I was aware that I was breathing. Shallowly. That was interesting. I had been sure I was dying.
As I became more cognizant of my continued existence, I enjoyed the steady feeling of air moving in and out of my lungs. I inhaled deeply until I stretched my ribs and my lungs stung from the expansion, then I exhaled in a great whoosh.
My lips quirked in a half smile. Ah. So, I could feel and move my lips again. What else was functional?
I wiggled my toes. I bent my fingers, and they scraped against soft dirt and plant debris. I became aware of the scent of sun-warmed soil and sweet summer grass. I was lying prone with my hands cushioning my face. I bent my knees and stiffly pushed up off my hands to sit against my feet. I ran my hands over my face and brushed my loose curls behind my ears. I cracked open my eyelids. They felt as though they had been closed for eons.
Sunlight assaulted my eyes. I blinked rapidly to adjust. Gradually, I could see. I examined my palms and the backs of my hands. They appeared normal even though my skin felt overly sensitive and prickly. I looked around me.
I was kneeling on a small oval of crushed wheat-colored tall grass. I was surrounded on all sides by thin stalks heavy with ripe seed heads. Their bases were shaded because of the density of the stand, but the tops shone in the sunshine. A gust of wind blew, and the grass swayed and whispered. As the breeze subsided the scent of grass berries grew again and I heard the faint thin whistle of bird calls, chatting with each other as they conducted their business.
I returned my attention to my body. I ran my hands over my skin, checking for injury or abnormalities. Everything seemed to be fine, aside from the fact that I was stark naked. A shadow passed over me. I snapped my eyes up, but it was just a white puffy cloud passing over the sun against the … lavender sky?
Disbelievingly, I pushed myself to my feet. The grass rose to above my belly button and stretched in gently undulating hills as far as I could see in every direction. En masse, it was a sea of greenish gold, sparkling in waves with the movement of the wind. Low on the horizon to my left sat a giant white moon. To the right a red crescent moon was halfway up the sky. I turned in a slow circle. A third white half moon was risen in the sky behind me.
I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t even form a fully articulated exclamation. I sank back down to a crouch and unfolded my wings to cover my head. I linked my hands behind my neck and practiced taking a few more breaths.
“Oh,” I said.
“Okay. Okay.”
The breeze gusted and I shivered slightly.
“Woo.”
“Okay.”
I paused.
“Alright.”
“Okay. Talk it out,” I told myself. “One thing at a time. Breathe.”
I am a surgeon. I do not panic
I noted my racing heart and rapid respiration. I took conscious control of the breathing aspect and tried to slow it down. I partially succeeded.
“I am not dead,” I said. “That is a good thing. I can breathe. That is also good. Okay.”
I paused to appreciate those truths.
“I am on a planet that is not Earth.”
Okay
I raised my head and breathed out through my nose. I gawked at everything around me and stood back up. My heart thudded in my ears.
“I am on a planet that is not Earth and I am not dead and I am breathing.”
A wild laugh escaped me, and I spun in a circle. I stilled and stared at the lavender sky. And stared at the waving grass. And the three moons. I watched what looked like birds flit through the air and in and out of the gold stalks. I dug my toes into the cool dirt and stared at the white clouds moving slowly across the sky.
“I am somewhere else,” I whispered to myself.
I extended my wings and let the wind ruffle through my feathers. I stared at the horizon. I watched everything around me for hours, not moving from my oval of flattened grass where I had appeared. The moon on the right sank further toward the horizon and the moon on the left rose higher in the sky, appearing to grow smaller. The moon above and behind me didn’t move much at all. The sun noticeably slid down from its peak above me and toward the center of one of the far-off hills.
“Okay,” I eventually said. “I am here. Where is that?”
I swept my gaze over the hills as if an answer would suddenly appear. The clouds floated by. The grass waved and the birds flit about. Were they actually birds in this alien place? Was it actually grass? Was this planet populated with anything else? And where were the people who sent me here?
The enormity of what had occurred was overwhelming. I was not the only one of my kind. Hesitantly, but excitedly, I reached tendrils of awareness out from me and down through the earth, spiderwebbing away from me. I found nothing magical or human-made for several miles around me.
I retracted my magic back to myself. I was leery of encountering something, or someone, new who also had magical ability. I had no idea what their reaction would be to unsolicited magical touch. I grinned as a thrill sparkled through me at the thought of meeting others with magic.
Where were the people who brought me here? I was fairly certain they were all dead. But they must have been returning to other people, right? I considered whether I hoped the hypothetical people found me soon or not. The meaning behind all of the shouting of the people that found me on Earth was difficult to discern. The screaming people tied up on their knees were concerning.
My breath sped.
“You will find your people one day,” said Tommy, apropos of nothing. “And when you do, it will be terrifying.”
I blinked and chewed my bagel. “What are you, a seer?”
It was our second day of being roommates, though we’d been friends for months. Tommy putted about the tiny kitchen, making coffee and frying himself eggs.
“No, I speak from experience. And for you in particular,” he said, gesturing a spatula at me, “when you’re not in control of everythin’, you’re goin’ to freak.”
“Great, thanks Tommy. Is this your way of telling me I’m hard to live with?”
“I’m just sayin’, it’s okay if you lose your shit.”
“Right. What makes you think I’m going to ‘find my people’?” I asked with air quotes.
