Chapter 7: Sean gets a surprise

~~ April - Week 15~~

Sean was on guard duty outside the dome-tend.

After the storm, the valley looked fresh, and he enjoyed watching his first sunrise in more than three months. The clouds had scuttled off, and it was a beautiful, crisp, clear morning.

Sean was walking the perimeter when he noted a flickering effect off towards the forest. He stood still and watched what he thought was an unusual bird flit up towards the fence. It stopped lingered about 30cm from the fence. It seemed to be investigating it.

He zoomed in his vid and took a little time to comprehend what he saw. It was most definitely humanoid in shape, with insect-like wings. It was only about 36cm tall. It had long greenish hair, with pale green/grey skin and wore a scrappy-looking, brown, silk frock. The little being stretched out a hand towards the fence.

“No,” yelled Sean, but she couldn’t hear him as his voice was muffled by the helmet.

Zzzz ... ap.

The little being shot back from the fence and then she dropped to the ground in a heap. Sean had tried to deactivate the fence before she touched it, but he wasn’t quick enough. By his reckoning, she had gotten at least one good boot. He ran over to her and bent down.

He hoped she hadn’t been hit too hard. He carefully scooped her up between his two hands. He headed into the transporter at a run. As soon as he was through the decon-unit, he ran to the sickbay and laid her on the table on her side. He flicked on the machines.

He was aware he had broken protocols bringing her onto the ship. But all he could think of was that he had hurt her. He stripped off his gloves and tossed back his helmet so he could see better. He carefully rolled her over onto her stomach and laid out her tiny limbs.

One of her lower wings was bent on the underside, probably from when she hit the ground. But there were no obvious breaks in her limbs. The scanner ran through its procedure. The medical program was obviously a little confused with the parameters of the body it was scanning. But eventually, it indicated that as far as it could tell, she had no broken bones and she was breathing.

Lee, Kyle and Ellen joined him in the sickbay. Ellen was the closed thing they had to a medic, which was why Sean had called her. Ellen bought up the scan and enlarged it. She confirmed that she didn’t think the being had any broken bones or internal injuries.

Ellen was amazed at the interesting scapula and muscle arrangement down her ribs and spine that supported her two sets of wings. She examined the wing very carefully. She thought that it would heal, as the main spline wasn’t broken. But knowing nothing about ‘Faeries’ as she called the creature, she couldn’t be sure.

She sent the data to Dave on the ship and told him to keep quiet about it for now. For Kyle, Lee and Sean even though they had seen the pictures, they were still in just as much shock as Ellen, actually seeing a faerie in the flesh, so to speak.

Sean apologised, for contaminating the ship but Ellen wasn’t worried. She told them the molecular scan didn’t identify any infections or microbes they would consider hazardous. The strangest reassurance he got was from Lee. She had looked at the faerie intently and then smiled at Sean.

“Your daughter will be fine,” she said and walked out.

The faerie had curled into a ball and shivered. Sean shooed Kyle and Ellen out and closed the sickbay door. He gently picked her up and put her in his lap, placing a hand towel over her to keep her warm being careful of her wings.

He sat for about fifteen minutes, just watching the amazing creature. Then she began to stir. He watched her carefully as she lay still once she was alert, and she took in her surroundings. He wished he knew how to tell her she was safe.

He carefully and slowly slipped a finger under her tiny hand. Hoping it reassured her that he wasn’t going to hurt her. She let her hand lay in his for a time. Then she slowly moved to smell his finger and taste him with a ticklish lick of her little tongue. Gripping his finger, she sat up. So, he removed the towel.

She flexed her wings and realised one wasn’t working properly and said, “Skata!”

Sean laughed softly. If his old language studies were accurate, she had just said, ‘shit’.

“I am sorry my little friend, we didn’t mean for you to be hurt by our safety measures,” he told her, not sure what she would understand.

She looked up into the dark blue eyes of the little giant and studied him intently. Her instincts told her that she would be safe with the big person. Her culture beliefs said that her life was now linked to his. Plus, he smelt and tasted nice.

She determined he was a good person, and he had such strong energies. He had saved her life when she had foolishly reached out to touch the string, which vibrated with pulsing energy.

She didn’t understand all he said as some words were strange. But she felt she had got the general gist of what he meant. In the faerie way, if someone saves your life, you are beholden to keep them safe until released from the obligation. She didn’t know how to tell him this. She instinctively knew that he didn’t know their ways.

“My name,” he said and then paused. “Sean.” He pointed to himself. He then pointed at her, “What is your name?”

“Sh.or.n,” she said, pointing at him, and he nodded. Then she points to herself. She grinned and said, “Sparky.”

Sean laughed. He had a feeling it wasn’t her true name, but it definitely suited her. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Sparky. Are you ready to meet the rest of my team?” he asked.

She looked at him quizzically trying to work out what he had said.

“Hmm, armada?” he tried really stretching his old Greek as she seemed to understand the Greek related words the best. He never could work out why his mother insisted that he should study defunct languages while he was in high school, but it seems it had a use after all.

