Starman part 1.

A lot can happen between adventures.

Yaska May Däwngale and the people of her village sat around the community fire. Jan was telling a story about the storm festival. Yaska rubbed her fingers through the sand. It did not rain a lot in the desert, but once every two years, there was a rainstorm. Even though she had been gone for so long, Yaska had heard his story many times and had gotten bored of it. She decided to leave the village to look at the stars.

“Where are you going?” It was her friend Mariça, the most unusual looking of the bunch.

“West. I am going to look at the stars.”

“Okay.”

Yaska walked until she couldn’t hear the buzz of the gathering. She found a spot next to a shrub and lay down, resting her hands behind her head. It wasn’t always easy to see the stars because the atmosphere often distorted them. In her homelands, however, there was less humidity, so heat distortion was reduced. Even on this clear night, the stars shimmered and danced in the skies, and Yaska knew she was only seeing a fraction of them.

Yaska gazed at the hundred or two shining dots, tracking their irregular movement until she saw one that was moving oddly. She blinked. It wasn’t shimmering, or moving in hazy circles. It was shuddering. And getting brighter. Yaska watched it, and realized that it was growing.

She sat up, and then, keeping her eye on the star, she stood. She rubbed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the light was the size of her fist.

“What?”

A fiery mass plummeted down from the heavens. Yaska watched as it smashed into the ground, twenty steps in front of her. She was quite astonished.

Yaska, fearless, approached the landing area. As the smoke dissipated, she could see a bright mass of whites and yellows shifting around. She watched as the ball of light took shape. It morphed vertically, splitting at the bottom and the sides. Yaska watched it compress into the definite shape of a person.

“…Hello?”

The form’s brightness faded slowly, until all that remained was a soft glow over it’s tanned skin. The face remained featureless.

Yaska waved her hand in front of where the face should have been. She thought that perhaps it would spark the next part of the creature’s transformation, that it had gotten stuck.

Yaska put  her hands on her hips, staring at it. After a while of nothing happening, she took a step back.

The creature tentatively stepped forward.

“Aha!” Yaska took another step backwards, and the creature again followed. “So you can do something!”

Yaska turned and started walking back the the village, checking over her shoulder frequently to make sure the creature was following. As she neared the makeshift stone huts of her village, she heard muttering.

Then, a voice rang out, “I will go, because I am the eldest. If anything happens to me, it is a much smaller loss than if we lose Jan, our hunter.”

Yaska entered and approached the group; huddled together and worried. It was Mariça’s part-mother who had volunteered herself. Jan noticed her first.

He said, “What is that following you?!”

Yaska stopped. The creature stopped. Yaska realized she had no idea what she had just led into her village. She assumed it wasn’t dangerous because thus far it had been so benign, but she couldn’t be sure. Still, she wasn’t too worried. If it was dangerous, she had the strength to deal with it.

Yaska turned around and said, “- oh, you are finally getting yourself a face, I see.”

The face of the creature pushed itself out of the front of its head, much to the surprise of the villagers.

Jan ran up to Yaska and whispered, “is this normal?”

Yaska nodded stating, “It started as a ball of light.”

“Hey!” Mariça shouted from among the group, “it looks like a boring Jan!”

Yaska and Jan looked up.

“I look like that?”

Yaska approached the creature.

“Can you speak?”

The creature opened its mouth and gave a shriek. Jan stepped back. Yaska stepped forward, readying herself, just in case.

Mariça’s mother walked to Jan and said, “that’s an infant’s screech. If it just got its face, it likely doesn’t know how to use it.”

Jan said, “Well, actually, it just got my face.”

After tapping it a few times, Jan declared the creature harmless. Yaska said that since it figured out how to grow a face so fast through observation, it would likely learn how to speak the same way. So, the village returned to the fire and Jan began another story.

And the creature did listen.

Daniel Triumph.

Next Part

This will probably be a 3 parter. Not super long. Yaska really should have more appearances, as she’s one of my oldest characters, but so it goes.

If you want, you can help me out on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/DanielTriumph)