The Refugee

Chapter 8- Cassie

"So." Jake said cheerfully. "We need a plan to help Feralae." It was raining outside, heavily. "And we want to get it done. Erek has already agreed to loan us the things we need to help Feralae. We have cleaners, brooms, dustpans, paper towels, rags, sandpaper…"

"Mops, buckets…" Marco counted off the items in the hand cart that Erek had lent us.

"Furniture finish, paint, brushes…" Rachel said cheerfully.

"Garden tools, tools in general, nails, screws, and other pieces of brick-a-brack…" I counted. "Plus a hologram emitter from Erek to hide the place with. And a picnic lunch."

If I may ask Prince Jake, how will we get all of this there? Asked Ax. And do you know how to use all of this equipment?

"I do." I said calmly. "Well, most of it. I'm not sure how to use the finish and paint.

"I'm going to help." Erek said cheerfully. "All of you morph something small and climb on and I'll push you along. The weight is like, nothing to me and we'll beat her there."

Sounds practical enough. Tobias said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, actually Tobias, it sounds insane." Marco rolled his eyes. "Totally and completely insane."

I don't see you offering any solutions Marco. Tobias pointed out.

"Fine, fine, as Rachel would say, let's do it." Marco threw up his hands in exasperation.

I closed my eyes and focused on the housefly. When we were all bugs Erek picked us up and slipped us under the tarp that covered the cleaning supplies. Suddenly…

VOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHH!!! We were blowing through the air. We were a human strapped to the bottom of a formula one car! We were the astronauts on a launching shuttle. We were on the vomit comet training at twice the speed of sound! It was incredible!

Picture the fastest thing that you've ever seen and multiply it by ten. You wouldn't even be close. Then, when I finally thought that I wouldn't be able to cope with the speed, Erek braked suddenly, causing sonic booms. I tumbled out of the handcart, landed on my head, and demorphed, sprawled in a heap.

Erek winced. "Sorry, I didn't mean to send you tumbling there."

Marco reeled. "That's okay." He fell over.

Erek caught him. Marco smiled at him, looking a little green. "You sit down. Now, to make it look like a little miracle, I'll just disappear." Erek grinned, shimmering out of view.

We slipped inside the hologram to wait and surprise Feralae. Sure enough, a pair of Harris Hawks came spiraling down out of the sky. I watched as Feralae and Alloran demorphed. Toby came swinging down out of the trees behind them, followed by a pair of young hork bajir. "Ready guys?" Jake asked.

"Ready." I whispered with a grin as wide as the Pacific Ocean.

"Let's do it!" Rachel exclaimed.

The hologram shimmered out. "SURPRISEEEEE!!!!" We all shouted at once.

Feralae, Alloran, Toby, and the two young hork bajir jumped about a mile. "Cassie what?" Feralae took in the handcart filled with cleaning supplies and the emitter and lunch. "You, you picked all of this for me?" She asked. It was still raining lightly. The rain made her look so beautiful. She looked almost like she was wreathed in a halo of light and water.

"We wanted to let you know that you weren't forgotten." Jake said, stepping forward to speak for all of us. "We came to help you fix the place up. I'd also like to introduce you to one of our friends, Erek the Chee."

Erek extended a paw with an android smile, which looked remarkably, like when a dog smiles. "Pleased to meet you Feralae. I'm a chee, and android. In my native language it means friend."

"Pleased to meet you Erek."

"I brought some housewarming gifts." Erek continued. "A holographic emitter to help you hide the cabin and a generator that has slightly more power than this place, so that you can have lights and such." He began to unload.

So we got to work. Toby and her twin siblings Alda and Bara, both also seers, began to check the roof for leaks. We went inside and opened the door. I heard a thoughtspeak voice thunder. BEWARE MORTAL, THE WRATH OF THE GHOST OF THE CABIN!! YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR MEDDLING INTERFERANCE!!


Jake instantly began to morph tiger. "Morph everybody!"

I was already started when. YOUR PITIFUL MORPHS HAVE NO EFFECT ON ME! I AM THE MONSTER MORE POWERFUL THAN ANY YEERK YOU HAVE EVER SEEN! I WILL CRUSH YOU WITH MY CLAWS!!

