The Joining: The Cycle of the Shards Book One

23: Critock and Shanna

     To any average onlooker that would have happened upon them, unlikely as that would have been due to the seclusion of the hill rising above the small field with patches of trees, the pair appeared to be an average couple of teenagers, staring up into the sky on a romantic evening and watching the stars and constellations that appeared in the newly night sky. Of course, the circumstances were quite different for the two of them, as they sat awkwardly next to each other.

Critock sighed as he scanned the night. Tomkari, as expected, was vehemently against spending precious time with Shanna at all, let alone having an in depth conversation about exactly what was going on and who they really were. But he relented as Critock had explained, in hushed but direct tones, that a teenage girl who was going to be at the same place as the rest of them tomorrow and was needed for the latest iteration of the plan was understandably very disturbed and confused about what she had just witnessed. The only way that this was going to work was to make sure that she was going to stay on their side, and there was no better way to accomplish that than with a nice quiet conversation. Communication could break down any barrier, even in a glorified First Contact situation. He shook his head. If the governments of Earth could see them now, the designated representative being a teenage girl, the only one now that could help save their planet and planets beyond. Ridiculous.

If Kyle had anything to say about him hanging out with Shanna, he wasn't making it known. After the insanity of the flight, and subsequent narrowly evaded destruction, Kyle had gone very silent, almost as if he was in shock. If he hadn't been so focused on the task at hand, he would have worried about the boy's consciousness. Right now, though, making sure the girl wasn't going to run away screaming was the top priority.

Shanna, for her part, had lost count of the number of questions that she had for Kyle...Critock...Whoever. Who was he? Where did he come from? What was going to happen to Earth now that he had arrived? What was going to happen to Kyle? Realizing that she was probably the first person on Earth to ever have the chance to ask an alien whatever she wanted left her tongue-tied, which was compounded by the fact that the alien was in the form of someone she liked. For the first time she was alone with him on the hill where they were guaranteed that no one would bother them, and she was completely unable to take advantage of the situation. So she sighed and tempered down the feelings from her body that steadfastly refused to acknowledge that this wasn't Kyle at all. She looked up at the stars along with her alien friend, and as she moved her head up she caught his eyes in the corner of her sight. She could just barely see the tint of color that differentiated yesterday from today in his pupils, and by the look in his eyes she realized exactly what he was looking for, and knew the perfect question to ask.

"Which one is yours?"

Critock was startled from his stargazing at the sudden voice. "Hm?"

"Your home. Up there. Which star is yours?"

"Oh." He chuckled. "None of them, actually. Marconia is too far away to see with the naked eye from Earth. Hell, I doubt you could see it with most of your telescopes." He was silent with thought for a moment, then pointed eastward, at a black portion of the sky. "But, it's in that general direction. Roughly, give or take a few trillion miles."

Her eyes squinted. "How did you get from trillions of miles away to here? Mr. Phelps said that warp drive was a myth."

"And he'd be right, I suppose, I don't know what warp drive is, but there's no way to get a ship moving that fast. At least no one's ever found one. Marconians have been around longer than any other race in the Universe that we've found, and we've never seen anything better than what we've got."