up for the time they had lost. Sasha hated to think of what they would do if they didn’t arrive before sunset. How would they find their way through the trees in the dark?

After several moments of silence, Sasha cleared her throat. “Um,” she said uncertainly, “Will your hands be okay soon?”

“Yes,” said Lily. “I will be alright as soon as I apply some healing salve to them.”

“And I’m guessing that salve is back home,” she said.

“That is correct.”

Sasha sighed. This was becoming a long and weary trip. “Then I guess we’d better get there.”

For once, Lily had been right about them being almost there, since it wasn’t long before Lily pointed into the trees ahead and remarked that his village was a short way off. But try as she might, Sasha couldn’t see anything. Did Lily just have a favorite tree that he slept in and called home? She sure hoped not. He seemed more put together than that.

A few minutes later, they arrived at a location that had fewer trees than the thick forest they had just walked through, and Lily declared that they had arrived. Sasha looked around the place, trying to detect any sort of civilization, even primitive civilization, but nothing was there. Lily wouldn’t lead her to a place that held absolutely nothing, not even shelter, would he?

“H-How can this be your home?” asked Sasha, her voice on the verge of tears. All she wanted was a warm meal and a bed to sleep in after all that work, and it looked like she wasn’t going to get even that. Perhaps Lily slept in pine needle beds every night. That sounded terrifying at the moment, since she was too exhausted to deal with that, or to run if danger approached.

Lily seemed confused. “But this is my home.”

She grabbed the sides of her head as though doing so would hold her brain together. “No, no, it can’t be!”

“Why can it not be my home?” asked Lily, who came over and took the satchel off Sasha’s shoulder. He seemed to be worrying about her having worked too hard.

“Because there’s nothing here!” Sasha lost control and started bawling. She couldn’t take this at the end of the day. If he was going to make her sleep in the woods and not have any proper shelter for it, he should have given her some warning. And he should not have marched her all this way to get her to another random spot in the woods unless they had been heading back to Portland. But they had gone out of the way as far as she knew and were no nearer Portland for it. Why had he led her all that way for nothing?

“Child,” said Lily, but Sasha ignored him and kept wailing. She was not in the mood to be talked down to at the moment when she was in the midst of panicking from exhaustion. Lily sighed. “Sasha,” he said, “would you please calm down and attempt to look at me?”

He had said her name. That had gotten her attention. Lily had never called her by her name before. She sniffed a couple times and turned her teary face toward him. He wrapped his arms around her protectively, and she didn’t flinch. He strangely felt like someone who honestly cared. Like an older sibling or something.

“Thank you,” he said, and he pointed up in the trees. “Now tell me, what do you see?”

“Trees,” she whimpered.

“That is all?” said Lily. Sasha nodded.

Lily sighed and rubbed at his temples with his free hand. “This would explain your predicament. I had thought you could see on your own.”

“I can see.”

He shook his head. “No, not with your eyes.” He paused a moment to scratch the back of his head like he was thinking about something tricky. He gazed longingly up into the trees for a minute, then he turned back to Sasha.

“There was something different about you when we first met. What was it?”

The blush that had found Sasha early in the day came creeping back again as she remembered all the things her friends had made her do, and she found she didn’t particularly want to elaborate on them, especially since she still wasn’t sure if she and Lily had… done anything. The idea terrified her, and she wasn’t sure by this point whether she was more afraid of finding out they had or of finding out they hadn’t. She was growing fond of Lily, but she wasn’t sure which way she was.

The long silence that followed indicated there was not going to be any other conversation until she gave him an answer, and he wouldn’t stop until it was expressed, so she had better get the dreaded explanation over with.

“I was… um… high.”

“High?” said Lily, quirking an eyebrow at her. “I seem to remember you being down low in the river, not high up in the trees.”

Sasha chuckled and shook her head. “Not that kind of high, you goof. I was---how do I put it---intoxicated.”

Another long moment of silence passed, and Sasha shrunk into herself. Was Lily going to hate her for revealing this and reject her when she had nowhere else to go? She wished she hadn’t said anything, even though he had asked. She just couldn’t bear to have him reject her like that, not when she needed his help right then more than anything, and…

“So by ‘high’, you are referring to having consumed a substance to which your biology has a low tolerance, and therefore had an altered mindset.”

She stared at him for a couple blinks. “What you said.”

At this, Lily smiled. She almost thought she’d heard a chuckle from him, but perhaps she had been mistaken. It was hard to tell with Lily. “You must be more careful with these things, you silly child. You nearly died from your level of intoxication because you were not aware of your surroundings.”

“Believe me, I know,” said Sasha. “I’m never taking drugs again. Ever.”

“That is probably wise,” said Lily. “But do you remember what it felt like to be in that altered state?”

What a strange question. “More or less, yeah.”

“Good,” said Lily, and he touched his hands to her temples and rested his forehead against hers. “Try to go there with just your mind.”

