#starae

Before getting out of her car, she actually considered if it was a side-effect from BB's relentless torture, but pinching herself didn't work. The crater was still there, a few meters from where she had parked, green lights and smoke coming out of it in a pretty (un)realistic manner, so she closed the door behind her back, put her hands in the holes of her sweater to warmth herself and hide the fear she was feeling, and walked the distance to what she hoped was only some kind of drone or whatever military device that was definitely not a UFO.

She didn't find any of that, just a little girl with red wild hair, seated in the middle of a huge hole with her fists radiating the green lights she had just seen and that disappeared as soon as she stepped into view. Raven could've fainted, she wanted to when the little girl floated out of the dirt, right until reaching her height and looked at her with curious eyes, but it was hard to actually come to terms with giving a fuck about something (yet).

The girl spoke then in a language she didn't understand. "What?"

She thinks that was pretty eloquent on her part, taking on account this girl had just fallen from the sky, radiated some kind green energy from her body, floated to where Raven stood and looked at her with what she would describe as alien-eyes. The girl seemed to found amusing her gawking and maybe that's what made her take advantage of her shock and push her lips into hers.

She was warm, soft, sweet, like a poem. "My name is Koriand'r," she whispered, not caring at all about personal space. "I need you to help me."

ii.

She had endured five minutes of his uncoordinated movement when she took his sticks and threw them out of the window.

"Heey!"

"I need to ask you something."

Garfield looked at her, his hair falling to the side with the movement of his head. "Well, I should've known you didn't want to listen to my music."

She wanted to retort that, that was not music, but she had a very naked girl sleeping in her bed –apparently, Tamaran was the planet from where she came from and it was customary to be very comfortable with nudity–, so she simply shifted her weight from one foot to the other and asked.

"Do you believe in aliens?"

BB's eyebrows raised. "Are you reading a book or something?"

"I think I found an alien."

"Okay?"

"And she kissed me." Dammit, she was panicking. In her defense, she had simply listened to Koriand'r all the way back –how she had escaped from some aliens called the Citadel, how her sister wanted her dead and stuff like that– and then let her wrap herself around her body, so it was about time it happened.

"Well, that's sexy."

Raven wanted to punch him. "What do I do?"

"Kiss her in front of me? please?"

Raven kicked him in the shin after stomping on his stupid drums. BB's mother thanked her from the kitchen as she came out of his house.

iii.

Garfield, and probably almost the whole mall, was staring at her. Koriand'r was oblivious to it, of course, but not because she wasn't well aware of her surroundings, much less of the Earth customs, she had read each one of Raven's book in a whole day after all, but because she didn't care about anything else but the way the ice cream she was eating melted against her tongue.

"This is so good, Raven!"

She pulled her hood a bit more down, trying to hide after Koriand'r interlaced their fingers over the table. She was not going to blush.

"I am so going to have fantasies about this," Garfield said, mouth agape.

"So you believe me now?"

It was a stupid question, taking on account that it was hard to miss Koriand'r eyes, which was why she had her cover them with black lenses, which just helped to add up more to her beautiful appearance, but, seriously, this was BB.

"Totally. So what're you going to do?"

She narrows her eyes. "I told you this so that you would help me decide that."

"But you're the intelligent one."

Koriand'r looked at Raven, then at Garfield and gave him a sweet smile. He answered with a dumb-looking one. He asked, "what do you think we should do, Kori?"

She tilted her head, thinking for a brief moment. "Well, until I'm safe I will have to stay here, on Earth," she then turned to Raven and smiled happily to her. "In the meantime, I would really like to try this... dating ritual you earthlings have and then have sex."

"Can I watch?" Garfield straightened, hope shimmering in his eyes.

She punched him in the face.

iv.