Morphs? How could a ghost in a remote cabin possibly know anything about morphing and yeerks. I looked up, around me, trying to find the source of the noise. I saw a pair of eyes seem to glow in the dim light. I demorphed and aimed my flashlight up to the rafters. DON'T JUST STAND THERE FLICKING THAT LIGHT AROUND!

But I did anyway, and the rat ducked back into it's hole. "DAVID!" I called up. "Nice to see you again!"

The thoughtspeak voice became decidedly deeper. I KNOW NOTHING OF THIS HUMAN DAVID!! It boomed. THIS IS MY CABIN! MINE!

"Nice try David." Rachel rolled her eyes. "We know that it's you now."

"Who's David?" Feralae asked, confused.


"The traitor animorph." Jake explained grimly. "We tricked him into being trapped in rat morph. We couldn't kill him."

No, so you abandoned me to a fate worse than death. David growled. Jake, I would rather have died than spend my life as a rat.

"And I would rather have trapped you than become a murderer." Jake answered up to the hole. "You would rather have died David? Maybe you don't think it's murder to kill somebody in morph, but I do."

"We all do. David we came here because there's a girl in exactly your same position who's taking exactly the opposite approach." I explained. "And she wanted to live here." Toby was listening from the door.

Are those controllers? David asked, meaning Toby and Alloran.

"No, we freed them from the yeerks." I explained. "Or rather, Toby was born into freedom and Feralae freed Alloran. But the yeerks took her mother and father. Her mother is now Visser 3, and her mother can morph."

David whistled appreciatively. Oh alright, she can stay. I'm warning you though, this place is a pigsty.

"That's okay." I told him. "We brought things to fix it."

Oh. I have got to see this. David scrambled out of his hole and took up a perch on a beam.

We hauled in the cleaning supplies. Feralae and I took up the brooms. The cabin was filled with old leaves and dust and even a little owl poop and pellets. We found an owl nest in the attic loft and left it. The owl had flown away when it saw us coming. Marco and Jake began cleaning the windows. Tobias morphed human and helped Toby and the twins with the roof, using shingles made of bark slabs. Ax, Alloran, and Erek clucked over the generator and holographic emitter.

This technology is amazing. Alloran said with awe as he looked over the generator. My wife Jahar would cut off her right arm just to have one look at this thing.

"Well we have had centuries to perfect it." Erek said smugly.

David chased other rats and spiders around for awhile, until we gave him a job cleaning the details in the furniture and the corners. The twins finished the roof and went to the stream for water to put in the pump. The pump was one of those old kinds where in order to get it to work you needed to pour water into it. After that Feralae and Rachel and I took up the mops and buckets and began to clean the floor. Then Feralae taught us a method of polishing floors. We stood on opposite sides of the room and ran across the floor, meeting in the middle.

We moved the furniture up to the loft first. Feralae, Tobias and Alloran acquired a barn owl that we found up in the rafters. The owl had to be kicked out unfortunately. It flew off in a huff. Marco and Ax morphed cobra and rattle snake to chase the rats out of their holes. We agreed that David could stay, but most rats could carry diseases like Haunta Pulmonary Syndrome, which was dangerous. We couldn't exactly take Feralae to the hospital, so we had to try and keep her as healthy as possible.

Once the floor was clean we moved the furniture down. Feralae threw out the old mattress and blankets. She had her own and she didn't want to sleep on something so musty. The rain had stopped by now, so we took the old dresses out to the trough in the yard to be washed. Marco and Jake helped clean out the trough. Alloran tested the water with one hoof. It works. He assured us. The water will be safe to wash with.

The dresses were washed and hung out to dry. By that time the boys had brought the furniture outside to be refinished. We all rolled up our sleeves. Feralae proved to be more adept at this than we were. I figured she'd learned the skill from her father. We left the furniture to dry while we whitewashed the walls. We opened all the windows for the fumes to go out and began polishing the floor.

The furniture dried and we brought it back in. The books had been stored in some old crates that we'd found. We hung the dresses up in an old wardrobe, put the books back on the shelf. The bed-frame was left for now. The cabin looked amazing.

We went down to the basement of the house and found a lot of barrels. They had once contained flour and things like that. Now they smelled of rot and mold. We could clean them out later. Feralae also unearthed cloth of different kinds. It was actually in pretty good condition. We also found nails, knives and other things that were non-perishable. We saved the cloth, but the food stores had to be gotten rid of. The smell here is almost overpowering. Alloran shivered. Horrible the conditions these people lived in. How could they expect to live like that, with that smell?

