literature

A Mission of Friendship, part 3

Deviation Actions

djangobb's avatar
By
Published:
5.1K Views

Literature Text

Colby casually watched as the little human strolled across the house’s wooden threshold. After Danny made it past the doorway, he slipped out of his sneakers and bent down to pick them up. Straightening back up, a look of comical uncertainty crossed his face.

“Um … where should I put my shoes?” he asked.

Colby was trying hard not to laugh, but this was just too much. When he’d first seen his human friend that day, and while he’d been hanging out with him, he’d regarded the little guy as remarkably confident, brave, and cool looking. But now, he saw him for the first time as … well … cute. The feeling kind of disturbed him.

“Dude, you don’t have to take your shoes off,” Colby said through his smile. “It’s a house rule for me, but not for you. I don’t think you’re going to get our floor dirty.”

Danny tried to keep eye contact with his friend. It wasn’t easy from this vantage point, being on the floor only a short distance from the towering 12-year-old, and he felt his friend was giving him a bit of a strange look.

“I understand that,” Danny said. “I thought it might be something you do out of politeness. Actually can I go ahead and take them off? It’s a rule at my house, too, and I’m just more comfortable this way.”

Colby nodded assent. He reached down and picked up his human friend, whose pair of sneakers still dangled from his tiny fingers. Colby took them between two of his own huge fingers and placed them carefully inside one of his own moccasins on the floor.

“I’ll just have to remember they’re in there,” Colby said. He held Danny up to face level and his green eyes gleamed with excitement. “Are you ready to take a tour of my house?”

Danny smiled as he lounged hot-tub-style in his friend’s giant hand. “Sure, Dude, sure. Can’t wait to see what a giant-sized TV looks like. I feel so lazy being carried everywhere, though. Maybe next time I’ll bring my bike.” Danny brushed his hair back as he surveyed the cavernous foyer.

“Next time!” Colby thought, and his heart swelled. “That would be great! I’ve never seen a bicycle in real life before,” he said. “It might be kind of against the rules for you to ride it around, though. I’ll have to check.”

Colby stepped through the door into a much larger room. His footsteps made soft “thoom” noises that echoed through the massive chamber. Danny gazed here and there, almost straining his neck to take it all in, and noticed that the floor was different, a kind of smooth, light stone, and the room was lit by three glowing globes in the middle of the ceiling. He saw titanic furniture — a long, blue couch covered in soft-looking cloth, a fancy looking gray chair, and a metal coffee table etched with twisting floral patterns. Each piece was as big as a building, and Danny was filled with the sensation that he was flying around a bizarre little cityscape.

“This is our living room,” Colby said. “We honestly don’t spend that much time in here, except for when we read together or have guests. Sometimes I eat breakfast in here before school.”

Danny squeezed his friend’s index finger unconsciously. “But wait … my dad said you were homeschooled. Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I take classes online here at home for about half of my school,” Colby said. “We’re still sort of considered a ‘remote settlement,’ so we don’t have everything. There’s a learning center about 10 kilometers from here that I go to for language classes, science projects, and stuff like that. We only have a few teachers living in this TDP.”

Danny was about to ask his friend what kinds of science projects he did, but Colby moved over to the coffee table and excitedly pointed.
“Do you see it?” he asked.

Danny looked, but was confused. He didn’t see anything.

Colby started slowly waving the hand carrying his human guest back and forth. It was like he was trying to make Danny seasick. “Do you see it now?”

Danny squinted his eyes and looked closely. “I … think I see something,” he said. “It’s like a wave in the air or something.”

Colby stopped the movement of his hand. “It’s our TV,” he said. “All of our TVs look like this. My dad told me human eyes have a hard time seeing them, but you should be able to see it clearly when it’s turned on. To me, it just looks like a big, glass rectangle. Let’s go to the kitchen!”

With that, the giant walked down a very short hallway into another room. Danny noticed huge pictures on the wall as they passed. One was a posed picture of the Suriel family. Another had Colby’s mother with an older woman. He wanted to ask Colby about it, but, before he knew it, they were already in another room and the giant boy was giving him the rundown.

