Oriehn

Chapter 44- Taliesin

Chapter 44- Taliesin

I woke up to darkness surrounding me. Not recognizing the location, I sat up quickly, my abdominal muscles protesting loudly, and banged my head against something. "Ouch." I muttered and slowly slid off of what I recognized now as a bed. Tripping over something, I crashed onto the ground. "Ouch!"

"Stop making so much noise. Some of us are trying to sleep, you know, and not waking up randomly at two in the morning!" A girl's voice shouted, and I recognized it from yesterday. Robin, I remembered, and I turned to the direction the voice had come from.

"Where am I?" I asked.

"Oh. Right," Robin laughed. "You are in our small shack of our house. It was abandoned in the woods and we came across it. Since then, it has been our refuge."

I nodded. "But what am I doing here?"

"Well, after you passed out, we brought you here and tried to get the glass and shrapnel out of your arm," I could see her sitting on her bed in the darkness. "We don't have much medical equipment, but we did do all we could. Thankfully, most of that didn't get that far in, so most of it came out."

"Most?" I inquired. My hands shook as I gingerly touched my wound. Hissing in pain, I retracted it quickly and furrowed my brows. "Should I even be standing up right now?"

"No!" Robin laughed awkwardly. "There are a few pieces that are lodged in there pretty deeply. We could not get that out, so you will just have to bear and grin with that until we can get you proper medical care. We have a doctor, but he is away for the week. Once he is back, we can get him to treat you," She said, sitting next to me.

I nodded at her. "I remember you saying something before I fainted. What was it?"

She hesitated, stretching the silence threadbare, "'You are one of them,'" She repeated.

"Is that a bad thing?" I asked, recoiling away from her. I inconspicuously moved my leg into a better position for fighting and running. She laughed and shook her head.

"No, Taliesin, it's not. In fact, it's quite the opposite," I saw Robin grinning at me. "We support the Oriehn occupation of Earth."

I gasped lightly, then scowled. This could just be a well laid out plan to get me to trust them and confide in them, but at the end they would destroy us. "Those do not exist amongst your species." I emitted a low growl, and Robin looked startled, then laughed weakly.

"You don't believe us, do you? You don't trust us, either."

I nodded, stretching my arms, and she looked sad. "I— I have just..." I tried to explain.

"You do not need to explain." She said, turning away from me. "I know exactly how it feels, being left out, being betrayed. It has happened to me, and to all of us," Robin paused. "And if you don't trust us, that's okay. We'll help you anyways."

"Yeah," Another voice chimed in. "If you don't trust us, I have a friend that is an Oriehn stranded here. He has gotten quite old, though, but I can always bring you to him."

"That would be great," I say, and Robin placed her hand down onto mine. She flushed pink, a smile lightening her face. I wrenched my hand away from underneath hers. Robin sighed and looked away from me. "I-I am sorry," I muttered. "That was just an instinctive reflex. We Oriehns do not touch one another very much." Except Alice, my mind added.

Robin nodded weakly, but I could tell that she was still hurt. She abruptly stood up, brushing a lock of dark hair behind her ear. "I will leave you alone now. Get some rest," then she turned on her heel and stormed away.

"You should not have done that." A voice cut in. "She likes you, you know. Especially over the past few days...she liked how you talked in your sleep—we all really got to know you." He flashed me a crooked grin. "And I do not mean in that way."

"Oh." I blinked. "Wait, what do you mean by 'few days'? And since when did I talk in my sleep?" I asked, feeling mortified.

He laughed. "You were delirious for a few days, you know. Within your delirium, you started mumbling and I guess we all just liked your character. You seem like an honorable person."

I shifted uncomfortably on my bed. "What exactly did I say?"

"You said a lot about what had happened to you in the past few weeks. Something about a blown up lunar station, and the last born female?" He laughed. "It didn't really make that much sense, but we did hear your thoughts."

"Tell me more about you all. Like your motives, and what you plan to do to help," I said quickly, diverting his attention away from my ramblings.

"Oh. Well, we caught wind of what the scientists were doing to the Oriehns, since it was broadcasted on television. This was just their plans, as well as their boasting about indestructible machines or something," He scratched his head.

I agreed. "Yeah, that is it. What motivated you to join together and help us? As far as I know, should you not be on the opposing team? What made you change your mind?"

"We were a group of friends that stuck together, you know? And one day before all of this drama, we met an Oriehn. He was wandering around with a broken leg, and then he bumped into us in the forest. We took him in, and he quickly became our friend."

"What was his name?" I inquired, leaning forward.

He sighed. "He never told us, insisting for us to call him A. I'm guessing that was the first initial of his name or something, but I am not sure. Anyways, he told us all about what we humans were doing and planning, but we did not agree with our kind."

"You see," he hesitated, "We want to be immortal too."