20 Galaxies
Arc 1 - Past
Part 1 - Legend in the Sky

Chapter 1

"You be careful out there, Ru," Ms. Hadley cautioned as she handed the little girl her lunch. "There's some nasty thunderstorms on the way."

Ru slipped the lunch bag in her backpack and stuffed her long brown hair into her raincoat. "What? But I want to see -"

"No. There's Severe Thunderstorm Warnings out, so I want you to get right on that bus when it gets here." Ms. Hadley tightened Ru's hoodstrings, making her head look like a red lightbulb.

"But Mom," Ru whined, untying the strings.

"It's dangerous! How many times do I have to tell you that?" Ms. Hadley sorted through one of the many stacks of paper on the kitchen table, plucking a few sheets out and stuffing them in her briefcase. "I should drive you to school myself, but I'm already running late. No missing the bus to walk in the rain, got it?"

Ru made a sulky face. Her mother had so little time, but there was always enough to nag about the weather. Ru turned the conversation to her little brother. "Where's Jayson? He's going to miss the bus too."

"Never mind about Jayson. He's over at the Coronas'. Get going."

The sky was always the first thing Ru looked at when she set foot outside. Plover Road was covered by dim, oddly-ridged clouds today, the trees hissing in the gusty winds. The outside world was flushed gray, all the way up to the corner where the bus stop was. Empty houses loomed around Ru as she trudged along the side of the street, not a light in sight except for the dull orange glow of a streetlamp.

The morning bus was not Ru's favorite part of the day. It jumped on every crack in the road (which the boys who sat in the back seat thought was the greatest thing ever) and has a lingering stench of fish. Not to mention by the time it reached her stop, all the seats had at least one person in them, so she never got a window. She wished she was in high school, so she could drive a car instead. Being only eleven years old, she would have to wait a few years.

Clasping the ends of her hood together, she reached the corner and waited there. Amber leaves swung across the wide concrete diamond where plover intersected Cardinal. Cardinal Street was one famous street for a residential road. She could follow it all the way to school, or to a much more interesting place such as Warbler Parkway. She stared at the sky again, waiting for the rain. She knew it would be there any second. The weatherman said that the rain would probably miss the south side of Tanager Park. Ru had laughed at him.

Tanager Park might have been the most famous city in Illinois if not for Chicago. Ru had been to Chicago a few times and was overwhelmed. Even neighboring Vireo City didn't have such a skyline. But Ru preferred Tanager Park. She had lived there for all eleven years of her life and knew enough about the town to start her own tour. Especially about the legends. She could see it now - driving everyone around in a bus with a window all to herself. She would start it off with a weather forecast - an accurate one - and then she would take them all to Warbler Parkway and tell them the Legend of the Cameraman. And then there would be a flicker in the forest, just like a camera flash -

Thunder rolled somewhere far away, and right on cue, the rain poured down. Ru, her mind still wandering in cartoonish vision, wondered if she would have to swim to school.

A crow soared over head, silently perching among a few others in a swaying birch nearby. Ru hadn't noticed them sitting there. Usually the crows in the neighborhood were rather vocal, especially when they were together like that. These birds just swung with the wind as if they were leaves on the trees. Maybe they're afraid of the storm, Ru thought.

Or maybe their mothers had nagged them about being out in the storms too, and they decided to sit there out of spite. Ru decided to try that one time. Weather lectures was a weekly part of Ru's life, any season, any time of day. "It's too cold." "It's raining buckets out there." "Tornadoes means inside now." It came from everyone. Her mother, her brother, her teacher, her sitters - even her best friend Colleen, although it was because she was deathly afraid of thunder and lightning.

Where was Colleen, anyway? She might have been afraid of the storm, but she would be dragged to the bus stop kicking and screaming if need be. Ru listened for the musical creak of the gate that signaled her friend was on the way.

Someone was approaching from that direction, but this person was too short to be Colleen or any of the other people that should have been at the stop now - Chris Artcele, Jayson, even shorter than Randy Corona. Most of the stranger's identifying features were hidden under a long red raincoat. Ru decided the stranger would be male until she could tell otherwise.

A car passed by, but the only thing that was more visible about the stranger in the headlights were the raindrops sliding in faint glints down his coat. He walked in an odd manner, very smoothly, almost as if her were on rollerblades. Rollerblades, though, made a good racket against concrete, even in pouring rain. On top of that, he was going down a hill, but as he came closer, he slowed down. Though his eyes were concealed in the darkness cast by his hood, Ru could tell he was looking at her.