“This is our kitchen. I don’t think it has as much space as human kitchens … well, you know, in relation to size … but my mom and dad really love it. They’ve tried a lot of Earth recipes with Esdreel vegetables. We had tacos yesterday. I think we’re having meatloaf tonight … except, you know, without meat,” Colby said. He then walked over to a window and peered at the dimming sky. “Neither of my parents are home yet, so I might have to cook dinner later. Are you hungry or anything?”

Danny almost didn’t notice the question. He was amused at how his friend was excitedly, and kind of geekily, showing him around and explaining everything, but he couldn’t help staring, entranced, at every enormous item in the room. It was surrounded by a stone counter, underneath which he could see huge cupboard doors. He saw no refrigerator, and what appeared to be the sink looked like a circular cobblestone fountain. An island countertop jutted from the middle of the floor, and it had an array of metal slats on it that he assumed was the stove or grill. Being here made him think of classic scenes from Jack and the Beanstalk in storybooks and cartoons, but he quieted those thoughts. Part of his orientation for visiting the Esdreel community was “never mention human folklore concerning giants.”

“Danny, are you hungry at all?” Colby asked again, a knowing smile on his face. He appreciated Danny’s look of wonder. He hoped someday to have that same look on his face as he visited the world outside the TDP.

“What? Oh yeah, kind of,” Danny said. “What about one of those Esdreel vegetables? Would it be OK if I tried one of those?”

“Yeah, that’s fine! I’ll just get you a siquay. I snack on those all the time,” Colby said. He gently moved Danny over to one of the stone countertops, which was stomach-level to the giant, and set him down. Danny shucked off his backpack as Colby walked over to a corner of the kitchen, bent down, and lifted a trap door. He retrieved a stone bowl, big enough to fill his hand and covered with a green foil. Carefully, he brought it over to Danny and set it down with a great CLACK!

“That didn’t hurt your ears did it?” Colby asked, and when Danny replied in the negative he proceeded to unwrap the dish and pull out what appeared to be a big purple cabbage. It fit cozily in between his forefinger and thumb. He was about to hand it to Danny, but then paused.

“I don’t actually know how heavy this will be to you,” Colby said, frowning.

Danny was optimistic, and it showed on his face. The vegetable his friend held was about as big as a watermelon. How heavy could it be?

“I’m pretty strong. Go ahead and give it to me,” Danny said.

Colby placed the siquay in his friend’s open arms. As soon as his giant fingers stopped bearing its weight, he noticed his human friend’s body start to shake.

“Hooooly crap!” Danny said as his arms gave way, allowing the siquay to drop onto the counter with a “thunk!” He sat down next to it and rubbed his arms. “Yeah, that’s a little too heavy, heh heh!” As usual, he tried to laugh such things off, though he was sort of embarrassed.

Colby tried not to smile. The disturbing thought that the human was cute was starting to enter his mind again.

“Our vegetables are all really dense compared to plants on Earth,” Colby said. “In fact, you might only want to take one bite of it. It might fill you up too much before dinner.” He felt like a nagging parent saying that, but the feeling became eclipsed as he watched the little human tear off a leaf of the vegetable and munch on it. One little voice in his mind was working hard to stifle another little voice that was saying “Awwww!”

“You’re right, it is dense,” Danny said as he chewed. “But it’s pretty good. It tastes kind of sweet. Like sweet tea.” He then stood up and threw his backpack over his shoulder again. “Where to next?”

For a few minutes in each room, Colby proceeded with touring Danny around the house. The dining room was like any dining room, and his dad’s office was very simple and organized. Upstairs, the master bedroom was like any large, comfy bedroom (with its own invisible TV), and the bathroom, too, was simple and serene with circular stone baths and sinks. Everywhere in the house, simple cupboards (made of huge slats of wood Danny knew had to be alien) occupied the corners. All together, the house seemed like a very well-kept, calm place with the occasional family picture and odd collectible object hanging on a wall or sitting on a shelf, and Danny thought that, had it been made to his scale, it wouldn’t have been much bigger than his family’s own apartment.

