As Elfangor walked across the lush grass of his planet, he grew ever more certain that he had come home. Everything here was familiar to him. From the graceful kafit bird that flew overhead, to the tiny hoobers that bounced across his path on their springy tendrils and stared at him with their funny bulging eyes.
Elfangor had asked his father if he could have one of his own once. His father had said that hoobers as well as kafits, dereas, and the large heavily furred mereals belonged to all Andalites. It was something that Elfangor had always tried to remember. It was right about then that Elfangor spotted the stream.
The oh-so-familiar stream. But, if the stream was here, running its well-known course, then did that mean…? Elfangor raised his main eyes, even as his stalk eyes kept up their constant surveillance. He blinked twice, but the sight did not change in the slightest.
It was the small rise of a hill he liked to climb, but more important than that was what lay on the other side of that rise. If he climbed to the top, as he was wont to do on the few occasions that he was allowed to go home now that he was in the military, Elfangor was sure that he would see the well-loved landscape of his home.
Taking a deep breath, Elfangor raced up the side of the slope and leapt across the stream. Sure enough, there was his family's scoop, right in front of his eyes. He was home. The mere thought was enough to make all of his other concerns seem trivial.
Elfangor ran over slopes that he had known all his life, gentle curves that were as familiar as his own name. Finally reaching the crest of the low hill, Elfangor stared out over the oval scoop where he and his parents lived. Elfangor could almost feel the grass of the scoop under his hooves, and he couldn't wait to see both his parents and his childhood toys again.
Then he caught sight of something he had never seen before, something that could not possibly belong in the place where it now stood. Everything in the scoop was as it should be, the cultivated grass and flowers were all there. As was the blue awning that covered the southern quadrant of the scoop and kept their possessions out of the rain.
But there, just beyond the western side of the scoop, was a tall crashing waterfall. A waterfall that simply fell hundreds of feet, from a cliff that jutted abruptly out of the grass. It was a magnificent sight to be sure, but it violated every known law of physics.
Elfangor felt his hearts lurch, and for a moment upon spotting the falls his lungs just stopped working. Once he could breathe again, Elfangor stared around and the landscape of this surreal place. One that looked so much like his own planet, but could not be anywhere in the real universe.
The first thing Elfangor looked to, however, was the sky. What he saw there was beyond impossible: the sky had been divided into patches of three separate colors. With three differing patterns to further distinguish them.
The first was the bright red and gold of the sky on his home planet. The second was a strange, but no less beautiful, pale blue with drifting white clouds. The third and definitely the strangest, was a sickly green color and torn by frequent bolts of jagged lightning.
What have we done? Elfangor whispered, awed and frightened at the same time.
***
Visser Thirty-two found himself in a meadow, one that could not ever have originated on his planet. Grass in a blue-green color spread all over the ground. And trees with needles, as well as those with leaves, bordered the area.
The trees were all varying shades of green themselves, not at all like those on Alloran's planet. But this was not the Yeerk homeworld either. It seemed to take aspects of the Andalite world and change them subtly, creating an entirely new place out of these strange but familiar elements.
Who could have done this? The Visser wondered, being very careful to shield his thoughts from Alloran. Then he remembered the human female, Loren. Could she be responsible for this lush meadow, so much like those on the Andalite homeworld?
A flash of black caught his attention, distracting him from his mental pursuits. His former host was leaning against the rough pale brown trunk of one of the needled trees, arms flat against the cracked surface. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to fit in perfectly with this strange environment.
A soft breeze tugged gently at his black hair. The Visser thought at first that he had gone unnoticed, until the boy's crimson eyes snapped open and fixed him with a piercing stare. Fading back into invisibility after giving the Visser a murderous glare, the last that Visser Thirty-two saw of him were his footsteps in the grass.
Looking at the meadow surrounding him, Visser Thirty-two became increasingly certain that Loren had created this landscape. It did not fit with any of Alloran's memories. And it was definitely not a place that could exist on his homeworld.
***
Elfangor walked towards the waterfall, intending to start his search from there. It was a logical choice, since it was the largest landmark visible. Elfangor set off at a steady trot, arriving at a halfway point between the hill and the falls, when he decided to explore this strange environment more thoroughly before endeavoring to find Loren.
Turning away from the falls, Elfangor hung a sharp left, taking himself farther and further from the cascading water. As far as he could see, this place was devoid of sentient creatures. And Elfangor also saw that his previous observation had not even covered less than half of the terrain on this extremely odd planet.
When Elfangor came to a wide grassland, one that he had known for most of his life, he realized that "odd" was not a strong enough word to describe what he was seeing. Not strong enough by worlds. The grassland was inherently familiar to him, but it had been bisected directly through the center.
On the right, the side that Elfangor now stood on, were the normal grasses, flowers and trees of his planet. On the left was a hostile and unfamiliar landscape. A barren, desolate wasteland with plants that barely merited the name.
The green sky, split by harsh lightning at random intervals, was the sole atmosphere in this place. Could this be Earth, the planet Loren was from? Coming closer to the boundary of Andalite lands, repulsed and a bit fascinated both at once, Elfangor looked closer at the blasted land.
Normally, Elfangor shied away from using emotive words to describe a planet. But there was no other way to capture the essence of the place. It was, to put it plainly, hideous.
Skirting the boundary, Elfangor decided not to risk venturing in. Then, out of one of the holes, a creature – or a plant – shot up into the air and stood perfectly vertical for just a moment. It was a dark – almost black red – and resembled a Taxxon tongue in everything but its sheer size.
Farther away from Elfangor's vantagepoint, another of the plant/creatures slid out of its hole with a wet scooping sound. Elfangor spotted the oddest thing then, it was an animal, or so it seemed to be. But not like any that Elfangor had ever seen on any of the planets he had been to. It was a quadruped, that much was normal, the legs were quite a bit thicker than those of any other alien he had seen before though.
But, the strangest thing about this creature was that it did not possess a head. None at all, as far as Elfangor could see, it just possessed an abnormally thick neck and a pair of broad shoulders. It passed directly in front of the plant/creature, and was snared by its hind legs in less time than it took Elfangor to blink.
It let out a pitiful moan, though Elfangor wasn't sure how it managed that feat with no head, as the plant/creature dragged to back to its hole. However, the animal was far too large for the plant/creature to pull into the hole. So, the latter just held the animal prisoner as the former continued to moan.
What is this awful place? Elfangor wondered. But even as Elfangor thought that, he was starting to suspect he knew the answer. Elfangor's epiphany came when he recognized one of the "ponds" as a Yeerk pool. Elfangor had only once seen holographic images of what he was seeing now, but he knew beyond any doubt that this was the Yeerk homeworld.
***
Visser Thirty-two wandered around in the lush blue-green meadow, wondering if he should chance going after his old host again. Staring at the trail of crushed grass, he decided to forgo the chase, for now. Consciously heading in a different direction, Visser Thirty-two tried to put the still-fresh footprints out of his mind.
***
Elfangor turned away from that sickening parody of his home planet, not wanting to see anything more. He decided then and there that he would find Loren, and maybe the two of them together could find a way off of this impossible world. As far as Elfangor was concerned, Visser Thirty-two could find himself.