Outcast (Camp NaNo 2015)

Chapter 1

I stared intently up at a ringed planet that was billions of miles away from me. It was hard to believe that it was once my home.... over five hundred years ago. The sky was blocked, covered in a haze of smoke and what humans liked to call "industrialization" or "progress." I preferred the term pollution. But they hadn't gotten there yet. The bad would come long before the good. That was something that I personally accepted as a near fact. But I knew that the ecosystem's deterioration and the "crazy weather patterns" that people kept talking about was a phase before the coin finally dropped and the humans finally realized that all their 'environmentally safe' crap was just a lie and a ruse. Unfortunately that day of realization would be a long time in the coming and I knew I'd be kept waiting for a while.

I was banished from my home for something I didn't purposely do. I didn't set out to kill a man! In Saturn's years, I was only five years old at the time. My father expected me to have full control over a power that no one else possessed--let alone knew how to control--at that young age.

I'm a mindwalker, a psychic freak. It's not my fault that some people aren't prepared and are weaker than others! But people seemed to think of it as just that--my fault.

Before I left, my father told me that I could come back in 18 of Saturn's years. 18 years didn't seem like a long time until I came to Earth and became used to the long 24 hour days and the short 365 days in a year. But that wasn't the worst part of this deal. Every year on Saturn is almost 30 years on Earth. Long days, short years and a seemingly eternal sentence. However, I think the hardest part was keeping myself on the move and unknown in the background. This was definitely a task that is easier said than done when it was taken into consideration that I only aged once for every 30 years here. Unfortunately I just had to land on a planet where that wasn't normal. A planet where it wasn't normal to go out in a sleeveless shirt in -40 weather. I might be able to adapt to most of Earth's weather conditions, but that didn't mean that my habits changed with that adaptation. On Saturn, -40 was like summer or maybe a warm autumn temperature.

I didn't let anyone know all this. I learned quickly that humans tended to form a bad opinion of me when I told them about Saturn. They usually thought I was crazy and headed for the nearest mental asylum.

That was why, for the past 500 plus years, I haven't been open about my past to anyone. But I longed to change that, to tell someone about the real me, but I wasn't sure if I could trust my only current friend.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed and I dug out the small communication device. It was amazing how phones had developed over time. I had been around since the 1900s, seeing the quick-paced trends that had developed and faded as technology and fashion advanced. From a box large enough to give me hand cramps when holding it up to my ear for long periods of time to flip phones that fit comfortably in my pocket, then changing to touch screens, air screens, microchips and finally something big enough to just fit in the palm of my hand, most literally. First people want smaller, then it's too small, then back to being too big. Nobody on this planet can make up their mind! But, then, I shouldn't exclude myself from this group of indecisives, though.

I clicked to answer the call and a hologram of Blair's head appeared at face level. Out of habit, I turned the call to Private, ensuring only I could see his holographic face.

"Hey," he greeted me, smiling. I matched his wide grin with one that stretched my face a little bit.

"Hey Blair. What's up?"

"Can you meet me in about ten minutes?"

"The usual spot?"

"You know it." he nodded.

"Yeah, sure."

"Thanks, Ty." he clicked off the call.

I started walking, taking my time in getting to the park, as it wasn't very far away. As I walked, however, I was almost certain that someone was following me even though when I turned around, I saw nothing but empty fields. The feeling still remained even when I saw Blair leaning against our meeting tree.

The moon shone brightly upon the metal tree which Blair stood under, it's bright leaves of silver rustling almost musically in the breeze, covering the quiet sounds of machines pumping out manufactured oxygen made from human-exhaled carbon dioxide.

I joined my friend under the tree, fingering carved initials that now withstood the tribulations of time They were my initials: T.F.

"Tytiana, my faerie queen." Blair smiled, kneeling down and kissing my hand. I gave my usual, much practiced, restrained grin and gestured for him to rise. It was all just an act, of course. I might be otherworldly, but I wasn't Shakespeare's famous faerie queen. But I had to admit, it was quite fun to do a play on my uncommon name.

"So, what's your big reason?" I asked, jumping right to the point, because I knew from experience that if I didn't, we would quickly get sidetracked and depart without discussing what we came here to talk about.

"Well, um, you know how you've said that people don't really consider you to be normal?" I nodded, curious and a bit frightened as to where this conversation was going. "well, I've heard rumors that thagovamanduzntthankyourither." It was all one jumbled up slur of gibberish words that sounded half like nothing and half like a drunk beyond belief guy talking about the fish he caught when he was half sober yesterday--okay, bad example, but point made.

"What are you talking about?" I exclaimed. Blair leaned in closer to me after taking a look around to see if there was anyone around--even though it was currently on the later half of the evening when it was nearing complete darkness just before the sun tried to peak out over the horizon. Then, out of nowhere, he pulled me into a hug and whispered in my ear so quietly that I had to strain to hear, even though he was so close that he could have licked my ear without sticking his tongue out more than half an inch.

"The government thinks you're different and so does the rest of society. And not different in a good way." he explained. I knew exactly what he meant, unfortunately. It was something that I had been living in fear of for the last five hundred years. Different meant alien, and alien meant dissection. And in almost all of the alien comes to Earth stories that I had heard of, the alien wasn't alive after getting its cuts taken out. This scared me more than Blair knew. What had I let slip out over the years? What did they know?

I had to run, but I had nowhere to run. Five hundred years of running for my freedom, for my life, and I was trapped. I was cornered. But this time I might have an ace up my sleeve. This time I had a little thing called a spaceship, paired with the end of my banishment.

Eighteen years until I could come home, Dad said. Well, lucky for me, I only had a handful of days until that eighteen year sentence was up. All I had to do was wait a couple of days--survive for a couple more days, but, much like blending in with a crowd of Earthlings, this was going to be hard. Very hard.