He closed his eyes, afraid for that what he would see. His fire would surely hit the man and the man would certainly not survive this. All his hard work to keep that damn alien alive had been for nothing, it would be dead by now anyway. How sorrowful, he wanted to ask the alien so many things. He would ask where all the spaceships came from, what his planet was like, why he was here, but it was too late, the alien was dead. All these thoughts were going through Chanyeol’s head, while fire was still shooting from his hands, uncontrollably.

Okay, I knew what I had to do, breath in and focus. I put my hands in front of me, by means of protection. Fire isn’t harmful. It’s not stronger than me. It’s just fire. If water can fight it, so can I. In fact, 72% of my body contains water already. These kinds of motivational thoughts went through my mind. I felt something warm my cheeks, head, hands, feet. It was very warm, but it didn’t hurt. Actually, it felt really nice, like I was showering without water. Yes, this meant that I could still do it, the fire went past me and didn’t hit me like I thought it would. I really didn’t think I would be able to pull it off again. Now, where was the fire coming from? Directly from that guy? Did they invent paranormal powers on Aurora during the time I was flying towards here? What kind of technology did I miss out on while I was asleep??

Chanyeol felt that all the heat was leaving his body, he could gain control again but decided to get rid of all that damn fire, he didn’t want it inside his body anymore.

The fire lessened and I could see that the fire was indeed coming from the boy.

He finally dared to open one eye. With one eye he traced the place, where were the ashes of the alien? However, he noticed that everything was in ashes, but the alien. Out of shock, both his eyes opened widely. What happened? He couldn’t have avoided the fire, that would have been simply impossible. He felt the last bit of fire leaving his body, he shook his head and ran over to the alien. Chanyeol took him by his shoulders.

His grip was tight, I felt that his hands were shaking. His hands were very warm though, the warmth went through my t-shirt, it felt so nice. I could see that disbelieve was written all over his face. I knew this face, this wasn’t the first time people had looked at me with this gaze. I didn’t mind him gazing at me though, he was really handsome and I enjoyed looking at him. Although it was hard to find authentic races on Earth nowadays since racism wasn’t a thing anymore and people of all kind of races had been mixing over time, his face remembered me of that of an authentic Asian, which I had once studied for history. His astonished face was really cute and adorable. Suddenly he started to stammer.

‘You’re alive…? You survived?’ his voice trembled.

I nodded, so at least all these days without a proper shower hadn’t turned me into a dead-seeming zombie, well that felt good.

‘How did you do that?’ I asked. He just attacked me, I had the right to ask him things first before he started questioning me.

‘I don’t know, I was born with this power, like some other boys. It’s not so special, what you did was way more special though, where did you learn to block fire?’

He knew that he might come off as a little nosey, but he didn’t care at this moment. Chanyeol had taken care of this freaking alien. If this man knew ways to block fire, he should teach it to Chanyeol. Chanyeol could teach it to everyone, this way he would never be a danger to anyone anymore. This really was a perfect plan.

‘I don’t know, I was born with this power,’ was the reply of the alien.

Great, of all the aliens this universe had to offer, he had to find one that found itself funny. Why was Chanyeol always the one with bad luck?

‘Is there a way to teach me?’ he eagerly asked, his eyes sparkled.

The alien shook his head, ‘nope, someone told me it’s a paranormal gift. I don’t really know what I do either, so even if I could teach you, I wouldn’t know how to.’

Chanyeol sighed in disappointment. Well, at least there was someone now that had no reason to be afraid of him. Sadly it was an illegal alien and Chanyeol didn’t know anything about him.

‘Are you hurt?’ he tried.

I shook my head again, ‘the fire didn’t hurt me at all, but if you mean the crash, then yes. It hurts a freaking lot, I didn’t know we were supposed to crash into Aurora, why wasn’t this a safe landing?’

The boy looked at me in perplexity.

‘Aurora? What is Aurora?’

I looked at him, I could barely believe him. Was he really one of those standard lame-joke boys? Although I didn’t want to, my nervousness made me laugh.

