Don’t Blame Me I’m A Martian-33

Chapter 33

*Before…

“Okay, this is just like breathing and meditating only you inhale…and as you do you feel the new breath, the new life and energy it provides your body coming in….hold it…and as you do and you feel the strain in your body as the air is running out and getting bad you picture inside of you all the things that you have inside of you clogging you up coming off of you like steam…and exhale it all out and release it…another breath…hold…and like steam…that incoming air and life it brings is refreshing and washing it all out of you and just like air it goes to all the cells…and exhale…”

Cheyenne has me do that for five minutes or so and I can honestly say with her talking and her guiding me with her feelings of things because she’s done that it’s kind of like that…like I’m washing things inside my psyche out and clear with each breath.”
By the time I’m done I feel…I feel different better but…
Like I ran awhile and got all sweaty and just had a great shower and a good release cry at the same time.
I look at Cheyenne.
I extend my hand and she takes it and we head up the beach path and back to the others.
Not needing words for how just good and thank you I’m feeling right now.

*And Now…

It’s such a different and cleaner feeling too as I head back and I swear that I can even smell things a little differently?

“It’s you sensory short term.” Shy says.

“My what?”

“When you cleanse you still know what you know only you cleared to recent memory of it.”

“Oh so this is why it feels like this?’

“Yep it’ll fade though like when you feel the dawn.”

“I’m still getting used to that too.”

“You won’t when you open yourself to the sunlight waking the world it’s something that never changes.”

“It kind of makes me sad though.”

“Oh?” Shy looks over at me and it’s this kind and sweet expression there.

“We’re destroying the planet.”

She nods. “Again…” There’s something else there too.

“What?”

“It’s a big thing back home and in other colonies.”

“What is?”

“Allowing humanity to do the same thing all over again?”

“Oh…like the prime directive?”

Shy nods. “There are some that think that we should influence how this world runs, to direct mankind to a less destructive path.”

“And you?”

“No…I think that we need to stay out of it because the temptations will be far too tempting even for us…we’re not that much different than anyone else.”

I nod and think for a minute as we get to my tent-trailer. “I couldn’t let that happen…I’d have to fight something like that if it did happen.”

Cheyenne nods. “And I’ll be right beside you.”

I…I… I step over and I give her a light kiss. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I head inside and get my things for the last day of raking and stop and I change into a sports bra…I don’t want to fight with them right now and we meet up with the others and get in our vehicles and we head out to the last field that we’ll be working. I’m thinking about all of this and how much my world has changed and might change and stuff I literally am just winging it.

I mean how will all of this affect everything else?

School?

My life?

I mean I’m now part of something that’s so huge it’s impossible to get my head around it all. It’s kind of scary too.

And that’s something that I’m still dealing with, hormones and being afraid in different ways than before and part of me is trying to figure out that if it’s actual changes or if I’m picking up impressions of me through other people or I’m just doing it myself because of my own social expectations of me changing and the ideas of it being stuck in my head from all the gender stuff I was raised with?

I look at Cheyenne. “I might need some time today just to have some space to think okay?”

I flicker my block and she nods. “Good idea, I mean you just broke things off with Kaylee.”

I know they get what I meant and stuff but we’re not alone in the car so it works.

I offer them a smile though as we are all getting out and getting our things and stuff and I go and get a rake and my bag with my water and stuff in it and then get some buckets and some flats and head off to the rows.

We’re at the Stevens plots today another one of those families that does berries here and they sell mostly local so they always use rakers over the harvester machines that and they’re an old school family and they hire the kids like me as a matter of like pride and stuff.

Mind you there’s still money in it…they’ll take their berries back to the shipping barns and they’ll dump them on a mesh belt and there’s blowers and they have people that pick out the squishy ones and then they’ll put then in those tiny little plastic boxes and sell them for a lot more that what they paid you for.

But they actually pay pretty well for raking compared to some people. There’s raking home too but the ones that hire rakers put them in the kinds of places they’re growing that you really can’t run a harvester tractor.

Blueberries when you rake then usually are strung off into rows with plain white string so it like lets you keep track of how you harvest the field. And when you rake by the flat like I do it’s just easier to get two rows and pull out that middle string. Most rows are just a pain in the ass when it comes to going back and forth a double row you can still manage pretty good and you don’t have to move all over hell because your next row is really far away because of other rakers.

I wet down my hair and adjust my band on my hat to be snug so I don’t have to mess with my hair and I take out some sun screen and put that on and the I tale some veg-oil and a paper towel and I clean and oil my rake.

That’s an old trick. Berries are juicy and they’re sticky no matter how you rake them and getting a sheen on the tines makes it actually easier to rake. You even get less leaves and twigs stuck in it.

I’m smiling though because this is the last of the fields and the best one actually and they save it for us kids and other rakers to pick.

It’s a nice little sea of berries.

I put on my sunglasses and turn on my mental blocking and then my I-pod and get to work.

The music helps because I’m listening to the stuff that I was always listening to and that kind of helps me shift into old Dylan head space and I go at it…not being stupid and pushing it to wear myself out but really putting a drive on because I want to feel that…that strain and the hard work and the stuff that I knew was me before all of this and stuff.

I don’t want to lose me.

If I’m changing, if I’m going to be maturing into a Shuan then I want to do this on my terms and not get drowned in that all the newness.

It feels off a little not feeling things like someone turning a radio off in your house that is usually left of. It’s that absence of background noise and at the same thing it’s just as soothing and relaxing once I’m able to be alone with my own thoughts.

