CARRALIS

My name is Carralis. I'm not a human. I'm not a Yeerk. I'm not an Andalite or a Hork-Bajir, or a Skrit-Na or a Taxxon.

I'm just a Kelbrid. Not in the nest and now without my band. I'd left them behind and some fairly crazy stuff happened afterwards. I'm not sure if anyone back home will ever see me again, but I'm keeping record of it just in case.

In fact, we all are, considering our stories intersect. I'm starting it off though, since the others thought my point of view would be the most interesting take on it, at least at first.

It's up to you if you want to believe me. I have some unbelievable things to say, after all.

For a start? I'm from the future. It's a future with a rather precarious existence. If you want to know more about how time-travelling works, you'll have to ask someone else. I'm a fighter, not a scientist. It's unusual enough that I've written this down.

If you're still listening, there's more.

Earth, a planet located hundreds of light-years from Kelbrid space, is being invaded by a species of parasitic aliens called Yeerks. My friend is one of them. No, he isn't part of the invasion. He's like me: from the future.

We didn't go to the past because we desired to. It was truly a 'freak accident' as the others say. By then we were stuck. What could we do? We were stranded in time, with no family but each other.

Anything could happen now. We could live. We could die. Maybe we find a way home to our future, or we become the instruments of our own destruction. Maybe everyone gets a happy ending, or maybe we are all destroyed.

Yet that is a what-if. What-ifs are worthless. So instead, let me tell you something else. Something that happened. I will tell our story, and how we came to be amongst each other, as friends and allies.

It began when I ran away. I hadn't said goodbye to a single band-mate. I didn't know I wouldn't be seeing them again, of course. You see, I'd done something bad the night before and couldn't face the thought of what would happen when the others found out later that night.

No-one I know thinks that I should've made such a great deal over it. I was a young, fiery Kelbrid, filled with a sense of duty to my band and my Kingdom, and until that moment, I'd never done anything out of line.

So that's why I panicked.

I dropped from my shelf in the colony and spread my flight cerata. The thrill of acceleration graced me. I almost flew into another Kelbrid. I whistled an apology to her and kept flying. I was still inside the transparent chambers of the colony superstructure. I raced towards the nearest exit - one I'd used so many times.

It was ingrained in my memory. I burst through it and out the other side. I didn't delay: I couldn't think straight and I just needed to fly.

I quickly folded my cerata and shot down to just above ocean level and coasted on the watery air cushion. It way daytime, so most Kelbrids were still asleep.

It also meant it was practically impossible to see anything once I left the colony perimeter, mist and clouds hung over the ocean from the daytime heat. I continued coasting blind, relying only on my cerata to guide me in the changing wind currents.

There was no destination in mind, and no one would be insane enough to follow me this far away during the day. I needed to think. I needed to get away. Still, my thought went to my band-mates.

Rennis, Oxyss... what would they think of me? I wondered what would happen if I was kicked from the band. They'd still be large enough with seven members. We were still young. They might even find a replacement for me.

My thoughts drifted as I flew. Then I realised it. How long had it been since I'd flown from my colony? Panicked, I soared in circles, trying to find anything that'd signify my colony in the distance.

The only thing I saw was mist. I was stupid. You never fly during the day. Never. Kelbrid nurses tell stories to hatchlings about terrible things that happen to day-fliers. They'd frightened me so much that I'd been the last in my band to work the courage to even take his first flight lesson.

Then I'd gone and done it. I'd flown into the mists.

Frightened, I picked a random direction to fly in. It was better than giving up.

It wasn't good enough. I never saw the lights of my colony shining bright along the horizon ever again. Instead, the horizon just kept stretching and stretching as I flew. It never ended. Brazion's oceans were huge, almost as large as Earth's.

I found myself tiring. I closed my eyes. The pain in my muscles and the burning in my throat was somewhat soothed by the warm wind against my skin.

Then, despite my attempts to stay awake, my senses dulled. My hearts slowed. I must've flown miles and I was reaching the end of my tether.

I could barely hear the distant crashing of the waves. Even the ever-constant rumble of the sky felt so far away. My cerata faltered and folded, and the sharp clarity of sound, wind, and humidity fell away from me.

The warm surface of the ocean caressed me as I fell into it. It washed against me, trying to pull me under.

I fell unconscious.

When I woke up, I was on sand. The ocean waves lapped against me gently. I'd washed up on the beach. The fact that it was sandy and baking didn't tell me anything. Brazion was always either ocean or sand with nothing in-between.

Something touched me but I couldn't bring myself to care. I was so tired. My brain rationalised it as a curious seaworm wondering whether I was dead yet.