Everything froze.

For a moment, Ru was by herself. The rain speckled the air around her in little silvery pins. A fork of lightning lay soundless across the clouds. Ru had just noticed there was no sound at all when her vision filled with blue. There was an overwhelming feeling - a presence, maybe, that almost pushed her down. It was not supposed to be here. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and through its rhythm, she thought she could hear words. She pushed aside her alarm, straining her ears.

If they were words, they didn't make sense to her. Soon the presence took away any kind of free thought. It was forcing her to look at it, but she could see nothing but blue. She resisted, screwing her eyes shut, trying to scream for help.

The sound of the scream was enclosed, thinning into a piercing squeal that snapped her out of her trance. The squeal had been the brakes of her bus, passing her by and heading up to the next street.

"Aah! No!" Ru yelped.

Her hood flew off as she raced after the bus. Her hair, quickly soaked by the storm, smacked her face and flew in her eyes. She kept running, her backpack jostling around, the lunch bag crackling within. A longer weather lecture was not worth keeping lunch unsquashed.

Her lungs began to chafe, and the bus was pulling further away. It would get to the next stop far before she did, but at least she could tell the kids there to make the driver wait for her.

As she turned the bend, however, she saw that the street was empty. There were six people at that corner on every other day, she thought, how could they all miss the bus at the same time? Unless there was something going around, which Mrs. Hadley would have been informed of by the Coronas, Ru could think of no other reason.

The bus idled at the corner, and Ru gained on it a bit, but she could see it would not be enough. It made a left, slowly, teasing her. Ru stopped to catch her breath, casting a hideous face at the retreating end of bus, and thought hard. She might be able to catch a ride with the Coronas, who could leave later through a direct route to the school.

A bolt of lightning suddenly split the air over her head. Through the roar of crackling thunder echoing away she heard the bus brakes and its tires scream, and once she deemed it safe to remove her fingers from her ears, she forced herself to run up the street again. The bus was backing up, away from a massive oak bough that had fallen across the road. She could see the kids inside slipping towards the front, the driver ordering them to stay in their seats as she reached the door.

~*~*~*~

"Good morning, class."

The Reading teacher had just walked into her room, a contagious smile etched across her slender face, blue eyes sparkling. Her short, bouncy, sunlight-colored hair was sharp against the gray morning. No one could imagine her otherwise, the perfect person to battle the storm outside. She had decorated the room with vivid posters and glossy stars just for days like this.

"Good morning, Ms. Kolar!" the class responded in drawn-out unison.

Ru sighed heavily and glanced at the drawn shades. She was the only one who wanted to see the rain, or at least hear it. Maybe she would ask later.

While Ms.Kolar stood over her desk arranging her notes for the hour, Ru's mind wandered back to the stranger in the red coat. She couldn't picture him very well, then again, there was nothing to see about him but a red coat.

"Those of you in my Language Arts class should pay special attention this class," Ms. Kolar announced. "Today we'll be starting the Tanager Park legends unit, so take out The Legends of Tanager Park and open to page 82 while I take attendance."

Ru grinned. All right! Guaranteed good grade, she thought as she opened the book.

A vivid painting jumped out at her from the page. It was an image of a blue, four-point star in the middle of a dark pine forest. Her smile widened even more as she saw this.

The blue star was one of Ru's favorite legends. She had first heard of it at Lora Mugen's birthday party in Warbler Parkway. The partygoers had settled around a dim pit fire that cast blue smoke over the waning moon. Everyone would be going soon, but a few of the boys wanted to get some scary stories in before the parents would come to pick them up and spoil the mood. From this gathering, Ru learned the story that defined most of the incidents that happened in Warbler Parkway. It centered around a giant blue light, something one account described as "like one of the Pleiades." This star roamed the Warbler forest at night and the unfortunate people who got in its way disappeared. There were no more stories after someone saw blue shimmering in the forest, across the baseball field from where they were. They found out later it was Joe Reland and a flashlight covered in blue plastic wrap.

Ru wished the blue star would make him disappear. Maybe she would have a story to tell.

"This story," Ms. Kolar started, "Is one of the most famous of our town."

Nathan Hawn couldn't wait for her to explain. He nearly jumped out of his seat, crying out, "Is there really a blue star?!"