But now was the moment of truth — Colby had saved his own room for last. He bent down to roll up the room’s screen-like door, and ta da! Here it was.

At first entrance, the room seemed just like the others, but Danny’s vision almost seemed to blur as this time Colby whisked his tiny friend right over to a set of shelves covering the west wall. It was loaded up with toys — action figures as tall and taller than Danny and vehicles he could easily fit inside.

“Some of these are things I’ve gotten for my birthday, or I bought them on Esdras,” Colby said, and he pointed at some oversized “Kung Fu Panda” merchandise. “A lot of the stuff I like isn’t made by Esdreel factories, so I’ve sculpted and painted a lot of these. My favorite is the black suit Spider-Man over here.” He held Danny right in front of it. “I had one of Starscream that took me a long time to build, and it was my favorite, but it broke.”

Danny whispered a “Holy cow!” as he looked over the sculptures. They were extremely well done. Colby had a line of Thor, Captain America (painted with a kind of goofy smile), Batman, Aquaman, a blue alien-looking superhero he didn’t recognize, Bumblebee, Black Panther — he even had Vegeta! All in all, it looked like he’d sculpted more than twenty figures and vehicles.

“This is amazing!” Danny exclaimed. “You made these? You’re really talented!”

Colby beamed with pride.

“I recognize almost all of these, though, and they’re from human shows and stuff. Aren’t there any Esdreel things you like?” Danny asked.

Colby walked over to his bed and sat down. He held Danny over his bedside table, but didn’t set him down. Colby could see a strange, flying saucer type vehicle with red and green markings on it sitting on the tabletop next to a globular lamp and what looked to be a little bed sized perfectly for him.

“That little ship you see there is from an Esdreel show called ‘Noyakuna,’ “ Colby said. “It’s a pretty cool show about explorers chasing a huge, ancient monster through space. I like it a lot, but I just like a lot of earth shows better. Earth is just kind of my thing, I guess.” He got back up off of his bed and, still bursting with excitement, lumbered over to another side of his room. This time, he held Danny in front of what looked like a blank wall with a short desk and chair sitting in front of it. On the desk was a black metal box, about the size of a moving truck, which he proceeded to wave his hand over. Immediately, the invisible TV screen on the wall came to life with white light. Danny grinned as he saw the familiar Xbox logo take form.

Colby, still holding his friend, moved him over the black box and, with his other hand, pried open its top. Inside, Danny could see weird-looking machinery attached by wires to a normal, human-scaled Xbox console.

“Awesome!” Danny said, totally impressed.

“Do you want to play something?” Colby asked? “We can finally play something other than Tekken.” (They had played Tekken 6 on Live before, but it was the only game they both had.) “You brought your controller, right, and some games?”

Danny tapped Colby’s thumb and said, “Yeah, put me down for a second.” The giant obliged, setting him lightly on the desktop. Danny took off his backpack and started rummaging around in it. After a little bit, he stopped, got a sly look on his face, and peered up at his huge buddy.

“Colby, how long do you think it’ll take before your parents get home?” he asked.

Colby scratched the back of his head and looked down at Danny. “Um, I don’t know. Probably a while. Why?”

Danny held up a DVD. It’s cover was all white, and Colby bent down and squinted his eyes to see what it was.

“I brought ‘The Thing,’ “ Danny said, grinning evilly.

Colby’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh no!”  he thought.

During the boys’ online conversations, the subject of movies often came up. In fact, when he was trying to convince Danny that he was a human just like him, Colby occasionally lied — not an unusual thing for a kid his age trying to impress a friend. One big lie was that he had seen movies like “Poltergeist,” “Halloween,” and “Resident Evil.” In reality, he wasn’t allowed to watch movies like this unless he begged his parents, but he really had little desire to see them, anyway. Colby was easily freaked out. He had once secretly downloaded “Super 8” (and gotten in trouble with his parents for it later; it had too much bad language), but he couldn’t even get through it. Even the second “Harry Potter” movie gave him nightmares when he was nine.

