"But I'm going home," Kiera said blankly.
"Well, I'll talk to him," Evelyn said, and rushed into a new subject. "Isn't this an awesome view?"
Kiera looked at her, attempting to decipher her warning. It sounded very much like Evelyn was trying to tell her Romas could marry her off at his will when he pleased. The idea was absurd, even for someone as chauvinistic as Romas. Her instincts didn't like Evelyn's nonchalance on the subject.
"Yeah, nice view," she murmured. "Do they have anything unusual, like four moons?"
"There are two moons and two suns, but the suns are so close together, you can't tell," Evelyn said. "The standard day is longer than ours, about thirty hours instead of twenty-four, with that divided evenly between day and night."
"Have you been there before?" Kiera asked.
"No. I've been interrogating Romas for about two months now," Evelyn admitted with a smile. "They have green grass, oceans, and blue sky just like us."
"Is the sun yellow?"
"Yes, Kiera!"
"So the only difference is their animals and the size of their people," Kiera said.
"Pretty much."
She shifted in her chair. She had many more questions, but the more she asked, the less she could deny the world around her was real. Tomorrow she would meet Romas's alien-brothers and parents. Or maybe, just maybe, tomorrow morning she would finally wake up.
They sat for a while before she felt a familiar sense of anxiety at the reality of her situation. She wandered back to the safety of her room, wanting paper and pencils, her favorite jeans … anything familiar to comfort her. She lay on the bed as she had for several days already, sick of the jerky-like food Evelyn brought her.
She couldn't sleep, even when the computer turned her lights out in the only sign it was bedtime. She spent the night waiting for the nightmare world to end and dressed the next morning with an undertaker's solemnity. Soon after, a warrior came to her door and led her down several halls and into a tiny box resembling an elevator. Unlike an elevator, it didn't appear to move. She felt silly standing in it with the three warrior strangers around her, waiting for something to happen that never did. When the doors opened, she realized everything had changed. For one, she was no longer faced with dark grey. For two, it was not just Romas and Evelyn before her.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of cheerfully clothed giants and models lining a petal-strewn pathway. Brilliant sunlight blinded her after days of grey, and she blinked at the bright, familiar blue sky.