Corn Fields (private thread)

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    The house was a spooky one, when it was empty like this. His sisters hadn't actually lived there in a few years, though there was usually one or two various extended family members passing through from time to time- mostly elderly, coming to stay for a month to be somewhere new, but also where there was someone around. So, Maddox, at 19, taking online courses, kept an eye on what was probably the perfect setting for a horror movie, and he'd long since decided that it couldn't be one. After all, how many horror flicks starred only one character? No fun- unless, of course, he was in the prequel bit of the movie, he was the one that died to scare all the idiot teens in the future.


    He tried not to let that thought bother him as night crept over the sky, finding himself in the living room, a veritable fort of pillows and blankets around him, the TV turned up and playing some cheesy movie about a robot falling in love with a woman when there was... a noise. A really loud noise, the kind of noise he wanted to pretend he hadn't heard and could just go back to watching his movie, because noises like that near by were not good sounds because that meant something had exploded or hit the ground really hard, and that was not good news-


    "Alright, I'm going- make sure nothings on fire. That'd suck." He stood, disentangling himself from the pile of fabric, flicking on all the lights he passed through the house as he made it to the door, peering out. There was an awful lot of flickering light out there, orange and white and red- fire. Not really bad, from what he could tell at a glance, things were pretty damp- it had rained earlier that week, and the corn wasn't bone dry yet. Still, he grabbed a fire extinguisher on his way out the door, breaking into a jog down the rows, feeling the night air raise goose bumps on his skin, the hair prickling on the back of his neck. He wasn't a child, he could handle being outside at night, this was fine, he told himself as he listened to the crackling and popping around him, approaching the... whatever it was.


    Something, nestled in a crater, flames burning in a deep furrow in the corn. He stepped carefully, spraying the foam onto the smoldering plants here and there as he went, trying not to see what was in the crater. Maybe it was military. Something they were testing, something that went wrong, something he would get in trouble for knowing about-


    "H-hello?" He said, voice quiet in the empty night. There was no one else for miles. Just him and this. He felt his hands shaking a little as he aimed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher at about where he figured there was a door, or something- "I mean- what the actual hell is this?" He tried to put a little assertiveness into his voice, which continued to sound a little more squeaky than he would of liked- "Some kind of joke? This is a joke, right? B-because it isn't funny, you're gonna get a face full'a foam, alright? So why don't you come out, nice 'n slow." Assuming there was anything in there, maybe it was just space junk. That happened sometimes, right?

    It was all her fault, really. Fawn couldn't help but reflect on this now, as she watched the heat of atmospheric entry burn white-hot streaks around her malfunctioning life pod. If she hadn't argued with him, maybe he would have slept in a nearby recuperation cell instead of requesting a room down the hallway. And if he had slept near her, maybe he would have been on the same life pod. And if he had, he could have piloted it properly. And--
    A loud, distressed pair of voices rang out in crackling unity over the pod's single speaker, interrupting Fawn's thoughts. "Reduce velocity. Current trajectory will lead to crash. Fatality likely."
    "Noooooo..." Fawn whimpered, mashing her hand desperately against a button, racking her brain for some remnant of knowledge from her days at the academy. Panic was making her mind hazy and oddly clear all at once, but for some reason all the important stuff was the stuff that slipped away.
    "Reduce velocity. Collision imminent. Fatality likely." The pair of voices were even more crackly now, and nearly drowned out by the roar of fire and wind around her craft.
    "Damn it. Damn it!" Fawn cursed under her breath, slapping with open palms against clusters of buttons now. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, and exhaled, long and slow...
    Suddenly her hands no longer flapped against the console uselessly, and she was momentarily whisked away into the consciousness of her other half.
    A coastline. Hands, confidently grasping the yoke of the life pod. Snow-- tundra-- stretched out below the window of a peacefully descending craft. And one hand, casually reaching up and flicking a switch overhead to deploy...
    "Drag chute!" Fawn shouted, her eyes snapping back open. She reached up, flicking the switch with a triumphant laugh. There was a jolt as the drag chute slowed her pod, but as the surface approached much too quickly still, she realized it may have been too little too late.
    "I tried," she sighed, strapping herself into the seat and preparing for the worst. "Sorry, Seraphim."


