“Sisters, what is this?”

“I do not know.”

“Like all else, sister; irrelevant. Proceed with preparations.”

Soon after the sensation of falling started, I closed my eyes. This was all a dream, right? I’d woken up from dreams like these before… so this must’ve been the same. Right? Right?

It wasn’t a dream. I knew it wasn’t; I knew it full-well, yet I couldn’t help but desperately try to convince myself it was. I couldn’t live like… this. I couldn’t live with the sole purpose of being an exploration probe for the damned elitists up above.

It took me a good minute or two before I finally came to terms with the fact I wasn’t dreaming. Two minutes, and crashing down on the Lands, back first.

“Connection error. Subject not found.”

“Sir… does thi– crrr… mean what I think – crrr…?”

“I’m… I – crrr… –inian.”

“No… N– crrr…”

“Verdinian, what a–…”

“Unable to re-establish connection. Long distance communication unit damaged.”

That’s the last thing I heard from James. A message overrun by radio static, ultimately ending in an electric voice telling me my transmitter was broken… Well, at least it was just my transmitter that broke. It could’ve ended way worse… like my shell cracking open like a fine egg in the morning. Actually, maybe that would’ve been better; then I at least didn’t have to be forced into this horrendous contraption.

I was alone now. Truly alone, lost in a world of which nobody knew anything. And I could’ve cried right there, lying on my back in the middle of some open field, with a small stream of water running next to me. I wanted to; to vent my emotions, to lessen my anger, but I couldn’t. The single most humane feature the Subject could have, was the ability to show some sign of emotion. Facial features, some venting system… anything.

But that’s the one thing it lacked. Probably replaced by some unnatural, broken contraption like the portable black hole or the magnetic field manipulators (the latter of which slowly began to start up; a quiet buzzing sound got louder over time).

I screamed and tore grass out the ground, closed my eyes (or camera system) and started to throw punches into the dirt, but I couldn’t shed a single tear, which only fueled my frustration even more.

It felt like I didn’t feel anything, but I did…

Like I wasn’t allowed to feel anything. Like I was forced to be an apathetic piece of trash like all other elitist Khaei.

“Why can’t I just cry? For the Gods’ sake!”

How long was I there for? Fifteen minutes? Was it forty?

I didn’t know. It was much longer than I normally would go in an enrage mode, or that’s what it felt like at least.

By the time I calmed down, my magnetic field manipulators had warmed up completely and were already buzzing softly in the background, causing me to hover upright above the ground. My two arms were floating loosely next to the main part of my shell, my head right above it, in the same manner as I saw on the holograph.

I shook my head and took in my surroundings. I’d crashed down in a small open field, surrounded by trees the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. A couple of feet next to me, a small river was running through some rocks that lay low to the ground.

Oddly, the clearing seemed empty of life. I took a moment to look around me, but nowhere did I see any big or small creature; no fur between bushes, no feathers inside trees… I would’ve thought my fit of frustration would’ve attracted at least something, but it seemed like it had rather scared everything away. Or well… almost everything.

After my third time scanning through the clearing, I finally noticed a very small orb of wispy energy slowly floating my way. It had a purple color, but there was a stronger hue of blue noticeable in the center.

“H… hello?” I asked it, even though I didn’t even know if it’d be able to understand me.

Whether it understood me or not, it definitely noticed I was speaking to it; as soon as I said that, the blue color took over the purple one and it started floating away again at an increasing pace. Dim red flashes were coming from its center.

“No, hold on! Please…”

It stopped, still shining bright blue.

“Please, I don’t mean you any harm. Honestly.”

It turned purple again, but kept hovering on the spot, and so did I.

“Hey…” I tried carefully, “my name is Kate… I’m not from the Lands.”

Some glassy sounds escaped her, something that almost sounded like a gentle stream of water flowing down a mountainside. It blinked a bright red color, to which the air around it started to feel warmer.

“Look, I don’t know why you’re afraid. But we’re both wandering the Lands alone, correct?”

A green blink; underneath it a small sprout of some flower started to grow. It slowly started making its way towards me again.

“We could make a deal…”

It slowly started glowing yellow, accompanied with a soothing breeze getting stronger against my shell. The closer it got, the more it dawned on me how small this Wisp actually was. It didn’t look like it was in any state of defending itself against whatever predators roam the Lands. Then again, neither was I, probably.

“If you can guide me around on the Lands, I’ll protect you from whatever you’re fleeing from.”

