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I think I can really say that the happiest moment in my life was when I walked out of the woods...what? Yesterday? I'd rather lost track of time as I was lost there.
The first thing I felt was much clearer-headed and purer, as I saw that the darkness had left me. Then, when I looked at my reflection in the river, my hair fell in front of my face and I saw that it was long and blond again. Not only that, but I wore new clothes...flame clothes. I made a face at the unstyleish clothes, but admired the green boots I was wearing. Where had they come from? It was a great pity that I'd lost the cloak and whip...
I walked back into Aekea under a darkening sky, not bothering to think of how I was going to take the train without any gold on me. Things would work themselves out, I figured. And so they did, quite unexpectedly.
There was a long line at the checkpoint at the gate. A long, unruly line, in which everyone was pushing to get ahead. It didn't help that the guards were paying no attention to the line... Ahead of me, a girl was trying to make the boy she was with get off his cell phone. As they argued, something hit my foot. It was a shabby wallet that had fallen from the boy's pocket.
Before I could tell him he'd dropped it, a guard shuffled over and said "Out of the line, you two!" Protesting loudly, they followed him into the guardhouse.
Was this fate? As I moved forward, I quickly scooped up the wallet and pushed it into my own pocket. Nobody noticed.
I finally got inside, much faster then anyone else, since I knew how to charm the Aekea checkpoint guards. Long blond hair helps! Once away from the checkpoint, I looked at the contents of the wallet: just enough gold for a train ticket to Barton! I raced the gathering rain to the train station, and won by an inch.
I didn't have to wait long for the train, and I settled down happily in a compartment I had just to myself. Oh, I was so happy...untill a scrowling alien got on and snapped, "Get out of here, you monkey!"
I wasn't going to have any of that! "Watch what you call people!" I snapped back. "This is my planet, you know!"
"Can't we just sit somewhere else...don't start a fight." That wasn't an alien voice, and neither was the face that looked around the alien's scrawny form.
"Devious, let me do the talking," the alien growled at the human girl behind him. "I am a truely intelligent being. You are an a..."
"Shut your big mouth," I screamed, jumping up. I had just recognized the human girl. Dressed in seasonal colors of green and red, wearing striped stockings and lots of jewelry, her hair mockingly the same color and style mine had been so short a time ago, it was Angel. She gasped, and wispered, "Dawna?"
"Angel? You're with them now?" It hurt to say the words.
"Side with the winners, right?" She shrugged weakly. "They're not too bad..." The alien reached out a green hand and smothed her hair, and I understood why she was so well dressed. It wasn't her usual like of good clothes...she was a pet.
"They won't win...you can't be sure..." I stumbled over the words.
"More chance then you self-sacrificing goody-goodys winning!" She laughed. "I'd advise acting a bit cute around the Zurg, Dawna...you might be needing one soon."
The alien sat down and pulled her onto his lap. "Not I," he said. "Out, ape. Now."
I was too numb to protest any more. As I went out into the corridor, I looked at her one more time. "If you want to come back to our side," I said, "I'll always be there for you..."
She laughed. "I'm with the Zurg," she said, snuggling into the alien's lap. I sighed. It seemed that the battle lines had been drawn.
I found a seat in another compartment, but I had to share it with a prissy old lady in black, who kept fiddling with her portable TV. I was staring blankly out the window at the rain when she took of the headphones and said loudly, "Cindy Donovinh's going to do an interview with Gambino in a moment. Want to watch, dearie? You look bored."
Needless to say, I did! She turned on the speakers and I moved to sit next to her and peered at the tiny screen on her lap. Cindy started talking in her sweet but emotionless interview voice...
And then Gambino started. I groaned. He was chatting Cindy up! "Shameless!" the old lady muttered beside me. "At his age..." The next moment, she was laughing her head off as Gambino argued with Cindy about how he should be interviewed.