There were a few stifled giggles and a sympathetic smile from Ms. Kolar. The poor kid lived less than a block from Warbler Parkway, and had grown up hearing much nastier versions of the legends from his older brothers and Joe Reland. Ru was thankful she only had a younger brother, who had little interest in the legends, although he knew them just like everyone else.

"It's only a story," Ms. Kolar reassured. "Some people believe it really happens."

After the class read the story out loud, she walked across the aisles with a stack of worksheets in her hands and had them passed out. Ru was placed in a group with Nathan and Kenna Paine, a girl who had moved from Joliet at the beginning of the school year. As they settled into their newly-made groups, Kenna started to open her textbook to look for the answers, but Ru stopped her. "It's OK," she said, "We can fill it out."

A glance around the room revealed to Kenna that everyone else was filling out their sheets without so much as touching their books. Ms. Kolar took no notice, scratching the day's vocabulary words down the right edge of the chalkboard. "Wow," Kenna whispered. "Daddy said the kids already knew the local history, but I thought he was just trying to get me to do extra credit."

"Don't act too surprised," Nathan advised, chewing on his pencil. "Everyone around here thinks it's funny when the new kid finds out all the rumors they hear about this place are true."

"Not all are true," Ru argued.

"Most of them."

"They still can't prove anything about the legends." Ru was surprised how similar she sounded to her brother at the moment, but continued on. "By the way, Kenna, if you ever run into Joe Reland, don't believe a word he says."

Nathan nodded in agreement. Kenna looked confused, but didn't ask. "Have either of you seen this blue star?"

"No," Nathan mumbled, a bit dejectedly.

"There's always people out there looking, though," Ru added. "Every couple of years someone says they saw it."

"Don't they try to take pictures?"

"Yeah, lots of people do." Ru said. She recalled a time where she had seen ten people in a row with cameras and telescopes on the edge of the forest. There was to be a lunar eclipse, and these observers thought that the happenings in the park might have something to do with miscellaneous astronomical events. Her teacher was one of them, and she and several of her classmates had gone there to watch along with him to see if anything would come out of the forest. Jayson had gone strictly to see the eclipse. "My brother keeps saying things like, if there are people that saw the star, how come they didn't disappear? He thinks all the legends came from Joe."

"But Joe's in sixth grade," Nathan said. "There's been stories about the star for over twenty years."

"Jayson says it doesn't matter. There could have been more people like Joe back then."

"Could've been my uncle," Kenna said with a laugh. "If he ever lived in Tanager Park."

"Why did you guys move here, anyway?"

They finished the sheet and kept talking until Ms. Kolar interrupted. "Pass your papers forward, please, and take one of the article that's coming around."

The article was a badly-photocopied piece that made Ru scowl when she picked it up. It was from the Daily Jaeger. Her frown intensified when Kenna leaned over and whispered, "Hey, the writer's got the same last name as you."

"My mom wrote this," Ru mumbled.

"Really? Wow!" Kenna half-squealed, half-whispered.

Thankfully, Ms. Kolar didn't let Kenna carry on. The article itself was about the real disappearences in Warbler Parkway over the years and a general piece about the area. Tanager Park was a suburb of Vireo City, Warbler Parkway was the gigantic park within Tanager Park that took up 2/3 of the grounds. The city passed laws to preserve the parkway, officially because of some wildlife there, but even Ru knew it was because of the many legends surrounding those woods. The article, like her brother, would not let the reader believe that the city officials thought the legends were real.

The legends stuck with Ru for the rest of the school day, through the math review of powers and roots, through her flattened brown bag lunch, even when she was walking home from the bus stop. The rain had gone, the sky a breezy blue, the exact color of her eyes. She wondered if the star was the same color.

Sometimes she wondered who would believe such weird stories. Nathan Hawn, maybe. Maybe all the legends were caused by people like Joe Reland. It would be a disappointing reality.

But why do these people believe these things are real? Ru wondered. Have they seen it before, or do they just believe in it? How would they know?

Home was one driveway away. The Hadley house's spintered walls, normally dusty, looked like dark chocolate in the clear sunlight. Her mother's petunias bordered the uneven stone walk to the front of the house, a soft fence of blooms, a shade of fuschia that was almost neon. A reflection of the neighbor's yard peered at her through the cross-hatched wood on the window of the front door.

"Hey! Ruster!" a waving voice called out.

