Rylan was grateful for this moment to collect her thoughts. Jake had talked until the sun had come up about how he had found her and what it meant, specifically to him.
She was overwhelmed.
Could Jake be right about this Luna?
Rylan was not religious by any means, but she had always believed in a higher power. And it did make sense to her that there would be other worlds out there in the universe; life on Earth couldn't have been some freak accident. But what kind of 'higher power' screwed with lives like this? Maybe Jake was wrong, but how else could she have gotten here?
The last thing she could remember before waking up on the lake was going to sleep in her room at her mom's house. Normal. Now her world had been shaken and turned upside down.
More like totally removed from me,
Rylan thought darkly.
What was happening here? How could this have happened?
Humans did not have the technology to travel through space quickly. If they had been responsible she would have been like... well dead, because it would have taken centuries to get this far from her home. She knew she couldn't be in the same galaxy. Probably nowhere near the Milky Way. Mankind had not even found a planet, moon... whatever, that could sustain the life of an ameba let alone anything larger or more complex! Well unless you talked to conspiracy theorists who believed that we kept aliens locked up at Area 51 and claimed the government knew a lot more than they were saying. But Rylan didn't believe those claims.
She sighed. What if it was someone from this planet? What if Jake had interrupted someone from retrieving her? Or maybe Jake was the one to bring her here and told her that ridiculous story so she wouldn't be mad at him. Looking around the room Rylan decided that was probably not the case. She really didn't have any concrete proof but nothing about this room suggested 'advanced'.
I don't know what really would constitute advance maybe computers... everywhere... for everything, automatic sliding doors, something...
The room itself was a mystery to her. The furniture and décor was rustic and the materials they used were very basic. Wood, rock, mud, glass, and it looked to be some kind of metal; these seemed to be the preferred choice of building supplies. Rylan couldn't find anything that could be made of plastic or any other artificial material. However, the way they had been crafted was extraordinary. The carvings on the bedposts and dressers were intricate to the smallest detail making it appear as if the tree naturally grew that way; there were no marks or scrapes as if left by a blade or other tool. The rug on the floor was immense and flawless. The sheets that covered the bed were the softest thing Rylan had ever laid on. Both didn't seem to have a stitch holding it together at all; they simply stayed together on their own.
The floor was wood, but instead of wood cut into planks, it seemed as if there was only one piece of wood covering the entire floor. There were no seams just one plank traveling from wall to wall.
Impossible!
There were no air vents for heat or air conditioning and yet the temperature didn't seems to fluctuate like she thought it should have without them. This place was such a contradiction. It was medieval. It was futuristic. It was amazing.
Studying the room gave Rylan a chance to escape from the uncertainty that had filled her since awaking on this new planet. She tried to remember what the bathroom looked like but she couldn't think of any significant differences from the ones on Earth. It was luxurious that was for sure, but not strange. She was half tempted to go back and look around and discover its idiosyncrasies, but she couldn't. She wouldn't give Jake a chance to catch her unaware. The door was still broken so she couldn't lock him out, not that she could to start with. But she didn't want to give him the change to sneak up on her.
She was a chicken and admitted it proudly. Her mother's voice filled her head 'better an alive chicken than a dead duck'. She smirked. That saying had always sounded a little ridiculous and still did. Thinking of her mother though made her ache. Now she was alone on an alien planet. Well alone with all of the Weres.
Rylan wondered how she didn't realize back at the lake that she wasn't where she was suppose to be, on Earth. She tried to remember what the lake looked like. But her memory was hazy at best. She couldn't remember anything that seemed odd about the trees, rocks, dirt, or lake. Those few minutes she could remember, if she hadn't known any better, she would have thought that she was on Earth. It gave her a small flicker of hope that this world would be very similar to hers, a very slim hope.
How did I get myself into this mess?
She thought.
How am I to survive living on this planet where everyone is so much bigger?
Rylan was shocked at how huge Jake was as a wolf. She had seen grizzly bears smaller than him!
Are all Weres as big? Are they all wolves?
She hoped there were some nice smaller creatures that she wouldn't feel so helpless next to.
A rabbit,
she thought,
cute and cuddly.
An image of the rabbit from Donny Darko flashed in her head
.
Hell any rabbit, even a cute rabbit like Harvey the Invisible Rabbit, seems creepy at that size.
One after another, small seemingly harmless creatures popped into her head but once she pictured them as big as Jake had been as a wolf, they no longer seemed harmless.
I'm at the bottom of the food chain here.
She hated feeling weak and dependent on others.
