A Wider Sky Ch. 03

Copyright first edition 2013, 2015

Chapter 3

I'm strapped in tight that my chest could barely lift to take in air. My eyes drew to horizon transforming from blue to a lush spread of green as the hovercraft descended to travel down the street of a mossy treelined town. It looked so like the life in the pictures in my mother's childhood photo album: more human than the colony and probably more humane.

The neighborhoods palatial not at all like the ghettos of the colony that is a concrete jungles of low-rise apartment buildings that swelled close to the filthy curbs. The quaint single-homes were set back from the streets. The houses coordinated in color from a ranch style light yellow house, small two-story light green home sat next to a whitewashed single family home. All had immaculate front yards of vibrant green grass and all that was missing was a picket fence with a little yipping dog and a baby bouncing around in a rolling walker. The streets were clean, the grey-white cement of the sidewalk looked like no one dared to drop a over-chewed wad of gum or hock a cold lurgey. Everything looked picture perfect but something was off.

As the hovercraft moved through the small suburb towards the small city center yet it was like a picture book of a ghost tow, completely empty. It was odd not seeing a single soul was outside; back home in the colony people always milled around outside moving here and there. When the hoover craft's gravitational pull kicked in; my stomach dropped so hard my knees gave in a bit. The craft landed in front of the only tall building at the edge of the city limit.

"Yeah, that first time is always doozy," Perfect Teeth remarked and pulled me to him by my arms. The red head officer grabbed my bag, hauling over his shoulder effortlessly without my necessary slant to one side to balance its weight with my own.

Their boots clomped down the ramp and into a tall art deco building that reminded me of the 1960s style buildings in New York my mom had pictures taken of Before Eclipse. An stone arch and a small glass door giving away no secrets to the inside of the building. I followed them inside trying to not get stampeded under their brisk walk. They guided me through the lobby and through the first do to a large room.

Mirrors again. The room filled with mirrors made my skin crawled all over my body because I suspected that the mirrors were probably two-way mirrors. Two-way mirrors always reminded me of taking the test knowing deadly aliens were on the other side observing.

The red head dropped my bag on a large table for scrutiny in the middle of the room and I forced to sit across from it on a alien green plastic chair. I sighed and tried not to slump in my chair but they events exhausted me emotionally and physically from my two hour hike to nowhere, or as it was, to where the Y'vori soilders ambushed-- picked me up.

The rusty haired man which I had assumed was the leader opened my bag and then took my things one by one and held each thing in the air. I realized that my items were being approved by whomever or whatever was behind the two-way mirror. I tried to not blush when Red-hair my panties and bras held up for alien approval. I huffed and tried to breath my tears back into my body that had been threatening to fall since I calmed down in the hoover craft. It was becoming too much, everything was becoming too overwhelming. Walking in the shale desert under the hot sun, I was hungry, being pushed to the hard ground at gunpoint by strange men, learning that humans had been living on this side of the realm and almost losing my mother's picture was finally took its toll on me. My eyes floated to the back of my head and everything went black.

***

A strong smell had brought my sense back to me. I found that I was lying on a cot, my duffle bag was next to me and the Perfect Smile was leaning over me. My heart raced, frantically I searched the room for any aliens, as I jolted up which was a huge mistake because my brain started to swim upstream.

"Hey, hey, relax lie down."

"What happened?" I looked at my body as best as I could lying down. Everything seemed in order, no alien probs... yet.

"Here," he handed me a military canteen that was too shiny to have ever seen war, it actually looked like it belong in a museum instead of the front lines. "Drink," I obeyed.

"It tastes..." I couldn't pinpoint what was different. I knew it was water, but it didn't taste like the water back home, it was crisper, maybe our water wasn't as clean as we had tried to make it. Unless...? I quickly spat out the water as fast as it was coming into my mouth. I made a huge mistake and I tensed ready to run and fight.

"It's fine. Its not poisoned or tainted." Perfect Smile huffed incredulously and endearingly rolled his eyes. "It's probably clearer than any water you've ever had, heck its cleaner than the water we had Before Eclipse."