Ru glared at the two boys sitting on the front porch. One was her nine-year old brother Jayson, the other, Randy Corona, who lived across the street. "Don't call me Ruster!"

"What took you so long?" the boys laughed.

She stomped up to them, looking Jayson straight in the face. His dark eyes were almost insivible under his beloved White Sox hat. Then she looked Randy over, his wild, filthy hair and the big hole in his jeans she knew he probably got from jumping off some homemade ramp on his rollerblades. Neither of them looked sick, which prompted her to ask, "Why weren't you at school? Cutting class?"

"We had a half-day," Jayson told her.

"-and you didn't!" Randy added.

"So?"

Ru stuck her tongue out and pushed past them. Randy jumped up and skated backwards around the tiny cement porch. "Ruster! Ruster!" he sang.

"Go home, Randy!" Ru yelled.

Randy stopped in front of Ru with a big grin. She slammed the door in his face. She heard a clatter of rollerblades and a loud "oof" as he tumbled backwards.

"Jayson, is that you?" Ms. Hadley called from upstairs.

"No, it's me," Ru called back.

"Oh, Ru! Good." Her mother rushed down the stairs in a deep green skirt and blouse. It matched her auburn hair perfectly. Ru also noted a thin gold necklace with garnets in the front. Her mother only wore that when she might have her picture in the paper. "I won't be back until late, so Janice is going to stop by for a little while, all right?"

"We don't need a sitter," Ru said, frowning.

"She's coming here to clean. You can help her if you want."

"I was just going to do my homework."

"Really?" Ms. Hadley said, surprised. "Good for you! Keep that up. And tell Jayson he's supposed to come inside for dinner when Janice shows, OK? I told her it was all right if she brought some McDonald's. I'll see you tomorrow."

She gave Ru a short kiss on the head and hurried out the door without another word. Ru watched her pull out from the garage and drive off, and sighed heavily. Tomorrow, they might see each other for dinner. Or for five minutes. Whatever assignments her mother had for the newspaper that day.

In the family room, Ru found paper strewn about, the shorter of the two blue couches overturned, its flower-speckled cushions lying across the room in a pile. There was a faint aroma of cooked salami in the air, strongest by a pile small plates with brown puddles of grease gleaming faintly. Janice was going to have a fun time cleaning.

The TV was blaring the early afternoon news. Ru scowled at the reporter and shut it off. She shuffled through the paper on the floor, looking for a few blank pieces. Some were her mother's discarded notes, some were mangled drawings by the boys, imitated baseball cards and Power Rangers. A small pile of unused looseleaf lay hidden near the TV.

Much to her amazement, her mother's office was completely cleaned and organized. A much more suitable place to work, Ru decided, even though there were no windows, just the same wallpaper in every room on the main floor, designed to look like a chain-link fence with flowers growing on it. It was supposed to make her feel like she was outside, her mother said, but there was no sky on the paper. It probably would have been distracting if there had been a sky, Ru reasoned. She plunked her backpack by the desk and started right in on the paper. She wasn't usually eager to do homework, but her Reading assignment wasn't really homework to her.

The first assignment was about the history of Tanager Park, which Ru could write pages about without even looking at her book. She went on about how very old legends, told even before the settlers came, said the woods that were now Warbler Parkway were considered sacred ground, and not meant to be disturbed. She wrote about the many visitors in the summer and especially around Halloween. She stopped short, however, when her writing lead to her father.

She wondered if he had to do assignments like this when he was her age, and if he wondered the same things about the legends as she did. When out-of-town reporters and paranormal investigators came to explore the park, she would sometimes follow them around, asking questions and irritating them. Her mother only laughed when she caught word of it, saying Ru's father used to do the same thing.

Ru shook her head. The paper assignment was done well enough. Actual reading was next. They were to pick a myth in the book they hadn't heard before (or if they had heard all of them, their favorite), and write a paragraph. It was the same as any of their other Reading assignments, only this time, Ru was prepared.

It was a both a disappointment and a delight when she found the title of a legend she hadn't heard of, titled "Angel of the Trees." She wouldn't have an advantage on this assignment, but she might find out more about the park.

