He Comes in Peace

Skye nervously unlocked the door and ran out of the room to the hallway. Her mother's door was closed.

Blowing out a long sigh of relief, she returned to her room.

"Kartayon? Hey, d'you mind if I call you—Dude! Don't touch that!"

Kartayon was squatting on the floor, looking through the loosened floorboard. He had wrenched it out of its place, and picked up the piece of steel and the box.

"I'll take that, thankyouverymuch." She moved her hand to snatch it out of his hands, but he jerked it out of the way very, very quickly.

"What is this?" Kartayon seemed to be very well educated in the English language, and didn't use contractions, but he certainly needed to be a bit educated on manners nowadays.

"Don't touch that!" Skye successfully snatched it from his hand, but she thought that he let her.

"Forgive me; I did not mean to offend you of any sort."

"Uh-huh…" Skye grumbled, nodding stiffly. She cradled it against her chest protectively.

"Is that box of great importance to you?" he queried, eyes seeming to zoom in on the scratched up surface of the case.

"Yes. Very, very great importance."

"May I see it?" he asked politely.

"Um, sorry, no."

There was an awkward pause. Skye assumed that Kartayon had no idea what 'ice-breakers' or 'small talk' was. So she couldn't exactly count on him to drum up some enthusiasm and start another conversation.

"Oh yeah, I was going to ask…"

"Yes?" He looked away from the window and fixed his eyes completely on her.

"Um, I…" Skye momentarily lost her thoughts. She wasn't used to so much eye contact. Nobody at school looked her fully in the eyes like that. Especially not with lime green eyes.

"Hey wait. Your eyes. They just changed colour."

Kartayon blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"Your eyes changed colour. They were lime green before, now they're…Yellow-ish green."

The alien seemed to bat his eyes at her, and Skye sub-consciously blushed.

He's pretty cu—What the heck am I thinking? He's an alien! I mean, sure, he could be cute on alien standards, but I haven't seen any other aliens to compare him with, so really, I shouldn’t be thinking something like that…

Despite her mental chastising, Skye could not help but look over his face. Tay had bangs that covered his eyebrows, but not the emo/punk bangs that covered half his face. His facial features were pretty even and well distributed. He wasn't exactly drop-dead gorgeous, but he had a friendly, old-fashioned look about him, and for some reason, Skye thought he would look (to use the exact word that she used inside her head) scrumptious in a tuxedo and fedora. He was pretty slim, but not thin enough to see his ribs and count his bones. His skin tone was a powdery light bronze colour, like a perfect tan, and it matched nicely with his dark reddish-black hair.

"You were saying? Please continue," Kartayon reminded.

Skye blinked. "Right. Do you mind if I call you Tay instead? For short?"

"Tay? May I ask for what reason?" he asked slowly.

"Well, your name's kind of long. And if we're going to go outside my house, then Tay would be passed off as a nickname for Taylor or something."

"Excuse me, but when have we decided to go outside?"

"Oh, well, we haven't, but we might, well actually, we probably won't, and I don't expect you to go waltzing out with me or anything, but it was just another reason for calling you Tay, but if you don't erm, want me to call you that, I suppose I could just stick with calling you Kartayon, that is, if you do mind…"

"I believe you are rambling, Skye Cedona."

"Wha—Oh, can I just call you Tay? Just 'cause it's easier?"

"If you wish."

Skye looked at him incredulously.

And that took so long, why?