What a strange request, for that matter. But she was too tired to fuss at him by this point. She took a few deep breaths and focused on that feeling that tugged her mind to places unknown. It was surprising to see she could find the feeling even without drugs in her system, but it didn’t feel the same as the drugs. She felt more natural and at peace with the world in this state. Maybe she could continue doing this whenever she needed to feel better about the world. Just make herself “mentally high”.

After a moment, Lily let go of her. “Very well. Now take a look.”

She opened her eyes and nearly tripped over her own feet as she looked up at the same trees she had just a moment before. The trees were not just bare trees as they were before, but each one in the area had a lovely little home of some sort in it. They were constructed in a way she had never seen before, but too far overhead for her to make out the exact details of them. It appeared the houses had been made by wrapping the trees’ own branches around themselves to provide a sort of artful shelter. How clever.

A sound nearer to her enabled her to tear her eyes away from the strange houses and look at ground level once more. A number of people stood around, staring at her and Lily. All of them dressed in the same strange garb as him, but varying in hues of green, blue, brown, and sometimes red. Many of them had the same long, white hair that Lily possessed, though he didn’t share the scowl that a couple of the older people were giving him.

Lily turned to her. “It is alright, you will not be harmed. They are concerned by the presence of a human child, but you will be treated well while you are here.”

His words sunk into her skull, and the various pieces of the day that had eluded her up until then began to make sense. His eccentricities, his knowledge of the forest, his seeming elitism in not considering himself to be part of the human race---how could she not have seen it?

Sasha wasn’t in her own realm anymore. She was in the company of elves.


Blood pounded in Sasha’s ears and cut off most of her ability to hear, though she supposed that probably wasn’t a bad thing considering the only thing to hear was a bunch of arguing elves. She had to be dreaming. She was going to wake up the next morning and realize this whole ordeal had just been one very long drug trip.

Sweat poured down her face, and every time her knees would wobble, a bead of sweat would plop onto the ground. She wasn’t sure whether it was time to be fascinated or terrified, so she stuck with bewildered until further notice. What was she supposed to do, just stand there and look stupid? She was good at that, but it hardly seemed the right thing to do.

She hoped Lily would be alright. He stood before what she was sure was some sort of elf council, arguing in their native tongue. She couldn’t make out a word of it, but they sounded so pretty when they spoke. She wished they were doing something other than arguing. She wanted to hear them speak together in their native tongue about something nice so she could focus on how pretty their speech sounded instead of wondering if there was an ugly undercurrent to their words.

At long last, the council broke, and Lily came to her. “There is nothing to fear. They will not harm us.”

“But why did you take such a risk of bringing me here if you knew it was going to get you into trouble?” asked Sasha.

Lily shrugged, which infuriated Sasha, and she sent a glare his way which would have made a shark shrink in fear. It didn’t seem to have much effect on Lily, but she couldn’t say what would get to an elf. She knew a lot less about elves than she had always given herself credit for. She had read all the “required” books for fantasy lovers, including The Lord of the Rings, but she had still missed it when she ran into a real elf. The books must not have captured them quite right.

Seeing her glare response, Lily decided to give a better response. “I knew they would not harm either of us, or I would not have taken such a risk. You needed help, so I offered the help I knew how to give.”

Her shoulders relaxed as she let out the breath she had been holding for some amount of time, though she was still irritable at Lily for having not explained all of this to her. She was going to pick his brain later and figure out what was going through his head to make him think it was a good idea to bring her here without warning her first. But she couldn’t stay mad at him, even though she tried. No matter how she looked at him now, she saw an elf, and she just couldn’t stay mad at an elf.

He extended his hand to her, and she grimaced again at seeing his blistered hand. She hoped he would take care of that soon, now that he was somewhere he could get the treatment he needed to heal. She hadn’t realized elves couldn’t touch metal. “Come,” he said, “It is time for the evening meal.”

Sasha wasn’t stupid enough to turn down food, even if it was all going to be foresty food on the table. She was too hungry to complain, so she gently took Lily’s hand and let him lead her to the community table.

Lily found her an empty seat and guided her into it. Her seat was a leftover stump of a long dead tree. She counted her blessings, as most of the others seemed to be sitting on rocks. Elves probably wouldn’t deliberately kill trees for the sake of sitting in comfort, so they only got wooden seats when they found a tree that had already died. That was all guesswork on her part, but it sounded plausible, so she gave herself a mental pat on the back for figuring all that out.

The food before her was similar to what Lily had served her earlier in the forest, except it wasn’t in such a recognizable form as a makeshift salad. She realized he had been trying to accommodate her as best he knew how. That had been sweet of him. It didn’t seem she was going to get accommodated now for being human, so she was going to have to suck it up and not to be rude in front of her hosts.

A bowl of something was placed in front of her, and she looked up into Lily’s smiling face. “I think you will appreciate this more than some of the things on this table.”

She looked into the bowl and recognized none of the ingredients in it, so she wasn’t sure if she could agree with Lily on that comment, but saying no to him seemed like a bad move. Researching what she was eating didn’t seem like a bad move though. “What is it?”

Lily’s expression seemed amused at her question. “I could tell you the name of the dish before you, but would that really answer your question?”