    Fawn opened her eyes in spite of possibly the worst headache she'd ever experienced. She groaned, glancing around wearily to take inventory of her situation. The door was hanging slightly open, and the whole pod was smoldering, resting at about a forty-five degree angle. Grumpily unfastening her restraints, she stood on unstable legs and reached towards the door, but froze when she heard a voice. It took a moment for her translator earpiece to calibrate fully, but she could tell whatever it was was either nervous or outright scared. "--why don't you just come out, nice and slow?"
    Fair enough, Fawn thought, and in her shocked state,flung the door open a bit too hard. It flew off its damaged hinges with a sudden crash, and she realized maybe a second too late that she might look a bit scary. Her wide eyes and the hundreds of freckles that showed around her tattered space suit were both luminescing a vibrant electric blue, and her hair was a tangled mess that was backlit eerily by the glow of embers and dim flames.
    "Hello..." she said, her voice raspy and low from smoke inhalation.

    Maddox was usually on end for keeping his cool in insane situations, which was why he was not running away screaming. The delay in response to his request (there hadn't been enough force to call it a command really) was just long enough for him to believe that there wasn't something in there at all, he was fooling himself. Maybe he should go back to the house. Maybe he should call the military, wasn't that what you were supposed to do? Was there a hotline for space junk?
    The door (hatch? Porthole?) slammed open, causing him to jump and make a fairly high, girlish noise, the panic response enough for him to pull the handle on the fire extinguisher, a short burst of foam spraying forward. After a moment passed, realized that it- they? Had spoken to him, which, combined with the appearance of the alien (dear god, it certainly wasn't human), causing him to use the fire extinguisher yet again, before stumbling back a few steps-
    "Hello? Hello! Oh my god-" Maddox let out a short laugh, eyes looking a little wild- "You can talk! I mean- English- and you just- the sky-" he was gesturing wildly with the nozzle of the extinguisher, gabbling out nonsense- "I mean... where are you from? Not Iowa- geeze, I mean maybe, I don't get out that much, but- god what am I saying, you just crashed from space, and-" he stopped, mouth open slightly, midword- "crashed. Holy cow, are you- uh, alright? Are you hurt?"

    Fawn coughed a bit. Between the smoke and the foam from the fire extinguisher-- some of which had gotten on her, sticking to her spacesuit briefly before the fabric weakly rippled in a faltering attempt to rid itself of foreign material. When she regained her breath, she spoke, taking a cautious couple of unsteady steps forward onto the charred (and foam-speckled) ground.
    "My translator-- still calibrating, forgive me." Fawn frowned, her large blue eyes narrowing as she tried to process what he'd said and respond. "I am not from here. I... Um, I am slightly injured..." She trailed off with a series of odd nonsense sounds, then stopped herself, tapping the earpiece fixed to her long, pointed ear. "Stupid thing. I think it's damaged."
    Suddenly, the magnitude of her situation started to sink in. She had crash landed on a Class D planet, separated from her other half and the rest of her mission, and now she was conversing with a native who was armed with a rudimentary extinguishing device. She was alive, so it could be worse, but still, this was bad. She needed to salvage what she could from the ship and get away from the crash site, but for now-- the world was spinning and her legs were threatening to give out. "I... I need to rest. Do you have a shelter nearby?"

