Star Child

Five - Impasse

After being released, Ashaki immediately shot to her feet. She watched her keeper leave and immediately wanted to take after him so she could make due on her threat to kill him, or at least, attempt to.

However, she stopped her pursuit. The alien was massive. He was wide and tall. It would be like trying to fight a linebacker. His skin was tough like armor. Realistically she couldn't kill him. She doubted she could even injure him!

She sighed in preemptive defeat. He had also freed her. It wouldn't make sense to attack him now...despite how upset she was over the demise of Star Chaser. It surprised her that he decided to be nice and free her. It was contrary to what he thought he would do. Seeing him untie her and casually leave...was interesting.

What was the purpose of her capture? Why did he release her? As she toed off her trainers, these questions weighed on her mind. She changed her shirt to a clean one she had tucked in the bottom of her backpack.

A shower was preferable to a change of clothes but she would have to make do without one a little longer. Sweat, dirt, and leaves clung to her skin still and she wished she had packed some shower wipes for her hike earlier. She'd be able to use them to remove the ick covering her after her failed escape.

The floor was slick beneath her pink and purple mismatched socks, and slightly warm, which was strange. When her feet touched the big fur pelt rug, she knelt to run her hand through the thick follicles. It was exactly how she imagined—the longer course hairs stood out from the shorter soft ones. She wondered what kind of beast it belonged to. It also looked alien.

She withdrew her hand and refocused on finding the exit door. It had disappeared when the alien left, but she knew its general location. She kept along the far side to avoid the weird wall of swords and jumped a few feet in the air when the door slid open before her.

There had to be some kind of proximity sensor she couldn't see. It wasn't the first time she had seen a door that slide open but this one was the first time she had seen one so seamlessly blended into the wall. Seeing it just appear like that played tricks on her animal brain. Thankfully she spent the majority of her time in space where she was surrounded by high tech society, and was able to recognize it as alien tech.

Poking her head into the hall, she saw a dim corridor that went right following a seamless black wall. The big green alien was nowhere to be seen so she bravely entered the hallway. The floor was a dull black that was also warm like the room. She followed the path until she walked into a large open area where the lights were slightly brighter. She couldn't find the source of the lighting but what she did find was the cockpit and inside was the alien seated in the pilot's seat. Her heart leapt into her throat, but he didn't seem to notice her. She crept closer.

His clawed hands tapped away at the control panel, strange looking star maps and diagrams were displayed on the view-screen. It seemed that he was plotting a course for an object...maybe a ship? Deciphering it was hard since she couldn't read the fast flowing foreign script scrolling down the right-hand side of the screen.

To her, as she watched the heavy flow of information fill the screen, it was sensory overload. There was so much to see that it was hard to take in what was being presented. She wondered how he could stand it.

Looking past the information overload, she saw nothing but stars. A nebula in the far distance gave off a low purple glow. Typically space was just emptiness but it was nice to see beauty in all of that darkness.

Ashaki straightened her wayward hair and took in the rest of the room. Straight across was another short hallway that ended in a dead-end and to the right there seemed to be the entrance in its large upside down U shape. There wasn't a stray box or item to be found in the open space of the room, all of the usual things that had cluttered her own ship were not present on the alien ship or at least, not visible. She couldn't see any breaks in the smooth dark gray walls that suggested hidden compartments where one could store things, but like the door that doesn't mean they weren't there.