"So it's not as much of a shock?" Evelyn asked hopefully. Kiera's face skewed again as she started crying once more.
"In my dream … the aliens … took me … to a planet ruled by spiders!"
Evelyn sighed. Kiera was bound to be traumatized until she saw for herself there were no monster-sized spiders on Romas's home planet. Hopefully, hopefully, that would be the largest obstacle Evelyn faced in explaining the situation to her.
"Come on. I'll tell you about Romas and where we're going."
* * *
Kiera's tears stopped sometime during the hours of explanation and history lessons Evelyn gave. She heard very little of any of them but somehow managed to nod when required and even respond with words her shocked mind did not hear or understand. She sat very still on the dark grey bed, her legs folded and hands in her lap, and stared at Evelyn.
She wondered if she had died, for she seemed able to see the conversation occurring from a dozen feet away, as if she were watching television instead of involved in it. She nodded and accepted Evelyn's far-fetched explanations just as she might nod and temporarily accept the equally unreal world of Star Wars. When the movie was over, she would smile, get up, and go home.
But this movie had no end. The world around her was real. And it was uglier than she imagined a spaceship to be. There was dark grey and sterility in the absence of anything remotely friendly, homey, or welcoming. A yellowish glow emitted from some unseen light source in the grey walls reminded her of a late winter afternoon that never ended.
Kiera wasn't watching Star Wars but living it. The only thing that seemed to click was Evelyn's insistence that there were no spiders. Yet she'd seen the most incredibly huge spider dangling over her head when she awoke. It even slapped her with one of its long legs. She shuddered and asked again, "Are there more spiders on the planet?"
Evelyn looked defeated, and Kiera expected she had already covered the subject exhaustively.
"That was a cat, not a spider."
"It had eight legs," Kiera insisted.
"It has six legs."
"It's still more than four. Cats have four legs."
"Kiera!" Evelyn snapped. "It's their version of a cat!"
"Does their version of a dog have eight legs?"
"No! They don't have dogs, and it only has six legs!"
"What does? The dog?"
"The cat!"