    ((ooc: I just remembered I have a visual for her kind of? I have a colored picture of Fawn and Seraphim together but that's a wip and it's on my laptop so I'll put that here later))

    "Your ears." Maddox said, his voice almost a whisper as he stared at her in the dim light of the burning land. He stood there and gaped some more, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening. An alien. There was an alien in his families corn fields, while he was the only one home, and all he could focus on were her ears-
    "You look like an elf." He said after a few moments had passed, and then dropped the extinguisher, letting it thud heavily onto the ground.
    "Sorry- I mean- yeah. Shelter. Home, my home, over...uh, this way," he watched her sway where she stood and took a few hesitant steps forward- she didn't look dangerous, no ray guns blazing, no demands to go to his leader. She looked pretty beat up, as far as things went.
    "Maybe- uh, maybe you should sit. Lemme put your ship out." He suggested, scooping the fire extinguisher again and starting around the small crater with controlled bursts of foam, taking the moment to inspect it. He knew something about how things that flew should look, and was curious to know what someone from another planet would make.

    Fawn listened to him with the specific kind of blank stare that only someone who has had a uniquely terrible day can have, and sat on the ground a couple feet away from the ship. "Elf?" she asked vaguely, the word feeling strange in her mouth. Her translator had identified it as a word specific to this particular dialect of the planet's native language. Slang, perhaps? The creature with the fire extinguisher had mentioned her ears, and she began to notice the differences between the two of them. His ears were small, and close to his head, and Fawn reached up to her own ear self-consciously. Were large ears considered ugly on this world? Also, he didn't glow at all. It was well past sundown and nothing about him had lit up at all. Fawn remembered a briefing she had received once about other life-bearing planets and vaguely recalled this planet having long, brightly lit days and shorter nights which were brightened by sparse cloud cover, artificial lights, and the reflection of sunlight on their moon. Maybe they didn't need to glow?
    The hiss of the fire extinguisher shook her out of her thoughts. He was circling her life pod now, and seemed to be examining it as he moved around it. It wasn't much to look at, honestly. Just a small, oblong pod made of silvery metal, with rudimentary stabilizer wings and a port in the back for a drag chute to deploy, should the pod encounter an atmosphere. There was a window at the front, although the viewing glass was scorched so badly it was barely translucent anymore. The interior of the pod was a charred mess, but the emergency power was still on, so the flight console was lit up in a multitude of colored lights that blinked slowly on and off. Some of these colors would likely be invisible to any species with a smaller visible spectrum, and Fawn wondered idly if the deeper reds and violets would be lost on the native Earth creature.

    "This. This is so cool." He wanted to just drop everything and study it, get his notebook, ask a million questions to the alien who was- looking pretty awful. Of course, he couldn't know for sure, since she was an alien and all, and perhaps this was just her expression of pure joy. It just didn't seem likely, since her ship was currently in ruins at his feet.


    "Alright- well, looks like this isn't gonna burn down the field- are you by yourself? Are there any other ships coming?" He asked, looking up at the star speckled sky, as if expecting to see another ship careening their way. It was still in his mind that he should call someone, maybe, though his inner sci-fi hero was telling him that the government was probably not a good idea. His more predominant inner conspiracy-theorist was also telling him to keep this hush-hush until he figured out all the facts. If this was just a bad accident, maybe it would be best if they could just...figure it out quietly. Yeah. Because aliens could totally achieve space travel from other solar systems, and with that technology, they'd just crash land into his shitty corn fields. Of course.


    "House is this way," He hesitated, first walking past Fawn, back the way he came, and then stopping- he wanted to help support her, she still looked like she was about to keel over, but he couldn't be sure how comfortable she would be with that. Besides, what if her alien skin had some kind of weird property to it, it was glowing after all.

    "I am glad you like my life pod." Fawn said, a bit puzzled. "It is nothing compared to the main ship, but I suppose for a more primitive race, any spacefaring craft would be..." She trailed off, searching for a non-slang word for what she was trying to say-- the translators couldn't handle slang very well. "Interesting...?" Close enough. "And no, there are no others incoming. Any others will have already landed. My pod was the last to deploy..." Fawn paused, narrowing her eyes. Her ears twitched slightly. "I should not be telling you this. How do I know I can trust you? The last few missions to this planet barely escaped detection and capture." She stood slowly, attempting to be menacing, which was difficult considering she was shorter than the Earth creature she was addressing. "You could be trying to get information out of me."
    At this point, any attempt at intimidation failed miserably as her left leg gave out and she crumpled to the ground with an indignant squeak. "I-- you do not understand what I am, I am from an advanced race--" She tried to stand again and failed, looking a bit like a particularly grumpy and glowing fledgeling bird who had tried a bit too soon to fly. For another second or two she tried to maintain an angry expression, but quickly gave up, her shoulders slumping as she looked away. "And... I think I need help."