I searched his eyes for truth or any hint of malfeasance when I could find none, I surrendered with a drop of my shoulders and took the canteen again and drank. I drank and drank, i couldn't stop, i felt like my entire body, even on a cellular level was thirsty and needed so much hydration.

" Good. You're dehydrated and by the looks of you who knows that last time if ever that you had a decent meal." With that, Perfect Teeth stood up and picked up a tray of food and brought it over to me.

I didn't even question if it's tainted or not, I was so hungry and it smelled amazing, looked amazing like something from one of the Life Magazine paintings of Thanksgiving.

I took a bite of the orange mushy and it melted in my mouth -- sweet and tangy.

"What is this?" I couldn't help piping with my mouth full.

Perfect Teeth again chuckled, he had a habit of teasing me because of my lack of knowledge that was starting to annoy me. "You've never had sweet potatoes in the colony?"

"Sweet Potatoes? Potatoes are white."

Perfect Teeth's smile slide to one side as he rolled his brilliant eyes and huffed.

"What is this? I pointed to a large drumstick that was too large to be chicken?"

"Wild Turkey."

Wow, it was amazing, wild or captive. It didn't taste like the pretend chicken turkey my mom used to make.

"Not so fast, don't get used to this. You wont be eating too much human food when you are at college."

With that my heart dropped and I spit out my food and everything in the room rushed around me.

"Hey, hey slow down when you eat. didn't you mother teach you any table manners." She did, when it came to eating human food at a table. Perfect Smile ignored my probably blistering red face and my the girdling trying to regain my breath, coughing were the food went down the wrong passage.

"I wasn't-" I started and fear crept in stronger than before.

"Hey it's not that bad. Their food. You'll like it."

"You've had it before?" I dropped my fork with a clatter to the plate.

He stood blank poker face -- lying, "Alright now, finish up and then we will take you to your host home for the night."

I calmed myself and took a deep breath. I had learned three things in that short period of time. One, the humans in the realm had better food, better cooking options and seemed to have a normal life. Two, I was going to have to eat alien food soon. Three, I was actually going to go to college, which gave me some relief that I wasn't brought her to be exterminated but then I became excited and nervous for a whole new realization -- I was going to go to school with aliens.

***

Perfect Teeth carried my bag and instructed me to follow him as he led me out of the inspection building. He told me that I would return to this building tomorrow to be transported to the college. I couldn't help but wring my hands nervously because that meant another day that I might face aliens.

We walked out of the building onto the quaint city streets that were empty. It was already night out but unlike home, the streets were lite with street lamps that gave a warmth to the city center, but no one was outside enjoying restaurants or movies like city people did in my mom's world.

We walked for about twenty minutes until we reach the suburban area I saw on the way to the Inspection Building. We stopped at simple yellow ranch home and he led me into the home.

I was surprised how huge the home was, they had a livingroom three times the size of my entire apartment, a separate kitchen that was amazing, it actually had a stove and oven not an electric hotpot and oven that we had sitting on our dresser back home.

"Welcome, Kiowa," a human "thank god" woman greeted me as she glided down the stairs of the home once we arrived.

"Kiowa, this is my wife, Maddie." Perfect Teeth remarked.

I quickly noted that he did not hug or kiss his wife which was odd.

"Ben, can you show Kiowa her room, and then she can shower and get ready for her trip tomorrow"

Ben, noted. Perfect Teeth's name is Ben and also noted. Maddie also didn't seem romantic towards her husband as well but I didnt want to pry to much into that observation so soon upon my arrival.

Ben led me upstairs to a small bedroom, which still was larger than the room I shared with my mother my entire life. A bed sat against the wall and a small dresser on the other side of the room. He pointed to the bathroom down the hall and also pulled a large terrycloth bath towel from the hall closet before leaving me alone.

Finally, I took a deep breath and my butt bounced on the bed as I plopped down replacing for the first time the entire day and I was still alive. I quickly pulled my bag to me to search through it to see what things were deemed unfit or hinted to rebelliousness for my new life. So far everything was in place. I fingered my mother's picture in my jacket pocket. I was sure that it would have been deemed a violation had I not I shoved it in my pocket.