It started picking up speed now, and it seemed as if the Wisp would just crash straight into my shell to push me back or something. Rather than doing that, however, it flew past me and started orbiting me like a moon around a planet, but at a way more alarming speed.

Throughout its orbiting, it kept glowing its yellow tint, and the longer it kept going, the stronger I felt wind blowing against me from all sides. It was so strong even, I had massive difficulty trying to move away from my current spot. It definitely felt like it was trying to attack me or something.

“I… I promise…?” my voice tripped over my words in a failed attempt to hide my desperation. But it kept getting closer and closer to me.
At the point it almost touched my shell, a strong gust of wind pushed on my shell from underneath me, causing me to be flung into the air at a quicker speed than I was expecting. Although the wisp had stopped orbiting me, I was spinning around in the air due to the winds from before, with this creature now loosely following me in my way up.

By the time I reached the peak of my trajectory, I’d stopped spinning entirely and I was left with an extreme feeling of disorientation and nausea. (Why the Khaei gave the Subject a sense of nausea is beyond me.)

I shook my head quickly and noticed there was a small lake up ahead in the field, before starting to fall down again with this wisp still floating beside me with an increasingly yellow color.

Before I crashed down on the ground, another gust of wind slowed my descend to a more acceptable falling speed; a speed slow enough to give my magnetic field manipulators time to adjust to the surface of the Lands so I didn’t fall down on my face (or where my face should be) again.

“Dear Gods…” I looked over to the wisp thingy floating close to my right arm. Its yellow gained quick flashes of a color edging more towards white, accompanied by rhythmic, high-pitched sounds that were equally glassy to the ones it made before. Almost as if it was… giggling…?

I was baffled… but I still found myself softly laughing at what just happened. Its attack wasn’t an attack, it was a… dance of sorts. It must’ve been very excited to have found someone.

“I like your style…”

The pulsing of the yellow slowed down as it gradually turned to a soft, warming red. Kind of cute, actually.

“So…” I stopped my chuckling, “Do we have an agreement?”

The wisp blinked a green with a slight hue of yellow surrounding it. Another sprout seemed to grow from between the grass underneath her, this one more quickly than the last.

The wisp flew closer to me, and started playfully prancing around in a vibrant yellow.

“Haha, I can already tell this is going to be good…” I said more to myself than to it.

“Actually, I don’t know your name yet, do I?”

It turned to an empty gray when I asked that question, followed by a single pulse of faint red. I should’ve figured it’d have difficulty expressing its name, especially with only a few colors to talk through. I decided to push through, however.

“Do you have a name…?”

The answer to that caught me by surprise; the color blinked to a red. Yes, the wisp was small, but surely it’d been wandering around long enough to have a name at least?

“You don’t, huh… How about I give you one?”

An almost instant yellow color emerged from her, followed by quick green flashes. It was quite adorable, to be honest.

“So… are you male or female?” I tried asking carefully.

It returned gray… which was just amazing. Communication is a lot harder when you can only ask yes-or-no questions…

“Let me rephrase that, and don’t take this the wrong way, please. Are you a female wisp?”

The gray color made place for a blink of yellow, followed by a fast pulsing of green.

That’s all I needed to know. I went through a list of names through my head, considering what might sound good for her.

I chuckled when I thought of “Katherine”; Kat and Kate. Sounded like one of those ancient double comedy acts Grandma used to talk about…

I decided on a better name for her though.

“Hmm… What do you think about… ‘Val’? Shorthand for ‘Valentina’?”

She started flickering green firmly, while her outside was shining an extremely vivid yellow. If there was one name she really liked, it definitely was “Valentina”. I laughed at her excitement.

“‘Val’ it is!”

She bobbed around me for a little longer in a shining bright yellow, before slowing down in front of me. We stared at one another for about a minute in silence; I smiled invisibly at her. I only met her about ten minutes ago and she’d already almost made forget about being the Subject… almost…

“So, Valentina. What do you say we set off?” I realized time didn’t stop running for us. It’d get dark soon.

She briefly shook around in place, as if she was shaking a daydream away from her mind. A green, but still yellowy, flash followed.

“Great!” My excitement echoed quietly through the field. “Would you be so kind to guide the way to the nearest civilization, partner?”

She jolted upwards far faster than I was expecting, and rushed towards the north-east.

“Wait… Val! Not so quick!” I yelled behind her, following her as quick as my Magnetic Field Manipulators allowed me.

We were setting off towards a forest, with just above the trees something that seemed to be the white top of a mountain, far in the distance.