There was once a small boy named Byron living near Warbler Parkway. Every day, he would go outside and play with his best friend, Chris, who lived right next door. The two got along well for the most part. But one day, they got in a fight, and Chris ran home in tears. Knowing there would be a call to his house, Byron ran off into Warbler Parkway.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been there too many times before, and got lost inside the trees. He grew tired and hungry, and finally just gave up and rested on a tree.
"Why are you crying?" a curious voice asked.
Byron saw in front of him a girl, about his age- with green hair! That wasn't the only thing strange about the girl, there were leaves attached to her back in the shape of wings. He was a bit frightened at first, but she had a warm and friendly smile that made him feel more comfortable. "My friend's mad at me and I can't go home" he sniffled. "No one will want me around."
"I'll be your friend" she offered. "We can stay here in the forest, and we'll have lots of fun."
Byron cheered up right away, and the two of them ran off into the trees together.
But his parents were getting very worried, and so was Chris.
The next day, some of the searchers found him in the forest. It sounded like he was talking someone, but none of them saw anyone around, so they took him home.
He didn't want to go. He put up a big fight, kicking and screaming and trying with all his strength to get loose. But the others were a lot bigger and stronger than he was.
As they took him away, he heard the angel call to him. "Why are you leaving? You can't leave now! I thought we were friends!"
He wasn't in as much trouble as he thought when he came home, but the city was. As the week went by, the plants in the park began to dry up, even though there was plenty of rain. People began finding starving and hurt animals around the edges. But no one believed what the Byron said about the angel.
Byron knew it was because the angel was sad. So one night, while his family was out taking a walk, he escaped into Warbler Parkway. People started chasing him, but since he was small, he could fit through the trees easier and he soon lost them. The angel flew out in front of him. She was very happy. "I knew you'd be back."
"Yes, but you see, I can't stay here all the time. I have a family who loves me very much, and my other friends too-"
He then noticed Chris watching him from behind, who was staring wide-eyed at the angel. "You're real!"
The angel looked startled too. "You can see me?"
Chris nodded. As several more people gathered, their astonished voices filled the air at what they saw.
"Then I must leave" the angel explained. "But I will return someday. Until then, we'll still be friends."
The angel flew off into the night.

The story seemed more like something that the class would have read in first grade, but Ru didn't think any more about it. All the easier for her to write.

Who wrote this? she thought. Byron? Or Chris, maybe? She played with the idea of the Chris in the story being Chris Artcele, Jayson's friend from up the block.

She glanced up at the clock. It was 6:30 and there was no sign of Janice. Janice was their old sitter, a quirky, peppy woman who her mother claimed to be "stuck in the 80's." She was always right on time, sometimes early. Ru's mother hadn't said specifically when Janice would show up, though.

Ru closed the book and wandered back downstairs to the living room, righting the love seat and plopping down on it. The sun was setting outside, a plain, cloudless yellow sky. It was getting darker more quickly and soon the wave of tourists would surge again. Some were probably out at the parkway right now, fussing with supernatural sensing equipment they might have invented themselves. Some would have plain cameras or even binoculars. Ru's favorite visitors were the psychics. She could get them to read her fortune if she told them about any strange things she saw in the park. But she hadn't seen anything, and these so-called psychics could never tell that she was lying.

Why can't I see a tree angel?

The stranger she saw that morning could have been the tree angel for all she knen. She didn't remember much of the encounter, but she knew something had happened.

Suddenly Jayson popped up, not more than two inches from her face, screaming "FOOOOOOOOD!"

Ru shrieked and bounced backwards. Jayson didn't laugh like she was expecting him to, he only eyed her oddly.

"You can't make your own dinner?!" she yelled back at him.

"Jeez, you're jumpy," he commented, straightening his hat. "Mom said there was frozen pizza, but she won't let me use the stove."

"Janice is bringing us food."

"Yeah, but I'm hungry now."

"So microwave some ravioli or something,"

"Don't know how to use the can opener."

Ru growled and led Jayson to the kitchen. The first floor was almost all an open area, with the kitchen, living room, family room, and two dining rooms only seperated by parts of wall with the top halves cut out, and thin, wooden counters with decorative pillars in their place. The cupboard with the canned food was just out of her reach, so she clambered up on the counter below it. The white counter tiles were sticky. Jayson had eaten more than microwaved salami since he came home.

"Don't climb on the counter!" Jayson scolded. "I'm telling Mom."

"Do you want dinner or not?"

He was quiet. Ru sorted through the cans on the bottom shelf. "So why aren't you out with Randy?"

