Banished To Earth Book One 6

He   turned toward his bed and saw a cloud of bright white pin pricks swarming just above the pillow.

  “You waiting for me?” He yelled.

  “Shut up in there.”

   His eyes scanned the room desperate for a way out, then he spotted the moons’ white sliver hanging low in the sky through his window. He raced to it and dropped to his knees peered out and found Prissy(Priathamel) waiting there fifteen feet away. She looked like a little white owl, squatting in the dark. Her eyes swollen with concern and wet with tears. How could he see her so clearly. He wondered. It was then he realized she was glowing even brighter than his little lighthouse lamp.

   Frozen in place in front of the window, he saw the darkness fade and ever so slowly turn to blue and green. Prissy and the eye lights faded like the night. Faded, but not completely washed out of his memory, pushed down and boxed away, but never really gone…

 

Chapter 7

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   Like Priathamel. Chase soon realized his disembodied consciousness was tumbling through space and time toward her childhood. And like her, he was about to find a lost bit of himself deeply embedded in her past.

   When their long- forgotten union was shattered and they were blown from their true home world, a bit of each of them went with the other, tethering them, and as they were now discovering, slowly reuniting them.

   However, unlike Priathamel’s ghost -like presence on Earth, Chase soon found himself in an all too real body on Phastanar. Phastanar being the alien world into which she was born after her separation from Chase so long ago.

   A hazy gray star swelled against the black. It was coming right at him. Chase braced himself as much as a disembodied entity could. With shocking suddenness, the dull gray world filled his field of vision. He was streaking through the alien atmosphere like a meteor. A blur of blue and ashy white clouds streamed past him as he plummeted toward a place in his past he never knew existed.

   He felt like a fly stuck on the hood ornament of a car plowing through an endless wall of fog at break -neck speed.

   Surely ground of some sort had to be somewhere far below rushing up at him like a punch in the dark. However, he could no more fend it off any more than he could dodge it.

   His bodiless condition would be his only hope of survival. One cannot break bones; one does not have.

   But he knew there were worse things than broken bones and torn flesh. At least he could not fall forever could he?

    His answer, his landing pad, as it were, was crouching and patiently waiting on an out cropping of flat rock. It was looking out over a moon lit haze shrouded forest.

   Without warning, Chase finally broke free of the thick bank of clouds, masking Phastanar’s  primal face.

   Far above him and off to his right, hanging high and regal against a star -studded canopy of black, Phastanars twomoons shone bright through the ragged cloud quilt. Their milky

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  white glow frosted Phastanars’ hazy tree dotted valleys and craggy brush tufted hillsides with a haunting silver glow.

   It seemed nothing on Priathamel’s  ‘second home’ could escape the gauzy glow of its double moons , nothing but this little smudge of blackness squatting atop the massive rock formation jutting up at the sky like a clenched fist. The same black smudge Chase was streaking toward.

   Being black it absorbed light as easily as it was about to absorb Chase. He needed a body, but that body need not be human.

   Just as the dark form grew and became more defined, he saw what it was and tried in vain to veer off, but he was powerless to do anything but fall.

   His mind screamed just as the shaggy mound of matted black fur rushed up and engulfed him.

   Life, vibrant though not human, was his again.  He looked down and saw stone. He looked again and saw paws, his paws, where hands should be. He tried to think but words would not form in his mind. He was no longer a man. He was now a warrel, Phastanars’ version of a wolf.

    Sweet scents, night scents poured into him. He lifted his stubby snout and sniffed the air, cocked his head, sat back on his haunches and listened. Priathamel’s world saturated his new form like warm soothing water swelling a sponge. He could smell the dew dampened forest far below, taste the cool wet air, hear insects clicking and buzzing in the underbrush and feel fear sagging heavy in the air.

   Something was hiding on the hillside, somewhere down there, something trembling in the dark.

