Friends in Strange Places

Friends in Strange Places

Running was one of the few really good ways for Rose to let out the pressure that sometimes built inside of her, the pressure that so often wanted to break free in angry yells and kicking the nearest likely target. She was focused on this endeavor, her brown skin beginning to gleam with the exertion. So focused that she nearly missed the movement from the corner of her eye, but once she tracked it, her footsteps abruptly slowed, then stopped.

A ball rolled out into the sidewalk and came to a halt directly in front of Rose. Puzzled, she looked around for the owner.

There was no one in sight.

She looked back at the ball. She had had one just the same size, but that ball had been red, and this one was the shimmering blue-green of her very favorite of Mama's nail polishes, the one that made her think of mermaids dancing with dolphins in the sea. Mama told her that mermaids aren't real, but Rose thought she detected a faint far-off wistfulness in Mama’s eyes when she said things like that. Like she knew she had to be an adult on the outside, but her heart on the inside wanted to believe otherwise.

She looked around again but still, the owner had not appeared. It could belong to anyone, even that huge bully who lived the next street over, Danny Melton. Danny liked to tell Rose that her braids looked like snakes and that her real name must be Medusa with such a head full of snakes. These insults he intoned in low voices when adults were around. When they were not, it was open season for Danny to chase, and kick, and punch any unfortunate in his path. If the ball belonged to Danny there would be blue hell to pay for even breathing too near it, so Rose backed away from the ball and went on her way around it.

In a few moments, she felt something hit the back of her foot. Glancing around, she saw the ball had followed until it made contact.

She thought the wind must have blown it, although it didn't feel like there was much of a wind at the time, but what else could it be?

Rose had really loved playing with the red ball, running along and kicking it ahead of her and pretending she was on the US women's soccer team, leading her team to victory and triumph. It had given that pressure inside her something positive to fix on, to dream.

She took a tentative step around the ball and gently kicked it back in the direction from which it had come. No shout of indignation or rage followed, so she summoned the courage to approach it quickly and kick it again, still gentle, still timid.

She kicked it once more and watched it roll to a stop several feet away. As she hurried to catch up to it, it came rolling back towards and then a little past her at a slight angle.

Rose stopped in her tracks, feeling distinctly like what her papa liked to call "bamboozled." No wind would kick the ball back to her like that, like a conscious back and forth between her and another. Wind was too broad, too imprecise.

She turned to look at the ball, which had just then began to levitate upwards, coming back down with a bounce and continuing in a dribble by an unseen player.

Rose took two quick stuttering steps backwards at this development. Her mouth frozen in an "O" of surprise, she finally made herself call out.

"Who's there? Wh-Who's doing this to the ball??" she cried, looking in all directions. No one materialized, but the ball kept dribbling, dribbling.

Rose thought some more. She knew that drones were a thing, and that radio control cars were a thing, her mama had told her about one that she had when she was Rose's age. Perhaps the ball was being controlled remotely like those cars? She wasn't sure if such a thing was possible, but after all times had changed a lot since they were kids, as both her mama and papa were fond of saying.

Still, if it were being controlled from elsewhere, it was possible that Danny was at that elsewhere, laying some kind of obnoxious trap for Rose. No one was in sight, though, and Rose thought she might be able to outrun him if needed. She was able to do that often as Danny's lumbering size made his blows hurt, but it also made him slow and sometimes clumsy.

Taking a deep breath, she waited for the ball to hit the ground again and swiftly kicked it off to the side and out of the dribble. She ran after it, full of the glee of a new toy on a fine summer day, and kicked it still further.

When she reached the ball again, a thought occurred to her and she circled the ball and surveyed the point where the phantom dribbling had been. She made up her mind and kicked the ball back to that point.

It came to a stop, and then briefly it rolled quickly back and forth, just a little bit, as if being kicked from one foot to another, before coming back her way, this time with a kick that had some loft and sent the ball in a gentle arc to land near her.

Delighted, Rose let out a giggle and dribbled the ball between her own feet several times before hauling back and really letting go, sending the ball sailing high and long.

Back and forth they went, the ball soaring between Rose and her unknown teammate. At one point the ball went up in midair, and then bounced off a point a few feet off the ground, as if off someone's head, a trick Rose had seen sometimes in the pro soccer games and which she had not been brave enough to try with the business end of her own face just yet.

On the ball's next trip back to her, she did try to bounce it back off her head, although the impact made her see a couple of stars and the blow hit rather more of her nose than she had planned. Still, it was a start.

"Ro-ooooose! Come on in now, it's time to wash up for dinner. You want to come on now, it's cheese ravioli and your papa is promising to eat the whole pot before you get here," called Mama.

Damn. She loved cheese ravioli more than anything but she didn't want to stop playing. Just then, her nose twinged a bit where the ball had hit and that decided her. Papa after all was entirely capable of swiping her ravioli and she found suddenly that she was very hungry.

She ran towards her house, abandoning the ball behind her. After a few more steps, she stopped and turned around.

She called out to her mysterious friend, "Thank you!" Then she turned back and ran the rest of the way, her teeth set for cheese ravioli and full of the euphoria of a good day of play.

***

Zadlin looked after the human and sighed. They had thought it would be fun to come to this planet with their bearers, but it turned out to not be all that great, since they had to live on a plane of existence that was shifted just eight degrees off the human plane, so that they could not see Zadlin nearly all the time.

Over the Earth year that they and their bearers had been on the planet, Zadlin had gradually figured out how to manipulate things in the human plane of existence, although they dared not attempt to make themselves visible. From the way the humans behaved about certain events, Zadlin would have thought it an unwise course of action, even without the dire warnings of their bearers regarding potential consequences.

When Zadlin had seen the human playing with the red ball, they had watched, envious and wishful for the sheer joy the human exhibited as they kicked and cavorted with the red ball. Later, when they saw the hulking human steal the ball, the one who treated so many others with such violent actions and words, they were offended and angered at the disruption of that kind of pure delight.

So it was with no prick of conscience (for Zadlin did have one of those) that they waited for the lumbering mean one to be on their own with the ball, to then trip them sight unseen, and kick the ball to relative safety while the creature howled and mewled, clutching their leg on the ground. Zadlin had resisted the urge to go and kick the wailing lump, but instead retreated with the ball to study it.

After kicking it about and experiencing some portion of the elation the other human had seemed to feel, Zadlin tried another of their matter manipulations and transformed it into the color they had heard the human admiring on their bearer's fingertips, the brilliant, shimmering blue-green that made Zadlin think of the seas back home.

Then it was time to return the ball to the human who deserved the satisfaction they got from it. Zadlin kicked the ball ahead a way as they had seen the humans do, picking up speed. Pressure, lingering from the unpleasantness of the encounter with the vicious human, slowly deflated within Zadlin as they went faster and faster, jubilant, running.

The End