SIXTY-THREE: Home, pt. 2

Alden stood in front of Stuart’s door, pondering what to say. Visiting him wasn’t a requirement for this special quest, but it had obviously been what she wanted. And Alden felt like she’d been treating him better than she had to, maybe even better than she should have, and he figured he should do the thing right in return.

He tried to remember his first impressions of the Artonan boy and combine them with his newest one.

He’s really, really serious about things I barely understand. And, I think, the guy is socially awkward by both Artonan and Earthling standards. Plus, he’s grown up in what’s obviously a high pressure environment even if most people seem to be in chill mode here this evening.

I don’t know what to do with all of that.

“You know,” he whispered, “I’m not sure I’m the correct person for a…a friend-making mission at the moment. I’m probably off personality-wise myself right now.”

He’d thought he was dying. Then he’d felt like he was dying. Then he’d gotten to talk to Aunt Connie. Chicago still existed. Earth was still blue. Alden was spying on the Primary’s family. He wanted to go home and see everyone and stand under his own planet’s sun, and simultaneously, he wanted to be all alone in a dark room for a few weeks.

Nothing felt quite right or real.

He decided he would just knock, say, “Hello, please help me get back home,” and figure out how to be friendly to Stuart from there based on the guy’s reactions.

He knocked.

He heard the sound of footsteps, then a boy several inches shorter than him opened the door. He was in the pared-down version of the wizard’s uniform that students wore at LeafSong, and he had thin gold rings wrapping both of his irises, which were a slightly unsettling bright rust color.

His shoulder-length brown hair was still sporting the dramatic and unflattering style he’d adopted for mysterious reasons in the wake of the mishnen incident. Half shaved bald, half French braided.

“Hello,” said Alden.

Stuart’s pale face paled further. He opened his mouth slightly, closed it again, and then, without blinking, he slowly shut the door on Alden.

And did not re-open it.

“That wasn’t one of the reactions I’d planned for,” Alden muttered, staring at the brown wood. He waited a couple of minutes, then knocked again.

“Stu-art’h?” he said, talking in the direction of the door’s access panel on the off chance it worked like an intercom. “Hi. It’s Alden Thorn. We’ve met before. I think you probably remember. Um…I brought you third meal.”

He paused, knocked some more when there was no reply, and then added, just in case it wasn’t clear, “I’m not dead. I am here at your house unexpectedly, though. Sorry if I scared you.”

The door finally slid open again.

“I did not succumb to fear,” Stuart said quickly.

Sure you didn’t.

Alden held up the meal container. “…let me in your room?”

The Artonan boy hesitated, then stepped aside.

All of the places Alden had seen so far during his work as the room service guy had been customized for their occupant, and this one was no different. But Stuart’s tastes were unusual. He had almost no furniture and a ridiculous amount of floor space. Everything functional was tucked into a wall nook, from a standing desk with a pair of screens over it to his bed.

He had plenty of square footage for an entire living room set, but he’d opted for nothing but a bare wood floor.

“Where do you want your food?”

“Put it anywhere.”

The only place in the room that wasn’t neat as a pin was the desk, and it was covered in some delicate-looking glowing glass thing that might have been anything from an art piece to Stuart’s schoolwork. Alden wasn’t going to risk knocking it over, so he set the container the only other place he could.

The floor.

When he turned around, he found that Stuart had sneaked up behind him. To stare. They were standing half an inch apart.

“Oh. That’s close,” said Alden, taking a step back.

There were splashing sounds coming from a closed door to his left. Maybe Stuart had left the bath running?

“The entire campus heard you died on an assignment for Superior Professor Ro-den. I had someone check, and the likelihood of your survival was so low that no resources would ever be wasted on a rescue attempt. You are probably not really here.”

Startled, Alden asked, “What do you think’s happening right now, then?”

Did Artonans believe in ghosts? Kibby hadn’t mentioned it.

“I believe I am <<hallucinating>>. As I used to in my childhood. It’s probably been brought on by the stress of socializing with my university peers. If I converse with you, I will detect more and more flaws in your presence, and then you will vanish.”

He’d had hallucinations as a kid? In that case, he was handling Alden’s arrival shockingly well. He had to be freaking out right now.

“No,” Alden said hastily. “You won’t detect flaws in my presence. I promise. I’m really here.”

Stuart narrowed his eyes. “You speak Artonan. You did not previously. That is a flaw.”

