"See you later, Movers!" I shouted at my friends while waving goodbye.
"Bye, Nina!" The Movers shouted back at me in unison.
"Binina," Warehouse Mouse squeaked, almost unintelligibly.
I turned around and left the Warehouse, red polka dot suitcase in hand. I didn't know where I was going but I knew that it was time to leave. I would miss my friends and I would miss solving idea emergencies. But more powerful than those feelings was the feeling that I needed to get out there and experience life on my own.
I was about a block away from the bus station when I noticed a girl who seemed out of place. She had long, wavy brown hair, a floral sundress, no shoes, and a look of bizarrely content confusion on her face. She was walking along a raised garden box, holding her arms out in an attempt to keep her balance.
"You!" she whispered as I walked past her. I stopped even though I wasn't sure she was speaking to me.
"Me?" I asked.
"You," she said, this time a little louder.
"I'm Nina," I said.
"Nina," the strange girl spoke my name as if it were a word she had never heard before. "It's going to rain," she continued.
I looked up at the perfectly sunny, blue sky. "It doesn't look like it's going to rain."
"Oh," she said. "But it will. Somewhere. And it will make a river." She jumped off the garden box and landed next to me. She grabbed my hand and shouted "let's go!" She began running, dragging me along with her.
For a moment I thought "what am I doing running along with this stranger?" until I realized that this is what I yearned for. Adventure. We had been running for at least a full two minutes before I remembered that I had left my suitcase near the garden box where I had first met this barefooted girl.
"I live on a spaceship," she said. Suddenly she stopped running and dropped my hand.
I thought to myself, "this girl must be crazy." I was seriously considering the "slowly backing away" approach to getting out of the situation when the mysterious girl pointed up at the sky.
"See?" she said. "Rain." I heard a loud, continuous noise that sounded like thunder and for a second I believed her. I was more than shocked to see what appeared to be a giant metal firefly descending from the sky. A hatch was opened on the bottom and a man in a brown overcoat was hanging out of it.
"River!" the man shouted. "What the gorram hell do you think you're doing?"
"I found this lost kitten!" River shouted back while gesturing toward me. Then she turned to me and spoke quietly. "Captain says it's time to leave this planet. Are you coming with?"
I was frozen. I'd seen the Movers do some pretty crazy stuff, but this spaceship might just be a little too much for me to handle on my first real adventure. I didn't respond. The girl grabbed my hand again.
"Mal!" she shouted up to the man. "Can I keep it?"