    "I kind of am trying to get information out of you, but- uh, for me. I mean, who's gonna believe me, I live in a corn field," He said, fidgeting awkwardly "I'm just a hick- apparently from planet hick, from what you're implying," He seemed a little put out by her sudden suspicion of him. He still wanted to ask more questions, especially if she just implied that there had been more 'missions' to earth. That was exciting- a little terrifying, but exciting none the less. And then she crumpled, causing him to almost instinctively dive forward in an attempt to catch her. He didn't quite make it, and pride seemed to be something of a factor-


    "Yeah- uh- you can just...lean on me? Or I can just pick you up, probably- here, lemme just-" He fidgeted for a moment longer before putting the extinguisher aside and somewhat awkwardly scooping Fawn up bridle style, idly wondering if she was inhumanly light (it didn't really feel like it) or if he had actually built up some muscle mass by being the local 'fork lift' in exchange for living directly on the farmland.


    "There- just, put your arm around my neck, we can see how badly you're hurt back at the house," He was making an attempt to sound professional, despite the fact that he was carrying an alien back to his house. Just a normal Tuesday night.

    Fawn considered protesting her sudden removal from the ground, but was too struck by the oddity of the situation. In the last few hours, she was interrupted from her mission by a disaster that destroyed the ship, separated her from her other half, and stranded her on a primitive world, and now she was being carried through a field by a native creature who had just admitted he wanted information from her.
    Yeah, today had been strange, to say the least.
    Silently, Fawn slipped her arm around his shoulders, trying to shift her weight as little as possible in the process. She could hear his heartbeat and breathing quite well from where she was, and she noted the odd rhythm and speed of it compared to the pulse of her own species. After a moment, she found her eyes drifting shut, and opened them again with a slight feeling of embarrassment. Her ears twitched back for a moment, and she hoped he hadn't noticed.
    "You are not a high-ranking official type, are you? Your culture has an intricate hierarchy, from what I recall from briefings." She was trying to sound confident, although she barely remembered anything. "So... I would be relatively safe with you?"

    Maddox was somewhat concerned when it appeared that the alien had fallen asleep- or passed out. She could be more badly hurt than he thought, and what could he do if she was? He couldn't not exactly take her to the hospital. He had a friend studying veterinary science half way across the state, but that wasn't going to do him much good. There was so much he didn't know about her, what if the air was killing her? What if it was contact with him, what if one of them contracted some insane space-illness, he'd read War of the Worlds, he knew how it went.
    And then her ears twitched (it was kind of an interesting geasture, like a rabbit or a cat), and she started talking again and he felt himself feel somewhat relieved. Enough so that he laughed when she asked if he was an official-
    "Lady, I don't even have my associates degree yet-" could aliens be ladies? "The hierarchy of this country is kind of rediculous, but I'm not in it." He nodded at the rundown farmhouse as it came into view- "you think I'd live here if I were important?" He hadn't latched the door- good thing too, he pushed it open with his foot and sidled through the doorway, making his way through the dimly lit house to the couch, his movie still playing on the TV.