Everything seemed in place so I let my dad's large army duffle slide to the floor making an matching exhausting thud that mirrored how I felt. I looked again around the simple room. Oh my, I was incredibly disheveled, my face was covered with dust. I willed my legs to begin working again so I could at least look presentable plus a shower was just what I needed.

The shower was the first hot shower I had ever taken in my entire life, I kept forcing myself to hurry and finish cleaning because I knew I was using up valuable resources but I couldn't help but luxuriate and really build up a lather. A hot shower seemed to calm all my still lasting bundled and frazzled nerves and I finally relaxed.

I heard Ben and his wife Maddie downstairs chatting. Perhaps I was wrong about their relationship.

I used to get annoyed when my mother would talk about what I should look for in a boy that I might want to possibly marry. In her day, girls went off to college, choose their career fields, explore the world before settling down with someone that they admired and who cherished them back. My mother would reiterate how important it was that I was able to choose who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with because it was one of the few choices we had left to pave our own life paths in this new world.

I liked a few boys in my school growing up but no one really paid attention to me. The girls were always paired off first and I was left being the third wheel. My first kiss didn't leave me desiring more and I was never asked on dates. I really liked one guy while in school. We had a similar circle of friends and got along well becoming quite close friends while attending school and our A-levels together.

Once I finished my vocational training all the girls were buzzing about who had asked them to marry. A girl a few years behind me turned to me.

"Kiowa, did Matthias ask you to marry him," the girl with bright eyes and Shirley Temple dimpled cheeks asked.

Matthias was my best friend and crush; and there was no escaping the fact that everyone in the colony knew I cared a lot for him. I loved Matthias from the first day I laid my eyes on him during a refuging trip in school. He was tall with the most entrancing hazel eyes I had ever seen that seem to have a starbust of a sunflower in his iris when he looked at me. He knew I liked him and always found the most opportune time to tease me about it.

We were finishing our vocational training on the same day. Finishing the required assigned vocational training was the official entry into adulthood in the colony. It was also the day register with the colony magistrates who we were intending on marrying. Everyone was always approved, we never suspected that our alien overlords would care so much who we decided to procreate with.

"He hasnt asked me," I responded.

Not only was he my first love, he was a lot of firsts for me. I dreaded the idea that he was going to asked Natalia, a girl who he had been pining for since A-levels. It felt like a lottery there was a chance that he would ask her yet I still had hope. Matthais and I had the most in common; and what did he have in common with Natalia? She had already finished her vocational training as a sign maker. Sign maker is a pretty good job because you work closely with the colony governor creating signs of instruction for the colony. Her grades where not so great, so she didn't attend A-Levels with us. Which meant that we had two years that Matthias and I spent together learning together and explored personal boundaries together -- he was a master persuader. I hoped that Matthias would see me as a good match and would forget about Natalia. Absence made the heart grow fonder, despite it all, Mathias and I were so similar. I chewed on my cuticles nervously all the time, wondering if I wasn't pretty enough or just not enough for him.

But I was smart and I was a dreamer and together we dreamed of how we would make the world better, so that life with or without the Y'vori could work. But when we finished our A-levels we entered our required assigned training the next day after the final tests. That first day of training was the first day we were split, he was assigned to receptacles and recycling and I was introduced to the seamstress factory floor. I was ready; I had accepted my lot. I was going to live till the day I die working in this sweaty, steamy industrial factory floor cleaning and making clothing for the colony and the realm until my hands withered and my fingers curled crooked with age. But secretly I hoped that after this first day, my certification day, I would have a light at the end of the tunnel and Matthias would be waiting outside waiting for me to ask me to be his mate for life. If I had Mathias, all of this would be OK, I could survive and be happy.

The girls seemed so giddy while we stood in a line before our instructor to receive "a pat on the back" of congratulations. No real need for pomp and circumstance our circumstance was not that we had been trained to do the work we just go to our station and do the work. Our instructor was giving verbal evaluations as diplomas and the governor had interrupted the instructor, giving us time to whisper about the men standing outside to take us to the magistrates to get married. The governor of the colony stood near my instructor and whispered into her ear before he approached me. I was pulled out of the line of my classmates and followed him into the factory office which overlooked the entire noise smokey floor.

