Home
This is something I've had in my head for years, and it's what I originally created the "Quinn" (aka Ken) character for. I started writing it down a while ago, and this is what I've come up with so far. It's actually a far longer thing I had planned, but I haven't been able to write it yet. Yeah, it's kind of weird, but that's how I roll. 
Did I mention it's a rough draft?
_____________________________________________
Black. The world was black, despite his best efforts to make it become light. It was as though he was trying to come out of a drugged sleep.
Voices. He heard voices. They spoke in alien tongues, two of them, each different. One sounded closer to him than the other. It seemed to be all vowels and hard consonants. The other seemed farther away, but it carried better. This one’s speech was softer, with more subtlety and lilt than the other.
“Melaq, move away. The sedative is wearing off,” said the more distant voice in his own language.
“I’ll be fine. I’m almost done. Besides, that’d be enough to keep you out for another ten minutes,” came the reply. Had Ken been more awake, he may have found it odd that the conversation was coherent, though neither party used the same language.
“Melaq, I’m not joking. Move.”
Ken finally opened his eyes halfway. He looked at a blob of blue directly in front of his face - curse the blurriness! He could barely see a thing. The distant voice shouted something, which startled Ken, and apparently, the blue thing. It finally came into some focus. It was a serpentine reptile with four legs and long fangs, like a sabertooth tiger. It stood on its hind legs and used its front ones to hold something like a tablet computer. It was looking right at him, and it must have been about eight feet long by Ken’s reckoning. What was a man who couldn’t move to do?
Ken screamed at the top of his lungs. This prompted a scream from the lizard, but the lizard was not simply screaming. It was calling back to its partner, “More sedative!”
Ken smelled something sickly sweet, then promptly lapsed back into unconsciousness.
The partner made a sound that could only be described as a chuckle. “Enough for who for how long?” it asked sarcastically.
“Oh, shut up.” said Melaq.
Ken began to wake up again. The chains holding him down in his slumber were weaker this time.
What a dream, he thought. Feels like I overslept, though. He lay there on his side for a moment, enjoying the feel of the pillow underneath him - Hey, something doesn’t feel right about the pillow…
He opened his eyes, and was greeted by something he never expected to see. The bottom of his vision was obscured by a rectangular sky blue object, and he was staring at a four-fingered claw of the same blue color. He screamed again. He tried to hand back from the claw, but the claw moved along with the hand. He flipped onto his back and tried to crawl away, but the claw responded as one of his hands again. Furthermore, this made him look along the length of his own body. Nothing was the same about it.
His neck was easily three times its previous length, and was covered in pebbly blue scales with mottled teal patches. The scales continued down and along his entire body. The exception, it seemed, was on his chest and shoulders, where thick white fur ringed his collarbone and made a long triangle going down his chest. His arms hadn’t changed in length, though his longer total length made them look shorter. On each forearm, there was a line of long-ish white fur in a line from the outside of his wrist to his elbow. Looking further down his body, the whole thing was covered in the same scales as his neck was, and it was all much longer and more flexible than before. His torso was roughly twice its previous length and had a larger ribcage. Going down past his hips, there was a long, muscular tail slightly longer than his torso. There was a small tuft at the end of it, like one might find at the end of a cow’s or a lion’s tail.
Once he had taken in all of this, which took about as long as it would take to read the preceding description, he bothered to look around him. What he saw was that he was laying draped over his pillow short ways, and that very little of him was hanging off said pillow. His newly-formed face formed an expression of shock as the fact sunk in that he was only about a foot long in total. The expression stayed firmly in place when he realized he looked exactly like the blue thing he was screaming at was probably identical to him in both size and shape.
Deciding he needed a better look at himself, he moved over to his clock on the opposite side of the bed. This was easier said than done, given his new proportions and the fact that his pillow made walking or crawling yet more difficult. He finally made it across on all fours, partly crawling, partly slithering. He looked at his reflection in his clock and saw his face. His face was shaped much like that of a mongoose sans the wet nose. His nose was shaped like a snake’s, and twitched ever so slightly as he breathed. His eyes were a brilliant purple and had slits for pupils, like a cat’s. The fur that covered his chest made a racing stripe starting on his forehead and terminating in the tuft of his tail. A pair of small gazelle-like horns sprouted from the back of his head.
