Lewis poked his head out from the manhole, his tail twitching nervously as his eyes darted about the empty alleyway. “All clear, Chief.”
“Homlin zwio Yeppa naikana?”
Lewis closed the manhole and looked over at the seven inch tall pudgy blue humanoid sitting on his shoulder. It had tall tall black eyes, pointed teeth, two twitching ear-like antenna, wore a red bandanna on its head, and despite how horrifying this description sounds, it still managed to look cute and innocent. “Yes, I’m sure there aren’t any humans. And I told you, my name is Lewis now, not Yeppa. After all, Yeppa is a gremlin name, and I need to pass off as human if we want to live through this.”
The creature made a scrunched up and confused face. “Ru- ru… Ruuu-is? Ruis?” The creature’s face scrunched up tighter briefly, then started to relax. “Ruis… gaka?”
Lewis nodded. “Yes, Lewis. I know it’s weird, but human names are just like that, I guess. Now, back to business.” Poking his head out from the manhole once more, Lewis took one last look around. “All right, Chief, you go down and give the others the all clear, I’ll go ahead and see if I can get a good idea of what humans look like.”
The creature gave the thumbs up, then leaped off of Lewis’s shoulder, plummeting back down into the sewers.
After checking briefly to make sure that Chief was gone, Lewis crawled carefully out of the sewers, and into the alleyway. He then began to carefully creep towards the exit of the alleyway, and the entrance to the main streets of the city. However, his expedition was cut short by a drunk old man stumbling into the alleyway, and startling Lewis into skittering halfway up the nearest building like a panicked salamander before he remembered he had wings and flew the rest of the way.
Breathing heavily, Lewis carefully peeked over the edge of the building, checking to make sure the man hadn’t seen him clearly. Thankfully the old man seemed to be more startled and confused than panicked, suggesting that he had only caught a glimpse, just a passing shadow. He heaved a sigh of relief, his claws releasing hold of the concrete. That had been close. The humans not knowing about the existence of other worlds was one of his greatest assets. After all, how could they discover him and his gremlins if they didn’t even know they should be looking?
After waiting a few seconds for his heart beat to return to normal, Lewis slunk over to to the edge of the building that faced the busy streets below. Carefully examining each passerby, he began to pick and choose traits from the ones who looked like they were young, but not children. He was very careful to only pick traits from those he believed to be male. He had heard humans made a strong distinction between the two sexes, and if he had to pick one, it would never be a female. They reminded him of faeries, a species he found deeply unpleasant. Not that he’d ever met one, but what little written history gremlins had was about the horrible things the stupid butterflies had done to his kind. He really wasn’t eager to prance about looking like such filthy beasts.
Lewis shook his head. He needed to stay positive. A heart full of rage made him no better than the other gremlin kings, and it was to get away from all the hate, violence, and greed that he’d come to this world in the first place.
Right. New realm, human realm. He was in the middle of shapeshifting into a human. Curse his minimal attention span. Darting across the rooftop, Lewis began to search for something to see his reflection in. His search ending by a portal, he was pleased to find that he looked as human as everyone on the streets. The transformation had gone much better than his past attempts. Well, save for his claws, solid black eyes, horns, wings, ear-antenna, pointed teeth, and long tail with the blade on the tip. This wasn’t a big problem though, since he had saved these parts for last. After all, walking around without all the extra bits or pointed teeth just felt weird, and human eyes were completely useless. They couldn’t see anything when it was dark, and when it was just a little too bright, they’d start to hurt! Frankly, it was a wonder they’d survived this long. Well, their enormous size would be helpful. Lewis hadn’t thought a creature larger than himself and the other gremlin kings was possible…
Lewis slumped onto the ground, this was going to be far more difficult than he thought. The whole experience was draining, and had left him feeling an emotion he never thought he’d feel; Homesick…
A note from the
authorninja:Starting to get an idea of what this story is about? Lovely!
Not really much to say about this chapter though…
Ah well. See you guys Friday!