Earth Alien

The bed consisted of a frame of hardened clay. The mattress was constructed of several layers of a very strong but soft fabric. Underneath the mattress was a web of what appeared to be interlaced strips of tree bark. It felt to Perry to be the same combination of soft and firm comfort he had experienced in the chair upstairs the night before. He recalled his own confusion while sitting in the chair. He had seen nothing in the darkness but the moving stars through the transparent ceiling and the glowing eyes of the beings around him. So far, his hosts had shown no signs of intending him any harm. The sounds of the people moving around him, their shadowy forms gliding through the darkness, had not unsettled Perry at the time. Even in the daylight, he still was as disoriented as afraid.

Perry sat up. He sniffed the purest air he had ever experienced. It caused him to contemplate the incredible events of the past few days. The cosmic storm had indeed taken him to a very hospitable planet, with trees and animals. The evidence was all there. I’ve landed somewhere in South America, Perry thought. All I need to do now is find some transportation and make my way back home. I know enough Spanish to do that. The short lived sense of elation returned as Perry recalled the voices at the top of the ridge. He heard people walking on the busy street outside, their melodious voices speaking their unearthly language. It was pleasant but different from anything he had ever heard. Although the surroundings were unfamiliar, they were oddly unthreatening.

Perry felt the wear of the stress from his incredible ride through space. It had ended but the rhythmic throbbing continued to reverberate in his head. "Go away, storm," Perry drawled at the throbbing. "Go away!" He still harbored hopes of soon returning home, somehow. He would tell no one about this place since they would not believe him anyway.

His thoughts returned abruptly to the present. Perry’s hopes sank again as he considered his surroundings. He sensed that the voices and people walking on the street outside were not human. Perry realized he was not on Earth, but he was not yet reconciled to his new reality. Looking first out of the window toward the street, and then toward the house next door, Perry saw that the day already was well advanced. The sun is moving down, not up! Remembering how quickly the daylight had progressed the day before, Perry decided to take advantage of what was left of the present day.

Perry walked out into the hall. In the daylight he saw that it was as simple as the bedroom. The walls were dried bleached bark, smooth and natural. The floors were of some type of baked clay tiles. Perry slowly walked down the hall, peering cautiously into each of the three rooms on each side. In one room someone was sleeping soundly. The person was completely nude and Perry did not stay to stare at him.

Hungry and seeking something to eat, Perry found his way upstairs. He began to recall he had been this way the night before. This time he was in more control of his entry since, in the daylight, he could see clearly and did not stumble on his way up, as he had done before even with the help of his hosts. It was reassuring to sight the large bowl of pinkish green leafy stalks on the table in the middle of the room, and the clay faucet running into the sink below it. Clean clay mugs, of various colors and designs were stacked upside down on the small counter next to the sink. The shadow from one of the ribs supporting the transparent walls and ceiling swept with visible movement across the sink and mugs; shadows from other supporting ribs similarly swept across the table, chairs and clay tile floor.

As Perry entered the room, a woman, sitting in the same chair where he nearly had fallen asleep in the dark, turned and smiled at him. Like the two men whom Perry had met at the top of the ridge the day before, she had huge beautiful eyes. The exposed parts of her eyes took up almost all of the area of the fronts of her eye sockets; her irises took up almost all of the exposed parts of her eyes, leaving visible very little of the white parts of her eyes. Her irises were closed down to pinhole size in the daylight, revealing a luscious brown color punctuated by sharp streaks of yellow radiating evenly from the centers to the edges. The woman was petting a small animal that looked like a cross between a rabbit and a squirrel; the creature was in her lap purring like a cat. From his upstairs vantage point, Perry noticed several other of these small creatures wandering about in the streets below.

Perry looked back at the woman and returned her smile. He nodded her the best greeting he could express without a common language. The woman gestured invitingly to a bowl of grain stalks on the table where she was sitting, and to the water sink and mugs in the corner at the top of the stairs. Perry helped himself to both and sat down on a chair across from her.

As Perry ate, the woman, still with the purring animal in her lap, wrote on what appeared to be a type of paper on the table between them. Instead of writing across or down the page as most Earth languages are written, the woman wrote what appeared to be a word on one part of the page, and then the next word somewhere else on the page away from the word she had just written. Occasionally she would write another word close to one of the others, but the order was not apparent to Perry. The movement of her writing disturbed the animal to the point that it jumped down and came over to Perry; it jumped up and began purring in his lap. Perry caressed it carefully, examining it as discreetly as he could. Its fur was long, thicker than cat’s fur but as soft.