“No, it’s not! I’ve been speaking nothing else for the past several months while I was trapped on Moon Thegund with an Artonan and no Contract translation. Listen to me. I’m sure I have an unusual accent. Would a hallucination have an accent?”

Alden thought this was a good argument, but Stuart didn’t agree.

“The Thegundese accent is distinctive. As are some of the human quirks of your speech. I think I am fully capable of hallucinating those.”

Alden grabbed him by the shoulders.

Stuart looked startled. Then he said, “Avowed do not usually <<initiate>> contact like this with wizards. That is a fl—”

“It’s not a flaw. I totally slapped you in the nose once,” Alden said in English. “And I called you a prick in front of your friends. Listen…you’re not crazy. I am really here. I was on Moon Thegund. I ran into your aunt, Knight Alis-art’h. I’m sure you know she’s there doing something dramatic to the dirt. She used a creepy teleportation chamber on her spaceship to send me here. I was supposed to die for real, but I didn’t. Instead, I landed in your forest. Since you’re the only person nearby who I know, I thought I would come see you and say hello and ask if I could use your family’s summonarium to go back home to Earth. Please.”

He managed to get it all out in a single breath, before Stuart could imagine any more flaws.

“Aunt Alis.” Stuart blinked for the first time since Alden had stepped into the room, then he stared down at the floor for a second and back up at Alden. “I did think your clothing choice was peculiar for a hallucination. I would not normally imagine something that looked quite like…that. Did you say my aunt teleported you here?”

“She teleported me, and here is where I ended up.”

“But not in our summonarium?” Stuart said slowly. “In the trees?”

“Yeah. A few miles away.”

Stuart’s fairly neutral expression underwent a rapid transformation, shifting through several different emotions so quickly that Alden wasn’t sure he caught them all. Shocked, worried, confused, worried…happy?

He settled on something that looked like a cross between nervous and happy, and he stepped out from under Alden’s grip on his shoulders.

“You walked here to say hello to me.” He sounded both pleased and surprised.

Out of everything Alden had just told him, he was sure that should have been the least noteworthy thing.

“You are my guest.”

Stuart said ‘my guest’ the way Kibby said ‘my magic lesson’. The phrase had just a little too much fervor behind it for it to come across as normal.

The Primary’s son clasped his hands together in front of his chest. “You have traveled a long way,” he said formally. “May I offer you a cup of wevvi?”

Alden closed his eyes for a moment. Of course there has to be wevvi.

“I’d love one.”

 

********

 

Wevvi at Stu-art’h’s house was an elaborate affair. He hurried from the room, leaving Alden to stand awkwardly in the barren space listening to the mysterious splashes from the bathroom, and then he reappeared several minutes later with a silver cart full of supplies. Fresh wevvi fruits that resembled white papayas went into a press, then the juice went into a pitcher that looked like it was made of pink quartz, and then about twenty different spices, each selected from its own little silver bowl with a pair of tiny tongs, got dropped in with it.

There was a somewhat mesmerizing chanting session over the pitcher, and then it started to steam.

Despite the amount of effort involved, Stuart worked quickly, and with a kind of precision that made Alden think he was probably doing everything in a specific, mannerly order.

When it was done, Alden took a sip from a cup that matched the pitcher. They were both sitting on the floor. Alden’s new messenger bag full of books was beside him, and Stuart was across from him, watching him closely over the top of his own drink.

“This is actually good.” Alden examined the wevvi with surprise. “Really good.”

The Artonan boy looked proud. “Yes. Guests of the household always say that! Most people have only tasted the artificial kind. There aren’t enough orchards to produce the fruit, so it’s usually reserved for ceremonies.”

“This kind isn’t so slimy.”

“I hate thick wevvi,” Stuart said with a deadly serious expression on his face. “I always feel as though I am drinking someone else’s saliva.”

Accurate. If the saliva was boiling hot and sweet.

“It’s all they ever gave me at LeafSong,” Alden said. “And we had the same kind on Moon Thegund.”

“I had to drink eight cups before first meal one morning.” Stuart shuddered. “When I was meeting with faculty members to make special arrangements for my classes.”

Alden raised an eyebrow. “Can’t you refuse?”

If the son of the Primary couldn’t, then was anyone safe?

“Now that I have <<established>> myself as someone who doesn’t refuse a beverage of welcome it will mean things to people if I do.”

He sounded frustrated.