    Fawn was puzzled by many things about the situation. Her translator was furiously adding these new words to its glossary of Earth speech, and she was struggling to keep up with the Earth creature's fast and haphazard speech patterns. Associate's degree in particular was a phrase she wasn't entirely clear on. Associate was a synonym for colleague or friend... Did Earth creatures go to schools to learn friendship? Was that not an innate behavior? She shivered, partly from the thought of being stranded among such an unfriendly and antisocial race, and partly because she was actually getting pretty cold. Her spacesuit had some degree of thermal regulation, but it was full of rips and tears.
    "Thank you for carrying me." Fawn said, once they were safely inside. She was quickly distracted by the TV, though. "What a primitive viewscreen! It is fascinating, really. You should allow me to examine it later." Another shiver ran through her, and she frowned delicately. "Um, if it is not too much trouble, do you have a thermal cloth or... garment? Of some kind?" she asked falteringly. "Your planet has a lower nighttime temperature than mine."

    The transfer from arms to couch was something of an awkward one, but he managed without face planting, and straightened up to look at the 'view screen'-
    "I mean- it's not that old," he protested- sure, it was square, not rectangular like the new ones, but it ran all the old VHS tapes. He liked the solid old thing.
    "Do you mean- like a blanket? Or a heated blanket- we might have one, Aunt Addy had chickens a few years back and she used it with them. I'll go find that," he scooted out of the room somewhat faster than nescessary, but he couldn't stop staring at her. The alien. On his couch. Why did this kind of stuff happen to him? If she'd been a few miles over, she would have landed in the Brandys back yard and it'd Ben their problem.
    He hurried back into the room a few minutes later, pulling the grey blanket with him and awkwardly flipping it over her before finding a place to plug it into the wall-
    "You can- uh, adjust how warm it gets with that bit-" He pointed to the dial "one's the lowest setting- the straight look in' number."

    "One." Fawn repeated quietly, and proceeded to turn the dial all the way up. "What an interesting written language. So many straight lines!" She traced a finger over the numerals on the dial. "Kinda pretty..." After a moment, she looked up at the TV, and what was playing on it. "May I ask a few questions of you? This is such a strange place for me... I can answer questions of yours in return, if you wish." She didn't even wait for a full response before pressing onwards, curiosity overtaking any politeness she could have been hanging onto. "What is your species called? What are you called? And what type of entertainment is this?" She pointed at the movie before pulling the blanket up to her chin and staring eagerly at Maddox.

    Maddox tugged a bean bag out of the corner, seating himself so that he was facing Fawn, legs 'criss-cross-apple-sauce'. He smiled nervously at first, and almost stopped- their facial expressions were probably going to be different. He could be baring his teeth, it could be threatening? Maybe? He didn't know, that was the problem, and it struck him again that he was speaking with an entirely different species, and she was curious about his own- he couldn't help it, he broke out into a huge grin-


    "Dude, if I can ask you questions-" He got out before she continued, and he broke off, letting her ask the first set. He marked off that one of his questions was going to be asking if she was mammalian or what, since she appeared to be having trouble producing her own body heat. Of course, maybe she was just cold. Put someone from Arizona into Michigan, they're going to be cold and like a heated blanket, mammal or not.


    "Uh- well, my species is human? Homosapien, I think? I'm bad with scientific names. And I'm Maddox-" He'd have to ask her name as well, that would probably be more polite, but then, what were the codes of social interaction when it came to an alien species- "This is... Tv? Television? It's a movie," He said, feeling rather embarrassed about it "This one's about a robot, and, uh, something happened? I'm not really sure, but something happened and it- he, gained the capacity to fall in love, and he was considered alive at that point so the government stopped trying to destroy him. I guess." It sounded somewhat silly, especially considering it was outdated sort-of-scifi, and he was now watching it with an alien on his couch. Better than E.T. at least.


    "Ok- my turn. What's your name? And your species? Where are you from?"

