Banished To Earth Book One (9)

   The old warrel roared and flung itself at the mahrah as it tumbled high into the air. The moment it flew over Chases’ head, he leaped straight up, caught the beast by the neck, bit deep and hard into the old warrels’ soft tender throat, jerked down and ripped its windpipe out like a bloody root snatched from the ground.

   Blood squirted and sprayed, painting them red as Chase, quickly bit again, this time clamping his spine  between his  teeth just before they crashed to the ground. Then with shocking strength born more from love than rage, he flung its old carcass up and slammed it hard against a massive tree trunk. The crack and pop of its shattering bones reverberated through the forest like firecrackers on the fourth of July.

   Feeling no pulse in his lifeless enemy, Chase released his death grip raised his snout and slung it back and forth slinging blood high into the air, until his fur and whiskers were sticky red instead of wet and dripping. He then turned toward the mahrah and saw it was barely hanging to the vines by its left front foot.

   Priathamel witnessed the entire fight and furiously patted her tiny fists against her mothers’ arms until she finally released her child. Pink tears collected in the corners of Phyilmorphets’ eyes as she watched her little girl eagerly shimmy down the tree trunk and toddle off toward the dangling mahrah and the strange new warrel.

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   A big pink tear rolled down Phyilmorphets’ right cheek. Her odd little girl had found her true family. In that moment she realized her daughter would never be at home on Phastanar much less the Cry’chi wood. Yet beneath her tear dampened eyes a smile began to spread as she watched Priathamel climb up to free the mahrah, hop down with the tiny creature clutched snuggly against her little chest and hop from root to root toward the warrel.

    As the little alien moppet drew near the blood-stained beast, which sat patiently waiting. It peered at her with strangely human eyes, then snuggled against her as she reached out and gently stroked his bloodied snout. It was as though it knew her from some time before. What time that would be, Phyilmorphet could not guess.

   Clutching the mahrah tight to her chest with her left hand Priathamel slid her right hand up and gently combed her delicate fingers through the course black fur lying between the warrels up turned ears.

   Just as the warrel was about to lick her face with its’ blood -stained tongue and she was about to kiss his bloodied snout, a thick blue haze settled over everything.

   Suddenly Chase could see nothing. It was time to go….

    With slow relentless certainty his conscious humanity began to sift into the warrel, like sand pouring into the bottom of an hour-glass. As more of Chase the man filled the warrel the more the blue haze drifted away.

   When it finally completely dissipated, he found himself sitting on a cliff overlooking a barren dry lake- bed. Little Priathamel was nestled by his side. Far below and spreading out to a hazy green horizon line a shimmering array of several silvery shift portals gently undulated. 

   Chase carefully eased to the crumbling edge of the rocky precipice. Priathamel still clinging to him, tagged along side. Her sweet prescience reminded him that he was not merely a warrel and she not merely Cry’chi.

   They were about to share yet more painful memories.

   Sadness began to darken his heart as one of the shift portals began to spin free like an upended plate and rise to eye level. It hovered, for a moment tilting and rocking as it spun. Gripped by anticipation the strangely linked couple watched in stone statue silence as the portal flipped up like a coin, slapping the air end over end until it flung itself high in the sky, disappearing then slowly reappearing, as a tiny silver dot against the  blue. 

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   When it came down, it dropped with such breath -taking suddenness they had no time to blink much less duck out of the way. It swallowed them whole, then deposited them in a most unlikely place…

Chapter 8

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   The cliff was no more. Now they were comfortably seated in the cool darkness of a movie theater. Chases’ recent past, gigantically playing out before them on a massive I-Max  screen.

    At the end of a short white hall, Chase the man, twisted uncomfortably on the thin beige cushion of a flimsy black metal chair. Behind him and just to his right a brown wooden door hung half open.

   “No!” A woman shrieked from somewhere inside the room. “No bedpans,” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

   Chase cringed, “Oh Mom,” he stood up and turned toward the door. It swung away from his face and revealed a plump pretty young nurse, dressed in light blue scrubs. She rolled her eyes up at him, then glanced over her shoulder at his mother, laying face up. She was only half dressed, her back arched up on a hospital bed, at the back of the room.

   Just before the nurse looked back at Chase, his mother reached under her soiled bed gown, snatched out her dung filled bedpan and slung it at the nurse.  It wobbled like a UFO piloted by a drunk alien, sprayed its filthy payload across the ceiling, hit the floor, with a loud bang and slid to a stop just inches from the nurses spotless white running shoes.

   The nurse, her face beet red, put her hands on her hips yelled out the open door. “Gotta mess in Mables’ room. Need a basin of, make that, cold water, wash rag and soap for her. And something to get the crap off the ceiling!”

   “Crap off the ceiling?!” Someone yelled back.

  “You heard me!” She looked up at Chase. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Her tone was suddenly soft as silk.

   “No, I’m sorry she’s giving you such a hard time.” He shrugged helplessly.

   “How did such a sweet guy come from such…oops, speaking out of turn. But you visit her two or three times a week. How can you stand it. She never has a kind word for you. But you keep coming back!”

   “She’s my Mother,” he said without skipping a beat. “Since her brother died, she’s all I got.”

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  “Well Chase, I’m going to come right out and say it. You deserve better and she deserves worse, a lot worse! You must really love her.  Sure, hope someone loves me like that one day.”

  “I’m sure someone already does Bonnie.”

  She smiled at him sweetly, searching his face for some sign of attraction, already knowing she would not find it. “I really don’t think so,” she murmured almost inaudibly, as she