A/N: Sorry about the delay! It’s November, so I’m busy working on my NaNovel.

Chapter 6 written by Stephanie

It had all started out well enough. “Okay, we’ll just cross this street,” Chris had said.

“Okay!” Faorn replied, stepping out onto the busy street.

“No!” Chris shouted, catching her arm and dragging her back. She gave him a confused look.

“What? You said cross the street, so I was crossing the street!”

Chris gritted his teeth. “If you just walk out, you’re going to get run over!”

“‘Run over’?” Faorn asked.

“I mean, a car will crash into you, and you will be pushed under its wheels, where you will get crushed and die,” Chris said slowly.

Faorn looked at the street with horror. “It’s like swimming across a channel full of starving sharks,” she whispered.

“Here,” Chris guided her over to the crosswalk. “You see these lines? How they make a path?” Faorn nodded. “Once it’s time to cross, you walk across this and no one will run over you.”

“How do you know when it’s time?” Faorn asked.

Chris worked on how to phrase it. “You see this pole here?” Faorn nodded again. “When you want to walk across, you press this button. Then you wait. The button sends a signal to the pole across the street. Then it waits until less cars then normal are coming, and turns on that red light” here Chris pointed up to the traffic lights, “So that all cars coming this way know that they have to stop. Once it’s done that, you’ll see a picture of a walking person light up on the pole on the other side of the street. Then you know that you have about two minutes to walk across to the other side.”

“Umm…”

“Did you get all of that?” Chris asked.

“Some of it.”

“Well, which part didn’t you get?”

“The part after ‘You press this button’.”

Chris nearly died right there. “Okay, let’s try again. You press this button, then wait until that picture of a walking figure lights up.”

“Okay!” Faorn said. She pressed the button.

After about three minutes, while Faorn grew steadily more impatient, the “walk” sign finally lit up.

“Yes!” Faorn yelled. “Success!”

Chris started walking across, and Faorn cut her victory celebration short to accompany him.

After a few more blocks and near-death-inducing crosses, they’d reached downtown.

“Look up,” Chris murmured to Faorn. She did… and her breath was taken away.

“They really do scrape the sky…” She breathed.

Chris smiled. “Would you like to go to the top?” He asked.

“Are you kidding?” She asked. “It would take forever to get up the stairs!”

Chris laughed a little. “Here, I’ll show you another useful little invention. It’s called an elevator.”

“You never took me to the top of a skyscraper,” Katyria complained.

“Hush. You never asked.” Chris replied. Faorn looked around before remembering Katyria’s existence.

The three went inside, and Faorn was immediately alert as she saw people scurrying too and fro. With Chris’s hand at her elbow to keep her from getting pulled by the crowd, they slowly made their way over to the elevators. Faorn eyed the cold metal doors with distaste.

“Is this an ellavyta?” She asked.

“Elevator,” Chris corrected automatically. “And yes.”

“What does it do?”

Chris smiled. “Watch.” He held up his finger, then pressed a button with a phallus ^ symbol on it.

Faorn gave him a strange look. “Why did you just press a button with a phallus on it?” She asked.

Chris twitched. “It’s an arrow pointing up,” he explained. “Now, pick a door, and try to guess which one will open.”

“What happens if I get it right?” Faorn asked.

“I don’t know. You get a cookie.”

“Cookie?”

Chris stared at her. “You’ve never had a cookie?” He asked.

“No. What is it?”

“Heaven.” Chris said, and left it at that.

Shrugging, Faorn pointed at the left elevator. Chris looked to the right.

Within a few seconds, the light above Faorn’s elevator lit up, and the doors opened. Faorn jumped back.

“What is this?” She asked.

Chris restrained her from attacking the opening. “Since we pressed the button, it knows that we want to get in, so it opened the doors for us.”

Gently he led Faorn inside the elevator, let Katyria get in, and pressed the button for the top floor.

The elevator gave a little jerk, then started up. Faorn stumbled and fell, but Chris caught her.

“Look out,” he said, and Faorn obediently looked to the back wall, which was actually a huge window looking outside.

She gasped. “It’s amazing! We’re rising up into the air!”

She hesitantly touched the window, the looked out, hungrily enjoying the view.

On the 16th floor, the elevator stopped.

“Oh, is this as high as it goes?” Faorn asked, disappointed.

“No, someone else wants to get on,” Chris said.

Sure enough, the doors opened, and two girls got on. One had blonde hair past her hips and blue eyes, and the other had straight, glossy black hair and brown eyes behind delicate glasses. They both looked to be in their early teens and were carrying coffee cups filled with hot chocolate.

“Hey,” the blonde said to Chris and Faorn, looking curiously at Chris. The smaller girl, with the black hair, nodded a hello. Chris and Faorn said hi back. The blonde girl stepped back, right into the corner where Katyria was leaning. Chris inhaled quickly. Fortunately, Katyria managed to zoom up at the last moment, ruffling the girl’s hair. The girl froze, and felt the back of her head with confusion. Then she looked up. And looked down. And stared at her friend, who was staring at Faorn with disbelief.

“What is it?” Faorn snapped, self-conscious. “Is it the hair? Huh?”

The two girls looked at each other.

“Adri?” The blonde said.

“Yeah, Stephanie?”

“I think we have an issue.”

“Me too.”

Stephanie, the blonde, started to whisper, but Adri shushed her, glancing at Faorn. Stephanie nodded and pulled out a notebook, which she proceeded to scribble furiously in. Chris watched in confusion as she held it so that only she and Adri could see it, and not even Katyria could look.

***

“Hey, Adri, do you think-”

“SHH!” Adrianna cut off her friend’s whisper, glancing at Faorn. Stephanie nodded, and pulled out her notebook.

Is it just me, or do those two look an awful lot like Chris and Faorn?She wrote.

Adrianna took the pencil and scribbled back, No, I see it too. And you saw the girl’s attitude. It’s definitely Faorn.

Good, Stephanie wrote back, Because I swear by the Gods I just saw Katyria hovering above me.

Adrianna glanced up. I don’t see anything.

It’s probably because I’m her author. I’ve touched “phospherant,” seeing as I invented it, so I can see her.

I vote we follow them.

Agreed.

Stephanie put away the notebook, and the two acted as if nothing had happened.

“Sorry,” Adri apologized to Faorn. “It’s really cool hair.”

“Thanks…” Faorn replied.

Then they were at the top floor.