I never go down here. David commented. It smells too much, and trust me, this rat has an excellent sense of smell. He was sitting on Feralae's shoulder. What are you going to do with all of this?

"It's getting late. Why don't we tackle all of this tomorrow?" I suggested.

Makes sense. Thanks for the cheezits by the way. David said, munching on it. We did a lot of work for one day.

"We will continue working on the roof." Toby said calmly. "Erek and I have no place to go ne? We will continue working. Erek, I would like your opinion of our new watch and communications platforms."

I will stay as well. Alloran said with a sigh. I do not get along well with Toby. And I do not feel welcome among the hork bajir. Perhaps in a few years, if we win the war, but I doubt it. I will be back in about one Earth hour. I must feed.

The others morphed bird of prey and caught a dying thermal. David went out to forage. He knew a raspberry patch nearby he said. That left us together. "Feralae…" I said softly. "I'm not sure what it is about you. I just get this warm feeling in the pit of my stomach."

She turned to me, startled. "You Cassie? Don't you like Jake?"

I blinked, surprised. "What makes you say that?"

"Well…" She said with a smile, looking out over the woods. "It's the way you two look at each other, like there's a little secret that only you two know, it's the look of lovers."

I sat in silence. "You… I mean I…" I had to do it. I had to know. I stood up and walked over to Feralae. I pulled her lips down to mine in a kiss.

I had meant it to be short, tender. But I felt a sort of jolt of sensation run through me. Feralae opened her mouth in surprise. I slid my tongue in, whimpering softly. Oh gods, and I thought that Jake was a good kisser? Who cared about Jake right then? Our tongues twined in harmony.

I suddenly realized what I was doing. I pulled back, flushing deeply. "What… what did I do?" I gasped. "Oh Gods…" I turned and ran.

I remembered a song that my mother used to listen to in the car.

The sign says do not enter
No trespassing allowed
With visions of redemption
I walk against the crowd

I could not believe that I had just kissed a girl. And what was worse was that I liked it. I mean how could I have betrayed Jake like that? I mean, he'd be so angry at me wouldn't he?


The sun is white with envy
Confusion on the ground
Breathing soft and holy
Temptation's only sound

I didn't morph. I just ran. The others would be so upset. I mean, who wouldn't be? Jake would be upset for cheating on him. Rachel wasn't exactly homophobic, but I knew that she'd be upset. I mean, her best friend kissed a girl?

A demon's day in madness kissed
I swear I never had it like this
Forbidden yet I cannot resist

Was what I did truly wrong? I mean, it felt so right! How could it be wrong?


Shocked in silent trances
Our eyes search just to know
What makes flesh and body hunger
For another burning soul

I tried to imagine the other's faces when they heard that I had kissed a girl. At least it was a member of the group. Marco would make some kind of smart remark. Jake would be angry at me, I just knew it. I saw Rachel's look of shock. I saw Tobias' burning gaze. I imagined Ax peering curiously at me. He would try to understand, but I knew that he wouldn't. Alloran might, but who knew with him? He was new. David would be a huge jerk.

Conscience quiet pleading
In the corner of my eye
But seeing is believing
All consequences fly

And Feralae, should I just tell her to forget it? I wasn't a… a lesbian. I mean… but it had felt right. How could I lie to her? I imagined Feralae's disappointed expression. I couldn't lie to her, I couldn't lie to myself. No way. It was one thing to lie to one's parents, but to a teammate?


A demon's day in madness kissed
I swear I never had it like this
Forbidden yet I cannot resist

I decided to keep it to myself. But I knew that I would eventually have to choose between Feralae and Jake.

That didn't make me feel any better.


With fever I persist
The rages of your kiss
My reckless heart in fist
And I cannot resist

No, I would keep this to myself, test the waters, and see if they'd be upset. Then I'd break up with Jake. I'd break the news to him privately. But I had to figure it out myself first.


A demon's day in madness kissed
I swear I never had it like this
Forbidden yet I cannot resist

I morphed to horse, the morph that started it all, and I ran. I ran from the one person I couldn't run from.

Me.