He reached up and felt his face and horns, and stroked the fur on his chest cautiously. That was when his mind turned to the only defense mechanism it might have in such a situation - denial. I’m still dreaming, he thought. This can’t be real; there’s no creature like this alive on Earth! He pushed the possible implication of that out of his mind. But this feels too real for a dream. Maybe I’m just not woken up all the way. I’ll get some coffee and I’ll be fine.
Ken slid down the covers onto the floor and slowly straightened up to stand erect. He stood on his hind legs for a couple seconds, then took a tentative step forward with his right foot. He wobbled for a second, but regained his balance by holding his arms out. His left foot came forward for the second step… and he fell forwards. He looked back at his tail. It was still dragging on the ground, and had fatally held him back so he fell over. Grudgingly, Ken continued forward on all fours, heading for the kitchen and the percolator.
He made it to the kitchen where he saw the coffeepot sitting on the countertop. The countertop… curses. The harsh reality of a one-foot-tall creature reaching a three-foot counter struck him like a train. After staring up at the counter for a few seconds, he decided that if this was really all an illusion of a groggy mind, there was nothing to lose. He arched his back like a cat ready to pounce, and jumped for a slightly open drawer. To his own great surprise, he made it, and grabbed the edge of the drawer with his foreclaws.
“Whoa,” he said to himself. “That was one heck of a jump.” He climbed into the drawer and onto the counter, then stood up on his back legs to press the “on” switch. He sat back waiting for the pot to brew, waiting for this strange dream to end.
Meanwhile, a man of about thirty years and a woman in her early twenties ran down the street that passed in front of Ken’s house. The man was tall, roughly six and a half feet, with short black hair, an athletic build, and a strong jaw. He was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and khakis. The woman was about five and a half feet tall, with half of her wavy red hair tied back in a rough ponytail. The other half hung down and covered her ears. She was slighter of build, but obviously she took good care of herself. She wore a long-sleeved knit shirt and a pair of middle-of-the-road jeans.
The woman was constantly looking at something concealed inside a PDA case. The case did not fit it well, so it was obviously not what the case was intended to hold. The device emitted a regular beeping sound and a faint blue light. Suddenly, it beeped. The woman looked up at a house and ran across the lawn to get to the front door. She turned to the man, who got to the front steps just after her.
“This is the place,” she said. “The residual teleportation emissions are coming from this house. Care to do the honors?”
She stepped back and drew a strange-looking weapon from the small of her back as the man nodded and stepped up to the door. He kicked next to the lock, and the door swung open with a loud crash.
Ken had grown impatient with his coffee and stopped it with only an inch of coffee in the bottom of the pot. He was standing on tiptoe with his front half in the pot, reaching down with his forked tongue to get to the caffeine. Several empty sugar and creamer packets lay on the counter to the side. It was at this moment that he heard the noise of his door being kicked open. He jumped in surprise, which pushed his nose down into the hot coffee. He immediately pulled back, sputtering and rubbing at the tip of his snout. He came out of the pot and sat on the counter as the man and woman came into the room.
“There,” said the woman, as she and her partner trained their futuristic-looking handguns at Ken. Ken simply looked at them and said, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
The woman lowered her weapon and pulled out the device she had used to find the house. She held it up to Ken, who recoiled slightly at the device being stuck in his face like that. She frowned at the device, then looked at Ken while speaking to her partner.
“He’s safe. What did they do to him? The scanner has no clue what changes they made. There’s nothing obvious except for the radiation trace.”
This was too much for Ken. “I’m a coffee-soaked lizard! I’m pretty sure they changed something!” he yelled.
“Easy there,” said the woman.
“Easy? I have no idea what I am or who you are! I am SO not ‘easy’!” retorted Ken.
“The second one’s fairly easy,” she said calmly. “I’m Silé, and that’s Kral. We’re part of a three-person team sent to hunt down a Cult spaceship.”
“Who is the cult, and why do they have a spaceship?”
“They’re a rogue interstellar organization involved in forbidden scientific research. They actually have a lot of ships; this one is a small medium-range science vessel.”
Ken cocked his head, incredulous but impressed. “So since you’re here, I can assume us humans know about this?”
Silé shook her head. “No. You see, we’re not entirely human. The cult got us, too, when we were kids. You see, their main area of expertise is genetic engineering, specifically shapeshifting. Kral, let’s show him.”