It touched me again. Then another creature touched me on my other side. Their fingers were freezing. But like a trapped raullin that knew it was going to die anyway, I didn't do anything. I let them pick me up. Heft my body away from where I'd laid.

Whoever had picked me up must've struggled to carry me. They dropped me a couple of times. The last time they dropped me was on a cold floor, and then I fell unconscious again.

The first thing I became aware of was that I was cold. It was an uncomfortable feeling. It's never cold in the colony. And the air… it was old. Barely moving, lazily circulating. Only the oldest, most dilapidated colonies had air this stale. Yet oddly, it was also dry as a bone.

My hunger and tiredness was gone, as if my entire flight had been a dream. I briefly wondered if that'd been the case until I opened my eyes and looked up.

There was this thing in front of me. A creature of some sort. I tried to focus on it. I must've slept for ages, because my eyes refused to cooperate for the first few minutes. But when they did, I wished they hadn't.

I was so shocked I jolted up and hit my head on the ceiling. It hurt. I half-swore, half-screamed. The creature in front of me jumped back too, but kept its huge, creepy, unblinking eyes trained on mine.

It was ugly. Disgusting, even. Pallid flesh, with no cerata, exoskeleton, or fur, or anything really. Just pale, dry skin.

I'd scared it. But I realised it didn't run because I was in a cage. A metal one with metal bars. That immediately struck me as odd. Why would anyone build a cage out of metal?

It stared at me. I stared back. I had no idea what it was. I'd never seen or heard of anything like it. It was grey, with slender arms and legs, and short fingers. An uninspired, dull, creepy… thing. I was so shocked that I wanted to go running right back to my colony to tell everyone about the horrible encounter.

Could I talk to it? Was it even intelligent?

"What… what are you?" I asked timidly. My voice echoed down the metal hallways, and the feedback in my cerata told me I must've been in a massive structure. Nothing as huge as my colony, but maybe the same size as one of its storm shields.

The thought of it sent shivers down my dorsal. Where was I? Who was my captor? Why did they put me in a metal cage?

The creature muttered something in a language I'd never heard, dropped to all fours and scurried away.

That - that had been rude. And I was still very, very confused.

I tried poking my head out from the bars to peer down the corridor it'd escaped through. If it thought metal could hold me inside the cage, then maybe it was best not to play my only trick until I knew what I really wanted to do.

After all, I was always known as the patient, calculating band-mate. I felt I needed to live up to it.

There again, the corridors were empty. Nobody was about.

And the only way to find out where I was, was to get out of the cage.

I thought about what Oxyss would've done and chuckled. Maybe I should act like her for once.

As I pondered, a scream broke the silence.

I swallowed, cringing. It was high-pitched and probably one of the worst sounds I had ever heard in my entire life. No animal on Brazion made that sound.

Another creature was being escorted by two of the creatures I'd seen earlier.

It was surprisingly similar to them, with the same odd posture that kept their bodies vertical. This one had smaller eyes, and you could tell by the way it walked that it could never drop to all fours and scurry around.

It also had a long patch of hair on its head, as black as my own dusty scales, and a pinkish skin tone. But it also seemed to have an extra layer of skin, which after a few moments I figured was some sort of accessory and not actually part of the creature's body. But why would it wear such a thing? Was it kidnapped during courtship? Or maybe made to wear it by the grey ones?

It seemed the newcomer was as much a prisoner here as I was. It kicked, shouted and screamed at the grey ones, but they continued dragging it until they reached the front of my cage.

I backed up, worried I would be noticed and punished in some way. A pointless action, since the grey ones simply opened my cage doors and threw the creature in with me.

A loud thud rang through the floor as it scrabbled to get back up on both feet and stared at me in horror. I assumed it was horror, at least judging by its wide eyes and act of backing away. But I didn't know what to think any longer. I was in a strange place surrounded by strange creatures.

The grey ones watched for a few moments more, then left the way they'd came.

I supposed this creature was meant to be some kind of nest-mate for me.

I gave an unimpressed snort and turned away from it to sit down. It wasn't that I was actually unimpressed. My curiosity was barely contained. But I couldn't think of anything better to do, with it screeching and trying to get as far away from me as possible.

My eldest clutch-mate always said to me when befriending prey animals, or even with shy nestlings: show them you're not interested in them and they'll try to approach you themselves.

A few agitating moments passed and I was surprised to see that he'd been right.

The creature said something and I turned my head to take a sidelong look at it. It said something again. When it wasn't screaming, its voice was level and fairly pleasant. I just didn't know what it was saying.

It must have been some sort of language. There was always a difference between pointless animal sounds and a purposeful language. I never really stopped to think about what that difference was, but I knew this was a language.