Jayson leaned on the doorway by the stove. "He got in trouble. Joe Reland was messing with him at recess and Randy gave him a black eye. I was going to tell his parents what really happened cause I saw the whole thing, but they told me to go home."

"Randy would get in trouble for something else sooner or later," Ru said.

Jayson's hat dipped, hiding his eyes. "I know. The kids in my class keep saying he could get kicked out of school. I told him that but he doesn't believe me."

He had taken on that low tone, the thoughtful one that made him seem like the older sibling. That was the voice that made everyone around him want to listen, especially Ru.

"Don't worry," Ru said, "I don't think Joe would last much longer, either. He's always up to something, he just doesn't get caught."

"I think he was the one who left all that cheese in the vents," Jayson said with a slight grin.

"Ew."

"It would have been good if they let us out of school for that, but noooo - we had to sit in class all day."

"And Joe didn't even show up for school."

The ravioli was nowhere in sight, and Ru took the front cans out of the cabinet to get a better look. "I hate it when he's walking around Warbler Parkway, like, pretending to be the blue star or ghosts or something. It's so stupid. It messes up all the people who come to look for the legends."

"Were you following them around again?" Jayson questioned sharply.

Here was where that "older sibling" tone was not pleasant to listen to. "Yeah, so what?" she said.

"Ru, can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Do you - believe the legends?"

One part of Ru wanted to agree with what Jayson would say, no. He had a sort of pull on people that made them do things like that. But she couldn't say it. He was looking for the truth, and they didn't hide things from each other.

"I - I don't know," she uttered.

Jayson snorted. "Well, you don't have to sound so melodramatic."

"Melocram -" Ru started. "That's not even a word."

"Is too."

"Is not."

She knew it probably was a real word. Jayson didn't just make up strange words to make himself look smarter, he didn't need to. And though she found the use of that long word annoying, she couldn't help but admire him. He could say with certainty that he didn't believe the legends.

"Oh - there it is!" she said, reaching in for the ravioli can.

A blue spark suddenly ignited behind the can. Fire! Ru's heart leaped and she drew back with wide eyes. What were they supposed to do in case of a fire?

The cabinet was dark.

Am I seeing things?

She leaned back on the counter, knocking one of the cans on the floor. "Ru?" Jayson said.

Ru slid off the counter with the ravioli, never once taking her eyes off the cabinet. It was blue - could it have been - ?

A chill streaked up her spine and rattled her. The room was silent, drained, cold. Almost frozen, like the world had been when she saw the hooded stranger that morning. Then the words came back, but this time, Ru understood. They were in danger.

Something rattled loudly above their heads. Jayson's shaded eyes became visible as he looked up at the ceiling, their soft brown tone alight with unease. "Why is the light moving?"

Earthquake was the first thing that came to both their minds, and it was quickly dismissed. It wasn't impossible in Illinois, however, the dinner-plate light above their heads was the only thing shaking, and quite violently.

"Something's gotta be wrong with the electrical system," Jayson suggested. "Maybe we should turn off the light."

Ru turned to the lightswitch, but another chill washed over her, and that horrible feeling once again urged her away from the kitchen. "What's the matter?" Jayson asked.

A scratchy, violin-like sound gradually became loud enough to be heard, then louder, forcing Ru and Jayson to cover their ears and sending Ru's mind into a panic. Whatever they were supposed to be running from, it was coming now. She grabbed her brother's arm and hurrried into the darkened family room, diving over the back of the short couch.

The light was now turning slowly. It wavered like watery Jello. The movement popped the light right out of its socket, snapping the wires with a burst of sparks and sending shards of glass across the floor. The light did not go out, however. It remained in the air and split it half, and finally molded into can shapes. They were two feet tall and about half as wide, one green, and one gray.

Ru and Jayson would have burst out laughing if the creatures' expressions hadn't been so fierce. They both had two dark, very wide eyes, and a mouth that looked like three sticks put together. Their surfaces were crinkled, like foam. "Giant, living soda can holders," Jayson mumbled. "I never heard a legend like this. If this wasn't a dream, I could have written it up and got some money."

A dream? How on Earth could he think this was a dream? No - this was too vivid. Ru curled into a ball, hiding the creatures from her sight.

The gray one spoke. Unrecognizable, rasping words - were they even words? The children clapped their hands to their ears, but the sound seared through, reaching inside, and the inside couldn't handle it. Ru bit her lip to keep from screaming.

