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Chapter 4 - The Author and the Aliens

When I got back to the house, all of the lights were off, except for the one in the living room. As I walked in, stomping off my boots, Caz sleepily greeted me. He was surrounded by half-opened notebooks and papers, all of them covered in writing. 

"Hey Stella," he yawned, letting the notebook that he had been working in fall, "Why were you out so late? Are you alright?"

I gave him a thumbs-up, and casually held up the cake and the drink that Skai had given me. 

"Want some alien snacks?" I asked, then, in response to the confused look on Caz's face, added, "It's a long and interesting story."

Caz sat up, and cleared off some of the notebooks surrounding him, giving me a space to sit. He ran off to grab some glasses while I sat down, grateful for the heat from the space heater sitting near the couch. Running back into the room, Caz gracefully leapt over the couch, and casually asked,

"So, what happened?"

"Long story short," I began, pouring the drink into one of the cups, "I found the new spaceship, very big, roughly... thirty-five, forty feet, I'd say? And there were footprints around the ship."

Caz took a long sip of the drink, which was a light purple color, and tasted somewhat like a combination of pineapple and bubblegum. Then, giving me a somewhat concerned look, he said,

"Please tell me you didn't follow the alien footprints."

"I followed the alien footprints."

Caz sighed, looking up at the ceiling, before looking in his glass and muttering,

"This better have alcohol in it."

He chugged the rest of his drink, then slammed it down and picked up part of the cake. Taking a bite out of it, he asked,

"Okay, so then what happened?"

"I... found a twenty-foot tall bug alien," I replied, laughing a little, "I screamed, they screamed and fell into some trees, I passed out, much to their dismay, as they said 'fuck' as I fainted. I woke up in their bed, they apologized, introduced themselves as Skai, and then sent me on my way with what I guess must have been a small crumb of bread or cake or whatever this is for them, but for me is like, a whole loaf. Whatever it is, it's good, but anyways, that's my very condensed story. Only other thing I have to add is that Skai's voice was... so strange. It was like... three or four people, of no definitive gender, speaking all at once, and it echoed in my head. I think it was telepathy, but I'm not one hundred percent sure."

"You said Skai was a giant bug alien?" Caz asked, and, after seeing me nod in response, he continued, "Well, that right there's your answer. Some insects can communicate as some kind of a hive mind, right?"

I nodded, and Caz nodded. We both nodded at the same time, before we started laughing. As we calmed down, I casually picked up one of the notebooks that Caz had been writing in, which was filled with some kind of circular symbols, that vaguely resembled something either magical, or crop circles. 

"Are these sigils or crop circle designs?" I asked, turning the notebook towards him. Caz gave me a confused look, and I explained,

"Like, are they symbols for magical purposes, or are they messages carved into our crops by aliens?"

"Oh, I guess they're closer to the second one," he replied, "It's part of an alien language for a story I'm writing. I... have the whole language written down in these notebooks."

With that, he picked up another notebook, and quickly turned the pages. Those, too, were covered in the alien language, and I raised my eyebrows.

"Hey Tolkien," I laughed, "Can you teach me this?"