‘Oh, come on! Are you serious? Don’t play these kind of tricks on me!’

The boy looked even more confused.

What the heck was this person talking about? Aurora? Chanyeol couldn’t even recall that there was a city over here named like that, not that he had ever gone outside the district, but still.

‘I really have no clue what you mean by that,’ he answered.

He saw that the alien started to get a bit annoyed, he could really not help him though.

‘How did you end up on this planet if you didn’t land on here?’ the alien tried again.

Chanyeol chuckled, ‘I’ve lived here all my life of course! There are more ways of getting on a planet without using those spaceship-things.’

Of course! I’ve slept for very long, so many years must have passed over here! Maybe the newest generation just didn't know that their parents went over here to start a new and better life. Okay, I’ll try it again.

‘Did your parents or grandparents come here by spaceship then?’

‘No, not that I know of. I actually think absolutely no one, except for you then, has ever come here by spaceship. We did see many spaceships like yours, but they never contained aliens like you and usually blew up too fast to check them anyway.’

I was in shock, ‘what? Have you ever checked whether they contained humans or not?’

‘Not so often, the ones we did check did not contain aliens though. You’re the only alien we have ever found.’

He looked down, thought for a few seconds and added, ‘not that we need or want them, aliens will actually get executed right away.’

My mouth fell open.

He know he shouldn’t have said this, but the alien needed to know he was in danger.

‘I won’t let that happen to you, don’t worry. But you need to hide. I will take care of you.’

The alien narrowed his eyes, ‘why? Why do you want to help me? If what you say is true, won’t helping me get you into trouble too?’

Chanyeol gave her a serious glance, ‘I’ve been taking care of you for a while now, if you do as I say, we both probably won’t get into trouble.’

The alien nodded.

With a pitiful smile, he added, ‘together with that, they say aliens are bad, but you don’t seem that bad, nor dangerous. Come, let’s go back into the cave, someone might see us.’

He softly pushed me along with him, towards the cave.

 

Momo hadn’t moved all this time, he waited and hoped that two people would come and fetch him soon, but was also prepared to see only one of them return. He knew what was going to happen and decided not to run after Chanyeol. He knew that Chanyeol was not always able to control his fire-power, and saw that Chanyeol’s panic just now predicted trouble. He really wanted to stop that alien, but he had been too scared. He had promised Chanyeol that he would make sure that the alien didn’t go anywhere, but he had smelled so bad that Momo made sure the alien was able to wash himself. When Chanyeol and the alien both returned, Momo started jumping out of joy and pushed the alien over and his face.

‘Hey Momo, down boy, we have to be glad that he’s still alive, and this is not really helping to increase his lifespan.’

‘Ah, so his name is Momo! It has been such a good boy!’ the alien maundered.

He bowed down and started to call him over and made weird faces like he just went insane. Chanyeol tilted his head and looked in disapproval.

‘What the heck are you doing? Do you think Momo is stupid or something? The fact that he doesn’t talk, doesn’t mean he’s stupid. At the moment it seems that he’s even smarter than you are,’ Chanyeol told the alien in a severe way.

‘But… I just want him to come over so I can pet him.’

‘If I would make those faces and sounds to you, you wouldn’t come over either, so why would Momo?’

Momo rolled with his eyes and thankfully looked at Chanyeol.

‘You’re welcome, buddy,’ Chanyeol replied.

The alien looked confused for a second, ‘so he understands everything you say?’

‘We assume he does. He replies with accurate responses to everything, at least.’

Of course. Of all the places I could have crashed on, I had to go to one in which an animal that had just seen me , was able to communicate with his owner. He’d better not tell on me or I will personally strangle that beast.

The boy squatted next to the animal and caressed him, ‘don’t worry, that man doesn’t even know where he is, let alone what kind of things are over here. I, on the other hand, don’t think you’re stupid, Momo.’

Wait a minute. I frowned. I had noticed before that he had been calling me a ‘he’, but now he called me a man too. I found that I should make clear that I was not a guy. Did I really look that manly to him?

I looked at the boy, ‘I’m not a man nor a ‘he’.’

