“What is it?” Dashel asked as I snorted with laughter.
“Nothing,” I assured him, trying to stifle my giggles. “Let's find a place to spend the night.”
The motel we found was cheap and grimy, but Dashel was fascinated by everything about it. He frowned at the tiny fridge in the room, confused that a limited number of food items were confined to a cold box instead of dispensed freshly at will by a replication unit. When he saw a roach scuttle across the carpet, he chased after it and tried to eat it, convinced that it was another food option which had been purposefully released into our living space like a mouse dropped into a snake's terrarium. He was confused that the sources of illumination weren't intuitive enough to simply sense our presence and switch on by themselves – and I had to warn him about the electricity running from the outlets through the lamps and other devices so he wouldn't accidentally shock himself.
“What a bizarre and primitive existence you humans have,” he marveled, rubbing the thin, scratchy blanket on the bed between his claws. “The Hielsrane should conquer you, if only to do you the favor of introducing you to superior technology. Even as our slaves, you'd be living more comfortably than this.”
But when I turned on the TV, he was utterly hypnotized – even by the commercials. It took a long time to convince him that the people on the screen weren't humans who had been shrunk down through genetic experimentation and forced to perform dramas for our amusement. “You have vidscreen technology,” he said slowly, “and you use it to broadcast these...frivolous plays? For amusement?”
We spent the rest of the evening curled up on the bed together, flipping through the channels. It was exactly the kind of mundane activity that I'd missed since my abduction, and I loved sharing it with Dashel. At one point, we found a marathon of syndicated Star Trek reruns, and he stared at them in disbelief.
“I don't understand. Instead of traveling to the stars yourselves to see how they really are,” he whispered in disbelief, “you spend billions of your Earth 'dollars' creating elaborate fantasies about what they could be like? It makes no sense at all.”
“Maybe,” I conceded, “but it's a hell of a lot safer.”
At one point, an episode came on which featured that perennial square-jawed favorite Captain Kirk fighting a reptilian monster on a remote alien planet (one which suspiciously resembled a bunch of California rocks and desert). “Hey, Dashel...bet you're rooting for the lizard guy to win this one, huh?”
But when I turned to look at him for confirmation, he was asleep next to me.
The next day, after we'd checked out of the motel, Dashel turned to me. “Where to next? Do you have parents or other family you wish to see? We'd have to concoct a compelling story about where you've been and why you won't be able to see them much in the future, such a thing would be difficult, but not wholly impossible, I think. If it were important to you.”
I shook my head. “Not my parents, no. They died about a year before I was taken. But there is someplace I'd like to go next...someplace important.”
We made the trip from Baltimore to the mid-sized town of Frederick by bus. I couldn't believe how the place had grown since I'd last been there. The population must have quadrupled at least, and everywhere I looked, there were new highways, housing developments, and shopping centers. Before, it had been a quaint and pleasant little place, full of independent shops and restaurants patronized by the students who attended Hood College. Now it was almost unrecognizable, a crowded and busy haven for commuters. The change made me sad.
Still, I had no trouble finding the small house on Taney Avenue, where I'd been invited to have dinner and stay the night countless times. It was where Daniel's parents had lived – and from my position across the street, I could see that they were still there. His father Eric was sitting on the porch in his favorite rocking chair, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper. His mother Catherine was working in her little garden and whistling to herself.
How long had they waited to see Daniel again before finally giving up hope, I wondered? What terrible theories must they have had about what happened to him, why he vanished off the face of the Earth? Had they suspected that I'd had something to do with his disappearance, or had they loved and trusted me enough to worry about my well-being too – assuming that whatever had happened to him must have happened to me as well?
Maybe they'd had to live all this time with the idea that he'd been murdered—or worse, been the victim of some senseless accident or misadventure, his body somehow eluding discovery all these years.
They were lucky, I thought. Because no matter what awful visions they might have endured when speculating about his ultimate fate, they'd never come close to the gruesome memory of what actually happened.
“I'm sorry, guys,” I said under my breath. “I'm sorry I couldn't save him. I'm sorry I couldn't bring him home to you. You deserved better.”
Dashel took my hand to comfort me, and we walked away before Eric or Catherine could look up and spot me.
Over the next few weeks, Dashel and I did a lot of traveling. We visited places I'd been to and enjoyed, like the Florida Keys, where I'd once spent a vacation with my family. We explored destinations I'd never had a chance to see, like Paris and Venice. We kept in touch with the Wyvern and sometimes made quick trips back for more
