Free Drifter from Hilwei (Chapter 1)

I – Sweet Dreams

It was near impossible for Linda’s lungs to acclimate to the freezing sensation of Ortera’s thin atmosphere. It took several laps of her tongue over those alien lips to regain the ability to take a breath. She found, once finally free to notice anything, that she was crouched in a thin in-ground cave just wide enough for her body and slight motion, a sight that might have worried her if this had not been a lifelong weekly occurrence.

She stood from her crouched position and squeezed her webbed fingers and toes a few times to get a feel again for what her Teroni, dark violet flesh moved like. Her arms were pipe cleaner thin and her legs weren't much meatier. A creature on Earth with such little muscle definition wouldn’t possibly have been able to crawl, let alone stand. But in Linda's dreams on Ortera, Teroni could easily jump eight times their height without even a running start. This was how she got out of that sleeping hole. She squatted just barely and then straightened her legs, forcing herself gracefully out of the hole.

The much bigger cave she found herself in was the rest of a Teroni home. Teroni homes were all holes and thus lit primarily with cool teal lights that lined the wall, standing in for the natural light blue glow of the sun. The lights in the cave were on, and knowing that Teroni were also sticklers for energy conservation, they wouldn’t leave the lights on for the possible awakening of Linda. She was arriving in the morning and someone was home.

Teroni homes didn’t consist of separate rooms, just wide holes with smaller holes for sleeping. What primarily segmented homes was furniture, most of which were carved out of the cave, not movable but surprisingly comfortable due to Ortera's crust being a spongy rock full of pores. In front of her was the familiar fire oven, which, based on the heat of the hole, was on.

She stretched her limbs, still stiff from a long sleep. A particularly loud crack emanated from her shoulder and a yelp erupted from the next room. Before she could say a word, Fotich’s head popped out from around the corner of the oven.

She knew it was Fotich from his light purple eyes and grey stripes that ran vertically down his wrinkly neck.

"Greetings, Linda. How was your rest?" he said chipperly, disappearing again, getting back to his oven. She walked over to him and found that in his hands was a large bowl of gilanoch, a Teroni delicacy composed of Ortera’s predatory worm species. She’d had it once, but her still human sensibilities kept her from enjoying it as much as the Teronis’ hatred for Gils gave them joy in eating them.

"Very busy. School is getting harder and harder every week.” She said this even knowing Teroni didn’t have school. She wasn’t sure why characters in a dream wouldn’t have her level of knowledge, so she couldn’t resist trying to trick her subconscious into acknowledging its omnipotence. Fotich didn't comment, used to Linda's odd stories, and showed the gilanoch to Linda, offering her some.

“No thanks, Fotich," she said, unintentionally making a face of disgust at the soupy mashed worm meat sliding around the bowl.

Fotich turned around, looking at Linda with his narrow, purple eyes in a seemingly insulted way. "I wish you could warn me when you come around. I actually made plans to meet with another friend today."

"If I could, I would." Linda couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the creatures in her dreams, figments of her overactive imagination, always speaking as though they lived their whole lives and made plans while she was awake. Some nights, she would appear in Vranto, where her friend Reno gave her grief for avoiding her responsibilities before proceeding to hand her a list of chores. Other nights, she would have friends in Latku telling her Yatiftu, their god, had been keeping them abreast of her daily struggles on Earth. It actually surprised her how much she was able to remember activities in the real world, even while in the middle of REM.

However, Linda made the most of visiting Fotich. She felt she most needed his Teroni love of relaxation and play over work after long days in the real world.

She shrugged when Fotich informed her he had already made plans. "Mind if I join you?" Fotich chirped in excitement and the matter was settled. He lifted the Graqo bowl to his lips and lapped it up, his long tongue scooping bits at a time.

The Teroni, as a species, did not care to speak of business. Those with important roles in society did it without much fuss and finished it up so fast that few kids even knew their parents did work. Linda and Fotich did not need jobs on Ortera, at least not those of which she was aware, so when she visited Ortera, the two of them spent the whole time hanging out together in the way Teroni teens did.

Fotich and Linda walked to the doorway and aligned themselves with the hole above them. Fotich led the way, squatting and then bouncing in one movement up about four times his height out into the wider outside world of Ortera. The only time the sky there was ever a dark blue was midday, so the fact that it was a few hours from sunset meant that the sky of Ortera that Linda leaped into behind Fotich was completely clear and provided the full array of stars and edges of the galaxy.

The commune in which Fotich and his kinship lived was settled in one of the many crater valleys of Ortera. The buildings all had light fixtures that blinked bright orange all day, every day. In a pinch, they were good for giving Teroni clever ideas as to how far they were from the structures, and at night, they were the only way of ensuring they didn’t stray too far from their homes. Linda followed Fotich up the route to the top of the northern side of the valley, whereupon a temple to the Teronis’ god, Yarol, stood.

Beside the temple was Flauru, Fotich’s friend and a person Linda was familiar with. Flauru had the typical skinny body of a Teroni with a variation of neon-green eyes and a tendency to walk on four legs instead of Fotich’s typical two.

“Hello Linda,” said Flauru, her voice throatier due to her more swollen neck. “Are you joining our trip up north? My father says there is a commune there with a weird fruit.”

“Yes.”

Flauru was a nice enough person and she was always up for a bit of exploring.

The three of them set off walking, but right as she was striking up a friendly chat, Linda got an odd but familiar feeling in her stomach. Faintly, like a ghostly whisper, Rovus's voice spoke to her.

