Home.

Where is that now? Lorien used to be my home, but I watched its destruction at the hands of the Mogadorians through the windows of our ship. The ship that I am now about to leave. We are landing on Earth in a few short minutes.

Earth. Can that be my home? Maybe it will be, but I have confidence that I'll return to Lorien one day. I can't get the picture of the barren, cold planet out of my mind. It can't stay that way, right?

"Three."

My Cêpan is calling me, but I don't want to go. I don't want to leave the others behind.

"Number Three."

I won't mind getting away from One's evil Cêpan Hilde, who is scary whenever we are bad. I guess she is otherwise okay, but she still scares me. And One herself is almost as terrifying, especially when she has temper tantrums at Nine, who always freaks out back.

But I will mind leaving the others, especially Two, behind. Two and I grew up together.

"Three, dear, come to me. We're about to dock."

I take a shaky breath. When I turn, my Cêpan stands in front of me with open arms. I walk past him, not wanting him to see the tears that are beginning to form in my eyes.

Don't cry. Don't cry, Three, you're a big boy now. Four years old. Almost a grown-up, right? Gotta act like a big kid.

"Three, I'm sorry about this. But we're about to leave, and I want to explain to you, my plan."

"Bad grammar! I think logically speaking, it should be 'I want to explain my plan to you!' Did you graduate from elementary school, or not?" Someone teases in a high voice.

Two.

It has to be her. Nobody else talks like that. I turn around, and there she is. My best friend is five, only a year bigger than I am, but she is a genius. When I met her, I couldn't walk nor talk. She was a toddler and into chapter books already. Right now, she has learned at least two human languages already, and speaks them so fluently I think my head will explode if I hear another human word. I think she's the coolest person I've ever met, even though she likes to tease everyone she knows.

I can't believe I won't be seeing her for a long time. My Cêpan won't tell me how long.

"Two!" I run up to her and tackle her in a rather violent hug. It almost knocks her over. "I'm sorry, er, and I'll miss you. But I-"

She cuts me off. "I'll miss you, too, you great idiot!"

"But I have a question-."

"Don't worry. I'll remember you when we meet again, I have a photographic memory of both your face and ankle numerical whatever symbol and am obviously the best intellectual prodigy in-"

"Oh, Two…" Conrad, her Cêpan, sighs.

"Sorry. So what were you going to say? I mean iterate, because say is a normal word and therefore soooo boring?"

"Er, that's kinda creepy, because I was going to ask how we were going to know each other! Anyway, I still have half the question left. How will I know you?"

"Easy. I will call you a great idiot!"

"That's mean!"

"But it's true! I always call you that, so you'll remember."

"Why do you call me that, anyway?"

"You think you're so cool, but you're stupid. In other words, your head is big, but your brain is small! Minuscule!"

"I love you as a sister, Two, but that's going too far!" I laugh. "Who's the real big-headed one here? I think we all know…"

"Oh, trust me." Two snorts. "I know! But I'm only like this with people I trust, because you probably don't know, but I get so paranoid of other people unless I know them well…"

"What if you didn't know me?" I giggle. "Like I was secretly a two-hundred-year-old insect who turned into a person so I could take over the universe?"

Two mutters something about 'unsophisticated incomprehensible babbling.' I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's bad, and it's about me. I laugh. Someone has a ridiculously large vocabulary… unlike me!

"You two," One yells, "it's time to leave! And get a room!" As soon as I've turned around, she breaks into a sprint towards the door, which is just starting to open.

"What does that mean?" I say?

Two sighs and sticks her tongue out at One's disappearing back, then turns to me. "You don't want to know." She runs to Conrad, who picks her up as easily as he would lift a baby. Conrad swings his ward over his shoulders and takes the giggling girl outside.

I feel my Cêpan's strong arms grab me from behind. "Up you go! Remember, in Kenya, your name is Hannu. And I'm Hali, your father. Your mother got into a car accident, and your relatives live in Quebec, Canada."

"Why Quebec?" I hear Hilde as she walks past us, not even bothering to try to keep up with One, who is running out the ship's open door.

"I like the sound." He says.

"One and I are off to California. After I told about an Earth sport called 'surfing,' she said she would join the Mogadorians if I didn't let her do it. I know she wouldn't really, but she is so adamant when she wants to do something." Hilde sighs.

"Two says she's going to the United Kingdom, but won't tell me where." I say. "She says that as long as she can buy lots of good books, she will go anywhere!"