I didn't laugh. I was trying to ignore the little voice in my head that was saying, "He got one sister, now he's after the other one." I didn't even care about his insinuations about Santa. And when he as good as asked her to dinner before his final "BWAAHAHAAHAHA!!!" I flew into a panic. All I could be glad for was that I was going back to Barton...
"Silly goose," the old lady muttered, switching the set off. "All he can think of is the ladies... Are you feeling all right, dear?"
"Just a headach," I said, which was half true. I did have a headach from all those "BWAAHAHAAHAHA!!!"s.
I jumped off the train as soon as it stopped in Barton, and was out of the station in a flash. Luckily it wasn't raining any more... I was intending to go to the GAIA 9 station to find Cindy. However, I soon saw her coming my way...with Leon! I stood very still by the side of the road, hoping they didn't see me. They didn't.
"Leon, I've had it with you!" Cindy said.
"Ok, ok," said Leon. "I'd just say it's a pity little Dawna's gone missing..."
Oh no! Not this again! Well, I'd soon deal with this... "Missing, am I?" I asked, stepping in front of Leon. I was pleased to see his jaw drop.
"Cindy went to the police...and everything..." he stammered. I laughed in his face.
"I was busy...top-secret stuff...stuff you wouldn't like to come out, would you, Leon?" I grinned. "Remember our deal?"
He didn't have much of an answer for that, so he stomped off, shouting over his shoulder, "I heard what Gambino said to you, Cindy!"
"Along with the whole world," Cindy muttered. Then she attacked me.
It was the worst scolding I've ever gotten. She told me very loudly how worried she'd been about me, how she was sure something horrible had happened to me, how a dangerous murderer had been loose in Aekea...all this in the public street, with people looking and laughing. How embaressing!
Then she dragged me off to the station, making up for her previous blast be refusing to talk at all. She only spoke when we got to her office, where Mike sat, looking gloomily at a sheet of paper. "Another memo?" Cindy snapped.
"Yeah," Mike said, not looking up. "You read it yourself, I'm not having you shoot the messenger like last time...Dawna!" He'd finally looked up and seen me.
Then I got an interrogation, only slightly gentler then the tirade I'd got from Cindy. Meanwhile, she read the memo, looking angrier with each word.
When she finally looked up, she said, "Mike, take Dawna to the Resistance Camp."
"Er..." was all Mike said, so she shifted her glare to me.
"Want to do a bit of reporting?" she asked.
"Reporting? For the station? Me?" I couldn't belive my ears. After upseting her so much, I was being allowed to be a reporter?
"We need someone in the Resistance," she explained. "You'd do well...want to go?"
I nodded, hoping this wasn't a dream.
"Good," she said. "Mike, get her ready and over there."
Some reporter! Mike gave me a brand new cell phone and told me use it to take videos of anything big or interesting that happened over there. "My number's on the phone, you can send them to me," he said. "Quality won't be very good for TV, but if it's the end of the world, who cares?"
Then we were in his tiny, bright orange car, heading west. We'd barely gotten out of town when I remembered that the road went in way too long a loop. "Just let me out here," I said, "I'll walk the rest of the way."
He looked very dubious. "All the way across those big fields?"
"If not, you'll have to do a big loop and then drive back," I said, "and it's getting dark!" So he let me out after I promised to call him as soon as I got to the camp.
I'll admit that I didn't very much like walking across the field with all the spaceships there! I was glad to get to the cluster of tents that's the Resistance Camp, and even gladder to find that some enterprising people had set up restraunts. I eventually found a place to sleep in a crowded tent...and since then I've been looking around the groups swarming around the camp.
I've noticed that almost everyone else here is wearing a mask of some kind. The Resistance is giving out red bandanas to tie around our faces so we won't be recognized. I've got one, but I'm not going to wear it. I see no reason to hide who I am or that I'm in the Resistance! After all, if we win it won't matter, and if we lose...well, I won't be around to care about hiding from retaliation!