A Fallen HomeKin

PART I

Dark magenta eyes set in a dirty face stared up at Fralith from the blade's reflection. The face in the reflection was his own, yet it looked so unlike him that he wondered sometimes if it wasn't real. Gone was the young brown face he'd known, replaced with a sickly pale, sunken-cheeked, and scarred one.

Strands of matted black hair framed his face, as dark as the sickle-like shadows hanging under his eyes that accentuated the haunted look in his irises and the spreading scar on his left cheek.

He reached up and rubbed it, tracing the arcs and swoops of its rough edges. It stood stark against his skin, a wrinkled red brand from the... from the... He shook the thoughts from his mind and sighed. Thinking about it wouldn't do him any good.

Turning the noren blade in his hand, he watched the light and reflection slide off of its edge like water. Can noren cut through light? he wondered. He wouldn't be surprised if it could; noren was the strongest and sharpest metal in the world, able to cut through everything as easily as butter. Light wouldn't be too far of a stretch.

HONK!

Fralith leapt to his feet, fingers tightening around the hilt, heart skittering so erratically that it skipped a few beats. On the black strip, a person glanced up from the rectangle they had been staring at and shook a fist at the MetalEater, not even speeding up to get out of its way. The MetalEater responded with another roar. The person turned their back on the monster and finished crossing the black strip, gaze glued on the rectangle as if it was more interesting than the growling monster.

Fralith shrank back into the shadows, clutching his noren knife and trying to breathe as quietly as possible. Why didn't that person care? The MetalEater had been right there. It could have lunged forward and devoured them! He shuddered, the screech of a MetalEater's paws, its blaring snarl, and terrifyingly hot skin echoing back from the first night he had arrived.

He didn't understand the people here. He didn't understand anything here. Not the language, the rectangles everyone stared at, the disregard for the monsters in their midst, the writing, the houses and buildings, or even the food. It just didn't make sense. Even after being here for three moon cycles, he still didn't understand. Everything was just so utterly foreign, so unlike SecondHome.

A pang twinged in his chest and he quickly pushed it away. Sheathing his knife, he turned away and surveyed the wall behind him. It was night, but just like the first one he had come here, it was almost as bright as day. The strange LightTrees shone bright enough to be replacement suns — providing enough visibility for him to find finger and toe holds.

With a final push, Fralith shimmied onto the roof. Once he was securely on top, he sat down and pulled his knees close to him. They tingled with fatigue, strength already sapped from the small climb. He bit his lip, gazing out at the many houses neatly aligned along the black strips. He needed food. Good food. Not the silly fat birds and their salty copper blood or the soggy half-eaten bread with poor excuses for leaves and meat — but good food. Real food.

Real food like salted BoomFrog in a thick, life-giving broth, with a platter of roasted WhiteGrub rolled in SwordSpice and butter. Real food like RoundGum fruit wrapped up in leaves and sugar; glasses of ice-cold SilverPod juice swirled with creamy Hinchilla milk; and plates of steaming rice served with flaky yellow-nosed fish steaks, GoodYum sauce and chickpeas. Real food, like SecondHome food. Real food, like home.

Home.

Fralith squeezed his eyes shut, a welling sense of pain rising under his lungs. Oh, how he longed for home. There it was safe. Familiar. Friendly. He didn't want to be here. He hadn't meant to come here. Yet....here he was. Trapped in a foreign world that couldn't be more different from his own. Trapped, just like in SecondHome.