I climbed back into the tree I had been resting in, but was unable to return to sleep. Restless and agitated, I climbed up as high as I could, up into the thinnest branches that barely held my weight. A faint breeze caused the treetops to sway back and forth, and with the ground below completely invisible, it took an extra degree of self-control to remain calm. But as long as I had at least one limb in contact with the tree, I knew I was safe.
I looked around me. The northern horizon was mostly dark, but to the south and east I could see the golden lights of the city. A band of rapidly moving red and gold lights stretched off into the distance in both the northwest and south. Tobias said it was something Humans called an "interstate" - a major artery of travel for their ground-based vehicles. Somewhere past that shimmering sea of lights was the Pacific Ocean - an expanse of water that covered more than a quarter of the entire planet's surface. For the Humans who lived here, all of this was completely normal. But for me, even though I had been born here - somewhere underneath that city - it was a completely alien environment.
Up above the city, the sky was still dark enough to be able to see the stars. One of them was the Homeworld. But which one? Was it even visible from this side of Earth at night? Spending my entire life in an underground Yeerk facility had deprived me of any opportunity for casual astronomy. I knew its location within the galaxy, of course - Sector 5, RG-21578-4. Forty light-years away. But I could not match it up against any of the little white dots above me. I didn't even know which were stars, and which were other planets orbiting the same star as Earth. I stood there, watching the stars for the last hour before the sun began to creep over the mountains to the east, and the stars faded away in the daylight.
With a rustle of feathers, Tobias landed on a branch above me.
(Good morning,) they said.
"Yes," I answered, "It appears the weather will be clear and dry until midday."
Tobias stared at me for a moment with his inscrutable hawk's gaze.
(Um... yeah, I guess so. Listen, I checked back in with Cassie before she left for school to let her know that you also had the same weird dream we did.)
"And?"
(And neither of us thinks it's a coincidence that it happened to all three of us on the same night. So she's going to ask the others to come over after school so we can talk about it and see if we can figure out what's going on. But that won't be for several hours. We've got most of the day wide open.)
"So how do you propose we use our time until they come?"
(Let's get breakfast first. Then I think we can do a little spying around town, see if we can identify any Yeerk activity.)
I climbed back down to the base of the tree. There was a hollow space among the roots. Inside was a pair of plastic bags, one of which contained an assortment of dried meats. I pulled out a container and opened it. It wasn't for myself, of course - as a Hork-Bajir, I was incapable of digesting this food source. But Tobias was completely dependent on it. It was one of the consequences of their being trapped in morph. Their body was now that of a predator that survived by hunting and consuming other animals. But he still had the mind of a Human, and was not mentally prepared to hunt and kill his own food on a daily basis. So the other Animorphs had been bringing packaged food for him to survive on. I set the meat on the tree roots, and as Tobias fed, I used my wrist blades to cut bark from a nearby tree.
The first morph I had acquired was Tobias, or at least the hawk shape he had been trapped in. It was a very useful morph for scouting around the city, with high mobility and vision vastly more powerful than either Human or Hork-Bajir eyesight. As soon as I finished eating, I started morphing. I could feel my body shrink while feathers began growing out of my skin. My face stiffened into a hooked beak, arms snapped and twisted as they became wings, and I could feel my internal organs rearrange themselves in a way that I knew should have been extremely painful, but was somehow numbed.
(I am ready,) I said after the final changes were complete, (Where do you want us to search today?)
(I've got a couple of places in mind,) Tobias answered, (We should probably check over by the Esplin Building first. Follow me...)