A Storm in the Making

Chapter 6--Who Are the Aliens Now?

Chapter Six

Who Are The Aliens Now?

“Ah, Storm Honey,” Uncle said when he heard my sobs. “Don’t break down on me now, girl,” Uncle scooped me up in his arms without the least bit of effort--like I weighed no more than a feather.

“Uncle? … How did you… do that?” I gasped, startled. Uncle is a strong man. I’ve seen him haul 50 pound shrimp boxes around with barely a grunt. But I weigh over a hundred pounds, too much for even Uncle to just scoop me up weightlessly from off the floor.

What was happening to us in this place where the normal laws of physics didn’t apply anymore? Would we change into some horrific alien creatures ourselves? How long would it before we could no longer recognize ourselves?

“I, uh--I--don’t know,” Uncle stuttered, standing there with me in his arms like he’d never seen me before. “I never thought. I just did it!”

“Huh! I hope super-strength is genetic,” Luke commented, admiring Uncle’s sudden weight-lifting ability.

“Hey, no fair,” Andrew croaked, staring at Uncle. “Luke can read minds, Uncle has turned into Superman, and I can’t do diddely.”

Uncle, embarrassed, set me on my feet.

“No it’s not fair. Now Luke and I are both freaks,” he harrumphed awkwardly, staring at down at his arms like he’d just sprouted them.

We might have debated Uncle’s new skill longer, but at that moment we became aware of voices coming towards us. Luke and Andrew threw their shirts over their heads, scrambling to get their arms through the right holes, when the tinkling bell of female laughter reached us.

As if we hadn’t had enough shocks for one day, up over the top of the hill that our gazebo/ prison sat upon, trooped the strangest array of beings we’d ever seen.

In the lead came an old man. A very human old man. He seemed to be lecturing a group of young adults—at least and the humans looked like young adults. The rest, definitely NOT! Humans and aliens both trailed behind the man like a small flock of ducklings behind a mother duck.

All of them were dressed in white robes. Different colored belts tied around their middles distinguished one garment from another, although what the colors signified, I hadn’t a clue.

A wind we couldn’t feel inside the gazebo,   as I preferred to think of it rather than a birdcage, whipped their robes about their legs, revealing long pants of the same color beneath their robes. Each of them wore crude sandals on their feet.

The old man held a long staff in his hand. Mounted to the top of the staff sparkled a blue gem of some kind, set in what looked like gold. The  staff itself looked like an ordinary wooden staff, though carved designs decorated the length of it. He held the staff casually in the crook of his arm while he waited for the stragglers to pop up over the hill and gather around him. I had to presume a hidden stairway led out of sight down the hillside.