The boy looked at me in surprise, ‘you’re an ‘it’ then?’

I laughed and shook my head, ‘what? No, I’m a girl, that means I’m a ‘she’ and then you don’t say ‘his’ but ‘her’. You do know what girls are, right? I mean, have you never had a mother?’

‘I again have no idea what you’re talking about, but if I had one, I’ll probably still remember, and I don’t remember what it is.’

This planet got stranger every minute, so there were only men over here?

‘There are no females on this planet?’ I asked the boy.

‘Not that I know of, I’ve never seen them or actually heard of them. What’s the difference between a male and a… How did you call it?’

“She” (as she prefers to be called) started to laugh uncontrollably, ‘female. And no, I’m not going to explain that to you, you should ask someone else, I’m sorry.’

Chanyeol raised his shoulders, ‘nah, I don’t want to know, actually.’

He would definitely try to ask her again another time, he was so curious.

‘What I do want to know, is your name! Do you have names on your planet?’ he asked.

The girl giggled and nodded, ‘yes, I’m Cara, what’s your name?’

‘Chanyeol,’ he replied.

The girl nodded and hold out her hand, waiting for Chanyeol to shake it. Chanyeol, however, had never seen someone making this kind of gesture before, and hesitatingly looked at her hand. Cara laughed, fondly took his hand and shook it. Her hand was so soft.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said with a smile.

‘Nice to meet you too,’ Chanyeol replied, smiling back at her.

Cara looked down, ‘are you sure you’re not joking about that alien-execution law?’

Chanyeol shook his head.

‘Then, what will happen to me?’ Cara asked, Chanyeol could see she was scared.

‘I’ll keep you in this cave for now, I’ll bring you food and keep you company for some time every day. And Momo will be here too, he’ll take care of you too, right Momo?’

Momo barked.

‘The members basically never get here, so if you’re very careful you can sometimes take him to the forest, but remember to not get too overconfident,’ Chanyeol told Momo.

Cara coughed and severely looked at Chanyeol.

‘What? Oh, I’m sorry, her, you can take her.’

Momo understood the order and nodded.

Chanyeol took out a few branches out of his bag, and lit them on fire to create some light and warmth.

 

We were silent for some time and looked at the fire, the silence gave me some time to think. Weren’t there really other girls out here? Wouldn’t I be able to live with the people? If all the other people on this world looked as Earthly as Chanyeol, it probably wouldn’t be such a problem to blend in.

I looked at Chanyeol, ‘and what if I go and live with the citizens? They look like you, right? So I won’t get found out easily.’

Chanyeol shook his head, ‘you can’t. You’ll be found out in no time. Your eyes will betray you. So will your body shape, especially your…’

Chanyeol stopped in the middle of the sentence and made a gesture in front of his chest. His awkwardness made me laugh.

‘I could bind them?’ I suggested.

Chanyeol shook his head, ‘what will you do to your different eye shape then? It is too risky. I can’t let you out of this district.’

‘District?’

‘Yes, it’s the place where Exo-members like me have to live.’

‘So you don’t get to see what’s outside the district?’

Chanyeol’s face showed some hints of pain, but it was only visible for one second, he quickly recovered.

‘Depends,’ he answered, ‘I’m not allowed to, but the others are. You have to able to control your power. As you’ve seen, I don’t have much control over it yet. I wonder if that will ever happen. If I gain control, me and the other Exo-members can live together with the other humans again.’

‘That’s so unfair and unhealthy! So you’ve never been outside the district?’

‘Not that I remember, before I showed signs of being an Exo-member, I probably lived with parents or other people who were responsible for me, outside the district. I don't remember much of that time, I got spotted when I was still really small and got to live under the guardianship of the very old Exo-members of the previous generation. They're all dead now though.’

Chanyeol probably saw that I was giving him a pitiful face, and gave me an encouraging smile.

‘It’s not that bad over here, in this district,’ he said. ‘You’ll quickly learn to survive over here.’

