Chapter Text
Life is good.
Life is good right now.
This forest is beautiful. You’re following a path in a large forest a few towns over on a hike. The town that kid is from. Those ladies with the weird skin, too. And the nice beach. Beautiful view.
Beach City.
It was actually between the hike and the beach, where to spend part of your vacation time.
You see the continuous stretch of the path, but to your left you also see… a different path leading to an open area.
Tree stumps, grassless.
You almost step on something. Something shiny. Naturally, you pick it up. It’s a jasper! It’s beautifully cut, shaped like a triangular prism. You place it in your bag and continue walking.
A few hours later, you’ve finished your hike. The sun has almost set and you’re back in your car. The drive home wasn’t eventful, but you did get to see Beach City one last time.
An hour later, you’re home. You’re slumped. You take a long shower, washing your hair and exfoliating. Maybe you should've gone to the beach.
After your shower, you unpack everything you put in your bag in the living room . Including the jasper. How could someone drop something like that? In the middle of the forest? What a lucky find. You place it on the coffee table and go to the kitchen to whip up a quick meal.
In the middle of your meal, in the middle of your movie, something glows in front of you. The glow floats in the air as what you can only describe as a… humanoid shape starts forming. Rightfully frightened, you stand up and walk towards your room, never looking away from the glow. Suddenly, a being appears and falls abruptly, right onto your coffee table. The table breaks in half. You see that as your cue to now start to run into your bedroom and lock the door.
A low growl comes from the person in your living room.
You stay completely silent.
Footsteps.
They’re walking around your living room. Then your kitchen.
You try to recall what you saw. Large, long blonde hair. Skintight clothes, like they were a part of her body… And most prominently, orange skin. It reminds you of… Those ladies with the weird skin. Before you can think longer about what you saw, before you can even try to continue to process what happened, you hear loud footsteps approaching your side of the house.
You’re rightfully terrified.
“Human.”
You don’t respond out of sheer inability to figure out how to respond.
“Human!” She bangs her fist against the wall next to the door in front of you, making it shake.
“Why did you bring me here? What do you want?”
You decide to reply honestly. “I didn’t know you were… sentient.”
Silence. Then footsteps.
She’s going back to the living room. Or leaving the home entirely. Either way, you feel slightly safer.
You crack the door open to peek out. She’s looking at the broken table, back facing you. Hoping she doesn’t kill you, you leave the room to join her in looking. She’s tall next to you. Like, 8 feet tall (243cm). Now that you’re side by side, you’re able to get a good look at her. Her orange skin has cuts of red and sploshes of teal. She also has horns matching the sploshes in color. One of them is broken. That fact slightly intrigues you. While you’re looking at her face, her eye catches yours. You get nervous and go back to looking at your table.
You’re pretty sure she's not paying attention to the table anymore.
“So, stranger,” You start, “Who are you?”
Silence.
“Why are you orange?”
She gives you a look that says “shut the fuck up before I fuck you up.” and you oblige. She then walks towards your door and tries to leave. The door is locked, and you realize she doesn't know how to unlock it. You raise a brow before unlocking it for her. She leaves wordlessly, and you think she’s leaving to go back to Beach City or something.
You’re still on high alert, but you go back to doing what you were doing anyway. You didn’t want to let this… woman? Person? Being? Whatever she was, you didn’t want to let her fuck up your vacation time. Aside from the fact your coffee table is in a million pieces.
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After some time, say an hour or so, your porch light turns on.
You just assume it’s some pesky raccoon. Actually, you pretty much imagine it to be anything.
Anything except for what it actually is. Well, in the back of your mind you had a feeling it was her. Your suspicions were confirmed when you saw her standing with her back facing towards the door when you opened it to look outside. The only reason you even looked was because of that little thought. To your shock, she didn’t turn around at the sound of your door. Maybe she’s just waiting for you to talk.
You stare for some time. She’s so… still. Like a statue. Her hands are on her hips. You could barely tell however, because of all that hair covering her.
You feel you must say something, so you let out a little, “Hello..?” for any ear to hear.
She turns her head to look at you. God, her side profile is lethal. She doesn’t give you another second to look though, as she decides to turn her head back to the way it was.
“I couldn’t find my way back.” She finally admits.
You offer her shelter in your home. She’s reluctant. She stays there, pondering on if she should stay or leave. Leave and go in a random direction. Anything to not stoop to the level of a puny, weak human.
