Unearthling.

It had been 20 years since he last saw her, when he had time warped back to 2010. They had met on a chilly autumn night in September. He had just been partying. She was in her bed writing this story when he popped into the middle of her room with a disoriented look upon his face.

She wrote: he blinked. He blinked. She was surprised. She wrote: he pranced around. He stayed put.

So he wasn’t a character that came to life after all. She closed her pen and sat cross-legged on her bed, observing this strange male apparition. She stared at his face closely and analyzed his whole body. He was about 6ft tall and had a plain white t-shirt with colorful jeans on. He was barefoot. He had grey eyes and his dark-brown hair was shaggy.

“Stop staring,” he said.

“Come again?” she replied, snapping out of her observation. Annoyed that she had been ordered too stop, she continued, “You could at least say please. ‘Stop staring please. It’s making me feel self-conscious.’”

He looked her, bemused. She continued:

“Besides, it’s not like you popped out of thin air into my room at 3 in the morning with no shoes on – which I must say is quite polite because I have a no-shoe policy.” She nibbled on a hangnail, thinking of something else to say but coming up blank.

“Who decided that?” Asked mystery boy.

“Me.” She stared at him again. He broke the few minutes of silence to ease the discomfort, “So aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?”

“I figured you were from the future. I just watched a movie that had a similar plot line and it’s the closest thing to this making any sense at all. Unless I’ve become schizo and am imagining you.” Their eye contact broke as she turned away. Under her breath, she muttered, “God, that would suck.”

“What’s God? Also what year is this?”

“You don’t know God? Where are you. from and why are you even here, in my room of all places too. It’s 2010 by the way.”

“I live in year 2030, in a tunneled place. I was on my way to my friend Miks place for a party when I took a wrong turn and fell through a hole. It happens you know, falling through holes… but this time I just kept on falling so I thought I was dying – until I found myself here.

“I was born in Hole 186, which is pretty nice actually. There are freesias growing on the walls and the ground is paved with diamonds. I’ve heard some other places only have gold.”

“Is this earth you’re talking about?” She asked.

“From what I know, migration to our planet Keplite happened in the past two decades from a planet called earth. My parents were scientists. According to them, the earth was losing sunlight and humans had ravaged it to the point of no fixing. So my parents were hired to move to Keplite. Apparently this earth was rumored to have green plants growing from the surface and wild creatures that walked on four legs and roared.”

“Lion? Tigers?” she piped in.

“Yeah! And gorillas. I saw some sketches in our history books.”

“I hate to interrupt your story, but you can go outside and literally run into four legged creatures of at least 3 kinds. Also the surface is green. And I’m breathing and alive.” She leaned back and laughed. “Welcome to earth. Now, aren’t you supposed to save it?”