I have a longer update coming, but in the meantime, please enjoy this bit of Friday Freewriting from my “Writing Magical Realism” class.
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The gentle whisper of the falling leaves left a susurrus in the crisp fall air. They knew it was fall, just as they knew the precise location of the planet along its slow celestial dance with the burning heart of the solar system. Each lungful (gillful? they weren’t certain about this mortal flesh they were given quite yet) of air brought new sensations and data to their mind.
Humidity: twenty percent.
Temperature: still calibrating.
Ambient light: good.
They had an idea of what they were doing here–nobody got sent to a new planet without some idea of what to expect. Okay, sometimes they did, and it always ended poorly. Fortunately, language was not a barrier, thanks to a year of transmission monitoring beforehand. Brushing aside the crumpled remnants of their protective cocoon, they stretched out unfamiliar limbs beneath an unfamiliar night sky.
With the same feeling of anticipation and excitement that they always had on a new mission, they flicked their fingers. Removing signs of their arrival was part of protocol, after all. The minute gesture from their fingers (elongated, with an extra opposing digit) made the localized atmosphere compress and give up its moisture, and the cocoon dissolved into slimy lumps under the dense fog.
Referencing their terminal again, they reviewed the mission materials. Ah, a typical mission then. Somebody had stolen the plans to a new product that hadn’t even made it to market yet–a pill that could grant flight to the consumer. Temporary, of course. Permanent flight was still an exorbitant surgery for those species that didn’t have the good fortune and genetics to be born with them. Oddly enough, their host body did not have flight capabilities, but they supposed it was to better integrate with the planet’s population.
No matter, they had a job to do, and they were being paid very well to do it. Time to get started.
