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She awoke slowly, stretching languidly to feel the soft rub of the bed linens. But the sheets weren't covering her body. With her eyes still closed, she felt around the mattress for their softness, thinking she must have kicked them off during the night. But she didn't find the plush texture of her mattress beneath her hands. Instead, her hand made contact with a smooth, cool surface. Rachel's eyes were open in a flash, but the darkness surrounding her made the action pointless. She couldn't remember her apartment ever having been so dark before. She moved to sit abruptly, but she couldn't bring herself upright. Her arms and legs were free to move, but her torso was immobilized.
She tried to remain calm, fighting the panic rising within her. Rachel's first thought was that something happened to her. Had she somehow suffered some injury that caused damage to her spine? But the last thing she remembered was climbing into bed, perfectly healthy and uninjured. Certainly, a fall from the height of her bed could not cause serious damage. And how could she move her arms and legs if she had suffered a spinal injury? She fought to sit upright again, lifting her head off the hard surface beneath her. While still immobilized, the action reassured her that she had definitely not suffered a paralyzing injury; too much of her body could move freely.
But then, fear rose to the forefront of her mind. If she weren't injured, why on earth couldn't she sit up? And then the room illuminated and she could see her surroundings clearly. What she saw was not the interior of her bedroom; she didn't recognize anything at all. She began to fight vigorously against the invisible bindings keeping her in her current position. Seemingly out of nowhere she heard a voice.
“Please. Do not hurt yourself. I will release the hold on you. It was only meant to keep you safe from injuring yourself,” a deep, husky voice spoke, but Rachel could not find the source.
She stopped thrashing and suddenly she could move freely. In one swift movement, she was upright and off the cold, hard surface that had confined her a moment prior. Her eyes darted around frantically, searching for a way out, but finding no obvious means of escape.
“Who are you? Why am I here? What do you want from me?” She questioned frantically.
A door slid open and a figure walked slowly, carefully into the room. “I am not here to hurt you Rachel. I promise you that,” the figure with the deep, husky voice tried to assure her.
At first, she couldn't make out anything but the outline of the figure. It was shrouded by a light that flickered slowly. And each time it did, the light became brighter. She immediately remembered the star from the night prior. It had held her gaze captive just as the light surrounding this figure was doing to her now. He continued moving forward slowly and as he did, the light obscured less and by the time he stood just a few steps away from Rachel's frightened form she could see him clearly.
He wasn't an ordinary man—if a man at all—but he resembled one in so many ways. He was tall, with arms and legs, hands and feet, sinewy muscle and a humanoid-shaped head. His skin was paler than hers—a considerable feat given that she had a fair, peaches and cream complexion all year round. He had no body hair that she could see. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and casual tee, which struck her as extremely odd given that he didn't appear to be...human.
There was no hair on his head either, but in its place were bright, beautiful red markings that looked like intricate tattoos. Upon closer inspection, those same intricate markings peeked out above the neckline of his shirt, covering his neck; they extended down the lengths of his arms where she could see below his shirt sleeves. His feet were bare with the same tattoos, but she couldn't entirely make out their shape; it seemed as if they changed almost imperceptibly in shape right before her eyes, first with almost minimal toe delineation, and now completely foot-like with toes just like any other man.
Rachel remained speechless for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what it was that stood before her. The effect the stranger was having on her confused her, making it even more difficult to summon a coherent thought. Arousal coursed through her body as her eyes traveled across his muscular, humanoid figure. By the time she had finished her perusal, the arousal had settled between her legs, making her wet, as her clit began to throb.
“My name, in your language, is Ny-len. As you can see, I am holding no weapons, you are not restrained. I have no intentions of hurting you,” he tried to reassure her in a calm tone.
“Then why am I here?” Rachel whispered, realizing just now as the stranger's eyes grazed over her body that she was still dressed in the tiny shorts and see-through shirt she had thrown on the night before.
She crossed her arms in front of her tits trying to hide them from his view, but to her chagrin, she was sure that he had already caught sight of her hard nipples. His eyes lingered where her arms crossed in front of her chest, and lust radiated from his eyes. Eyes that looked entirely human, except that the irises were a vibrant orange and the lids were more deeply hooded, like the eyes of cowboys in old movies, the heroes squinting against the hot, bright, desert sun.
“It was you who called out to me. Or, I should say, that you wished upon 'us.' My brother and I, we were the bright light that you saw in the sky last night. We have been watching you, and then we heard your wish. And when we saw you; your flaming red hair so similar in color to the markings on our skin; your beautiful, pale body, nearly naked before us. We knew in that moment that you were the answer for us, and I believe, we are the answer for you, as well,” he finished eloquently.
“So, what you're trying to tell me is that you're really an alien—a bright, shiny alien--and you've abducted me!” The idea sounded ludicrous even to her own ears. “Then how in the world, may I ask, are you wearing Levi jeans?!?” She'd noticed the label peeking from his pocket, and now began to wonder if this was some sort of crazy ruse. But she couldn't imagine who in the world would have been the instigator. And this would have to be some very elaborate ruse.
“In truth, I'm not. The clothing you see are simply an illusion, meant to simulate an ordinary encounter for you as much as possible,” Ny-len responded honestly. “As you will come to see, I also have no interest in lying to you, Rachel. You are far too important to waste time with lies and deceit,” he explained emphatically.
“Oh.” Rachel couldn't think of an intelligent retort at the moment, and was still far too uncertain about what was going on to make any sort of educated guess. If this was a ruse, she had no idea how to expose it at the moment, so she played along.
“How exactly am I important?” she queried skeptically.
“A battle is being fought on my planet among its tribes. In fact, it has been waging since long before my birth. But now, it has nearly eradicated my entire species. You have no idea what it is like to look around you and see so few of those like you left. And all in a struggle for power and dominance,” he spit out the final words, full of disgust at the notion.
His words seemed so genuine it was hard to believe that this was all some ridiculous setup. “So, how old are you?” she asked, entirely uncertain why that particular question came to mind.
“I am twenty years old, according to your measurement of age,” he returned without hesitation.
“But, you look so much older,” she spoke aloud. It's not that he looked like an old man, quite the opposite in fact, but she would have pegged him for mid-thirties.
“We do not age as you do, nor do we have a comparable life span. While your species may live into their hundreds, the oldest recorded member of my species, his light was extinguished when he was thirty-five years old,” he replied.
“Oh. But what exactly does that have to do with me?” Rachel asked, so caught up in the stranger and his story that how she came to be standing before him had completely slipped her mind.
“We'll get to that, Rachel,” he replied. And then abruptly he spoke again. “But for now, I really must leave.”
“Leave? What do you mean leave? What about me?”
Was he going to leave her in this room? Was she his prisoner? He had already begun to cross the room toward the door.
“You need time to rest, Rachel. It is for you that I must leave,” he explained cryptically.
“But I just woke up. Why on earth would I need to rest? What I need are answers. What I need is to go home!” she cried, more pleadingly than angry.
But Ny-len had already left the room. She ran behind him to try the door that had shut when he left, but it would not budge. She knew there was no point in pounding on the door, demanding her release. She'd seen enough movies to know that trick never worked. All of a sudden, a calmness came over her, like it had the night before after making her wish. She walked back to the hard, smooth table she had awoken upon, and sat down on the edge. She didn't feel tired, but allowed her body to lay back regardless, feeling the strange calm course through her. And then she was fast asleep again.