Chapter Text
Your name is JOEY CLAIRE and you're kind of in over your head.
Monsters attacked your house, you were transported to another world, and are now riding with an ALIEN on the back of a DEERCAT LUSUS that you named SIR LICKS ALOT that belonged to the other alien who almost certainly has been transported to your house, if he was that dude with the horns you briefly saw when you were transported here.
You hope your little brother JUDE both will and won't run into him. On the one hand, this DAMMEK guy seems like he knows his way around a few guns. If anybody could help keep Jude from being monster chow, it'd be him. On the other hand, he seems like a BIT OF A JERK if what XEFROS has said about him is anything to go by.
Xefros is the name of the Alien sitting right behind you, by the way, in case you hadn't caught that already.
Really, though, all things considered there are worse ways a day could have gone.
Xefros says something to you, and it takes you a moment to try and process the words. It's weird, the way you've been able to read this alien language and understand it. It also applies to voices as well, it seems, but that's a bit more confusing than should be possible. You're hearing two different tongues at once, it feels like. Both the original language, and then English over top of it? It's... weird. Really weird. The Portal must have done something to your brain, that's the only real explanation.
The more you hear it, though, the more you're hearing English rather than... whatever the name of the language is. You need to ask Xefros when you get a chance. Anyways, back to what he's saying... something something... Danger? Sun rising? He sounds nervous and he's not quite making sense. Undead? That can't be right.
You tap out a question to hasten the conversation along, "What's wrong with the Sun coming up?"
Xefros types out his reply, figuring it to be easier than explain aloud. And your stomach bottoms out just a little. This really is an alien planet, isn't it?
Still, you agree that it'd probably be for the best to hunker down for a few hours and get some rest. Back on Earth it'd be getting close to your bed time.
Xefros says some stuff to Sir Licks Alot, and with some nudging of agreement from you, the deercat diverges off the road towards what seems to be the ruins of a long destroyed house- Hive?- that should provide shelter from the sun's harsh gaze... and the apparent undead army that might be roaming around during the day.
The house- Hive!- you've found seems to have been home to a heretical mutant blood, Xefros says, looking at the dead frame of what seems to be a giant crab lusus, curled around a smaller frame of... oh, god. That's definitely a dead troll, isn't it?
For the first time, you get a good look at the differences of a Troll's skeleton versus a human's. The majority of the differences stand out at the skull, prominently. Long, swooping things that have since been broken and shattered into pieces. The way they emerge from the skull is definitely alien.
Xefros suggests clearing the bodies away before there's a chance they could reanimate with you two nearby. You finally decide to ask how that's possible.
Xefros says something about ghosts sticking around, and sometimes the vengeful spirits can reanimate their bodies, and attack the living, uncaring of if the person they're attacking is even related to how they died or not.
Xefros says that as a psychic, he can commune with dead spirits- of which there tend to be a lot on Alt... Alter...
"Alternia?"
"Yah," he nods. That's the name of the planet, he says, ALTERNIA.
Alternia, you repeat the name a few times to try and get the way it rolls off of his tongue down on yours. To him, you sound like you're speaking with a bad accent. You're trying to rectify that, though. If you're going to be spending any long amount of time here on Alternia, you'll at least want to sound the part. (Though, Xefros said most trolls might mistake it for your audible typing quirk. Who ever heard of such a thing? An audible typing quirk? How silly is that! It's not like Xefros is actually slipping a bunch of X's into his words as he speaks. (At least, you're pretty sure he's not. You're still dealing with that weird kind of double speak echo going on.) Although, you suppose if someone had a Lisp they were replicating in text form... maybe '2's for 'S's? ...But at any rate, the name of the planet and important things are things you should know how to say properly.)
You two search the hive for a little bit and then find what seems to be an old garden in the back yard that's really overgrown in the time it's tenders have been dead.
Xefros takes to plundering it for usable food- actual food that isn't insect based! Huzzah! (Even if it does look downright alien. Bleck.)- and then sets about clearing a small grave using the shovel (though he calls it something weird and you don't quite catch what it is) he'd used to plunder the garden for food.
And then, using the hoverpad, you gracefully put the dead troll and his Lusus' remains into the grave.
The sun starts to rise by the time you've both finished recovering the grave with dirt.
You slip inside, and Xefros does something that makes the windows tint over black. As the sun rises in the view, you realize they're like giant solar eclipse specs! Like the little paper glasses your teacher at school gave your class once so you could look at the sun without burning your eyes out.
As this happens, you can see that the sun here on Alternia is... quite a lot bigger than the sun on Earth.
By a LOT.
Like. You're not sure on an exact number, but if you had to make up a number, you'd say it's at least three times as big.
Xefros says something about it being the dark season so it shouldn't be up for too long. So you ask him, "What are the days and years like here? How long and how many?"
"Years?" Xef. Oh, poor adorable Xefros has no idea what Years are. He's confused by your human terminology.
"Like, how long it takes for the planet to orbit the sun once." You clarify.
He seems to consider it for a few moments, then, "Ah!" He nods. "Solar Sweep." And then he launches into a string of words that you can't quite catch everything from. (You ask him to type it out for reference later, just to make sure you got everything.) Once he finishes, you explain your own planet's mechanics.
As you both talk, Xefros prepares what food was scavenged into something appearing edible. It's mostly plant matter, so you hope BYERS, one of your brother's CARRIER PIGEONS, can eat some of it. Actually, you're hesitant to try eating any of it yourself just yet, so you shamelessly use Byers as a taste tester. (Hey! If the bird thinks it can safely eat it so can you! Probably.) Still... it's probably better for you anyways than those Bake-a-Cake things.
Xefros briefly gives you an odd look as you take the bird out, but with a simple explanation that you're watching it for your brother seems to answer any questions he might have for the moment while you all eat.
Working out the math as you chew on your late dinner, you both come to figure out that roughly two and a half Earth years equal one Alternian Solar Sweep. Putting your ages into comparison, when you were thirteen, you would be six here on Alternia.
It's quite an interesting little tidbit, but it helps you figure out what the right things to say are if someone questions you on your own. (You really hope nobody questions you on your own.)
So, at fourteen, you'd say instead "I'm Six and a half."
That's... basically the gist of it and is about as close as either of you can figure out without busting out a calculator.