'CHANGELING' Chapter One Book Two

Chapter One: Spewing Curve

                                                Chapter One:  Spewing Curve

            Space travel might seem glamorous to the uninitiated. I on the other hand know different. Saying goodbye to our Aunt Maggie and Uncle Gerome had been the easy part, even with tears and drama thrown in. Trusting an alien named Kal we’d just met to break us down into molecules and bend me and my sister across the known universe, easy peasy—keeping the contents of our stomach after…not so much.

The world my twin and I called home dissolved into pixelated pieces, just like our barren prison cell during our rescue barely a month ago. That time our familial connection had pulled us through the Web to Gerome. This time we were merely a passenger, in the side car of our bending host’s spatial jump to his home planet of Axsa.

Pain didn’t ride us this go around and we retained our consciousness but all of the moist wonderful chocolate cake Maggie had let us devour before we left spewed out to coat our feet.

Kal shifted at our side making a small dismayed sound. “I should not have let you eat.”

We craned our head up to squint at his over seven foot tall frame, breathing shallowly through our parted lips before I said, “Don’t get mad at us, you’re the pro at teleporting.”

Cass admonished me, embarrassed that we’d thrown up as our first act as a guest on an alien planet. “Silver, don’t get smart until we have a feel for things. You remember the whole wolf in sheep’s clothing bit, right?” Irritated she picked up a foot to waggle of some of the mess.

“Yeah, yeah.”  Our shoes were freakin’ ruined now unless they had alien stain remover. We should have worn our boots instead of our white canvas tennis shoes.

The floor appeared to be made out of a glassy-smooth midnight black substance and what faint light there was came from fuzzy glowing green circles mounted in a straight line on the ceiling. Ceiling could be the wrong word since our environs consisted of a long tubal cavern that ended in a set of embossed metal doors with a burnished copper sheen. Definitely not a place to hang out if you suffered from claustrophobia.

Cass murmured under our breath, “Obsidian, this place looks like it’s made out of obsidian.”

Kal’s shaved dome was shining with a green patina as he replied, “We are underground. You are correct in your assessment of this place—it is indeed made from obsidian. Please refrain from speaking until I inform you it is safe.”

At that pronouncement his ordinary seeming human features melted away as if they’d never been, to be replaced by skin a shade darker than coffee with heavy cream, a wide mouth filled with sharply pointed teeth, and eyes that shone just as glossily black as the cavern in which we were entombed. As we watched a clear lens flicked over the enlarged pupil, bringing to mind a shark or an owl, maybe even an eagle.