Sparky understood there were other people with him he wished her to meet. She nodded her head. Sean was pleased that they had been able to converse so far. Andy Mc Ray, their linguist, will be in raptures when he meets Sparky, Sean decided.

Sean had a gut feeling she was coming with him back to the ship. He couldn’t leave her here injured. Unless she could tell him how to find her people, she was coming with him.

“I think you hurt your wing when you dropped,” pointing to her damaged wing. “Do you think you can ride on my shoulder until it heals? I will not let anything hurt you,” he told her.

He pointed to his shoulder, and she climbed up with his help and happily perched on his shoulder. She hung onto a curl with her little ankles crossed over his collarbone. Sean hadn’t cut his hair in the three months they had been on the ship. The bottom had grown out, so the curls were a lot longer.

‘I must get Gary to get the shears out when we get back,’ he thought. Once Sparky was settled, Sean asked her, “Can I take you back to your armada?”

“Pry, nickt armada, solo,” she replied, hoping he understood.

“You lost your family in a fire, and are alone?” he asked her in his own words.

“Ya,” she answered.

‘German?’ thought Sean. ‘Damn her language was mixed up as English was’. “We say, ‘yes’,” he responded.

“Yes,” she parroted back.

Sean was ignorantly pleased with himself. He left the sickbay to introduce Sparky to the rest of the team. Kyle even found some materials and a box about fifty by twenty-five centimetres to make her a bed, which he put near where Lee and Sean had picked to sleep.

Sparky decided she liked these people. They even let her pick over their fruits and vegetables to see if she liked any of them. Sean had even peeled the one he called an ‘orange’ and gave her a segment to try. It was delicious, and she sucked the juice out of two segments.

She even liked the strange beverage that Lee gave her to try. ‘Coffee’, she had called it. It made her feel a little funny, a bit hyped up. But it had tasted good, and she later worked out why some in the group bitched in the morning until they had a cup of it.

The team went out and conducted one more survey before spending the afternoon packing up the samples in boxes for the scientists. They made sure they added the GPS coordinates of where they found them. They also tagged them with the picture number from the pictures they took before picking them up.

Sean and Lee also spent extra time with Sparky. They wanted to find foods that she could eat. Once she understood, she pointed out her favourite foods, including some fungus’ that Lee and Sean also bagged. They took pictures of the foods and the plants they grew on. Or soil samples if the part Sparky wanted grew in the ground.

Sparky even pointed out bad flora. Samples of these were also bagged. Sparky couldn’t fly up to some of the foods she indicated. But when she pointed them out, Lee climbed the trees to get some for her. Sean couldn’t believe how fast Lee scurried up the trunks.

The extra gravity here didn’t seem to worry her at all. She strapped on some spikes and up she went. Sean got worried when she had disappeared from view in one tree, not sure how high she went as she was gone for a good fifteen minutes. She came back with a delicate plant, which resembled an orchid. It had the prettiest little blue flowers.

“For Magda,” she had told him.

Sparky indicated it was okay to eat but made you sleep. Lee shook her head, “Gift, friend, no eat,” she said. Sparky understood. The more they talked, the faster the faerie picked up the differences in language and altered her own to suit.

When Sean and Lee realised how quickly she picked up their language, Sean started to teach her the alphabet, numbers and many of their basic words. It didn’t talk him long to get to simple sentences. That she was soon repeating and using.

Sparky decided she hadn’t had this much fun since she lost her family a year before. She was content with her new family as she thought of Sean and Lee. By faerie standards, she was still young only having seen twenty-five years. Sean and Lee had begun to think that she was about two-thirds of her real age as far as humans went.

That night the team asked Sparky about her people.

Sparky told them that the planet they were on was called Utopia. The Keltria people had come here from the other world. Bad things had happened in the other world. The five great wizards who protected them had opened the magical gates to bring them here.

The most prominent races of the Keltrian people on this planet were the Genteli, the Burgis, the Prols, the Pixs and her race the Faeries.

Philip asked, “Sparky, how long have your people been on this world?”

Sparky replied, “About 1750 years or so. I’m not sure exactly but around that long. My family’s records were lost in the fire when our tree home burnt down.”

Philip determined that meant her people had left Earth in the mid 300’s A.D. This gave him something to ponder on. He wondered how long the people she had called wizards knew about this place before bringing her people here.

Terry grabbed a large tablet and displayed a map of the continents of this world. He asked her if she could name them for him. Sparky loved the map and the pad, never having seen such a device or maps in such detail.

Terry pointed out what we called north, east, south and west. She happily pointed them out, after she got Terry to identify the one, they were on so she could get a bearing on the layout.

She pointed to each area and said, “The continent we are on is called Jahnville. It was owned by Lord Wizard Jahn. The other bigger continent to the west of us is Queland. It had been owned by Wizard Que. Wizard Antali took his people to Antalia, which is to the east.”

“Wizard Davin took his people to the eastern side of the northern continent called Davinia,” she pointed to the bombed area in the northern hemisphere.

She then pointed to an island on the map, “Wizards Rah took his people to this big island, northeast of here. It is called Rahia, but the people moved to the west coast of Davinia, after his death. It was too hot there, and the stories say that many died.”