I tilted my head at the creature and kept my cerata splayed.

"Do you speak Iltsilid?" I asked tentatively, hoping it'd somehow know my small colony's dialect, even if it wasn't a Kelbrid.

It looked at me, equally confused.

It was a smallish creature, about two thirds of my size. It wasn't covered in any sort of mucus, scales or hard shell. I wondered how it could survive on Brazion's surface. It didn't look adapted to live underground.

I went to stand on my own two legs and carefully approached it. It stared back at me warily. I noticed it was sparing glances at my hands.

No, not my hands, my claws. I noticed that its own hands had the same amount of fingers as mine. And they weren't tipped with hooks, but flat, transparent nails. It was clear that this creature's hands weren't built for fighting.

I wished I could tell it that, well, neither were mine. They were hooked for climbing, not for fighting. My limbs were powerful, but far too short to get any decent range on a strike. Maybe for an ambush but not a fight.

Since it couldn't understand my language, maybe it would understand tones? I gave a submissive whine. The same type that hatchlings make before they learn how to speak.

At that point I couldn't be more grateful that none of my own kind were around to hear that. I think I would've rather leapt into the ocean again than try to live that down.

But to the creature, it seemed to understand, and it relaxed.

At this point, there was no question of its intelligence.

I held out a hand to it, palm up. It flinched a little, looked at me questioningly, then touched its own fleshy palm on mine. It didn't really inspect my hand, but I could see it was curious. It mumbled something soothingly, then let go of my hand.

I stared at my hand dumbly. What had just happened?

I must've looked pretty stupid, because the creature started chattering in strange, lilting tones. It was a fairly entertaining noise. Then I realised what it was doing.

It was laughing at me.

I looked at it indignantly. Its laughter echoed down the metal hallways and reminded me of the gigantic maze of corridors we were trapped inside.

And I started chuckling too.

This was all so stupid.

Once our laughter died down, my new cage-mate tried talking to me again. It tried about a dozen words, before it said one that I recognised.

"Kelbrid?"

My eyes widened, and I had to remember to give an affirmative chirp. It felt strange to feel those sounds come from my throat again, but it was all I had.

Kelbrid was the accidental collective name of our species, one that the original space-farers used when travelling through space. We'd called ourselves that since the Kelbra Colony, from the Kelbra Desert, had been the largest original super-colony on the planet.

Then it clicked.

I was in a spaceship. These were aliens.

Blame me for not realising sooner, but space had never really held any interest for me. I cared for my band-mates first and Brazion second. What other Kelbrids did in space was irrelevant to anything to do with my life. I was too young, still in training, to be permitted to leave my planet.

I also found it hard to believe a foreign ship would be allowed anywhere near Brazion. If it didn't have permission to enter our subspace, it would've been shot clean straight of the sky and scrapped for valuable building materials.

The alien I'd been talking to seemed as surprised as I was. I suppose it didn't really know much either.

It pointed at itself and said another word. I paused for a second.

"Human," I copied with perfect mimicry.

It jumped. I'd been quiet since we'd met. But the human seemed pleased, pointed at itself, and said a different word.

"Lilah," I copied again. A name, I guessed.

If that was the case, I motioned to myself and said my own name.

"Carralis," I said.

Lilah nodded. "Carralis," it repeated carefully after stuttering a couple of times.

I guess my name must've been a little too long for its liking, because the alien had taken to calling me Carra. I didn't really mind. Lilah was a short name, so humans must've preferred it that way.

It turned out that we didn't need to break out of the cage either. After I figured out that Lilah wanted to use my claws, the alien worked out how to undo the flimsy lock with my index hook.

After that, we'd taken multiple excursions throughout the ship, although we could never leave for too long. Skrit-Na, as I'd learned when Lilah pointed and said their name, patrolled the cages regularly.

It was during one of these excursions that we came along a pair of animals. You could tell they weren't intelligent. When I stumbled past them, they were calm but wary of us.

Both of them were small and walked on two legs with a posture more like mine than either the Skrit-Na or Lilah, and one of them was such a bright shade of blue I had to wonder what type of environment would require them to look so vibrant.

"Earth animals," she said to me when she noticed me staring. She'd managed to explain to me that Earth was the planet she came from and in the process I'd learned a small amount of English from her.

I was apparently 'incredible' at learning the new language, but it wasn't really that difficult from learning a new colony language. I personally thought I was a bit slow. A nagging feeling itched at my mind and told me that any of my band-mates would've learned it faster.

The language also had a few strange linguistic rules, but with Lilah's guidance, I soon got used to them.