Kral and Silé closed their eyes for a second, and a faint glowing ripple surrounded them. Ken watched in awe as their forms seemed to stretch and distort over the course of a couple seconds.
Silé was no longer the human that she had seemed to be. She was now a more reptilian creature, with a raptorlike stance. Her skin was a shade of emerald green, with everything else being silver. Her scales overlapped intricately, like the scales of a fish. A swirl-shaped mark started at her left eye and circled around it twice. Her face was long, almost like that of a whippet. The main differences were her nose, eyes, and horns. Her nostrils pointed to the side and had cartilaginous guards that hid them from the front. These joined with the end of her muzzle to form a subtly curved beak of sorts that extended down below her bottom jaw. Her eyes were large and friendly, the same silver color as her markings, and her pupils were tall slits. From the back of her head extended a pair of horns that resembled elephant’s tusks that curved slightly down. Her neck was long, a bit longer than her head minus horns. Starting on it were fine silver stripes, like one might find on the back of a fish. These went all the way down her spine until about halfway down her tail. Also along her spine was a sparse sawtooth ridge of silver. The “teeth” of it were smallest closest to the back of her head and the end of her tail. Starting under her chin and going down until just past her pelvis was a long set of curved “W” shaped plates, also of silver. Her arms were much different now, replaced by batlike wings. Her wing membranes started of the same color green as her body, closest to her fingers, and they faded into silver as they approached the space between her fingers. Her wings had three two-knuckled thumbs for grasping, one opposed to the other, each tipped in a bone-colored claw. Her four wing-fingers had the same claws. The wing-skin connected to her body just shy of her pelvis, which sported muscular digitigrade legs. These terminated in feet with two toes pointing forward and a rear claw, all with one knuckle and sharp-looking claws. Her tail was about the length of her neck and head combined, and it was tipped with a small arrowhead-shaped blade. Despite her complete change in anatomy, she was still definably feminine.
Kral’s change was different and less drastic. He was similarly reptilian, but he maintained his humanoid stance. His pebbly scales were a deep, jewel red, while the rest was bronze. His face had a sort of equine character to it, and his pupils looked like cracks in an eggshell going vertically and horizontally. His neck was somewhat longer, and his shoulders were broad. His batlike wings were attached to his back, and were long enough that, when folded, the reached from just above his shoulders to his hips and curled around his back like a cape. He had angular V-shaped chest plates that started even with his collarbone and extended down to just between his bellybutton and groin. His legs were digitigrade and came with vicious four-clawed talons, which were larger, less dextrous versions of his hands. His tail was long, muscular, and very prehensile. It ended in a large spade-shaped blade.
Ken took in all this from his vantage point on the countertop and gaped. “Dragons…” he breathed.
Kral gave a noncommittal nod, and Silé gave a “meh” expression. “You could say that. We’re very, very distantly related to the creatures you probably heard of in legend. So is the cult. Now that Earth is accessible again, they’re coming for new experiments and genetic material. I guess they found something.”
“Again? How long has it been?”
“About 25 years.”
Silé was going to say more, but an ethereal, electric buzzing sound emanated from the bedroom. Silé scooped Ken up in her arms and started running into the hall with him. “We gotta go; they’re coming for you.”
Once she reached her destination, just under the door to the attic, she shifted back into her human form. Ken took this opportunity to look up at her and voice a protest.
“Why did you just leave him there like that?” he asked angrily. He had not missed the fact that she had taken him with her, but it didn’t seem right that she would leave her partner behind.
Silé seemed unconcerned. “He’ll be fine,” she said casually. The sounds of something violently slamming into the wall, the crunch of bones breaking, and someone yelping in pain didn’t seem to lend her credence - until the head of a male of Silé’s species broke through the wall. “See? Don’t worry.”
A few seconds later, Kral came up in human form, with one hand as a bloody draconic claw.
“Did you get the transporter tags?” Silé asked.
Kral held up two small metallic devices in his human hand.
“I got two,” he said shortly. “I don’t think we have long to leave, though.”
Silé nodded. “Agreed. Let’s get to the roof.”
“What’s on the roof?” Ken asked.
“You’ll see,” Silé replied matter-of-factly.
Kral lowered the attic ladder and climbed up it. Silé followed with Ken, and together they opened the dormer window and climbed onto the roof. Silé walked towards the edge. Ken, watching the gutter and the fall down to the ground get closer and closer, was getting nervous.
