Touchstone 1 - Stray

handle trying to talk in a language I don’t really know, not letting me be sloppy, and insisting I work the sentences out properly before trying to say them, no matter how long that took. Isten Notra’s minions kept popping in with snacks and lunch and to ask her if there was anything she needed and to give me scandalised looks because they heard me talking about vampires and zombies to someone Lohn later confirmed was one of the most respected scientists on the planet.
    It was a great day. Isten Notra’s a really special sort of person, with not a lot of time to spare, and she gave a whole heap of it to me.
    And I was outside of my medroom box, which was also a bonus.
    Wednesday, March 5
    Someone call the wahmbulance
    Ista Tremmar took off my eye-patch today. They’ve been changing the big adhesive covering daily, but my eye was taped shut underneath. Today they lowered the lights, pulled off the tape, and shone little torches at me. Then, after another tedious medical exam, they released me. I have check-ups and tests scheduled, and nothing else whatsoever, not even training.
    I should have been happy. Not so much at the nothing scheduled, but being let out of my latest box. Glorious illusion of freedom. But, you see, my eye is wrong.
    I have hazel eyes. Brown and green with some flecks of blue. I still have hazel eyes, but flecks of purple and violet have been added to the left one, and combined with the blue it drowns out the brown and green. It looks pretty cool, but I hate it. Because it’s not my eye any more and every time I look in the mirror it’s telling me I don’t exist any more. I’m not a girl from Sydney who loves reading and games and was about to start uni and hadn’t quite decided what she was going to do in the long run. I’m not Cass here. Devlin most of the time, and Caszandra occasionally. I’m a stray, and it’s not just what people call me, it’s what I am inside: something out of place. My main goals are to learn a tiresome language, and to avoid getting anyone killed until I can figure out a way to get home. Not dying is also a goal. I don’t like to count up the number of times I’ve nearly died since I was rescued. At least this last time I achieved something before falling apart.
    So now that I’ve finally been released and can wander about, I’ve spent the day moping on my couch. I should be grateful for having an eye at all, but instead I’m busy trying not to let myself get too upset, because I might take another sleep-walking excursion to Earth and I’d hate to have to be rescued again, but at the same time I can’t help but acknowledge that I haven’t done anything at all to try and work out how I reached Earth’s near-space, and how I can get home safely.
    Hiding how unhappy I am right now is important to stop them from monitoring me more and more, especially since my immunity to the aether makes me an even more interesting lab rat. I have no wish to confide in the greysuit who has had a session with me every day since I woke, ‘chatting’ with me in a way which screams ‘psych evaluation’. Or perhaps they’re a trauma counsellor, but in that case I can’t like them for not coming out and saying so.
    I wish I could stop having nightmares. I guess I really was in a blind panic back in the Pillar since my dreams are filled with scary things snatching at me, and I wake sweating and panting, with a hand clutched over my eye. I don’t think I’d make the grade as a Setari, even if I had psychic powers, and it’s a good thing that they have no plans to put me back on active duty any time soon.
    First Squad is off on some island called Gorra. I really appreciate that Zee emails me every so often and lets me know what’s going on with them, and with the shifting about caused by the Pillar shutting off. They’re slowly checking which of the known routes still exist, and trying to work out ways through the spaces which allow them to easily get to the same locations in near-space that they could previously access. Everyone’s scheduling has been thrown madly off, and they’re all working double-time trying to make up the ground they’ve lost.
    Bleh – this is not a fun day. It needs to hurry up and be over.
    Thursday, March 6
    Professionally sozzled
    This morning I had aether tests. Now that I’m no longer in danger, merely covered in yellow bruises, tender and stiff and occasionally shaky, they’ve decided to try and find out why I react so