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Chapter 3 - The Message and the Encounter

I ended up not going out into the woods since as soon as I got inside, more ships landed in the woods, and I heard a lot of commotion coming from out there. Also, an extremely large ship had appeared in the sky and started making beeping noises. There were other ships, which beeped back to the big one. Sometimes, their lights would flash different colors as well. It was beautiful, and strange, and despite my beliefs that the aliens were probably friendly at best, and neutral at worst, I still didn't want to interfere with... whatever was going on over there, so I didn't. Instead, I stayed inside occasionally going over to the windows to look at the strange spacecraft lifting up and touching down from deep within the woods.

"So," Mr. Mesji began as he sat down next to me on the couch that faced out to the woods, handing me a mug of tea, "I heard that you met Emersyn today at the bakery?"

I laughed and kicked at the chair a little, my face flushing. There was a pause before I replied,

"Yeah, I did. She gave me a cake in a box, and I've been too scared to open up the box, because I'm afraid of what might be in there."

Mr. Mesji looked thoughtful, and stared off into the distance before calmly saying,

"I don't think Emersyn has a habit of putting wasps into boxes and telling you that there's cake in there, you should be safe to open it."

"The usage of 'I don't think Emersyn has a habit of putting wasps into boxes' instead of 'I know that Emersyn doesn't put wasps into boxes' is kind of concerning," I said, standing up to go get the box, "So I'm going to get that box and open it up in here, and if there are wasps, then that's a problem for the both of us."

Mr. Mesji laughed, obviously unbothered by my threat. When I returned, he leaned forward expectantly, and looked at the small box. I laughed, and slowly opened the top of the box towards him, leaning away as if it was, as a matter of fact, filled with bees. As I did, however, his face lit up, and he softly said,

"Stella, this might actually be something you like."

I paused, then turned the box towards me, curious to see what was inside. Thankfully, it was a cake, delicately frosted in rainbow colors, with a phone number iced on the top. There was a small heart on the bottom, and I blushed, then said,

"I wonder what flavor the cake is." 

"Text the number," Mr. Mesji said, "I'm sure that she didn't include the number as just a decoration."

I looked back down at the number. It started with 603, so it was obviously from New Hampshire, which was where we were, and in that case, it was probably real. I sighed, then held up my hand.

"Hold up," I said, running off to grab my phone. I sprinted up the stairs, snatched my phone from off the bed, and then ran back downstairs and looked at the cake. My hands shaking, I started a new message, and typed in the numbers written on it. As I did, I asked,

"Mr. Mesji, you're good with words, what's something that I should write to her?"

At that point, I had already typed out 'hey', but had reached something of a stopping point, as I didn't know where to go beyond just that.

"Tell her that you appreciated the cake," he slowly began, "And that you especially appreciated the number, so that you were able to thank her for the cake. Finish it off by saying that you haven't tried it yet, and that you were wondering what flavor the cake was, although perhaps add in that you'd love it no matter the flavor, just you were kind of curious."

I went to start typing that out, but my finger twitched, and I accidentally slammed it down on the send button, watching in horror as my message, which read: 'hey, i a' went out into the world. My face paled as the message, fully sent, was read only a few seconds later, and the bubble that indicated that the person, who I was hoping was Emersyn, was typing up a response.