Haunted by the mystery of a strange accident, the life of Asteria, a young writer, suddenly takes a turn when aliens arrive on Earth and she is among the group selected to participate in the first contact, and the first interplanetary peace treaty...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Despite the questions from that first interview, Diana had assured us that everything had gone well, so immediately after returning to the base, preparations for the next interview followed, which would be the first of our tour abroad.
After getting off the plane, they took some of us to the Roman Building, the one of Clothing and Characterization, where they made sure to check that everything was fine with the outfits for our next public appearance.
Fortunately that lasted less than an hour, and when I finally returned to house number 2, I entered calmly, and after taking off my sneakers at the entrance, I went up to the second floor.
My footsteps were barely audible, so when I reached the open threshold of the room, the sight I encountered was not surprising.
In the middle of the sun-lit room, Jasper stood staring at something outside the window. After that he went to the side of the mirror, still without noticing my presence, and took off the sports shirt he was wearing. He looked at himself for a few moments in the reflection, and then sat on his bed, still looking out the window. He seemed down.
It was then that as I looked at his back... I felt a small squeeze of pity.
Back on the beach, with the wet shirt on his body, I hadn't noticed the marks that the past had left on Jasper.
His skin had a large scar that crossed diagonally from his right shoulder to the middle of his back, at the level of his spine. It was a large line of thin skin and a few shades lighter than the rest of the fabric, yet it did not cross any of the 13 marks.
It could have been anything that caused that, from a brutal fall to an animal attack. But I wasn't going to ask him, he already seemed to not be in the mood, and I wasn't going to force him to tell me the details of something that, just because of that scar, I already imagined was terrible.
Even without him realizing I was there, I backed away quietly, but the floorboards, no matter how new they were, creaked, giving me away.
Quickly, Jasper turned around and in a defensive position, and pointed a circelian dagger at me. For moments, his normally affable gaze became a mask of concentration, the expression of an animal determined to repel an ambush.
– Damn, Asteria. – Jasper lowered his guard just a little, seeing that he was me and, after throwing the dagger towards the bed, he asked somewhat annoyed: – What are you doing here?
– I live here, and the wardrobe adjustment took less than I thought, – I said, hiding the shock, and pretending that I didn't give much importance to the fact that he had pointed a knife at me.
It was then that my treacherous sight took in his naked torso and the way his light skin with some moles enveloped the strong muscles beneath it. The instinctive humanity in me refused to stop looking, but I did and this time my sight locked with Jasper's.
