Taylor

Taylor I

My girlfriend is so fucking hot. Long hair, beautiful greenish hazel eyes, slim figure, delicate long fingers and nails that are always the exact same color as her eyes. She's fairly new at this college, halfway through her freshman year. I'm a sophomore, so it's not too creepy. Everyone calls her "Tip" or "Tippy" because she bears a staggering resemblance to Gratuity Tucci, but with much paler skin. She's actually kind of gray. Cartoon or not, I'm so glad I met her. We've been together for just shy of four months, and she is the best part of my day. We text each other all day. Even just now, while I'm sitting in my last class for the evening, my hand is under the table with my phone, just messaging away to my gorgeous girlfriend. Her real name is Taylor. And she's amazing.

Taylor loves to listen to pop and hiphop; Future, Rihanna, Megan Trainor, you know the stuff. Her mp3 player is always on. I bought her an iTunes gift card for Christmas. She loved it, and used it entirely on rap albums. She baked me a whole tray of cinnamon rolls as a gift. I love cinnamon rolls, and hers are delicious. She is really good at cooking, but she's deathly allergic to cinnamon. It literally melts her skin instantly upon contact, so she had to wear two pairs of gloves while she made them. That being the case, they were extra special to me.

"R U still n class" she texts me, probably moving the conversation in the direction of meeting up. "Yeah," I respond, "but I'm out of here in like 15 mins. You trying to go out?"

"I mite b...theres sumthin I wanna tell u."

"#oshit. Cool then," I text back, thumb going crazy beneath my desk. "I'll come pick you up soon as I get outta here".

I tuck my phone away and pretend to continue paying attention in the classroom when I'm really daydreaming...or, er...evening-dreaming about my Taylor. My mom teases me all the time about how much Taylor has me wrapped around her little finger, but she's very appreciative that the girl doesn't take advantage of my feelings. My mom has seen me go through some pretty rocky relationships, so she's very glad to see one that makes me smile more than cry. She's welcomed Taylor into our little nest and has not given it a second thought. The fact that they both get along is very important to me. I have an older brother, but he's 30-something and lives across the country. With that situation, my mom is really the only family I have. My baby is important to me, but Mom comes first. Luckily, I don't have any ultimatums about it. It did take a little getting used to for my mom to accept Taylor initially, what with her quirks and all. It was craziest when she first saw Taylor blink her eyelids horizontally, then her eyeballs vertically. That made Mom freeze in shock.

...Okay, hold on. Let me explain.

Back in 2012, an embassy was erected in Holland. It was the weirdest got damn thing, because nobody even really knew that the building was being built. It was constructed in less than a year, and dedicated on every national news station in the world, because it wasn't a neighboring country embassy, it wasn't even an American embassy. It was an embassy for natives of the HR 8832 star system in Cassiopeia. The name of their planet is something we can't even pronounce, but on Earth, we call it HD 219134-D or "Loki", informally. There were natives of that planet that made a "discovery" of our planet back in, like, the early sixties. They spread the word to their scientists and politicians, who put together a deep-space exploration program to venture to Earth in 1971. The squad they sent, which was 10 individuals, landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and floated their way to China. This is where they first met and communicated with Earthlings. I can only imagine how difficult that would have been, speaking their language against Cantonese. I believe that on Earth, we've come to know their language as "Cassian-A". There are only two provinces on Loki, and all the Lokanese here are from the same one, so there is a whole other Cassian language that we don't even know, hence the "A". Taylor speaks fluent Cassian, and even though I have no idea what she's saying, I love when she whispers it in my ear. It's a language used by a people whose main focuses are communicating scientific or intellectual concepts and expressing affection to each other and families. I haven't taken any classes in Cassian-A, but I hear that there aren't as many words for the same kind of things in that language. While English has a hundred different ways to say "I love you", in Cassian, you just say "Moh taerre a tou". That's pretty much all I know!