“Are you ready to go home tomorrow morning?

“Yes,” Evelyn groaned, “I need a shower. Preferably with one that doesn’t include river water.”

“The goal is to leave by 11 am. So in order to do that we need to begin grabbing-” My mom’s hand dropped onto dad’s shoulder.

“Hun. We got time, why don’t we talk about that later.”

I was snagged on one of the words. Home. The intonation, tone and letters integrated themselves into the still echoing spoken words from the thing in the woods. Home was a complicated thing. Undecipherable, undefinable. Was it Bedlam? Was it the the other place, the one beyond the stars?”

I stood abruptly, not even completely sure of what I was going to do. “I’m going on a walk.”

My feet carried me more than my psyche did. I just put one foot in front of the other and let myself drift further and further past the green leaves. I find myself in the small meadow like the one where I first saw it.

The ends of several flowers were picked off, leaving behind the green stems. From where I stood, I could see the clear skies above me. The sun rays cast down bright sunlight in contrast to the dark shadows of the surrounding trees.

Scanning the area I found nothing, but still I shouted and ignored the slight crack in my voice. “I’m not here to fight! I want to talk, please!”

Nothing responds to my call so I kneel into the dewy grass below.

“I’m sorry.”

Still nothing.

Instead the only thing that moves is a wriggling worm at the tip of my shoe. I pluck it from the dirt and watch as it squirms in my palm. I can feel the ridges of its back and the slight slime that it leaves behind. “It is still strange to call this place home. It still feels wrong in the pits of my chest, it’s funny, you live somewhere for long enough and you know everything about it. The number of turns to your school, the names of everyone in town and-and still it feels wrong to call it home in the same way.”

“I’m not sure what I’m waiting for to be able to call it home-or if I’m waiting for anything at all.”

I had to stop myself from turning like I was on a swivel. I just needed to stay still. Its feet shuffled through the grass. I could hear the grass being flattened and the flowers being crushed beneath it.

I can feel their presence.

It looms with hesitance. But its still so quiet I can feel the wind as it caresses my face, my eyelashes flutter to a close for only a second. “I’m sorry.”

“Give your apologies to the suns.” They replied with a cutting timbre and the words made my lips tremble. The saying was a popular one from…home. A saying I had not heard in far too long. “You attack me unprompted in my home and expect me not to fight for my life?”

They spoke in the same language they had those few days ago. The gravelly tone shook the trees around us.

Slowly, I let myself turn towards them. It stood at the edge of a ring of trees, as if they didn’t want to step past an invisible barrier between the two of us. The shadows partially hid the details of their frame, obscured by the darkness from the canopy.

Their azure skin slipped blue highlights around the edges of their stark white hair. Their tall stature mixed them into the trees, like they were barely separate beings. I could feel how their analyzed me; watching me like I was a threat to quell.

I repeated myself , this time quieter as I stared at them My hands jut out slightly in a moment of surrender. “I’m sorry. I’m not here to fight. I just want to talk.”

“What do I call you?”

They don’t respond and we lull into a silence. I stare at them and they stare back.

So I switched my question, “Are you homesick?” I asked, trying to let them hear the blubber and tremble in my voice despite how it threatens to burst at the seams.

“Deathly. Overwhelmingly.” They stepped out from the shadow’s gaze. Now it was replaced by the glistening suns ogle.

“But what am I to do with such a feeling? What home is there to return to except for the bones of what once stood?”

“Often I dream of it. Maybe there is a world where I am home. And there is no war, no famine, no violence. And I’m standing in the suns warmth… and its quiet, silent. In my dreams I’m not sure what I’m staring at, maybe I’m standing at nothing but it doesn’t matter. Because I’m back there.”

They make their way next to me, sitting and picking at the leftover flower petals I mimic her in the movements. Feeling the soft petals rip under my fingertips. “Gi’it’al. You asked what you should call me earlier, it is Gi’it’al.”

“Rory.” Her gaze drifted to mine after I spoke, like she was waiting for me to elaborate. But I didn’t, Rory was my name. The only one I could still utter.

“The girl you were with earlier, who is she?”

“My sister, Evelyn. Or Evie but she doesn’t really like it when I call her that.”

She confesses it under a whisper like it is an oath or a secret, “I have a sister. I don’t know where she is, but I too, often dream of her. And the life she has a billion light years away.” Her fingers pick at the flowers around us, petal after petal.

I stare up at the stars, they glisten like petals in the now night sky. “I feel like I’m caught; half between the life I would’ve had stars away and half here. And neither one wanted me.” It was almost a laugh, one tinged with more anger than I wanted. But nonetheless the words flowed out like a waterfall that he couldn’t stop. “I’m too alien for Earth but I don’t know who I am past those stars.”

“I think you are wrong.” She declares, “You speak of home like it is still with you because it is. You know exactly who you are beyond those stars but you refuse to acknowledge it. You are a funny boy Rory,” I can almost hear the same laugh I uttered minutes ago.

I expected her to continue but she doesn’t, perhaps she is waiting for me to say something. But, in the absence of words to charge back at her with, I sit in the quiet of the forest. And soon she joins me in it once again.

“I think my parents would’ve loved this place. There’s nothing like this at home.” My voice cracked and it felt like the entire forest stilled as I whispered, “I wish they could’ve seen this.”

“The moss at their fingertips, the crackling fire, the marshmallows. They would’ve been lost in it.” The trees dwarfed the both of us. My head tilts to the sky and a faint picture of my parents standing next to me crashes into me like a wave. I can still smell the faint and sweet aroma of the flowers that grew next to our home.

I feel the knot unwind in my chest.

We sit in shared silence like its a close friend.

“I’m sorry for attacking you again. I-I don’t know why I did that.” I put knots in the grass by twisting the ends together. Some of them rip so I have to restart over and over and over again.

“For an alien living among the humans, you’re an exceptionally horrible liar.” Stirring began in my chest and struck itself down to my wavering knees.

“What do you mean?”

“You saw yourself in me Rory. You saw yourself in me like I am the waters’ own reflection.”