"You and that girl are such close friends." Sandor, with Nine on his back, winks at me as he jogs past me. "Very close friends…"

"Look at your face – grow up, Sandor!" Adel, leading Seven by the hand, has a red face.

"Why don't you look at your face?" Sandor shoots back, jokingly.

Adel doesn't look like she can take a joke. Dragging poor Seven along, she sprints after Sandor.

"Let's go, Three." My Cêpan says, carrying me along.

I struggle, but he won't let go. Eventually I just give up and decide to make the best of my situation. We're just going on an adventure. I try to make myself feel excited. Isn't it cool? I'm on an alien planet, about to learn new cultures and languages, to assimilate myself with these interesting-sounding 'humans!'

But there is so much I'm leaving behind, too.

We go outside, and I twist my neck, looking up at the stars in the night. They look different than they did on Lorien. Are we that far away?

"Three!" Two squeals when she sees me. Conrad is already taking her away, with a human behind them. "I hate you as a brother, but I love you, too!"

"That makes no sense!" I yell after her. "I thought you were smart, Two!"

"Well, as long as you remember that I'm smarter than you!"

"Got it! I love you as a sister, but I don't hate you like an anything, and we'll meet again soon!"

Two makes a weird salute at me, then points at something in the distance, prompting Conrad to break into a full-out sprint. The human gets tired in seconds, but tries to keep up. I watch their figures disappear.

Two is so much smaller than me, but I've always looked up to her. I think she might even be smarter than One, and she's a big nine-year-old! Of course, I'd never, ever tell One that… she might hurt me or worse, hate me forever and ever!

"Here are your tickets." A feminine voice says. "Kenya, right? Ah, you might want to lose those long socks."

I look at my socks, which are so long that they reach almost to my knees. "Do I have to? I love my socks." I turn and give the lady my best puppy-Chimaera eyes.

"His scar needs to be hidden." My Cepan explains. "We don't want one of them to see."

"Ah, yes. Please excuse my memory." The woman says. Her almond-shaped eyes narrow even further as she smiles.

"But of course. You're only human." My Cepan laughs. "I am just joking, dear. As a Loric super-genius, I can forget easily, too! And I'm kidding about me being a genius, too… heh."

"Who are you?" I say. "Not to be rude, but I thought we were supposed to be hiding from humans who knew too much about us!"

"I'm a Greeter," the lady explains, "one of the few gathered by Malcolm Goode to welcome you to Earth."

"Mal-colm." I say. "Wow, you humans have cool names. I have problems saying that one, though!"

The woman laughs. "What's your human name going to be?"

"Han-nu." I say, sounding stupid as I do it.

"Sounds like a portmanteau of 'handsome' and 'cow.'" She says.

"Cow?" I ask. "My name isn't Han-cow!"

"No, but 'nu' sounds like the Chinese word for cow." She explains. "Unlike you Loric, us humans have many different languages. I speak both English and Chinese. Where you are going, I think you should better learn Swahili."

"Oh, no!" I suddenly think of something. "What if I say a bad word in another language, and it was by accident, and somebody hears me and gets mad?"

"Just tell them you don't speak the language and it was an accident. Mistakes happen."

"Yeah, but sometimes bad things happen that aren't mistakes." I say. "Like what the mean people did to our planet. The Mogadorians are all bullies."

"Sometimes people do bad things on purpose, too." She says. "I hope that, when you're older, you make sure to do the right thing. Come, I'll take you to the airport."

She begins talking big numbers and human nonsense with my Cêpan, who seems to understand. I curl up in his arms and watch the sky. My eyes naturally seek out a specific faint speck of starlight, beyond which lies Lorien, where I will return to one day.

Upon seeing where the planet should be, I remember flashes of the night we left; fire, explosions, destruction. Two was crying, but not as hard as I was, and she calmed down when One screamed at her to shut up. I remember One screaming at me, too, and she was soon joined by Six, Five, and Nine. But I couldn't stop sobbing. Eventually Two, Four, Seven, and Eight got them to stop yelling at me, but, inconsolable, I just kept wailing and crying. Lorien shouldn't have been destroyed, and I should be back there.

I close my eyes and clutch my Cêpan's shirt, fighting back tears. I've left behind so much. The only friend I've ever known, Number Two, who I knew since before I was old enough to speak. My family, whose memory is starting to fade, and that scares me. My home, the only one I've truly had.

Lorien.