Life Outside

February 2030 - San Myshuno, New York
Smith family - Sam is 25, Ariel is 22, Alex is 8 months

Sam and Ariel both stay busy with little Alex. 

He’s getting close to his first birthday and they know he’ll be getting into even more of a handful once that day comes!

“Are you sure it’s okay if I go out to the gym while you stay with Alex?” Ariel asks.

“Go and relax,” Sam tells her. “I’m a dad, I can take care of him on my own.”

So Ariel heads off to the gym for a little alone time. Alex is asleep so Sam has his alone time to meditate and relax.

Ariel loves being a wife and mom, but a little time at the yoga studio is always good when she can fit it into her schedule.

After a nice yoga workout, Ariel hangs out at the gym with her friend Lia Akana.

“I think that old guy is coming to hit on you again,” Ariel whispers.

They don’t say anything as the man sits down. It’s clear that he’s trying to look younger than he really is, probably to attract the attention of young women like them.

“Hey, there,” he says as he sits next to Lia. “You looked really nice doing your workout upstairs. I was at the punching bag nearby. Did you see me?”

“No, I didn’t,” Lia tells him. “I’m not ever interested in looking at you. Is that a hint?”

The man lets out a grumpy huff of breath, but he gets up and leaves them alone. “Nice work,” Ariel tells her friend. “Maybe he’s gotten the hint to leave you alone.”

“Maybe that just means he’ll move on to trying for your interest,” Lia says with a laugh.

“Already taken!” Ariel says. “He’s out of luck.”

***

The neighbor across the hall is making a lot of noise with his stereo turned up loud. Ariel just got Alex to sleep and so she marches across the hall, pounding on the guy’s door and then threatening to kick him in the area that towel covers if he doesn’t turn the music down.

Sam comes into the hall to try to calm Ariel down, but she isn’t having it. “This guy has no respect for his neighbors! If he did, he’d know how to be polite about that terrible music he listens to.”

Sam assures Ariel that he can handle this and for her to go check on Alex. As she starts to leave, the guy smirks and says, “You tell her, man. A chick doesn’t make the rules.”

Ariel turns back around and scowls toward Sam. “You better be strong enough to hold me back so I don’t kick him in that tiny thing under the towel.”

Sam manages to calm her down enough that she goes back inside the apartment. Sam scowls at the neighbor. “Now you’ve messed up my night by getting me stuck with an angry wife. I should be the one to kick you where that towel hangs.”

***

Sam and Ariel hire a baby-sitter to watch Alex for a couple hours while they go down to the flea market in the square near their apartment. 

There are vendors set up selling food and drinks and a city police officer playing music for tips to give to a local children’s home.

Lia meets up with Ariel at the market and they leave Sam trying out a new snack one of the vendors is selling while they go look at the things for sale.

Ariel finds a martini style lamp she just can’t resist, even though she doesn’t know where she’ll put it.

Sam does a double take when he spots the man standing behind Lia when she arrives to shop with Ariel. The green skin, the eyes… could this be someone like him?

He’s nervous, but he somehow works up the courage to introduce himself to the man. He looks Sam up and down, taking in everything he sees.

“You are half?” he asks.

“A quarter alien,” Sam admits. “My grandfather was abducted and gave birth to my dad and his twin brother.”

Sam has so many questions for the man. “How long have you been here?”

“Twenty-two years,” he says. “I was sent here to study the people here, and I just never left.”

Sam knows he can’t ask too many questions here with all these people around them, but he hopes to at least hear a little of the man’s story and the home world he once lived in.

Sam tells Ariel all about his conversation with the man from the planet Sixam, the alien who had blended into Earth’s society for the last two decades.

“I’ve never met anyone else like my family,” Sam tells her. “I have to use the same story about a skin condition that’s made me green like this. Honestly, I was relieved when I saw that Alex doesn’t have skin like mine. He could go on just being human and nothing else. But now I wonder if maybe I should teach him everything I know about our history, everything I can learn.”

“I’m leaving that up to you,” Ariel says. “I don’t think you should hide it, but it is your family history to tell if you choose to.”

Sam smiles to himself as he thinks about the day he’s had. Maybe he will be happy to teach his son everything he can about that part of their family.

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I know these pictures are so oddly shaped! I had sized them for my Tumblr posts, but overwrote the original files. So these are the pictures I have saved in my folder. There are some other updates that have pictures like this too, but then I stopped doing it.

The scenery in San Myshuno is so pretty!