The woman at the front desk eyed Therrus, then pointed at his sunglasses. “It might be bright outside, but don’t expect much sunshine from old Bulver. He doesn’t like reporters, Mr. James.”
Therrus, reveling in the ring of his adopted Earth name, replied with a bow. “Fear not, madam. I am only here to help.”
Therrus picked flowers with Harmony Star in a field near their cottages.
“Luke! Come look at this!” Harmony called.
His heart panged every time she used his alias, but she couldn’t know his real identity. His true reptilian humanoid form would scare her, no matter how much she loved animals.
“You, too?”
Therrus ignored the she-human who spoke although he couldn’t help noting her voice was young-sounding, wry, and almost laughing, but with an edge of something else.
Something what? Didn’t concern him. The number one rule for Civarans visiting Earth: do not under any circumstances engage with the humans.
Announcing the winners of the “Multiversal: Dorian Gray” October 2025 flash fiction contest!
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“Agent Therrus, are you insinuating your cover has been compromised?”
I opened my mouth but swiftly shut it again. Is that what I’m trying to say?
The hologram of my Earthan Initiative contact lifted an impatient brow. Intergalactic calls were tricky as well as costly. When initiated, it was better to keep them “short and sweet” as humans said.
Therrus tried to quiet his heavy breathing, back pressed to the door, hands bound before him. He attempted, again, to pull apart the bindings. Stars, these are tight. How do they have access to such advanced restraints? He’d been led to believe that monitoring these particular humans would be simple.
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“Get it right this time, Therrus.” Loriq’s green skin shimmers as he stabs a finger at the main console of the Civaran starship. “Three relocations in two months?”
“Word of honor.” I raise one six-fingered hand in an Earthling salute. “No more interacting with primitive humans.”
Luke’s six-fingered hand trembled as he poured foamed milk with precision into the inky black liquid—each muscle begging to be the first to perform the long-awaited act. He had only read about making an espresso macchiato in his Human Studies courses, but now he was here on Earth, hiding his Civaran hand beneath caffeine-resistant gloves,
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I didn’t know what hit me.
Only moments before I had been reveling in the frost crunching beneath my sneakers and admiring Earth’s rising sun. Technically I wasn’t doing anything that was prohibited. It just never occurred to my superiors that any Civaran would willingly venture into freezing temperatures. As a reptilian, I’m cold blooded, so this was imprudent at best.
The wooden attic floorboards cradled the dying body of Mr. Evergreen.
“What happened, sir?” I set down my candle and wicker basket, palms sweating. Long shadows raced across the floorboards, the light illuminating a knife. The smell of moth balls and old cedar flooded my senses as I knelt. This was not an accident.
Beauty is as essential as breath to me. Art is my bread and meat. I sought a painting of a beautiful young girl in an oval frame titled Death in Life. A feat of artistry so a realistic that legend held it had drained the vitality from the subject herself.
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It is a little-known fact that the universe runs not on love, money, or the speed-of-light, but on appointments. Missed ones, mostly. Civilizations have collapsed because a royal overslept, galaxies have failed to form because a bureaucrat’s lunch ran long, and a million-year war was fought because someone misplaced a tea invitation.
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