The horrible noise stopped, and then something else happened. The confusion to Ru's senses was beginning to make her nauseous. Some kind of energy emitted from the creatures, possibly light, but instead of making the room brighter it was as if they were viewing it in a film negative. The negative light enveloped the two creatures, and stretched them out, until the shapes were human.

The gray one had turned into a shapely woman with bright red hair that fell to her waist, and white bangs curved around her face. The green one became a taller man, with big square shoulders and short hair with a false, green color to it. Both were wearing tight, black uniforms with belts made of square, silver plates. The woman's uniform had two giant, gray raccoon tails attached to the left side and white shin guards.  "This should suit us better," she said in a much more bearable voice.

The man glanced around the room uncertainly. "Are you sure they're here?"

"They have to be. This is the unawakened planet."

The grating in her voice was indeed gone, but the way she said that gave Ru and Jayson more chills. Jayson popped his head up over the back of the couch. "Maybe they're aliens," Jayson whispered.

"Jayson, get down! They'll see you!"

No sooner than the woman had flicked her eyes in their direction was she standing over the couch. Ru and Jayson jumped. The eyes were the color of cold, polished steel. They softened, however, when the woman figured out what she was looking at. "Oh, how cute," she cooed. "Look, Meno, there's children here."

The man - Meno - approached in normal strides, not instantly like the woman had. "Mizst, we don't have time for this," he said, agitated.

Mizst ignored him. "They're afraid of us. Why?"

"I don't know. It is the unawakened planet."

"I'm not afraid of you," Jayson piped up.

"Oh?" Mizst said, with a touch of amusement.

"I've had scarier dreams than this."

"Dreams?"

Jayson took on the older-sibling voice. Ru had the feeling it wouldn't have the same effect as it would with most people. "Yeah, you can't be real, see. Giant living flying soda can holders - I won't even tell you what's wrong with that - can't turn into people."

"Let the can people turn into whatever they want!" Ru hissed.

"Unless," Jayson murmured, touching his hand to his chin. "Wait a minute."

Ru couldn't wait for the explanation Jayson would came up for this.

"Are you the sitter?"

Mizst laughed. Meno forced her aside. "You may think children are cute," he started, holding his hand across his chest in a claw. Green fire burst from his palm and swirled in a ball.  "Personally, I find them annoying."

Ru shrank back, unable to take her eyes from the fire. She was sure that even though Meno could touch it without it burning him, she and Jayson would be fried. Jayson looked a little unnerved, but didn't move. He had to be right. There was no way this could not have been a dream. She pushed her mind, screaming at herself to wake up.

The green light from the fire filled the room, combining with the chain-link wallpaper, turning Ms. Hadley's quaint little imitation of the outdoors into a toxic wasteland. As moments passed, the light seemed bluer than it should have been, and soon the blue overtook the fire light. Meno glanced behind him, into the kitchen to the source of the new light.

"Watch out!" Mizst screamed.

Meno didn't have time. Mizst bolted sideways, just avoiding a brilliant torrent of light that shot out from the open kitchen cabinet. Wind roared through the lower level, shaking the walls like theater bass, scattering the paper on the floor into the air. The rasping voice came out of Meno in a shriek, disintegrating with the rest of him. Ru and Jayson saw a large green parrot appear briefly before it vanished in the light as well.

Ru watched, absolutely still, as the blue light packed into a solid shape that hovered above the kitchen floor. A ball, with four laser-like ends to it - a star. Soft tendrils of cerulean flame flowed around its edges, each one ending in a trail of sparkles.

"What are you doing here?" Mizst shouted, raising her arms defensively.

The star's voice wasn't ferocious and howling, the impression the legends gave off. It was sweet, the sound of wind chimes in a tender breeze. Still, they could detect its stern note as it spoke to the Mizst. "To do the same thing to you as I've done to your friend, if you don't leave now."

Mizst looked thoughtful, then gave a deep scowl. The negative light swirled up from the floor, sweeping her away into thin air.

Ru and Jayson stayed frozen, watching with bulging eyes. The star seemed to be looking back. They could tell, even though it had no face. They said nothing in hopes that it would leave them alone.

"Please do not fear me," it chimed. "I am aware of the legends. Though many have vanished before me, I will bring you no harm."

Ru relaxed as it went on, flickering and growing dimmer by the second. It's voice grew softer and softer. It was too late to go back by the time she realized it was putting her to sleep.