There are things that are in control…I have put it out there with the whole Chimera thing and people know on my Facebook and stuff. People know the same thing here and with my family and all the people that they told.

I do have some control…just not a lot of control over the alien stuff.

I look over.

Well…that’s one of the reasons why Cheyenne’s in my life right now.

And I have to really deal with the them and us relationship thing and them and me as a sort of student thing.

We’ll sort of have to hash that out.

I needed this, to get back to Dylan and feeling a lot more like me than I have being. I look over to where Kaylee is and y’know even for how much I was swimming in her mentally and emotionally and stuff.

I really don’t regret it at all.

We’ll always have what happened and we’ll always be close it’s just we tried and it just didn’t work.

And I learned things about myself and my abilities too.

I watch some of the others just kind of drinking things in…it’s the last bit of the summer and by next week I’ll be home and going to school. That’s not a lot of time given we’ll have gone home a few days before and stuff.

So I’m smelling the roses as it were for a few minutes.

Then it’s back to work and I’m actually thinking about the last few days and stuff and making them memorable and I know there’s going to be a few parties and I’m trying to figure if I want to go any of them or have one myself or rather with me and the cousins and stuff and all our friends from around here and the other people that come here from other places too. There’s a bunch of us that aren’t locals but we’re annuals.

The raking, it’s actually going really well just great berries and careful but fast strokes…yes there’s wrist involved so the pun is there.

I empty my buckets for the last time and way Junior Stevens over to get them and he has a scale and a cart hooked to a lawn tractor and he weighs them out. The Stevens’s pay by the pound and he uses a red pen and marks the number in my card this time and he pulls away to get to someone else.

And it’s rake, dump, repeat move to new rows.

Sometimes I’ll help one of my cousins when my row is done and I’ll help them finish a row so they can move on with the rest of us that and if we can each fill our buckets and finish the row that that’s just one of those things that’s kind of perfect.

Not an OCD thing either almost every raker likes to finish a row with a full bucket. I think it’s a symmetry thing.

Cheyenne’s definitely skill felt things out and she’s been raking as good as the best rakers here in the field which is actually turning into a competition. It’s not a tomboy thing it’s this sort of alpha thing. I’d have said alpha male but she’s not a guy…well mostly.

There is that kinda feeling though that this is just one of those Tuan things.

It looks like Shy might have one of those couple of hundred dollar raking days.

I know it sounds like a lot but there are normal people here right in this same field that will do that too.

Me. I want to do well enough to top up my money reserves but I’ll not even get close. I move on and get some more rows and hunker down and work until they call lunch!

Lunch is awesome here with so many people and most of us knowing each other it kind of becomes a bit of a tailgating thing with a few little camp stoves out doing stuff like hot dogs and a few hibachi grills with burgers and stuff.

And there’s cold drinks and shade from the vehicles and shy and I meet up at the group for the burgers and we get several of them on paper plates. Mine has two patties and cheese-whiz some mustard and a lot of ketchup.

Cheyenne has pretty much the same but relish too and hot banana pepper slices and pickles on hers just piled and messy and it looks like she likes it that way.

“Messy burger?’

She grins mouth full of food and this happy I’m being fed smile and she eats that bite and takes another small one. “I love burgers, they’re all over the planet and they’re all different and all are usually pretty yummy unless it’s fast food.”

“I grew up with fast food you didn’t.”

“Nope, another reason I like it so much the closest thing I had like that was market street foods.”

“Like what?”

“Choripan, Pancho’s Chipa’s.”

“Huh?”

“Uhm…sausage sandwich kind of like a taco meets and empanada but not, another kind of hot dog and Chipa’s are kind of like a doughnut ball but made from cornbread and fried and have a hole in them sometimes so you can squeeze in cheese or jam or sauces…one of my favorites even if they’re kind of junky.”

“Junky can be good, those sound pretty Mexican.”

“South American…I lived about two months in Buenos Ares before I moved on.”

“Really what were you doing there?”

Seriously I’m curious because that’s….compared to New Jersey like the other side of the world to me.

“Getting trained and tutored.”

“Trained?”

“We have people that run training houses around the world and we use our abilities in these places to teach those of us that show up to these places things from there and how to pass for a local.”

“Oh…will I be going to one of those someday?”

“Probably, you’ll have to at least come to Santiago with me at some point.”

“Where?”

“Chile.”

“You live in Chile?”

“No, not really but it’s where we bring in new bloods.”

“New bloods?”

“People like you. A lot of our people went out of the colonies to live in the wider world some have had kids we try and bring them home if they call for it or like you turn out to be Shuan or Tuan and their powers start.”

“Oh…”

I head to Jax’s car after I eat my burgers and take my pop and Cheyenne joins me and he’s there with some girl and they’re listening to tunes and have the AC blasting away and I slip into the back seats laying down and reach out taking shy’s hand while I’m doing so and she joins me laying in the cool of the car.

We both let out an out of the heat and pleasantly full sigh and she wraps her arms around my waist and wriggles to get comfortable saying, “In the tradition of my peoples I recommend a siesta.”

Jax is like. “Agreed…Amy?”

She takes his jacket and wads it up like a pillow and shoots me a look and a little smile as she uses him as a pillow. “Definitely.”

I snuggle back against Cheyenne and whisper. “Tell me about Chile?”

She hugs me a little tighter and whispers in my ear. “I first went there when I was six….”