   Warm slimy saliva flooded his snout, so quickly it spilled over his lower lip, strung down in long silver lines of hunger. Instinct burned in his belly as the last embers of his humanity relented.

   He lowered his stocky muscled knotted body, hugging the ground, creeping down the rock face silently, determined to blindside his prey.

   The ball of fluffy fear quivered in the shadows, transmitting delicious vibrations and scents of fear through the night straight into the warrel’s cocked ears and flared nostrils. Words were now lost to Chase, overpowered by mindless urgings and thoughtless blood

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  lust. The hunt was everything, his universe. He would have the tiny beast. If it took all night he would run it down and rip it open, gnaw its insides, and paint his snout with its’ blood…

  Far below, huddled in the center of a briar bush, a tiny spindly legged cotton ball creature, called a mahrah shivered in a black spine fringed hollow. It knew something stalked the darkness that the night belonged to the predators. Every other creature was simply prey. The mahrah did not think these things. Like its’ fear, it was embedded, instinctive.

  Drawing its puppy- sized body into an even more compact ball it hunkered down waiting for its’ flight instinct to tell it to spring through the keyhole tunnel it had burrowed under the bush and scampered back to the flock it had wandered away from earlier that day.

  The warrel slinked down the hillside and was soon making a wide circle around the bush. The hiding mahrah’s scent was sweet and strong inside its’ nostrils. It yearned to devour its slimy entrails. Instinct told the warrel the mahrah would never flee its’ cover until it no longer sensed danger. Seasoned predator that it was, it obliged and meandered down the hillside until the wind shifted and blew its scent away from the bush.

  Down in the dark watching and waiting, the warrel settled its squat chunky body under a low hanging branch and let the cool night breeze sweep all traces of his passing far away from his unsuspecting meal.

  The little beast may well spend the entire night safely nestled in its’ prickly borrow. No matter its flesh and blood would taste just as sweet in the sunlight as in the moonlight.

  Hunting was waiting, still as a stone in a sling. When the time came he would shoot from the shadows knock the ball of fluff and flesh to the ground, snap its’ neck, rip open its hide and feed on its’ steaming entrails while its’ tiny dying heart lay thumping pointlessly in the dirt.  Such was the Hunt; such was the Hunter.

  Three hours passed before the tiny creature scurried up to the edge of the opening. It twitched its little pink nose peeked out, saw nor smelled any predator, reared its fist sized head from the burrow, jerked about scanning the entire area. Still, nothing. It relaxed, then flung itself into the night, driven by thirst, it scampered down the hill toward the gurgling creek far below, berries grew there too and sweet grass.  No need to hesitate. The way was clear.

  Halfway down the hill, it saw a bush, its’ branches sagging low with sweet fruit as the cheery gurgle of water tickled its pointy black ears. If mahrahs could smile, it would have been grinning ear to ear as it hustled off the strip the bush of its succulent juicy offering.

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   A shadow among shadows sprang to life, sliced across the ground like a manta ray sliding across the ocean floor and slammed into the tiny creature. It rolled, tumbled and somehow

  managed to regain its footing. It skittered away only to run right into the wily warrel, which had simply hopped in front of it like a playful dog chasing a ball.

  It dodged away by turning on its left hind foot. But as its right hind foot hit the ground it kicked against a loose rock which sent it tumbling down the hill. Suddenly its’ tiny feet were kicking air. The warrel slammed its paws down on either side of it. Slobber slung from its snout and dribbled all over the little creature like basting sauce. Some of it ran down its face sliding over its eyes, blinding it.

   The warrels’ massive right paw jerked up and over, pinning it to the ground, then lowered its snout, growled, bared its fangs. Its’ jaws sprang open poised to lunge at its’ helpless prey. However, when it stared down at the trembling fluffy white ball something shifted deep within. The beast tilted its’ head like a playful pup eyeballing a new toy and sat back on its haunches. However, the tiny creature was still pinned snuggly to the ground.