"Different species?" I asked her. There was a thing with words being slightly different if you were talking about more than one of a thing. We had a similar thing with our language, but it involved speaking with a different pitch rather than changing the entire word.

"No, they're the same species," she replied. I stared at her questioningly, cerata splayed.

She pointed at the colourful one. "Male," she stated. Then she pointed at the drab one. "Female."

I must have seemed confused, because she elaborated.

"That one is male and that one is female," she said. Then she pointed at herself. "I am female, too." She motioned back towards the drab animal, then to herself. "We are both female."

I nodded, a gesture I'd picked up off Lilah. The drab animal must've been the egg-layer to blend in with its environment, not unlike Kelbrids.

"I am male," I said, with a small smile. My kind didn't normally smile, but we had the ability to, and I figured I might as well try doing it and make Lilah feel a little bit more at ease with me.

She nodded, seeming quite interested.

I had wanted to ask her about that but didn't have any way to convey my question. By the Sands, I hadn't even been sure if aliens had different sexes.

But I guessed the Earth animals had taught me.

"What is their name? The name of their species?" I asked slowly, a little worried that I'd gotten the 'of' convention wrong, but my worries were unfounded.

"Peafowl," she said, then pointed to each gender. "Peacock, peahen. Very beautiful animals."

I nodded as if I'd stumbled onto some deep profound meaning. I didn't repeat the words but Lilah knew by now that I'd filed them away for later, ready to surprise her.

She decided to continue the lesson. "They're mates. Married." She moved her hands and placed them palm over palm, so that they clasped each other.

I stared at the gesture, and my cerata flared in surprise. I reared back, stared at her, then glanced at my own hand. I hadn't… Had I…?

"No, no!" She raised her hands, both palms facing me. "Uh, what we did, that was different! Besides, I already have someone I like, sort of," she laughed softly, smiling and flashing her teeth at me again. The gesture seemed somewhat bashful.

"Oh," I said. I laughed awkwardly back. "I have no mate," I admitted. I was old enough to and already had someone in mind, but I was still officially unpaired. I quickly veered away from the subject of myself. "What is the name of your… someone?" I asked as if Lilah was the only interesting person in the room.

She suddenly appeared hesitant and I briefly wondered if I'd asked a question too far. Had I broken some sort of custom?

"His name is Oskel Four-Nine-Four," she said skittishly, her skin turning an even darker shade of pink as the words exited her mouth.

I tilted my head. Was that it? It was a long name but…

She seemed a bit taken aback by my confusion, then she repeated her mates' name and held up her hands, but only a few fingers at a time. At first she held up four, then nine, then four again. Then she paused and continued to hold up different amounts of fingers, then said:

"Numbers."

She held up one finger. "Number one." Then she held up two. "Number two." She did this for all of her fingers.

"Your mate has numbers in his name?" I asked her when she'd finished. She nodded. "Why does your name have no numbers?"

She pulled a funny face but still answered my question.

"Why doesn't my name have numbers?" She repeated for my benefit, aware that I'd been unsure of how to word the question and I filed away the information. "Because human names don't have numbers," she said softly.

"Oskel Four-Nine-Four isn't human?" I asked, shocked. Was this normal for aliens?

Lilah frowned. It wasn't a disappointed frown, like she made when she saw a caged animal, but more of a troubled one. "Oskel wasn't human," she explained. Wasn't human… so he was human now?

I was so surprised I didn't bother to formulate my reply properly. "Human now?" I asked, aware that I probably sounded like a hatchling.

She nodded.

"Non-human mates normal for humans?"

"Are non-human mates normal?" She repeated, remembering to correct me again. "No, Carra, they aren't."

She'd said it with an almost aggressive tone. I guessed that's why she'd struggled with a reply when I'd asked her. She didn't know how to tell me. Or whether to tell me at all, I guessed.

"He is human now," I said, trying to sound sure of myself, as if I wasn't still reeling from the revelation that people could swap species where Lilah came from. "If he wasn't human, doesn't matter. He is your someone, that is what matters."

She smiled at me. "Your English is getting very good. Already better than a Hork-Bajir, I think.

"And… the word is love," she said, hoping to enter the new word into my dictionary. I noticed her skin was still flushed pink. "When you really care about someone."

"Love?" I repeated with that questioning lilt that English used when asking questions.

"We do... love each other, I guess. Ugh, that feels weird to say. We're really good friends. I hope I can see him again soon," Lilah said distantly, looking away from me and at the distant wall. All of a sudden, she appeared incredibly sad. "Let's go back. I don't really want to talk about it any more."

I nodded and we headed back to the cages. We were so far away from Earth that thinking about her own kind must've upset her. I didn't blame her.

I missed my band-mates too.