Everglow: Friend From Far Away

15 - Pain Of The Past

"So, if you were forced to work there, how did you get out?" Fischer inquired.

"Honestly I-I don't really k-know. It was just a normal day there, but whatever chemicals w-were being mixed must have been mixed wrong. There were a l-lot of highly reactive chemicals there, someone must have made a m-mistake. There was an explosion right next to where I was working. It blew shrapnel everywhere and. . . killed a lot of people as well," she choked, trying to force the words out of her mouth. It wasn't easy, but she tried her best to push through the pain of her past.

"Shit. I'm guessing that's how this happened?" he questioned, pointing a finger at the bandage on her leg.

She nodded at him, all the while sniffling and gulping. "A piece of rock hit me in the leg and, well, did that. But I didn't even notice at the time. The guards came rushing in, but by the time they got there, several of us had already run through the hole in the wall. After that, I wandered the ice plains for about two days before getting here."

Fischer tilted his head in confusion, how she actually got here was still grasping at him. He hadn't forgotten the strange blue glow that he'd spied on the highway, the one which seemed to drain him of his senses and brought him to Ko. Maybe that teleportation theory wasn't so crazy after all.

"Wait, so how did you actually get here? Like, arrive on Earth?"

Ko thought for a second before giving him an answer, like she herself was unsure of what happened. "I. . . I don't. . .I don't really know. I remember being back on my planet and seeing this strange. . . ring. . . it was glowing and it. . . it was like it-"

"Like it was pulling you towards it?" Fischer finished, cutting her off. He realized that whatever that glowing thing was, was how she got here.

Ko looked up at him with confusion in her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Looking back at the ground, she thought about what he'd just said for a few seconds.

"Y-yea. . . yea it did. It was like I could only focus on it. How. . . how did you know?" she asked, puzzled at his knowing of the anomaly.

"Because I felt the same thing. Right before I was about to drive off, I saw it. At first I thought nothing of it, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to leave. When I got out to investigate it, I felt. . . like I was completely empty. Like you said, I could only focus on it. The traffic behind me and everything, it all became white noise. Blurry and distant. When I got closer to it, that sensation just. . . disappeared, then I found you," he explained, shaking his head slightly.

It didn't make any sense at all, what was this thing? Clearly it was how Ko managed to travel between worlds. Was it some sort of wormhole? A tear between space? It seemed likely. Then another thing struck him.

"Did you know of these. . . ring anomalies. . . back where you came from?"

"I already told you, I don't even know the name of my species, let alone where some strange space ring came from," she remarked, a tone of sarcasm in her soft voice.

Fischer rolled his eyes slightly at her comment. "Yea I guess that makes sense, dumb question, sorry. But what I don't understand is if this is some sort of space wormhole thingy, how my race hasn't detected these before. Or how they didn't detect this one. I was the only one who was there, no-one else seemed to even bat an eye."

"Maybe they just didn't know it would be there?"

Fischer shook his head quickly, remembering something else about the anomaly. "No no and I remember now, there was like a big storm around the area. I didn't notice it at first but look now, the skies are cleared, not a cloud in the sky. Surely that would peak the interest of some weather guys. Things like that don't just happen here. I've been alive twenty two years and not once have I ever seen a storm that just comes and goes like that. Come to think of it, I've never even heard of those wormhole things either, not even rumors or theories. It's like. . . like they never even happened. And us humans are pretty darn good at coming up with theories and outlandish rumors. None of this makes any sense at all," he vacillated, moving his tongue around inside his mouth in frustration.