I nodded towards him in a thankful way. I can’t remember that anyone had gone through so much for me ever before. He risked his life for me at this very moment, without any good reason. What if he turned out to be not trustable at all? But then again, why wouldn’t he be trustable? I wasn’t very special so he had no reason to use me for something, unless he did know what women were and wanted to use me for his own pleasures later on.

This was driving me insane.

I decided to let my self-defence trainings do their work if something really did happen and he suddenly attacked me or something. He looked at me and smiled. How could someone with a smile this cute, possibly turn out to be a bad guy? No, I would trust him, he was the only one I had right now. Except for Momo then, but apparently Momo does what Chanyeol says, so I still needed Chanyeol. He reached out his hand towards my head and touched it, which provoked intense pain that went through my whole head.

‘Does it still hurt?’ Chanyeol asked.

Cara nodded, ‘yes, lots.’

‘You have been in such a critical situation, you should be lucky I found you, or you wouldn’t have survived.’

Cara nodded again. Chanyeol stood up and sat himself next to her. He found that she had something interesting, he wasn’t sure what it was, but he really enjoyed being close to her. He felt that he had to protect her, no matter what happened. He actually didn’t know why he did all of this. He searched in his pockets and found a few purple, berry-sized fruits.

‘Here, I saved them for you, they help to reduce the pain and get you to sleep. They’ll probably come in handy right now.’

The girl accepted them gratefully and Chanyeol stood up.

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘I should go home. The others might get worried and check what has happened, and we don’t want that, do we?’

Cara shook her head.

‘You should get some rest and recover from the wounds. As much as I enjoy talking to you and had liked to find out more differences between our planets, I have to go now.’

‘I know, I understand. Will you leave the fire on? I don’t want to be left alone in the dark right now.’

‘Sure, I will keep it on, and I wouldn’t leave you behind all alone, silly! What if you are send by some kind of alien-organisation and your goal is to wipe out this whole planet? Momo will keep an eye on you, hopefully you won’t transform into some kind of monster this way.’

Cara laughed, but Chanyeol was actually very serious in a I’m-really-not-kidding-but-I-also-want-to-make-you-laugh-so-I'll-pretend-I’m-kidding way. Without actually listening to his common sense, he decided to follow his instincts. This girl would do no harm, and if she would, she would still be to weak now. He could leave her with Momo for at least tonight.

‘Shall I quickly get you some big leaves so that you can cover yourself and sleep warmly?’

Cara nodded again, ‘yes, please. That would be great.’

Chanyeol quickly walked away. Sweet that he thought of keeping me warm. I suddenly felt very tired and weak again, I really could use another good night of sleep. I waited for some minutes and although Momo was trying to keep me warm with his fur, I shivered because of the cold. I ate the berries, they tasted so nice. A few minutes later, I slowly found myself dozing off. I woke up thanks to a loud scream. Then I heard the sound of footsteps quickly coming closer. A person was coming closer and I felt that I was almost fully awake again. I was worried, Chanyeol must have slipped or something, I hope he was okay. I could finally distinguish the shadow of a person.

'Chanyeol!' I shouted thankfully, ‘are you okay?’

I was glad at first, glad that he had returned. But when I looked better, I saw that this wasn’t him. A shout escaped from my lips, scaring both me and this new boy. A young, handsome boy. Someone who might get me executed. He just stood there, mouth hanging open.

‘Oh my goodness,’ he softly whispered.

The only thing he was doing, was staring at me in great disbelief. I was definitely doomed right now. Doomed. Doomed. Doomed. It was the only word that went through my mind. Chanyeol rapidly appeared from the darkness, panting heavily, catching his breath.

The boy turned towards Chanyeol and spoke slowly, ‘Chanyeol, what the hell is this?’

 

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Hi everyone!

So.. Yeah, this update came a few days too late, and that was absolutely not the way I wanted it to go, I'm sorry! I kinda went to parties all weekend and got into time and inspiration struggles..

I will try to update it at the usual saturday or sunday again this week though, but I have some other very important tasks that need to be done before next week too, so I might again not make the deadline. But I'll work hard! Thanks a lot for reading my story, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it! :)

Love, CNBlueBird