Extraordinarily Unordinary - Sian Webster (books to get back into reading .txt) 📗

The East Sun was slowly beginning to sink behind the snow-capped mountains of Recondite, casting its last purple rays across the courtyard of the King’s magnificent palace. Its turrets rose high into Rocondite’s alien sky, which – at that moment – was a burgundy colour as the purple East Sun set, and the red North sun sat profoundly in the centre of the sky. The gold plated balconies and window ledges shined purple in the sunset, lighting the palace up like a ultra-violet beacon. As the East Sun finally finished setting, the last of its purple rays disappearing from the sky; it revealed the West Sun that it had been eclipsing. The West Sun had started to set an hour or two before, and judging from the ninety degree angle of the North Sun in the sky, it was around 8:30 at night. In an hour and a half, the North Sun would set, and the city of Sealie would sleep until the rising of the West Sun the next morning.

The sunsets in Recondite were certainly mesmerising, but as Steven Copsworth hurried across the King’s Courtyard with his wife, Marie, who was carrying their three month old baby in her arms, he had no time or desire to awe in the presence of the setting suns. A direct request from the King wasn’t exactly something you could ignore, and Steven Copsworth knew this from first-hand experience from when he first started studying the stars. The day before, he had sent the King a message, and now he had been summoned to the Palace on immediate terms. As the small family reached the huge arched doors at the foot of the Palace, Marie tapped Steven on the shoulder carefully.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Steven?” She asked; worry clear in her voice and eyes.

“I’m not sure of much, Marie,” Steven admitted, “but I am sure that Recondite is dying, and unless we fix that, or find a new planet, we will too. And Casey will never have the opportunity to have a childhood on a dying planet.”

“I wish so much that I could disagree with you.” Marie sighed, looking down at their baby, Casey, affectionately. “But even then, what type of childhood is one without her parents?”
Steven reached out his hand and caressed Marie’s cheek. “A somewhat better childhood than the one we’d be forcing her into if we kept her here.”

Marie sighed, but nodded.

Steven pressed the buzzer by the door and announced that they had arrived. They were instantly escorted to the throne room, where the King was waiting graciously in his magnificent gold throne, studded with amethysts which resembled the East Sun.

“You have good news, I gather?” He asked Steven slowly.

Steven nodded.

“Go on,” The King pushed.

“There is a planet.” Steven stated. “A planet not so far from here. Earth. It is inhabited. By a race much like our own, too. One of us could blend right in with their kind and they wouldn’t suspect a thing. They have the same physical characteristics.”

The King stroked his beard. “And you’re suggesting that we could live in harmony with these people?”

Steven’s eyes widened and he shook his head frantically. “No, no. That would be completely impossible. There’s around six million of them inhabiting the planet, and it’s incredibly close to being over-populated. If we were to live in harmony with them, we would bring about the death of Earth, not just our own.”

“So…” The King said slowly. “You’re suggesting an invasion.”

“Yes.” Steven said in all seriousness.

“How soon?” The King asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I suggest that we send one of us to the planet. Have them observe it and the way the inhabitants live. We shall see if they’re worth saving before we invade and start a cold-hearted war. We do not want to destroy a race that could help us in the future. They have the capacity to be so much more than they currently are, your majesty. They’re a young race. We must let them grow, or it will be as if we’re murdering small children.”

The King’s eyes swept the room as he considered Steven’s proposal, his eyes coming to a halt on the bundle of blankets in Marie’s arms. “…And you wish your daughter to be the one to go, do you?”

“Anyone older than a baby will grow too quickly. Maybe even die. We have to take our chances with a newborn and its empathy link with its parents. They will grow up around these creatures, the homosapians, and will unintentionally give us all the information we need to decide whether we may need this race, as well as all the information we need to defeat them.”
The King stopped and considered this for a while. Time seemed to stand still in those few minutes. It was as if the entire planet had come to a standstill to wait for the King to give the Copsworths an answer. Eventually, he nodded.

“Prepare a shuttle immediately.” He told the guard closest to him.

“As you wish, Sir.” The guard replied before hurrying off.

