In Alien Hands: A World Or Two

Some New Friends

When we reached the entrance of the building, a big alien held a device. He scanned me with it, startling me and Lyndsey. Merle started talking to him with an embarrassed tone of voice. Of course, I glared at him. A stranger just pointed a gun like thing at me, of course I'll flinch! It'd be unreasonable not to.

The alien just chuckled at me, waving me through and pointing the damned thing at Lyndsey and Aspin. It made a loud noise, making it even less pleasant. Merle had to nudge me into the building while I tried to intimidate the laughing stranger.

They interior quickly caught my attention. There were thousands of aliens and hundreds of humans. I could see booths of all sorts, some with cages and others with toys, a few with clothes and many more kinds of things. I saw a human eating some candy and another being pushed around in a cage. It was incredibly surreal to watch all this commotion, it was almost overwhelming.

Lyndsey and Aspin were just as overwhelmed. Wide eyes, gaping mouths all around. I was instantly glad for the leash, I'd hate to get lost there. Someone immediately approached, a yellow alien. It vigorously shook our dog-men's hands before kneeling in front of us. I took a hesitant step back, unsure about this new stranger.

It held out its hands, which I examined. Something about this interaction calmed me, holding their hand and looking at how much it looked like mine. Lyndsey just had to do the same thing, but Aspin wasn't interested. Once the two of us were finished, it stood back up, towering over us again.

It pointed to the right, to a big gateway. Our dog-men took us to the gate, with the alien walking alongside them. It talked to Grene mostly, motioning wildly with its hands. Reaching the gate, the alien stayed behind while our dog-men led us inside.

There was a desk with a dog-man sitting on the other side. She greeted our dog-men like most dog-men greeted each other, a lot of sniffing. She said words like "play" and "eat" which seemed exciting. Taking us through another door, we came into a hall. Multiple doors and windows lined the hall. None of us were tall enough to see through, though our dog-men could see fine.

We came to a door, it was the same as the others. The dog-lady pulled a device similar to the one at the door from a basket. It mad a much less noisy sound as she scanned each of us. She opened the door and our dog-men took us inside the room.

It was brightly colored, much like the human room at home. Toys littered the floor, a decent sized play set was against the wall. 6 or so humans ran around, giggling and playing with things, but that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was the two who weren't playing.

I couldn't quite place it at first, but they didn't seem human. They didn't seem like equals to the humans, either. Merle waved to them like they were his equals, which confused me. Merle was unhooking my collar when the pair approached them, and started speaking to them.

One of them had pointy ears, like an elf. Dog-men had pointy ears too, but these were more like human ears than dog-man ears. He was mostly ordinary otherwise, his eyes were green and his hair was brown. Lyndsey commented on his freckles, she had freckles herself.

The other was the same as the first in their strangeness, but still completely different. He had facial hair, blue eyes and dark hair. What was odd about him was his teeth, which looked sharp. This was all odd to me, I couldn't do much more that give them an awkward smile and wave when they waved to me. Merle seemed completely comfortable with the interaction, speaking to both of them like he would any dog-man.

Soon, all five of them left us in the room. I was concerned, wondering when they'd come back. Lyndsey lost her focus shortly after they left, running off to play with someone hiding it the play house. Aspin seemed about as concerned as I was, watching the door with me for a few minutes before we both turned to explore.

Aspin and I split up, I went looking to join Lyndsey while Aspin spoke to a boy with black hair. It is went hard to find Lyndsey, her loud giggling almost echoing through the structure, which was bigger than it looked. I turned a corner to see Lyndsey laughing with a blonde boy and girl. They looked like siblings, similar in demeanor and appearance.

The blonde girl noticed me first, stopping her giggling and nudging her brother. He stopped too, both watching me. Lyndsey noticed the silence and looked up to see me. She smiled, waving me over. The two seemed younger than I had seen any human off of earth before, it threw me off for a moment.

Age doesn't mean as much here as it did on earth. Lyndsey was almost 30 and she acted like a 15 year old. None of us had any qualms with playing with someone years younger than us. These siblings, who I learned were named Echo and Goldy, were just our friends now.

We all got along pretty well, playing for a bit before aliens came to collect us. I was disappointed, thinking Merle had come to collect us, but Goldy and Echo were called as well. The twenty or so humans in the playroom were all gathered by several aliens. A couple were dog-men, but the rest weren't anything I'd seen before.

We were all led out of the room and down the hall, through a bigger set of doors at the very end of the hall. We were met with a bunch of human-sized tables, trays at each spot. Aspin, Lyndsey, Goldy, Echo, the black haired boy, and I were sat at a long table with several other humans. A couple dog-men stayed nearby, showing us the food and giving us drinks and cutlery.

Echo and the boy (Aspin introduced him as Rebel) seemed a bit frightened of the dog-men, like they'd never seen one before that day. Goldy wasn't scared, smiling at the dog-man. All three of us had to assure them that the dog-men wouldn't hurt them. Another girl sat next to me, she introduced herself as Margaret. She had brown hair and Hazel eyes, similar to my own. She seemed fine with the dog-men helping her. She must've just gotten there, she seemed anxious.

"So, what kind of alien owns you?" Lyndsey was the first to speak. She was the social butterfly, I wasn't sure if it was because of how long she'd been in captivity or if that was just her personality. Goldy, Echo, and Rebel seemed unsure of what she meant, but Margaret had an answer.

"Quigor is my owner. How about you?"

"No, what kind of Alien owns you, not their name." Aspin tried to explain . Margaret seemed to think for a moment, finally realizing what we meant.

"I don't know what species he is." We stayed silent for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Margaret still seemed unsure about whether where she was was safe.

"What about you?" I asked Echo, Rebel, and Goldy. They still seemed confused.

"Like, who do you live with?" Lyndsey piped in, trying to help.

"Our Dads! " Goldy was happy to finally understand. None of us were satisfied with this answer. We were almost finished eating, the dog-men collecting our trays and cups. We were all lead back into the playroom, I assume to play some more

This one is turning out to be long! It'll be a two parter, so the next chapter will also be from Holli's POV. Goldy, Rebel, Echo, Quix and Tax (unnamed by Holli in this chapter, they are the two strange "men" who leave with Merle) belong to DulEmeiona. Margaret and Quigor (Quigor won't be seen until the end of the next chapter and will be given a bigger part in Merle's POV along with Tax, Quix and Quigor) belong to DefenderofHyrule. These characters were used with the permission of those users and they reviewed their parts before publishing. Please don't use other user's characters without their permission.

Published 11/21/18