“You know, if you’re going to go flying, you’re forgetting something,” he said with a slight quiver in his voice.
Did I mention it's a rough draft?
_____________________________________________
Black. The world was black, despite his best efforts to make it become light. It was as though he was trying to come out of a drugged sleep.
Voices. He heard voices. They spoke in alien tongues, two of them, each different. One sounded closer to him than the other. It seemed to be all vowels and hard consonants. The other seemed farther away, but it carried better. This one’s speech was softer, with more subtlety and lilt than the other.
“Melaq, move away. The sedative is wearing off,” said the more distant voice in his own language.
“I’ll be fine. I’m almost done. Besides, that’d be enough to keep you out for another ten minutes,” came the reply. Had Ken been more awake, he may have found it odd that the conversation was coherent, though neither party used the same language.
“Melaq, I’m not joking. Move.”
Ken finally opened his eyes halfway. He looked at a blob of blue directly in front of his face - curse the blurriness! He could barely see a thing. The distant voice shouted something, which startled Ken, and apparently, the blue thing. It finally came into some focus. It was a serpentine reptile with four legs and long fangs, like a sabertooth tiger. It stood on its hind legs and used its front ones to hold something like a tablet computer. It was looking right at him, and it must have been about eight feet long by Ken’s reckoning. What was a man who couldn’t move to do?
Ken screamed at the top of his lungs. This prompted a scream from the lizard, but the lizard was not simply screaming. It was calling back to its partner, “More sedative!”
Ken smelled something sickly sweet, then promptly lapsed back into unconsciousness.
The partner made a sound that could only be described as a chuckle. “Enough for who for how long?” it asked sarcastically.
“Oh, shut up.” said Melaq.
Ken began to wake up again. The chains holding him down in his slumber were weaker this time.
What a dream, he thought. Feels like I overslept, though. He lay there on his side for a moment, enjoying the feel of the pillow underneath him - Hey, something doesn’t feel right about the pillow…
He opened his eyes, and was greeted by something he never expected to see. The bottom of his vision was obscured by a rectangular sky blue object, and he was staring at a four-fingered claw of the same blue color. He screamed again. He tried to hand back from the claw, but the claw moved along with the hand. He flipped onto his back and tried to crawl away, but the claw responded as one of his hands again. Furthermore, this made him look along the length of his own body. Nothing was the same about it.
His neck was easily three times its previous length, and was covered in pebbly blue scales with mottled teal patches. The scales continued down and along his entire body. The exception, it seemed, was on his chest and shoulders, where thick white fur ringed his collarbone and made a long triangle going down his chest. His arms hadn’t changed in length, though his longer total length made them look shorter. On each forearm, there was a line of long-ish white fur in a line from the outside of his wrist to his elbow. Looking further down his body, the whole thing was covered in the same scales as his neck was, and it was all much longer and more flexible than before. His torso was roughly twice its previous length and had a larger ribcage. Going down past his hips, there was a long, muscular tail slightly longer than his torso. There was a small tuft at the end of it, like one might find at the end of a cow’s or a lion’s tail.
Once he had taken in all of this, which took about as long as it would take to read the preceding description, he bothered to look around him. What he saw was that he was laying draped over his pillow short ways, and that very little of him was hanging off said pillow. His newly-formed face formed an expression of shock as the fact sunk in that he was only about a foot long in total. The expression stayed firmly in place when he realized he looked exactly like the blue thing he was screaming at was probably identical to him in both size and shape.
Deciding he needed a better look at himself, he moved over to his clock on the opposite side of the bed. This was easier said than done, given his new proportions and the fact that his pillow made walking or crawling yet more difficult. He finally made it across on all fours, partly crawling, partly slithering. He looked at his reflection in his clock and saw his face. His face was shaped much like that of a mongoose sans the wet nose. His nose was shaped like a snake’s, and twitched ever so slightly as he breathed. His eyes were a brilliant purple and had slits for pupils, like a cat’s. The fur that covered his chest made a racing stripe starting on his forehead and terminating in the tuft of his tail. A pair of small gazelle-like horns sprouted from the back of his head.
He reached up and felt his face and horns, and stroked the fur on his chest cautiously. That was when his mind turned to the only defense mechanism it might have in such a situation - denial. I’m still dreaming, he thought. This can’t be real; there’s no creature like this alive on Earth! He pushed the possible implication of that out of his mind. But this feels too real for a dream. Maybe I’m just not woken up all the way. I’ll get some coffee and I’ll be fine.
