New Earth
Ariatta knew they weren’t her family. She felt it every time she walked up or down the carpeted stairs in their two-story home. And each night at the dinner table, when her mom served something that was supposedly her favorite or something with cheese, which apparently had given her a bellyache since she was young. She felt it most when she spent time with Gianna, her baby sister, who hung on her every word, even though they were two totally different species.
Gianna was nothing like Ariatta, which wasn’t surprising because they weren’t related. They looked like sisters, with the same dark hair, dark eyes, and colorful wings. But Gianna was fussy and loud. She didn’t mean to be, but she was all the same. Her left foot rested on the crook of Ariatta’s knee. She ate cheese puffs and watched television while Ariatta braided her hair.
“That’s too tight,” she said, pulling away.
Ariatta sighed because Gianna had pulled so far away that the braid had fallen apart, which meant she’d have to start over.
“Scoot back,” she said patiently.
But Gianna wasn’t listening. The cartoon had gotten interesting, and she was too busy watching and sucking cheese from her fingers. Ariatta grabbed her little sister by the waist and slid her backward.
She hadn’t had siblings back on Merrick. It had been just her, her parents, and Uncle Solomon. But she lived on New Earth now, and the only other person who knew she was an alien was Kai, her boyfriend.
He was alien, too, really, his body that of a futuristic human, but his mind full of thoughts of Old Earth. They’d lived here for six months on this planet where everything was strange and different.
Ariatta had experienced a far greater transition, including everything from electricity to flying vehicles to an ever-expanding body of scientific knowledge. She had never considered that pink flowers might have had white and red-petalled parents. She missed her biological parents dearly, but crying for them had not changed anything. The Orb had brought her here for a purpose. Everything would be revealed in time.
Meanwhile, Kai’s experience of New Earth had been a mixture of joy and sadness. His family was both familiar and foreign. For example, his new house was smaller, and his dog, Buster, was brown rather than black. He played the piano really well in this altered universe. So well that his parents expected him to practice constantly, which he hated. His brother was married with a kid, which completely shocked Kai. Before the trip to Mars, Kai’s brother Lucas had worked part-time at a grocery store and smoked weed every night.
The differences alone weren’t all that upsetting, but collectively, New Earth made Kai feel just as alone in his home as Ariatta felt in hers. He did remark the planet was more peaceful than Old Earth, which was nice. All four factions had survived colonization. But Kai wasn’t a member of any of them. His superpower had been flight, and all Merrick could fly, so of course, their ancestors were winged as well. Kai pretended to be a Reader, but the more time passed, the more complicated it became to continue that lie.
Ariatta was a Strength like her parents and Solomon. But she refrained from using her superpower. She was nothing like the Strengths on New Earth who went around boasting and showing off. On Merrick, Strengths only used their powers to complete necessary tasks. She missed Merrick and its simplicity, the tang of ripe crackleberries and fish that could read your thoughts. And the strangest thing of all was that Mars hadn’t survived after colonizing New Earth. There was no record of Merrick in Google or even in the library where futuristic humans housed bound journals called books. Mars was simply another planet in the Milky Way Galaxy devoid of life, just as it had been when Kai and his friends had first arrived from Old Earth. The Orb had not kept its promise to spare them.
“Are you happy I’m your sister?” Gianna asked.
“Very much so,” Ariatta said, genuinely. She smoothed Gianna’s braids down and ruffled her sister’s shiny feathers.
“I want to be like you when I grow up, but I don’t think I can.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I like to talk, and you like to listen. Listening is so boring. I don’t think I can do it.”
Ariatta laughed. “I bet one day you’ll meet someone you’ll want to listen to,” she said.
“Like Kai,” Gianna said.
“Maybe,” Ariatta said.
“Are you going to marry him? I saw you kiss him on the mouth last night.”
“Marry him?” Ariatta squealed. She snatched the bag of cheese puffs from under her sister and quickly folded it over, sliding it onto her nightstand. Then she grabbed Gianna’s soft belly and began tickling her until her little sister gasped for air. Gianna’s smile was like a magical balm. No matter how annoying she was, it was impossible to stay angry with her.
“You ARE going to marry him,” she bellowed breathlessly. “But you can’t live with him. You have to stay here with me.”
Ariatta scooped Gianna up and balanced her small body across her own folded legs. “I don’t think that’s gonna work,” she said.
“Why not?” Gianna pouted.
“Because one day I’ll have my own family and I won’t live here anymore.”
“That will be the saddest day of my life,” Gianna said. “I love you more than anyone.”
Ariatta froze. It was true. In the short six months that she’d lived with this family on New Earth, she’d come to see that Gianna adored her, and she had begun to feel the same way. Their mother often remarked that Ariatta had been the only one able to get Gianna to sleep each night until the age of five. But Ariatta had not been there when Gianna was a baby.
She’d been on another planet with her own family, helping her real mom make bread and pick wildflowers. She’d played in the arena under the light of a giant Orb that flamed all day and night over the small town of Merrick. She’d learned to fly by watching older children escape their parents’ arms, moving their wings back and forth fast enough to lift their short legs. She’d learned to read by lying on her dad’s chest and listening to him recite simple poems from the book of Merrick. And when she was old enough, she’d worked for Hameel at the Medicine Shop, where she’d met Kai and made the fateful decision to follow him into the portal.
She prayed each night that the Orb would grant her a second chance and another portal so she could go home. However, her heartbreak would only be passed on to her baby sister, who was fussy and loud, yet still one of the best futuristic humans Ariatta had ever met.
“I think you’ll be fine without me,” Ariatta said. “You’ll have your own bathroom, for goodness sake.”
“I’d die without you,” Gianna said, reaching up to pull her big sister into a tight bear hug.