I was startled when he explained the news -- the aliens where requiring me to attend their university. I was to start in four days.

I raced out of the factory when they told me to go home and prepare. I ran all the way to Matthias' home to tell him the news. I was hoping he too got the same news since he was just as smart as me. He had to be going to the alien university with me too. My dreams were expounding with each achy pain my muscles burned with as my thin shoes hit the hard pavement. We would go to university together and then marry. We may be able to pick our own career paths, our lives would be so much like the life my mother lived before Eclipse. We would be in love and love each other so much like my mother and father had. I was completely out-of-breath once I reached his 6th floor apartment, I skipped two stairs at a time to his sixth floor apartment squabble no better than my own.

When I opened the door, Matthias was standing there as if we were waiting for me. His eyes glimmered with happiness, I was set aback by the joy in his expression. Never had I seen him more handsome, more sexier than in that moment. He made me laugh, made me feel comfortable. He was the person I leaned on when my mother's stories were to hard to understand because they gave hope to something that we may never see. He made everything that was wrong with the world vanish.

"Kiowa," he chuckled in shock as my body crushed into his in a big hug. "Hey darling."

He pulled me away from him but still held me as he craddled my head in his hand, his thumb smoothing away my wayward curls from my face.

"You're going right?!" My face was wet with tears of joy, my face hurt so much from smiling so hard.

"Going where?" his eyes sought after my soul and it made me tremble. I longed to forever be in those intense giving eyes.

"To the-" and that's when I heard a cough behind me, requiring our attention be drawn to the corner of his family's small apartment. Behind the corner curtain which sectioned of the bed which Matthias slept in the living room was Natalia.

"Hello Kiowa," Natalia pulled back the curtain revealing a beautiful white dress of lace. It was simple but gorgeous. She also had a simple white ribbon that crowned her head pulling back her golden curls.

I couldnt say anything, I just backed away from Matthias. My heart pounded in my ears. Everything was muffled like cotton in my ears and the room spun with my very breaking heart falling like ashes from a fire. Through the fog, I'm sure I am hearing him him say he married Natalia -- afternoon -- I was in the factory office learning I was going to the realm. He then continues yet the room is swelling sucking the air out, he says that he hopes I find someone who will love me as much as he loved Natlalia. He reaches out for me and I am coming back to the present and back away from him, Outstrreaching his arms to me as if to comfort my shattered heart falling to my shoe soles like crumbled rose petals, his very hand, wishing to comfort that I wished to cradle my chin to him so many times, it is horrifying me. If I allow him to touch me, I know my heart would be strangled just by feeling his very skin on mine. I screamed "Get away," trying not to crumble into a pool of tears in front of him, in front of her - his perfect bride.

A loud whistle matched the past screaming in my head bringing me back to the present, to the bedroom in The Realm -- far from the colony and far from Matthias. My heart sunk deeper in my body. He doesn't know that I was in the realm, that I was allowed to go to alien university -- he will never know because he doesn't deserve to know the most private things about me anymore. He knew I loved him, everyone knew it, yet he allowed me to pine for him and for my heart to break. I heard Ben chuckle, even not able to see him, I already pictured his perfect smile as he dotes on his wife Maddie. I didn't want to seem rude, so I quickly pulled my pajama pants and top on to join them sitting at the kitchen dining room table sipping tea. Tea! I had only had tea on holidays but today was not a holiday.

Maddie's eyes looked up and spotted me first before Ben turned around to flash his famous perfect pearly grin.

"We were just talking about how amazing it is for you to go to college with the Y'vori," Maddie's eyes glittered with pride. "Come, Sit"

I slide into one of the empty two chairs at the table. "How do you like the realm so far?" She asked right away and tipped her mug to her lips. I could smell the tea it was cinnamon and cardamom spices with a smooth note of something else I couldnt pinpoint.