Ken slid down the covers onto the floor and slowly straightened up to stand erect. He stood on his hind legs for a couple seconds, then took a tentative step forward with his right foot. He wobbled for a second, but regained his balance by holding his arms out. His left foot came forward for the second step… and he fell forwards. He looked back at his tail. It was still dragging on the ground, and had fatally held him back so he fell over. Grudgingly, Ken continued forward on all fours, heading for the kitchen and the percolator.
He made it to the kitchen where he saw the coffeepot sitting on the countertop. The countertop… curses. The harsh reality of a one-foot-tall creature reaching a three-foot counter struck him like a train. After staring up at the counter for a few seconds, he decided that if this was really all an illusion of a groggy mind, there was nothing to lose. He arched his back like a cat ready to pounce, and jumped for a slightly open drawer. To his own great surprise, he made it, and grabbed the edge of the drawer with his foreclaws.
“Whoa,” he said to himself. “That was one heck of a jump.” He climbed into the drawer and onto the counter, then stood up on his back legs to press the “on” switch. He sat back waiting for the pot to brew, waiting for this strange dream to end.
Meanwhile, a man of about thirty years and a woman in her early twenties ran down the street that passed in front of Ken’s house. The man was tall, roughly six and a half feet, with short black hair, an athletic build, and a strong jaw. He was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and khakis. The woman was about five and a half feet tall, with half of her wavy red hair tied back in a rough ponytail. The other half hung down and covered her ears. She was slighter of build, but obviously she took good care of herself. She wore a long-sleeved knit shirt and a pair of middle-of-the-road jeans.
The woman was constantly looking at something concealed inside a PDA case. The case did not fit it well, so it was obviously not what the case was intended to hold. The device emitted a regular beeping sound and a faint blue light. Suddenly, it beeped. The woman looked up at a house and ran across the lawn to get to the front door. She turned to the man, who got to the front steps just after her.
“This is the place,” she said. “The residual teleportation emissions are coming from this house. Care to do the honors?”
She stepped back and drew a strange-looking weapon from the small of her back as the man nodded and stepped up to the door. He kicked next to the lock, and the door swung open with a loud crash.
Ken had grown impatient with his coffee and stopped it with only an inch of coffee in the bottom of the pot. He was standing on tiptoe with his front half in the pot, reaching down with his forked tongue to get to the caffeine. Several empty sugar and creamer packets lay on the counter to the side. It was at this moment that he heard the noise of his door being kicked open. He jumped in surprise, which pushed his nose down into the hot coffee. He immediately pulled back, sputtering and rubbing at the tip of his snout. He came out of the pot and sat on the counter as the man and woman came into the room.
“There,” said the woman, as she and her partner trained their futuristic-looking handguns at Ken. Ken simply looked at them and said, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
The woman lowered her weapon and pulled out the device she had used to find the house. She held it up to Ken, who recoiled slightly at the device being stuck in his face like that. She frowned at the device, then looked at Ken while speaking to her partner.
“He’s safe. What did they do to him? The scanner has no clue what changes they made. There’s nothing obvious except for the radiation trace.”
This was too much for Ken. “I’m a coffee-soaked lizard! I’m pretty sure they changed something!” he yelled.
“Easy there,” said the woman.
“Easy? I have no idea what I am or who you are! I am SO not ‘easy’!” retorted Ken.
“The second one’s fairly easy,” she said calmly. “I’m Silé, and that’s Kral. We’re part of a three-person team sent to hunt down a Cult spaceship.”
“Who is the cult, and why do they have a spaceship?”
“They’re a rogue interstellar organization involved in forbidden scientific research. They actually have a lot of ships; this one is a small medium-range science vessel.”
Ken cocked his head, incredulous but impressed. “So since you’re here, I can assume us humans know about this?”
Silé shook her head. “No. You see, we’re not entirely human. The cult got us, too, when we were kids. You see, their main area of expertise is genetic engineering, specifically shapeshifting. Kral, let’s show him.”
Kral and Silé closed their eyes for a second, and a faint glowing ripple surrounded them. Ken watched in awe as their forms seemed to stretch and distort over the course of a couple seconds.
