Marisol and the Tauri

Chapter Three

I wandered the woods for days wondering where the hell I was. The map my father said was inside the book wasn't there. So I must have missed it  when all the papers fell out. A big storm was coming and I sighed, knowing that I needed the water but that I'd be chilled to the bone. Ugh. 

I miss home, even if i was suffocatingly opressed by aliens. At leasy I could be opressed with my father. 

I sat down against a tree and thought about my "home."

It was a town and it had all the things that the human books talked about. Post office, grocery store, town hall, rec center, etc. But the thing was that all humans were kept under very strict watch, even if not all of us knew it. My dad had once told me that there were cameras on every corner and motion sensor alarms were turned on as soon as the sun started to set. Knowing this, they probably knew that I was in the forest. But none of the Tauri ever set foot in the forest for some reason, lucky for me. 

Fortunately, I was sheltered and protected by my father's brilliant mind. Other humans were used as servants or as labor slaves. The aliens did this all the while keeping up a cheerful yet opressive disposition. 

What ever happened to concerts, ice cream, and waterparks? They all seemed like wonderful things, well at least the humans before the Elightenment thought so. I have never experiencced anything exciting up until now. I wasn't sure if I liked "exciting" yet. 

I sighed and got up again. I walked for 3 more days, eating random berries and collecting rain water, before I ran straight into an old man with brilliant white hair and clothing the same color. His name was Abiam. The old man was mostly silent as he showed me his strange green house made of moss and stones. This was the man my father had told me about. We talked and I soon figured out that my assumptions were correct. Strangely, inside his home there was green tile and moss growing all along the walls. I heard an eeiry drip drip driping sound that put me on edge.  In the middle of the room, there was a enormous pool filled with murky green water.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s the Tauri’s monsters. Pets that they brought with them but so foolishly let loose into my forest,” he answered.

“You caught them?”

“Yes. I keep them in the pool. The Tauri hired me to collect them and take care of them,” he replied.

I felt a creeping sense of unease spread through my body. This man was working for the evil creatures. I had to get out of there.

“Don’t worry. I have no allegiance to the aliens. It is a cover up so that we don’t get busted,” he explained. I relaxed as he explained what I had to do. I had to prove myself to the Altias, a secret human rebellion against the Tauri. The book was supposed to help the uprising but I couldn’t visit headquarters until I had passed all the tests. I thought that was incredibly stupid. The tests would take weeks! It didn't help that he wouldn't tell me how many test there were. 

        The first task, he explained, was to obtain a valuable glowing jewel he had dropped in the pool during feeding time. I stepped closer to the pool and saw tentacles, glowing eyes, and webbed feet.

"I don;t want to go in there!" I shouted in surprise.

"You have to," he stated and made a grand gesture toward the pool. 

"Whatever Abiam, just 'cause you're all cool and mystic, ugh,"  I grumbled under my breath. I took a HUGE breath and ran toward the pool. 

I jumped in and swam, trying not to think of all the ways that this could prove my stupidity. I swam deeper and deeper until I saw a glowing light which looked like the gem. I swam toward it desperately, telling myself that I was doing this for dad. I almost reached it but I couldn’t breathe so I swam up through the slimy tentacles for air. I did this multiple times until I found the gem again. I grabbed it and suddenly I felt myself being seized by all the tentacles in the pool. I struggled, my air supply diminished by the second. The corners of my vision went fuzzy and I gave one last kick towards the surface. The last thing I saw was a jaw full of crooked teeth swimming my way and then my body gave out.