An endless ringing filled Najma's head, taking up all of his thoughts. He almost convinced himself that it was his alarm clockand it was time to drag himself out of bed to get to work... it didn't sound right, though. Nothing sounded right.
He shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, and that was definitely wrong. The surface beneath him was hard and coarse. He wasn't in his bed? He never slept anywhere else. Not even accidentally.
He couldn't be in another room, and he never rolled onto the floor, so why...? He clearly remembered falling asleep in...
Actually, he didn't remember.
He couldn't remember where he had fallen asleep the previous night. That was very odd. In fact, he didn't even recall sleeping. His eyes snapped open, and that was when he remembered why he hadn't done so sooner: his face was pressed against a blanket of thin, sharp, but pliable blades of—it shouldn't be possible—grass.
He tried to sit up before looking around this time to spare his eyes the unforgiving grass. The only problem was, he couldn't exactly sit up. He was in his Yu-Liang form, which only served to confound him further. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd Shifted...
He shook his head and rolled onto his stomach. Though his was sore, his movements felt freer than normal. He wasn't hiding. He was himself again.
A jolt of panic speared him. Someone would surely see...
He opened his aching eyes with a newfound urgency, and then he took a good look at his surroundings. If there had been any doubt before, there was none now; he was not about the Intrepid. Unless, of course, he had finally gone crazy and was hallucinating.
The grass was grey, with an undertone of washed-out green. The flowers dotting the grass were the color of dust and nearly blended in, but the blooms were so delicately, complicatedly beautiful that he stared at one for a minute at least. The sky was golden and red and violet and indigo and a thousand other hues, as if it was stuck in a forever-sunset.
He knew instantly where he was as soon as he turned to that many-colored sky. He wished he'd looked there first. Then again, if he had, he never would have looked away.
He was on Mikrask—the Land of the Unsetting Suns. It was a nice planet, and widely accepted as such by many people who had a hard time agreeing about anything. The facts popped into his head unbidden, from a foggy grey area that allowed no passage. What was back there? why couldn't his mind access the things hidden there? it was so frustrating. His memory had become less and less reliable...
He shook his head. Back to the task and subject at hand: Mikrask and figuring out how he was here.
The planet wasn't very advanced technologically, and most of the tech that they actually had was from other civilizations that came to visit and then accidentally left something behind. It would be swarming with tourists and the like if there wasn't a myriad of laws preventing any more than forty-thousand off-worlders at a time.
The native population of the glowing, perfect world was a green-skinned race named after the planet itself: The Makkas. At first glance, the aliens' skin was a similar swampy shade of green to the grasses that grew in wide prairies over the whole planet, but if proper time was given to examine them in the right light, the silver blood in their veins shone faintly through their skin in strikingly swirls, which made them sparkle in the light of the ever-setting suns. Najma remembered being quite taken with them, at once point.
If only he could remember so much about useful things, he mused bitterly.
It wasn't the worst place to wake up, but the thing that bothered him was the fact that he couldn't remember how he had gotten here in the first place. His head was buzzing with the ringing sound that refused to leave his ears. His eyes stung.
He slowly flexed each limb as he stood laboriously to check for any real damage. His legs, as always, were numb to a point just north of paralysis. However, the tingling numbness in his front legs was a different story entirely. He very nearly collapsed after having just gained his feet.
He had to test if he could still walk.
His leg had half-risen to the task when his head suddenly exploded with pain. And with the pain, the memories surfaced from the fog: The three prisoners that he'd rescued, only for them to kidnap him, being dumped on Scutarii, and finally finding a way off the awful excuse for a planet... the teleporter that had very nearly ended his life.
He should feel more unsettled, but the only thing that flooded him was relief; with each new thought that sprang into his head, his prospects got brighter. He wasn't dead. He hadn't ended up fused with the particles of a wall or a tree. He had woken up on Mikrask of all places, when he very easily could have found himself on a planet that was much worse than where he'd started. Or, if the teleporter's calibration had been really messed up, he could have died in the void of space without ever knowing it. And another thing—he was free. Free of his trio of crazed captors, yes, but he was also free from the Alliance.
Najma swung in a wide circle, searching for some sign of civilization even as he knew it was futile. He was more likely than not stuck in the very center of the biggest grassland on the planet. What was the name of that savannah? It should have been important enough to stick in his mind, but... apparently, his brain had strange ideas of what was important and what was not.
He knew the difference, though, and the most urgent thing he needed to worry about was finding some person to help him. If only there was some landmark to find his way by, but the grass was barren.
And so, he was startled nearly out of his skin when he heard a shout coming from somewhere very close behind him. In one motion, he whirled around and jumped back, preparing himself for a fight, but he was greeted with yet another surprise.
If the shocks didn't stop coming, then Najma might just be overwhelmed enough to faint.
It was a female Makka, standing poised as if to fight, two small daggers in her hands as she let out another defiant shout, probably to get his attention. But something seemed... off about her. Did Najma have it backwards? There was some fact or other, fighting to surface through the sea of his forgotten memories.
Then Najma realized quite suddenly that he was, for all intents and purposes, an unfamiliar predator. He was fearsome and large, and was probably trespassing on some sort of hunting grounds... or something. So, seeking to defuse the situation before either of them hurt the other, he shifted, grimacing as he felt a fiery ache spread through his frame.
