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If you’re here to read about two oblivious men falling in love, you opened the correct story. But if you came here expecting an easy romance, I fear you won’t find any of it here. If you came here expecting a happy story, I fear I might not attend to your expectations fully. For the story of Keith and Lance, while it does have its moments of sweet joy, is not easy nor happy.Had I written the story, it surely wouldn’t be as somber, but my job here is to only tell you what truly happened, to show you the events through the eyes of the protagonists as they try to survive and go back to their normal lives.As the being I am, I can only promise and assure I am telling you all the truth there is to tell. In fact, I won’t even tell you, I’ll only show you the truth, for nothing shall be more truthful, more faithful to the facts.I must warn you yet again, what you’re about to read is in no way a Coffee Shop Alternate Universe, or a Fake Dating Alternate Universe. Only words and more words of bittersweet feelings.The oldest register I could find was a letter sent by a mister Handall Cemels, someone I was informed was a fine gentleman with respectable lifestyle.Koturn is known to be a distant planet from everything, and annoyingly closed off enough for even the Galra to avoid. It bears a striking resemblance to Earth, with its beautiful blue oceans and green forests. The habitants, curiously named Driowana, walk like humans, talk like humans, act like humans and God, Vagone for them, have pity of whoever compares them to humans. They look very different, you hear? With their blue flesh and brightly colored hair, all either too skinny or too chubby. Eyes with an unending orange sclera will glare at you for certain and unless you’re immune, I’m afraid to tell you will at the very least shiver.Here is the letter, translated from the complicated language of Uotrecina, sent to Handall’s wife, the lovely lady Bathsheba Cemels, who at the moment was at her parents’ house, completing the monthly visit tradition.
“My dearest,
Every day without your presence has been torture, no matter if it has been four or four hundred days since we last saw each other. I am pleased to hear your mother is still as repugnant as the day we married, for few things bring me more joy than remembering her of her sickening genius. It’s also refreshing to know your father shall never again annoy the living, now being Vagone’s responsibility until his soul is light enough to ascend on this plane of existence yet again, and, by Vagone, I pray it happens when we both are long gone.
Yesterday the most curious thing happened. I was at the Temple, avoiding the faithful and evading the unfaithful, when a curious noise made me curious enough to go search for its source. Moreover, there, near the old statue of those old gods the Temple tries so much to forget, I found what I could only call the reincarnation of one of the gods. A man with—socking, yes!—dark brown skin and brown hair—brown, I tell you!—was there, unconscious. His resemblance with one of the gods is uncanny!
I couldn’t let the poor man there, no, that would be too cruel. He is now resting in our guest room. He woke up earlier today, and oh, my dear Bathsheba, you had to be here to see it! With what calm he talked, with what charisma he smiled! His eyes, oh my most loved, his eyes are so peculiar! White sclera with a blue—bluest blue, even bluer than you!—circle and a smaller black circle in the middle of blue circle, and there are some exquisite markings under his eyes, blue like water. Lance is his name, and he is a human, whatever it may be, from Earth, wherever that may be. He has no idea how or why he is here, all he says he can remember is being at his home—he lives in a farm, my dearest dear, a farm, can you believe?—and fainting, only to wake up here.
God send, maybe? Maybe. Maybe the old gods send him here to finally correct this rotten society of ours, to finally teach the faithful and the unfaithful the truth they so long forget.
Without knowing how he got here, and therefore not knowing how to go back the same way, he asked me for advice on what to do. He asked me for advice, how quaint! I told him about the Temple’s rigid rules, that the ships were only available to legal citizens and that he wouldn’t be able to put foot outside our home if he wasn’t recognized as one. He immediately got a glint into his eyes—blue, remember?—, asking questions on how to gain citizenship. His insistence made it clear he would to whatever it took to hopefully get back home, and which one of us can’t understand such a feeling?
I promised him I would look into it tomorrow first thing in the afternoon, right after I woke up and ate, and he smiled oh so gratefully, you’d need to be here to marvel at it in its fullest. You, my adored, who adores beautiful things—making me wonder, still, what you saw in me, who only beautiful trait would be this orange mustache—will be enamored with him once your breathtaking eyes clash with his otherworldly ones.
He is now sleeping, and I’m tempted to let him, but soon is dinner time and I do not wish for him to get hungry. Oh, dilemma! Dilemma, what am I to do without you, my decision maker, my most trusted?
I should end this letter now. My beloved wife, the very thing keeping me alive, be well for you and for me. Also, tell that wretched creature you’re supposed to call a mother that she can let go of her string of life already, for the living has no need for real walking nightmares.
Yours, truly and faithfully,
Handall Cemels.”
The response received is not important for this narrative, only long paragraphs of complaining about Bathsheba’s mother, a creature so vile that some believed she was not dead yet because not even Vagone wanted his own creation around, and maybe two of curiosity about the guest.I need to warn you yet again, my reader, that this won’t be a happy story. Maybe it will have a hopeful ending, but is hope enough to justify the suffering?