   A dull feeling of curiosity somehow managed to percolate up from the warrel’s dispassionate animalistic core, distracting it for a moment. The mahrah wriggled from its’ slightly loosened grip and tried to scratch away but the warrel’s free paw quickly slapped it back down.

   Fortunately for the mahrah, the slap was playful and light. It was yet to suffer any real harm. Still its’ thumb sized heart pounded frantically against the warrel’s mattress like pad.

   The persistent patting was like a child’s cotton ball fist knocking on a great oak door. Light as it was it still managed to reverberate up the beast’s foreleg, tremble up to its chest, where it resonated like a tuning fork against the warrel’s own pounding heart. 

   A cool damp breeze swept over them. It streamed through the warrel like clear spring water squeezed through a dirty sponge.

   When the breeze faded, the warrel ceased. The beast was no longer feral. Feelings, reasoning and knowing had somehow replaced the animal’s wild instincts, given it a name and resurrected within it a man named Chase Gillette.

   He lifted his snout, flared its’ nostrils and inhaled the night. With one paw still gently entrapping the wayward mahrah he set about sorting through all the scents his last inquiring inhalation had collected, until he smelled her.

 

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  Somewhere out there most likely sleeping in the dark, he would find her, lay his offering at her feet. The mahrah would make a wonderful present. It might prove better than words at getting her attention and winning her acceptance. He must have that. Even though he was

  not sure what she was now. She was here. That was all he knew or cared about. His love for her was all the identity he needed. 

  Her essence filled his heart like a warm summer breeze ballooning a sail. It gave him not only purpose and power, but direction. He could track her now. Her sweet scent perfumed the air like blossoming night flowers.

  There. He jerked his snout toward the dark wood covering the valley floor. Her scent was drifting up from there. With one quick jerk he rolled the mahrah over, bent down and caught it between his teeth by the nape of its’ neck. Like a faithful dog bringing the morning paper to its’ master, he traipsed down to the dark wood. The mahrah swinging from its’ mouth.

  High above the dark green moss cushioned forest floor, a tiny dandelion figure squatted atop the twisted bough of a massive ancient tree. The little puff of white was barely noticeable amid the rafter of branches that radiated from the towering tree trunk like the curved ribs of a giant umbrella.

  This was Priathamel’s home. She was the tiny dandelion figure.

  Far below an old warrel feigned lethargy, sluggishly meandered over a tangled web of lichen encrusted roots, amid the misty labyrinth of giant trees, known as the Creichi Wood. And like the younger warrel in search of prey, he too was in search of his next meal.

  Priathamel had only recently crawled from her mother’s birth pouch. The toddler still sported her white frizzy incubation down and squiggly powder puff hairdo. She looked like a two -legged cotton swab. She did not care how she looked. Her attention was focused on the old warrel prowling for food far below. It seemed to bear some special meaning for her. Soon enough she would learn at least in part what that meaning was…

   Her mother Phiylmorphet was of course intimately aware of the tragic circumstances that resulted in her conception. But then her conception was in no way typical of normal, accepted Creichee procreation.

   Even her name was odd. ‘Priathamel’ a strange name born of a strange dream, a dream that felt like a promise, a prophecy and a warning. Even stranger, it was a shared dream.

  The day after she dreamed of Priathamel, a young farmer named Gyle Hahs had walked into the wood, seemingly unaware of the grave threat, lurking high above his head. 

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  The Cry’chi Sisterhood waited there, feasted there. It seemed most men eventually succumbed to their preternatural beauty. Calling their ‘visits’ to the wood harmless curiosity. Or a test of their manhood by proving they could resist even the most beautiful of the siren like sisterhood.

  They all told themselves they only wanted to see one of the fabled creatures, then walk away. For any man who could escape the wood, was a man of singular virtue and self-control. Only a very few were truly strong and faithful to their wives and promised ones, but those men would not even look toward the wood. For they knew the Cry’chi walked there, hoping to be spied upon by the men of the valley.