    Fawn took careful note of what he was saying. Human, Maddox, and 'movie'-- the word itself was unfamiliar but the concept was not. And the brief summary provided was even more intriguing. She would have to ask more about their government.
    "My name is Fawn Fairlee," she recited as she had practiced-- it was not technically her real name but the one she had chosen in case she ever had the good fortune of ending up on a spying or diplomatic mission to Earth or any other less advanced world. "My species calls itself the Iillinos, but I suppose in your language it would best translate to... The Intertwined. Our planet of origin... We just refer to it as our Homeworld most of the time, but its scientific name, what we called it before we began colonizing and traveling, was Vespet."
    Fawn paused, sitting up a bit and letting the blanket fall away from her face. "Alright, my turn, human-- Maddox." The name felt delightfully foreign on her tongue and she said it slowly to make sure she pronounced it right. "Are there many coastlines on this planet? If someone were to have seen a glimpse of one from high in your atmosphere, do you have a map that could identify where..."
    She trailed off. Her ears flicked downwards and stayed that way for a few moments before she steeled herself and continued. "My species-- we are called the Intertwined for a reason. Each of us only has part of a soul. Most have half, though some less fortunate have a third or less. The other half of our soul is carried by a twin sibling. I can explain more regarding that later, but the reason I offer this information willingly is so you understand how urgent this is." She paused for effect, her eyes casting a faint blue light in the dimness of the room. "My other half accompanied me on this mission. We were on separate life pods, and mine malfunctioned, so I ended up off course. As we were landing, I caught a glimpse, through his eyes, of the land below him as he descended. I want to see if I can figure out where he is. If we spend too much time apart..." She trailed off, looking away and sighing. "I am sorry to trouble you. This must be a lot to take in."

    "Fawn. That's a name here too! I mean- for people, but also these little- uh, animals. They're really pretty, I'll have to find a picture for you tomorrow." He said, still grinning, even as his mind ran with the idea that she just said that they colonize planets. They took over and lived on them- now, it would be hasty and impolite to assume that they did so violently, or that they had any intention of doing so with Earth, but he certainly stored that fact away to ask at some point. Soon.


    "That's...really cool." He said as she explained the bit about the souls- "I mean, humans have kind of debated about having a soul in different religions I guess, most people agree that we have one, but it's...whole. Well, I mean, there's also people who think when you fall in love with someone, you've found your 'other half', but that's kind of BS if you ask me," he trailed off as she went on to explain how she'd been separated from her twin, and the problems that might ensue.


    "I...uh, i have a couple atlas', and we can just google stuff, though the internet went out earlier and I haven't been able to get it back." He hadn't exactly tried that hard to fix it yet, but there was something embarrassing about admitting that he couldn't fix the WiFi to a being that had traveled through the stars.

    "Oh, wonderful, an atlas! I--" Fawn said, then stopped suddenly. "Wait... You have... a complete soul?" Her eyes grew wide and her voice was soft with reverence. "There are only a handful of beings in my species with complete souls, and they are our wisest and most revered. Most of us can only dream of what it must be like, to be so balanced, so wise..." She leaned forward far enough that it looked like she might fall on her face if a slight breeze were to hit her. "I may have underestimated you and your kind, Maddox."
    Pulling back with a slight cough to hide her embarrassment-- she must have seemed a bit strange there for a moment, staring at him like that-- she fidgeted with the dial on the now very warm blanket. "Ah. The atlas? Where would that be?"

    "I mean-" he turned a bit pink, looking embarrassed "It's kind of speculation, the idea of a soul, we might have different ideas of what it is," He bumbled, feeling rather unqualified to explain the different ideas that religions had about a soul. Of course, most religions agreed that there was something like a soul, though it went by different names. He didn't feel particularly wise, and no one had ever revealed him, that was for sure.


    "Atlas. Yeah, it's probably just-" He didn't quite stand, scrambling the few feet across the floor to the cabinet, where he began digging through it, bringing out tapes and a few records before the musty atlas came sliding out on a pile of CD cases- because his family was so organized. He stood, and thumped it down in a flurry of dust on a coffee table, which he dragged between where he was sitting and Fawn.


    "There's kind of a lot of ground to cover, but most of the world is in here. Kind of. I mean, probably not all the tiny islands- you don't think he landed on an island, do you? I have a cousin with a boat, but-" He realized after a moment that he'd automatically assumed she was going to need his help, or that he was in a place to offer it.