“Uh, my friend on Yafol wants to talk to me,” Linda said dejectedly. “I’m sorry. I’ll be right back.”

Fotich laughed. “Take your time. The walk to the northern commune is a long one. We’ll carry you as we go.” Flauru didn’t say anything but glanced at Fotich in a way that Linda suspected was disapproval at being volunteered to help carry Linda. Linda chirped in agreement and closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on Rovus’s location. She sometimes struggled to transfer in the middle of a dream, having to focus on the distance between where she was and where she wanted to be. It was easier when someone was speaking to her, and, thankfully, Rovus said plenty enough to get her there.

Rovus, a short red creature with beady black eyes and no neck, as was standard of his species, was shaking Linda when she arrived in her Folfal body. They were standing on the moon of Yafol, the black hole nearby looming bigger than Linda had ever had a chance to witness. She could feel it gently pulling at her, like a tug from an invisible rope.

She would have been startled to be there considering the moon of Yafol was not where she'd last been in her Folfal body if not for the fact that this body was almost never where she'd last left it. Rovus was an odd creature, preferring the company of Linda's inanimate body to live friends. This meant that when Linda was not present to move herself, he would just take her with him in a special sack he made for housing her. She didn't mind because it was all made up anyways and Rovus was fun enough when she was awake.

“What are we doing here?” Linda asked, her eyes unable to focus on anything but the ominous black hole.

“This. This box was just lying here, chained up like it contained something valuable. It feels heavy, but I have no clue how to open it.” Rovus showed her a tiny yellow chest, like one might find in a pirate-themed fish tank, with small, almost necklace-like blue chains with a matching blue combination lock on the front.

Linda turned it over and shrugged. “It looks like it needs a combination to open.” It had three slots with symbols that unnerved her because of how human they appeared, not like the strange things she saw all over the place in her dreams. She rolled the cogs around a little, getting a feel for the mechanisms.

Rovus kept talking beside her, but the more she turned the cogs the more into it she became. Lucidly, a feeling of recognition came over her and her fingers began to be guided through them.

The first letter felt right when set to χ. She was almost giddy as it set into place with a satisfying tick. Then she played with the second dial until it too softly ticked when set to ξ. Finally, she heard a click when the final cog was set to ϛ. She almost chuckled at just how silly it felt to believe she could just randomly guess the combination from a weird letter system. She looked the combination lock over one last time and looked at Rovus, who at some point had realized Linda wasn’t listening and instead had stood there gawking at her.

“Is … that the combo?” he asked softly.

Linda shook her head. “Probably not. It would be an amazing coincidence if it was.” But even so, she let her fingers stroke the edges of the lock and then, before thinking, she pulled it apart, amazed as the chains slipped off the box gently and fell to the ground of the moon. Upon impact, the box flung open, and a bright yellow light sparked and vanished before Linda or Rovus could blink. All that was left in her hand was an empty yellow box. She tipped it over and found that nothing had fallen out.

“Did the yellow light get pulled in by the black hole?” Rovus asked.

Linda looked up at the black hole inquisitively. “I couldn’t tell. It all happened so fast.” She handed Rovus the yellow box. “I’m sorry I lost it.”

He shrugged. “That’s all right. Thanks for coming to help.”

“Sure thing. I’m going to leave though. I was in the middle of something.”

Rovus said it was fine. Linda closed her eyes and concentrated on getting back to Ortera. Her bodies, as she had been informed, usually went rigid when she transported, so there was little chance this body would fall when she left. She only wished that next time she visited Yafol, the location wouldn’t be quite as freaky as beside a black hole.

When she was back, Fotich and Flauru were holding slices of a melon-looking fruit to their faces.

“Ah, just in time. Taste.” Fotich pointed to a slice that’d been on her belly.

“How long was I out?” Linda asked, disappointed that her being gone for only a minute seemed to have put them out so much.

“Doesn’t matter. Eat. Go on.”

Without warning, Linda felt a gentle nudge on her shoulder. She reflexively moved her head to look at the motion and her eyes opened to help her see better. Bent down over her, hand on that shoulder, was her best friend, Melissa. She was dressed in the spaghetti-strapped yellow dress that Linda felt highlighted her brunette hair and peachy skin beautifully. Her wavy hair was clearly not brushed, but even bed head made it bounce and frame her freckled face as though with some level of purpose.

“I'm sorry to wake you, but we need to get ready if we want to make this open house on time.” Linda groaned and rubbed her eyes, her hand not violet like on Ortera but the human colour brown courtesy of her mother being black and her father native Peruvian. They were in a room that was only faintly familiar to Linda, which make sense considering she'd only barely become acquainted with the motel room the previous night before she drifted to sleep.

“I didn’t even get a chance to eat some of the fruit or say goodbye to Fotich,” Linda said with a sigh.

Melissa chuckled a little at this. “You and those dream friends of yours. I'm going to go fix myself in the mirror; be back in a second.”

Linda nodded and made a few motions as though getting out of bed, but when Melissa was around the corner, she lay down, closed her eyes, and was briefly on Ortera again.

“I need to go.” Linda handed her piece to Fotich, who looked dejected.

“I figured,” Fotich said, patting her head. Always trying to follow her friends’ customs without being awkward, Linda reached over and rubbed his in return. Before leaving once again, she caught out of the corner of her eyes a small streak of yellow in the sky. It was moving slowly, at least from her perspective, and she smiled. It was kind of cool that her dreams had continuity. With that, she opened her eyes and jumped out of bed.