Silé was no longer the human that she had seemed to be. She was now a more reptilian creature, with a raptorlike stance. Her skin was a shade of emerald green, with everything else being silver. Her scales overlapped intricately, like the scales of a fish. A swirl-shaped mark started at her left eye and circled around it twice. Her face was long, almost like that of a whippet. The main differences were her nose, eyes, and horns. Her nostrils pointed to the side and had cartilaginous guards that hid them from the front. These joined with the end of her muzzle to form a subtly curved beak of sorts that extended down below her bottom jaw. Her eyes were large and friendly, the same silver color as her markings, and her pupils were tall slits. From the back of her head extended a pair of horns that resembled elephant’s tusks that curved slightly down. Her neck was long, a bit longer than her head minus horns. Starting on it were fine silver stripes, like one might find on the back of a fish. These went all the way down her spine until about halfway down her tail. Also along her spine was a sparse sawtooth ridge of silver. The “teeth” of it were smallest closest to the back of her head and the end of her tail. Starting under her chin and going down until just past her pelvis was a long set of curved “W” shaped plates, also of silver. Her arms were much different now, replaced by batlike wings. Her wing membranes started of the same color green as her body, closest to her fingers, and they faded into silver as they approached the space between her fingers. Her wings had three two-knuckled thumbs for grasping, one opposed to the other, each tipped in a bone-colored claw. Her four wing-fingers had the same claws. The wing-skin connected to her body just shy of her pelvis, which sported muscular digitigrade legs. These terminated in feet with two toes pointing forward and a rear claw, all with one knuckle and sharp-looking claws. Her tail was about the length of her neck and head combined, and it was tipped with a small arrowhead-shaped blade. Despite her complete change in anatomy, she was still definably feminine.
Kral’s change was different and less drastic. He was similarly reptilian, but he maintained his humanoid stance. His pebbly scales were a deep, jewel red, while the rest was bronze. His face had a sort of equine character to it, and his pupils looked like cracks in an eggshell going vertically and horizontally. His neck was somewhat longer, and his shoulders were broad. His batlike wings were attached to his back, and were long enough that, when folded, the reached from just above his shoulders to his hips and curled around his back like a cape. He had angular V-shaped chest plates that started even with his collarbone and extended down to just between his bellybutton and groin. His legs were digitigrade and came with vicious four-clawed talons, which were larger, less dextrous versions of his hands. His tail was long, muscular, and very prehensile. It ended in a large spade-shaped blade.
Ken took in all this from his vantage point on the countertop and gaped. “Dragons…” he breathed.
Kral gave a noncommittal nod, and Silé gave a “meh” expression. “You could say that. We’re very, very distantly related to the creatures you probably heard of in legend. So is the cult. Now that Earth is accessible again, they’re coming for new experiments and genetic material. I guess they found something.”
“Again? How long has it been?”
“About 25 years.”
Silé was going to say more, but an ethereal, electric buzzing sound emanated from the bedroom. Silé scooped Ken up in her arms and started running into the hall with him. “We gotta go; they’re coming for you.”
Once she reached her destination, just under the door to the attic, she shifted back into her human form. Ken took this opportunity to look up at her and voice a protest.
“Why did you just leave him there like that?” he asked angrily. He had not missed the fact that she had taken him with her, but it didn’t seem right that she would leave her partner behind.
Silé seemed unconcerned. “He’ll be fine,” she said casually. The sounds of something violently slamming into the wall, the crunch of bones breaking, and someone yelping in pain didn’t seem to lend her credence - until the head of a male of Silé’s species broke through the wall. “See? Don’t worry.”
A few seconds later, Kral came up in human form, with one hand as a bloody draconic claw.
“Did you get the transporter tags?” Silé asked.
Kral held up two small metallic devices in his human hand.
“I got two,” he said shortly. “I don’t think we have long to leave, though.”
Silé nodded. “Agreed. Let’s get to the roof.”
“What’s on the roof?” Ken asked.
“You’ll see,” Silé replied matter-of-factly.
Kral lowered the attic ladder and climbed up it. Silé followed with Ken, and together they opened the dormer window and climbed onto the roof. Silé walked towards the edge. Ken, watching the gutter and the fall down to the ground get closer and closer, was getting nervous.
“You know, if you’re going to go flying, you’re forgetting something,” he said with a slight quiver in his voice.
