Disclaimer: I don't own the Animorphs, I don't own the aliens (guess who they are) and I certainly don't own Cassie.
Chapter Eight.
I stared at the creature, the alien. My mind began working properly, making connections.
The food, the shapeless clothing. The beings that knew where I was, and were capable of spaceflight.
The visitor stood at the entrance to the cave, and…smiled. How did I know it was a smile? It just was. It was all over her face. Normally when an alien smiles it's weird. Hork-Bajir smiles are just plain scary. Andalite smiles focus on the eyes. But the way this creature smiled was sort of human. And I liked it.
She said something, in that growly, fluid language of theirs. Needless to say, I didn't understand a word.
She frowned –a sort of creasing over her muzzle –and tried again.
I shook my head helplessly. I felt a little vulnerable, standing there in just my morphing outfit.
She looked at me, and tilted her head. Then she tapped her chest and said, "Inest." It was a strange word –eye-nest.
And again, "Inest." That time, I guessed she meant it was her name.
And then she pointed at me, and said something else. I guessed she was asking for my name. Well, it couldn't hurt. Much.
I pointed at myself and said, "Cassie."
One of her ears flipped, and I grinned. I couldn't help it.
Okay, so I guess I knew that it might not be an entirely good thing that they knew about me. But they'd saved my life. And from what I'd seen of them, they were pretty friendly people.
The alien –Inest –came over to me. She crouched down and touched my ankle gently, checking the cuts. She straightened up again and touched my face. Then she gestured for me to follow her and went out of the cave.
I followed her. I didn't have anything else to do.
----
One thing about these aliens.
I said they were friendly. I said they were energetic.
They were both of the above. But they were also extremely curious.
Curious, as in less than en minutes after Inest and I had joined up with a couple more of them, they were talking to me in a very questioning way. I couldn't understand a word. Did that deter them? Nope. Far from it. If anything, they got even more interested.
Now that I was close to them –close up and able to see them clearly –something about them bothered me. It was like there was a little voice in the back of my head, niggling at me. It kept saying that there was something I'd forgotten. Something important. It kept saying that I'd seen something about them, long ago.
But how could I, when I'd never seen them before?
I tried to put it out of my mind. But it stayed with me.
And so did the worrying question of what they'd done with their ship.
But for a while I was able to…what, exactly? I suppose it was something like putting my life on one side. Because out here, in the sun and the breeze, surrounded by creatures who seemed to want nothing more than to have fun, it was so, so wonderfully easy to put away my memories of the war.
You have no idea how much the war had been dragging on me. Come to that, I hadn't known just how much the constant danger had affected me. Hadn't known until some of it was lifted.
I mean, yeah, I was surrounded by aliens, and my track record with aliens is that a fair percentage of them would very much like to kill me. (Or, failing that, to slither through my ear and wrap themselves around my brain.) But the feeling I had about these aliens was like the feeling I'd had about Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. And so I stayed, and allowed myself to bask in it.
There were about sixty of them, I guessed. They moved around a lot, so it was difficult to tell. A fair enough number –about the size of the Hork-Bajir colony –but not too many. Though more than I thought I'd seen the day before.
And children. Yes, some of them were children.
They were smaller than the adults, of course, but what they lacked in size they made up for in sheer manic energy. I don't think they knew the meaning of the term 'stay still'. They just ran. Ran all over the place, moving very, very fast. And they tried to climb trees, which was just about impossible for them.
Later, I leaned that the only way Inest's kind could climb a tree was to take a jump onto the lowest branch, and then to 'walk' from branch to branch. They couldn't grip a branch with their legs, the way a human can. But that's beside the point.
As I said, the children were full of energy. And they were about as curious –and friendly –as the adults.
I was tired. All the activity had worn me out. So, despite the fact that it was still morning, I went and sat down on a rock out of the way, maybe thinking to get some sleep.
One of the children came up to me, a female with a silver glint in her yellow fur. She was carrying something very carefully. She came up to me and held it out, and I saw that it was a small bird with a crooked leg.
Incredible, it seemed to me, that on a different planet, this one could find it in her to be kind to a bird. But then, when I thought about it, wasn't that the kind of thing I'd do?
I took the bird, very gently. I found a small stick, straightened the leg, and tied it to the stick with a strip torn from my ragged leotard.
The child smiled, one of those funny smiles that went all over her face. She laughed, that strange chuk-chuk-chuk laugh that they had.
I looked around at the world. My world. The world I had sought to rescue, to save. Whether it be from humanity or from the Yeerks.
Inest came up to me. Said something to the girl. Looked at me.
Then she said, "What?"
Yes. 'What'. Her first word in English, and it was 'what'. Which, to be fair, was the word I'd been using the most.
"Cah-ssie. What?"
I kind of stared at her. Okay, so now she was picking up my language?
Well, it would make communication easier…
I waved my arm at the group on the slope.
"There are so many of you. And you're all so happy. I can't remember the last time I felt like that. And you help injured birds! They aren't even native to wherever you come from, but you care about them more than some humans I've met! And Inest…" I was going to say, What are you? But I didn't. There are some things you just don't ask. I think I sensed even then that I wouldn't believe the answer.
Because, you see, I sort of knew, already, what the answer would be.