The King then turned to Steven and Marie. “Take note, Mr and Mrs Copsworth; I have no power or authority to keep your child safe. A new born can die as easy as an eighty year old. Little Casey’s safety is in her own hands. As soon as the shuttle departs, there is nothing at all we can do to assist her on her way. She must make her own path. You shall have no contact with your daughter whatsoever. The empathy link you share will be severed and connected to me.”

All the blood seemed to drain from Steven and Marie’s faces, yet the both of them nodded in unison.

“So we have an agreement?”

White as sheets and looking as if they had seen a ghost, the Copsworths nodded once more.

“Thank you, Mr and Mrs Copsworth. That will be all.” The King said finally, walking over and taking the bundle of blankets from Marie’s arms. “I will not be needing your assistance again in the near future, so if you have any more worries, you can take them to your Sealie’s Royal Representative. I have no part in your little experiments anymore.”

After being escorted back out of the Palace, as the Copsworths were making their way back across the courtyard once more, the rays if sun reflecting onto it now red as the North Sun began to set, they looked into the sky and saw the last glimpse they would see of Casey for a very long time.

A white ray of light flew across the sky from the Palace and out to space. To anyone else in Sealie, or anyone else on Recondite for that matter, the small ray of light could have been interpreted as a shooting star. A rare occasion – the star-gazers like Steven would have been confused yet fascinated out of their brains, for there were normally only shooting stars in the third quarter of a Recondite year (in Lujy, Tausug and Beetmerps – July, August and September in Earth months, Steven had discovered). Yet Steven and Marie knew the truth; the ray of light that had been dubbed as an out-of-season shooting star was in fact Casey.

And Casey would be the only thing stopping the genocide of the human race, or the genocide of her own.

“Keep her safe, she’s not like you.”

I had read those seven words so many times in my lifetime yet they had never really made sense to me. I imagined they never would. Yet I kept the small piece of crumpled paper, admiring the beautiful cursive hand-writing the message had been written in, and wondering how on earth I had anything in common with the person who wrote it, let alone genetics.

The note was the only thing I had from my real parents. One tiny scrap of paper. Seven simple words. One huge message beyond my understanding.

“She’s not like you.”

How? How was I not like everyone else? What was I, then? An alien or something? No. No, I didn’t think so.

Well I guess I should explain a few things. My name is Casey Copsworth, I’m sixteen years old, I live in Nottingham, England (Ilkeston, actually, but people tend to know better when I say Nottingham because that’s where Robin Hood comes from), and attend Kirk Hallam Community Technology & Sports College. When I was a baby – barely three months old – I was left on the doorstep of Elephant Orphanage in Sheffield, which was about an hour away. I was at the orphanage for two or three weeks before I was adopted by Elizabeth and William Harris. I’m glad from what I’ve heard, orphanages aren’t very nice places to grow up in. But who can’t resist a new-born baby with springy red curls and emerald green eyes? Apparently my adoptive parents couldn’t.

So there I was, at my home. Yet, it never really felt like… home. Sometimes I felt like I didn’t even belong on the same planet. I was the same as everyone else, yes, but I also felt that I couldn’t be more different. I didn’t know why, but that was just how I felt. Elizabeth said all teenagers felt that way, and the only way to fix those feelings was to discover yourself – to find out who you truly were. I had no clue who I really was. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know, either.

Anyway, I sat at my desk in my small bedroom, reading and rereading the message my parents left me with all those years ago. I wondered where they were. Who they were. If they were happy… If they missed me at all…

I shook my head frantically as if to shake the thoughts away. I reminded myself that, biologically or not, Elizabeth and William were my parents, because thinking about my parents got me angry and sad at the same time, and I ended up turning into one big, blubbering emotional mess. I couldn’t afford to be a big, blubbering emotional mess at that moment; I had to get ready for school.

I pulled my uniform out of my wardrobe, happy to see that Mum must have ironed it the night before; it meant I wouldn’t be getting detention again for having creases in my shirt. I pulled on my white blouse, being sure to button it properly (I’ve never been good at buttoning shirts), slipped on my boring, navy blue pleated skirt, and rummaged through my drawers to find