It was unnervingly like the first time he'd ever shifted—he felt every fold and tear of his body as it reshaped itself into something else—something that at least looked human, even if it wasn't.
When he was standing once more after the pain faded, something clicked in his head—this couldn't be a female. The little scrap wasn't even wearing a shirt. But that still couldn't be right...
"What are you doing here?!" the boy shouted again, and with words this time, obviously in his native language, which Najma thankfully still understood, if a little hazily.
"I don't really know." Najma replied, voice snagging on the roughness in his throat.
He had no idea how he had ended up here. Why Miskrask? Of all places, there was no reason that the small grey planet stood out, and there certainly weren't any ancient teleportation consoles, so he couldn't fathom it. The codes must have randomized themselves when he'd been unable to figure out the input system for his destination.
"What is that supposed to mean?" the boy seemed just as confused as Najma felt, although obviously for an entirely different reason.
The thought wouldn't leave him alone: the kid was too scrawny. But it wasn't important.
Najma shrugged. "I don't really know that either."
"How did you do that?" the boy asked suspiciously, but there was a tremulous quality that gave away his fear.
"Do what?" and just as he said it, Najma realized what the boy was asking about. The young Makka had probably never seen anybody Shift before. He might not even know it was possible, having lived on such a secluded planet.
"How did you—" the boy trailed off, not able to find words to continue as he gestured slowly up and down Najma's body with one of his knives.
"It's a long story." He ran his fingers through his hair with a deep sigh, then a hiss. His palm was beginning to ache fiercely, and he pulled it away to examine it. The skin had split open again.
The sight of the wound brought reality a little closer to home. He had no money, no mode of transportation, and he was stuck on a planet where he wasn't likely to find either.
He sighed again, then he tilted his head up to look at the burnt orange sky. At least he was somewhere undeniably pleasant. If he was trapped, at least the cage would be gilded.
"W-what's wrong?" the boy asked. Najma looked at him again. He had lowered the daggers, and taken a hesitant, miniature step forward.
"Well, that's a long story, too." Najma said with a short, humorless laugh.
"You sure have a lot of 'long stories.'" The boy said, his shoulders relaxing a bit more. He stashed his two small daggers in sheaths on either side of his hips. "My name is Q'uanen."
Only now did it occur to Najma that the boy was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to have rushed into such an unknown situation with nothing but a pair of hunting knives.
"My name is Johnathan." The lie tasted sour on Najma's lips, but what choice did he have? Garter would be looking for him, and what was easier to find—a strange human named Johnathan or the last Yu-Liang in the universe?
"Well then, Johnathan, would you like something to drink? You look like you need it." Q'uanen's face had a faint air of something like humor, creeping up in the lines around his eyes and mouth.
Najma only nodded in reply, not bothering to ask how the boy knew. His chapped lips and sickly pallor probably spoke values.
"Okay." Q'uanen said with a short nod, turning towards the wide savannah. "Follow me, then."
Najma had a hard time staying within sight of the running form in front of him, but he barely managed, and eventually, Q'uanen stopped dead, seemingly in the middle of absolute nowhere. The only thing that separated this stretch of empty, swaying gray grass from the next was the tiny outcropping of boulders a few leaps and bounds away.
Q'uanen got on his knees and grabbed a chunk of tall grass and pulled. A small rectangle of sod shifted at his tug.
After Q'uanen was finished with the grass, a small trapdoor was revealed, vaporizing most of Najma's confusion. The boy lived beneath the prairie.
Q'uanen lifted the trapdoor, then lowered himself into the shadowy hole. As far as Najma could see, there wasn't any light down in the little cavern, so he was hesitant to join his new acquaintance. However, the boy had given him no reason to be suspicious.
Might as well take the leap. He had no other prospects.
As with the teleporter, the risk was also his only hope of survival. He didn't know how to survive here, and this kid did. The choice was simple, in the end.
The dark shaft into the underground was narrow, and Najma hardly fit within the tube of toptoil, but when he reached the bottom of the small ladder, the space opened up. A cool, damp feeling to the air told him that the room in which he found himself had to be a sizable one.
A few feet to Najma's right, a small, orange flame flared up in the darkness, and then expanded so that a pleasant, flickering glow illuminated one half of the room. The other half was still lost in the deep shadows.
Q'uanen placed the crude lantern atop a cruder table, then walked towards something that appeared to be a basket, rooted with dried mud to the floor. A ladle, dripping with water, was pulled from the depths of the wide, covered trough.
The sight of something to drink made Najma realize just how thirsty he really was. He knew for a fact that he was dehydrated just by simple addition of the facts, but until that moment he'd never really thought about how dry his lips were, or how scratchy his throat was.
He gratefully accepted the ladle that Q'uanen offered, and he had downed the water within seconds. The drink brought the sweetest relief to his hot, parched mouth, and he sighed.
"Now, I expect you won't be going anywhere anytime soon, so you'll be able to tell me all of these long stories that you seem to have." Q'uanen said slyly, not making eye contact as he dipped the ladle into the bin to get more water, and handed it to Najma.
The boy was right, Najma had to admit. The stories he asked for weren't exactly secret, and Najma did appear to be stuck for the foreseeable future. What would the harm be? When he inevitably had to move on, who would believe a lonesome Makka about something so outlandish?
So, when the water had soothed his throat thoroughly, Najma began to recount the events that had brought him, despite all the odds, to Mikrask.