She hesitantly turns around and walks towards your house. Her movements are stiff, and her fists are clenched. You hope she doesn’t think you think you’re strong enough to take her on.
You enter fully after her and close and lock the door behind you. The noise seems to startle her, but you don’t point it out.
You lay down some ground rules. Where she can go, where not to go, where the bathroom is, and you let her know she’ll sleep on the couch when the time comes. You also make her promise she won’t kill you. She might’ve agreed to your term just to stay.
“For now, I’ll be on the couch. Make yourself comfortable.” You say to her before heading back to the same spot you were in before. The movie you were watching had finished some time ago, so you started watching YouTube to fill the silence of your home.
She’d been static. In the same place she was when she entered the house. She stayed there while you spoke to her too, her eyes moving when you moved being the only sign there was life. Was there even life? She doesn’t even breathe. Not once did you see her chest move with the rhythmic flow of inhaling and exhaling.
Then, in the middle of your thinking about what to do with her after tonight, she finally moves. She goes to the opposite side of the couch, pushing your feet out of the way to make room for herself. Instead of planting your feet on the ground, you just curl up.
At this point, you’re paying more attention to the being rather than the video on your tv. You notice she’s looking at the tv, but she’s not watching it. It’s like she’s looking right through it. Like she’s zoned out.
Her eyes move ever so slightly, as if she’s looking at you in her peripheral. Instead of sheepishly averting your gaze as you would’ve a few hours ago, you keep it exactly where it is. You then open your mouth to ask her once more,
“What is your name?”
“I am Jasper.”
You feel as if you should’ve guessed that.
“Do you live in Beach City?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Uh…” How could she not know the name of her own city? “Yes.”
“Then yes. I live in Beach City.”
As you two talk she seems to relax her tense body ever so slightly. Your lips tighten into a fine line after being unable to figure out your next words.
You figure out what to say. “I hear it’s dangerous over there. Like, life threatening just to exist. I don’t entirely know why I went, to be honest.”
She gets quiet after hearing that, tensing up once more. Touchy subject, you guess.
30 more wordless minutes go by as you watch more YouTube. Jasper continues to look through the tv and you continue to glance at her from time to time.
Does she have anything to do with the life threatening status of Beach City, or was she a victim of such? She’s pretty big and brawny. That basically sums up your thoughts, as you replayed the conversation numerous times in your head as time went by. You decide not to spend more time thinking of that as it’s getting late, and your eyes become heavier with every blink.
You let Jasper know you’re heading to bed, stretching as you stand from the couch. She gives you a nod of acknowledgment.
“Do you need me to leave a light on?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay… See you in the morning.”
You depart to your room, leaving Jasper to her devices in your living room.
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You slowly blink your eyes open. You woke up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. You don’t have to use the bathroom, and you were in the middle of an enjoyable dream.
You find it difficult to fall back asleep, so you turn over to face the other way. You hoped that would make it easier.
Instead, barely visible in the moonlight shining through your window, you lock eyes with Jasper. Was she… watching you sleep?!
You let out a scream, and this startles Jasper as she enters a defensive stance. As if SHE’S the one who should be weirded out.
You jump up and get off the bed on the side opposite of her.
“What are you doing?!”
She answers your question with a question. Audacious. “What were you doing?”
“Wh.. I was sleeping. You know what sleep is, right?”
“No.”
You scoff, but you’re not mocking her. You’re genuinely surprised.
She’s clearly not of your species, maybe not even of your planet, but you thought she’d at least have a basic understanding of normal bodily functions.
Though, it’s now occurring to you that she may not exactly require those functions. But how could she not need sleep? That’s like, the most normal bodily function there is.
“Then how do you replenish your energy after a long day? You don’t ever get tired?”
“I’m a quartz soldier.” She scoffs as if that’s obvious. “I can’t afford to ‘get tired’.”
Huh?
“A quartz soldier? Like, for the military?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
She gets silent. You scan her face. You can tell she’s looking for the words to tell you, but you don’t know why she finds it so hard.
“Your feeble mind could never understand.”
That was the last thing she said to you before she retreated to the living room.
That’s the last time I’m ever letting an alien in my house, you thought.
You laid back down to attempt to fall back asleep. You weren’t gonna deal with this thing at ungodly hours of the night.