Alden finished his cup, and Stuart jumped up to serve more.

Alden was under the impression that they were still in the “making small talk” portion of their wevvi-drinking party, so he cast around for something to say. They didn’t have many points of connection to work with. The only thing he could think of…

“How’s your foot?”

Stuart looked down at the foot in question. He was wearing socks, so Alden couldn’t tell what it might look like underneath.

“There is some lingering nerve damage,” Stuart said dismissively. “I will have it healed after I have finished contemplating my errors, weaknesses, and <<misconceptions>> from that day.”

Yeah. There’s that…unique outlook on things.

“Not to be rude,” Alden said hesitantly, “but wouldn’t it be all right to have it healed, and then continue contemplating?”

“Do you still think I’m being a prick?” Stuart said in a slightly injured tone as he passed back the fancy cup.

“You learned to say prick in English?”

“I accessed the human internet in order to research all possible <<connotations>> of the word as part of my contemplations.”

Alden almost spat wevvi across the room.

“Don’t do that!” he said, aghast.

He had never met someone who belonged on the internet less.

“Why not?” Stuart looked at him closely. “It must have been an important insult for you to have so bravely given it. And cultural research is best <<pursued>> through <<native>> sources.”

“Noooo.” Alden wanted to melt into the floor. “Listen, you’re giving me way too much credit for bravery. And presence of mind. And accurate word choices. I had one thing I was capable of doing to help you, and you wouldn’t let me do it. So I was frustrated and uncomfortable, and I insulted you because I couldn’t understand you.”

Still don’t understand you.

“There wasn’t a lot of thought put into it on my end of things,” Alden concluded. “So you definitely shouldn’t put so much into it on yours.”

Stuart looked unconvinced.

“I don’t think you’re a prick.”

“The internet said—”

Alden waved a hand as if he could erase the internet from Stuart’s mind.

“I’m me. We should trust me to interpret me, and leave the internet alone. During the thing with the mishnen, I was thinking, ‘Oh no! A killer fish. Yikes! A boy with a missing foot! I think I should take the boy with the missing foot to a House of Healing. Why is everyone here trying to stop me from doing that?!’”

Stuart sat back down and scanned Alden with his eyes like he was trying to memorize every dirty thread of the Hawaiian shirt.

“Is that all you thought?”

Alden almost said ‘yes,’ but Stuart was a person who had taken a single insult so seriously that he’d spent the past several months researching it. Maybe it was better not to leave him to come to any conclusions on his own.

“I had a lot of thoughts. But they were based on ignorance, guessing, and stress. If you want to know what I think about things now, when I’m actually calmer, you should just ask me.”

Stuart nodded.

Alden waited.

No questions came.

Guess he doesn’t want my opinions on his actions, after all?

Fine then. Time to change the subject. “How’s school? Congratulations on passing your entrance exams, by the way.”

“I did pass them,” Stuart said, as if he thought Alden might have doubted it.

Well, Joe had said he’d be let in the school even if he failed, so maybe some people assumed favoritism?

“I am in the top seven percent or better in all of my classes.”

“Cool.”

“I have not invited a guest to the <<Rapport>> from among my classmates. I planned to. But then nobody was exactly what I was expecting. And bringing people here…it is delicate.”

Alden could imagine like eighteen different ways for Stuart interacting with his classmates to be “delicate.” But it still shouldn’t be that hard to invite a friend over for a weekend sleepover, or whatever the alien equivalent was. His family was operating on a different level, but they didn’t seem like they were impossible to get along with.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Guess I kind of invited myself over,” Alden said. “Sorry about that. Consider it a trial run.”

Stuart blinked at him. “I will.”

Alden finished off the second cup of wevvi.

“I should have asked if you were all right,” Stuart said suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“You just teleported from a chaos incident. Into the forest. I should have asked if you were all right, but I was focused on my own state of mind. And then I was excited to have a guest.”

Guests are so dang important to him.“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m good.”

“You are very dirty.”

“Well, I ran across a lot of a moon in this shirt. And then I…fell down when I arrived.”

Stuart tilted his head. “Were you injured on Thegund?”

Alden glanced down at himself.

“Yeah. I was. But I’m fine now. You don’t need to worry. Your aunt’s icorlax healer took care of me for an entire week. Rrorro. It was quite the experience. And I’m healthy now.” Alden looked at Stuart’s foot pointedly. “Getting fully healed doesn’t prevent contemplation.”