Now Danny stood here holding a movie he had touted as one of the scariest he’d ever seen.

“Come on. Whaddya say? Let’s put it on.” Danny said.

Colby put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure, dude. Does it have a lot of violence? My parents might walk in and see,” Colby said.

Danny let his arms drop and gave his friend a “not impressed” face. “Colby, man, listen,” he said. “I’m a year older than you, and I’m the cooler friend, so it’s my job to be a little bit of a bad influence on you. You can just blame it on me. Come on! Let’s put it on!”

Colby still looked agitated. He rocked back on his heels. “Ummm … How about we watch the second Thor movie? I just downloaded it and I kind of want to watch it with you. I still haven’t seen it.”

Danny did his best to maintain firm eye contact with the huge green eyes way above him. “Let’s do paper rock scissors for it. If I win, we watch ‘The Thing,’ OK? It’s a really good movie and I don’t want you to miss out.”

Regrettably, Colby ended up being pretty horrible at paper rock scissors, even when they did best four out of seven, and he allowed his human friend to call the shots. They turned the movie on, and he picked up a little video game chair for Danny from inside his desk. The movie started, and it didn’t seem too bad. It had a nice, calm pace — just a bunch of guys working in Antarctica — and he sat back and tried to enjoy himself.

But things changed. A dog mutated into some kind of horrible, amorphous beast. One by one, characters started disappearing, and you didn’t know who the bad guy was. The suspense grew and grew in a psychotic crescendo, and Colby’s heart pounded in his chest. He wondered if Danny could hear it. He wondered if Danny could hear him forget his strength and slowly dent the metal of the arms of his desk chair.

Finally, he could take no more and acted without thinking. On screen, a severed human head sprouted legs and started walking around a room, and Colby, still with practiced gentleness, reached up and snatched Danny off the desk. The human yelped a bit as he was forced to sit on Colby’s right leg, with a giant hand covering most of his body.

“What … what are you doing, dude?!” Danny asked, trying to twist his body around to look up at his friend.

Colby’s face was white, and his eyes were glued to the screen. “I, um, I was just making sure you weren’t getting too scared or anything,” he said lamely.

Danny almost laughed, but then thought better of it. It was a crazy sight, looking up at his huge friend from this position, watching the light of the movie flicker across his terror-stricken face. Could it be that this movie was too scary for his giant, super-strong friend? The idea seemed ridiculous, but knowing what he knew about Colby, it kind of made sense.

Suddenly, a clear voice was heard from downstairs. “Colby? Danny? Are you boys home?”

It was Colby’s mom! He was saved!

Colby got up from his chair and waved over the black box on his desk. He said a quick word in the Esdreel language, and the TV immediately shut off. Incredible relief showed on his face.

“Cover your ears, Danny,” he said, and the human obeyed. Colby yelled an answer to his mom.

He set his hand down by Danny, who felt like he’d really gotten the hang of seeing the massive thing come for him. “It looks like we’ll have to finish the movie later,” Colby said, kind of forcing a smile. “Let’s go downstairs and see what Mom’s doing.”

Danny grunted a “Yeah” as he climbed on. As Colby started walking to the stairwell, he looked up at his friend’s face and said, “Or, you know, we don’t have to watch any more of it, if you don’t like it.”

Colby looked down at him and didn’t answer. He was conflicted. Danny could tell he was scared during the movie. Did he think he was a wimp now? Humans on TV always did such crazy things with each other — they took incredible risks.

Danny could see the uncertain look on the giant’s face. He wanted to say something like “Everybody gets scared sometimes,” but thought that might sound kind of dumb. It might even make Colby feel worse, so he said nothing as they descended the stairs.
More of Colby and Danny! This part was a weird exercise in describing setting without letting it drag, and it ended on an awkward cutoff to me. Oh well. More to come!
© 2014 - 2024 djangobb
Comments1
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
You actually mentioned vegeta lol