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The morning eventually comes. You stretch, long and relaxing. It makes you want to sleep for a few hours more.
Then you remember.
You let out a groan before hopping out of bed. You have to deal with this being under your roof.
She’s in the living room when you walk down the hall, in the same position she was when you two shared that awkward conversation on the couch.
“Is that your spot now?” you ask with a snicker, attempting to set a lighthearted mood.
She seems to take the rhetorical question literally, raising a brow at you.
“Nevermind.”
You head to the kitchen to whip something up for you and your house guest. Bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Something simple, since you don’t know exactly what she likes. You hum while you cook, filling the silence. Well, almost silence, since the sound of bacon popping and sizzling fills in the room as well.
Soon, everything is done. You set up two plates and call Jasper into the kitchen.
“The least I could do for you, after kidnapping you, is make you some food.” You say before pointing at a seat for her at the bar. You place the plate in front of her where she sits and turn to grab her a fork.
When you turn back around, you see her toying with her food. She has a sunny-side up egg between her index finger and her thumb.
“What is this?”
“That’s an egg, Jasper.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
You felt it was obvious.
“You eat it, Jasper.”
“I don’t want to eat anything I don’t have to.”
‘Don’t have to’? That statement makes you tilt your head ever so slightly.
“You don’t get hungry in the morning?”
“I don’t get hungry at all, human.”
“You don’t sleep, you don’t eat. How do you get your energy back?”
“My gem is my energy.”
The jasper. That’s why her name is Jasper. No shit, Sherlock!
You’re curious now. “So your nose is a powerhouse?”
She looks down, then to the side, then at her plate of food, which is becoming increasingly colder.
“Yes and no. My gem is me. I am my gem. My body is just… light you can feel.”
You comprehend. “Like if you could feel a hologram?”
“If a hologram is a projection of light, yes.”
You nod. Then, you swallow and take a deep breath in. It comes out with a sigh.
“As nice as it’s been having you, you and your… sleep watching, I’ll have to drive you back to back to Beach City. I don’t think-”
Jasper interjects.
“No!”
“What?” your brows furrow as your face melts into a look of confusion. “I thought you wanted to go home?”
“That’s not my home.”
“What?”
“With my diamond gone, I have no reason to live there anymore. The barren forest reminds me too much of…”
Her sentence trails off.
She hesitates before speaking. Her brows furrow more than they naturally do. She closes her eyes and looks down, as if she just can’t believe what she’s about to say.
“Please. I’ll stay without my physical form if I must.”
“You mean as that gem I picked up?”
She looks you in your eyes before lifting a finger to point it at her nose.
Is this… vulnerability?
That lighthearted mood you tried to set earlier is long gone.
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Breakfast is finished. You enjoyed your meal, but Jasper kept her word.
The morning had gone by fast. You leave the house to go back to beach city for a few hours, just to go to the beach, and Jasper stays home.
The beach is boring by yourself. You relax, you tan, you splash. That’s about it. Your outing may have been made more boring because of the fact you decided to stay away from the boardwalk, instead taking in the sights of the tall, tall hills right next to the beach.
The whole day, you can’t stop thinking about Jasper.
What were you thinking? Leaving an alien in your home. Alone. Good lord. She seemed trustable, though. It’s not like she’d know what to do with herself. She didn’t even know how to unlock a door.
The day goes by fast, just as the morning. You never stopped thinking about Jasper.
You can’t say you didn’t enjoy yourself at the beach. The sun is now setting, so you decide to take some pictures before you go. You can’t wait to show Jasper the beautiful sunset you caught.
Finally, someone to share your scenery pictures with. Maybe her living there wasn’t so bad.
The drive back home, once again, was uneventful. Though, your stomach churned with anticipation about what could’ve happened while you were away. I mean, she’s not a cat, you thought. It’s not like she’d scratch up my furniture, you thought.
You took a deep breath and kept driving.
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When you returned home at around 10pm, you showed Jasper the pictures you’d taken. She was sitting on the floor of your living room. Where the coffee table used to be.
Some of the pictures were of yourself, but most of them were what you saw.
She told you snippets of stories of things that happened on that beach. Just enough to keep you wondering.
She was so mysterious.
She’ll have to finish those stories one day, you thought.
Maybe having this alien in your home wasn’t so bad.