“I just do. You think you’re all russet and burgundy,” he said, sitting down with his breakfast, “but really, you’re orange and pink.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I laughed. I got up to get myself coffee as well and leaned against the counter. “You have egg in your mustache,” I told him.
He smiled smugly at me.
Guilt surged through my stomach, oddly grounding me and slowing the blood racing through my veins.
“Alright you sweet virtuoso,” I muttered. “I’m not going to lose my shit.”
It was impossible to draw conclusions about my travel companions with literally no shared context. The one man tried to kill me in the tunnel. However, it was clear to me that their execution of the magic did not go as planned and he was panicking. A drowning person’s instinct to climb on top of their neighbor did not condemn people in general.
Clouds passed over the sun and the wind gusted strongly, bending the grass until the seed heads almost touched the ground. I shivered more strongly. I drew my wings in and bent them awkwardly to shield as much of my body as I could from the gusts. Time to move.
I pushed through the grass toward the tallest of the nearby hills. The stalks scratched against my skin, but the bases felt smooth against my feet as I tread on them. I could hear small animals scurrying in the field around me. I flushed a pheasant as I walked. Its brown and white wings glinted in the setting sun as it banked and soared. How was it that Earth life existed here?
I reached the top of the hill and turned to find the sun sinking down into the horizon. The lavender sky was filled with streaks of yellow and red and dark purple. The sides of the moons reflected the burning orange star. The fields of grass rolled in waves of liquid light, sparkling white and orange and purple in turn. I saw no signs of civilization or people of any kind.
I extended my wings and launched into the air, clenching my teeth as chilly air raised goose bumps. I flew quickly upwards and scanned the horizons. The landscape was unbroken by any signs of people. I dove back to land and huddled into my wings. Desire to find people overrode my hesitancy to reaching out with my magic.
I rushed my awareness through the rocks beneath me and air above, expanding concentrically in all directions. My magic filled the air and the land. It plunged through far off seas and twined through aciculate mountain ranges. I felt the pulse of magma far beneath me. Letting my magic expand freely felt like stretching and cracking my joints. I breathed deeply and reveled in the wild feeling of holding the continent in my grip. I flexed slightly, stopping short of causing damage.
I found no sign of cities or large-scale technology. That didn’t mean there were no humans or other highly intelligent life. Differentiating between a carbon formation in the shape of a tree and one in the shape of an animal was impossible at scale, let alone identifying a human animal.
“Well, shit,” I drawled.
I was safe for the immediate future, as far as I could tell. But I might be alone on this alien planet. Was that purposeful? Would people arrive shortly?
I could draw no conclusions until I explored further. I wasn’t confident that my magic could detect all signs of civilization.
For the moment, though, I was cold and hungry and thirsty. I needed to address my immediate needs before considering my questions. There was a stream five miles to the east.
It grew steadily darker, the sky fading to a velvet deep purple then black. Stars appeared in brilliant unfamiliar constellations. It was astoundingly liberating to use my magic freely to keep myself warm. No one flinched from me inadvertently invisibly touching them. Yet lacking the chatter and energy of billions of humans surrounding me, the planet felt like an echoing empty concert hall.
When I reached the stream, it was full dark. The bubbling pulled at my thirst. I knelt in the muddy bank, small stones pressing into my knees. I cupped a handful of icy water and took a moment to use my magic to boil it. I had no idea what would make me sick here. I gratefully drank, returning repeatedly until my thirst slaked.
My stomach rumbled. Usually, hunger was something I could ignore for multiple days if I wished before I had to countenance its demand. However, after draining all of my magic staying alive and then passing out for an unknown number of days, I was absolutely ravenous.
I sent rushes of air through the grasses near me until I flushed a group of five pheasants bedded down for the night. With magic, I snapped their necks and watched them fall out of the sky. With no tools other than sharp rocks and magic, I made a mess of gutting and cleaning them.
I created a bubble of oven-warm air around the birds, then voraciously ripped into them when they were ready. Once I was fed, I flopped to my back with a sigh.
There was a splash of bright starlight across the middle of the sky. All that told me was that I was in a galaxy.
It didn’t seem plausible that someone went to the effort to transport me here just to leave me without comment. I took a moment to appreciate that I had an answer to a question I’d had my entire life. I was not the only one of my kind. I did not originate on Earth.
The fact that I was here alone meant that either the people who brought me here would come collect me shortly or something went wrong. If something went wrong, did anyone know where, or for that matter, when I was? I was fairly certain I had traveled through a vast amount of time as well as space. I swallowed. The night sky fell into infinity.
Despite heating the air around me so I stayed warm enough, I wished I had clothes. I was very, very alone.
My breath hitched. I was unsure whether I wanted to cry or laugh. For the first time I could remember, my life had fundamentally changed. I marveled at how little I knew about myself. But maybe, soon, I would have some answers. There were other people like me!
I watched the stars wheel above me all night. When the black sky lightened to lavender and no other humans had made an appearance, my breath sped and my vision swam with spots.
I dug my fingers into the cool dirt. I held my breath until my ribs ached and I could control my inhalations. I decided I would wait for one month before considering whether I was marooned on the planet.
In the meantime, I would search meticulously to make sure I wasn’t missing any signs of people. I would concentrate on keeping myself alive and making clothes so that I didn’t meet whoever eventually showed up stark naked.
Because someone will be showing up I assured myself.