Kal
Xaerea was my home planet, and I appreciated it for all of the reasons someone appreciates their place of origin.
But it was not a beautiful place. Gray, cold, and dark would be better descriptors.
Back on Xaerea, I spent most of my time wishing I could be elsewhere.
Somewhere idyllic. On Earth, I was determined to spend as much time as possible experiencing its beauty while I had the chance.
Because of that, I was sitting on a bench just outside of Southern Charm, noting all of the colors I could see.
The street running through town was black, but not just black.
It was a shade of black that seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, so deep that I could almost see my reflection in the surface.
Buildings varied from deep red to green to the bright yellow of the restaurant’s facade.
I could see all of the shades of the universe from where I was seated, but one stood out in particular.
The blue of the sky overhead, clear and brilliant. But not nearly as brilliant as Lola’s eyes.
I closed my eyes and pictured her pink hair and rosy cheeks, the white of her smile. With my eyes closed, I felt a tickle at the tip of my nose. Eyes opening, I was presented with the orange and black wings of a butterfly.
Willing the insect to stay, I pressed my lips together and held my breath.
My eyes crossed to keep it in my vision and just watched as the butterfly slowly flapped its wings.
I imagined myself in its place—delicate, fragile, entirely renewed.
And I envied that butterfly’s transformation. Why couldn’t it be me?
A shadow passed over me as I watched on.
“Hey, man,” someone said, voice cracking. He was small, young—a human kid, surely. Brown hair with an upturned nose and sky-blue eyes. “There’s a bug on your nose.”
My eyes stayed trained on the butterfly and its unhurried dance. “I know, isn’t it wonderful?” I said, taking pains not to move my lips too much.
“Um, not really. It’s pretty weird, actually,” the stranger replied. The wooden slats of the bench shifted slightly as he sat down.
I could hear the judgment in his voice; it was all too familiar to me. I was being weird again. It seemed that particular trait wasn’t confined to my life on Xaerea, a flaw that could chase me across galaxies.
I responded with a short, “Hmm.” I had nothing else to say, especially after decades of receiving similar assessments on my home planet. I was weird, and that’s just who I was. I supposed that by this point, there was very little chance that I would actually change.
Eventually, the butterfly abandoned its post on my nose, and I followed its path as it flew to a bed of flowers nearby. The stranger stayed silent after that, though I could see him also watching the butterfly as it hovered from flower to flower.
“Still here, huh?”
This time, the voice was familiar. I sat up and smiled at Lola. But her eyebrows stitched together as she studied me intently.
“What are you still doing here, Kal? You left the restaurant over an hour ago.”
I could have told her that I didn’t have a place to go to, not really.
That I was just wasting time until dark, when I could use the Xaerean-issued tent in my backpack to sleep somewhere secluded enough that I wouldn’t get caught.
That would have been true, but it wasn’t the real reason I was still sitting here.
It was the colorful people, and the sound of vehicles driving by.
The chirping of birds as they pecked at scraps on the sidewalk, the gentle slope of blue-green mountains in the distance—these were the things that kept me from leaving.
Before that morning, I had never heard of a place called Roswell Falls.
Now, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect place to have landed, accidentally or not.
“Sitting,” I told her honestly. “Admiring the view.” I spread my arms wide. “And I’m counting how many colors I see.”
The kid next to me coughed into his hand. “Dork.”
Lola’s hand connected with the side of his head, provoking a cry of, “Ouch, Lo! That really hurt.”
Lola crossed her arms. “Well, stop being a dick, Jacob.”
I looked between them, confused by the unusual exchange. Lola must have noticed my confusion, because she pointed to the young stranger and said, “This little jerk is my younger brother, Jacob. Jacob, this is Kal. I just brought him on as a new dishwasher.”
Jacob nodded his head in acknowledgment, then ignored me completely.
“You waiting for a ride home or something?” Lola asked.
“Home?”
“Yeah, home,” she said with a laugh. “Like where you live, where you sleep. Did you walk here?” Lola looked around as if searching for something.
Home. For some reason, her question struck with meteoric impact. I knew I was lost; I was very aware that my home planet was millions and millions of light years away. But home? Back on Xaerea, I had a place where I lived, where I slept, where I spent my free time. It was…fine. Comfortable.
But I wasn’t sure I had ever truly had a place that felt like home. A stark reminder that I was as alone and out of place on Earth as I was on my planet. My hands grew clammy inside my suit, tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. I was alone here, too.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said softly, looking past Lola to locate the butterfly I had befriended. I scanned the flower bed. It was gone.
I glanced at Lola and pulled my hu-suit’s mouth into a small smile, one that I hoped was convincing.
“I’ll be fine.”