Page 13 of Riv's Sanctuary

He was a bad alien.

A horrible alien.

Turning away from him, she looked out over at the other mushroom houses. It was a strange-looking neighborhood.

Beautiful.

But strange.

The mushroom houses were all cream-colored, some having many adjoining mushrooms and some with only a few. Geblit's dwelling was one of those that had many adjoining mushrooms and she assumed that meant he was well-off.

Surrounding all the houses were perfectly manicured lawns of orange grass and well-maintained gardens of various flower species she'd never seen before.

And like an edited photo, the pink sky made a great backdrop to the already colorful scenery.

It was calm and welcoming—kind of like most upper-scale neighborhoods she'd been to back on Earth.

Her eyebrows rose a little when it dawned on her that she was in an upper-scale neighborhood right at that moment. This was the upper-class of alien life.

Not bad, she thought. It almost made her forget she was at the bottom of all barrels on this planet.

An exclamation of righteous indignation hit her ear and had her swinging her head to look at Geblit.

His oval mouth was open and stretched, his eyes bugged out.

"What is it?"

"I have been bested," he managed to get out with much, much difficulty. It was almost as if each word choked him a little.

"What do you mean 'bested?’"

"The slimy zookeeper put ‘no returns’ on the label."

The look on his face was of such utter devastation that she felt sorry for him. And, considering that she was the one who had no home except for the box in which she lay, that was saying something.

"What in Raxu’s name will I do?"

She could only look at him. She was at a loss for words.

What could he do?

Whatever he decided, her life literally depended on it.

She couldn't just jump out of her box, make a run for it, and hope for the best. She knew what was waiting out there if she was on her own.

Until she got a chance to learn more about living on this colorful alien planet, she had to play it safe.

She was no idiot.

Though Geblit and his wife thought she was hideous, she'd take being hideous over being cooked for dinner or raped ANY DAY.

Hopping out of the hovercar and forgetting all pretense that all was well, Geblit began pacing on his scrawny legs, two of his hands scratching his balloon at the back of his head, the other two wringing in front of him.

At the mushroom house across from them, she saw an alien of his kind looking at Geblit's breakdown through their window.

"Um..." she whispered. "You're getting an audience here."

Geblit didn't hear her or he was too caught up in his own thoughts to care.