3. Orbital Pudding

“Tika, son of Titus, you are sentenced to the maximum punishment of banishment, doomed to orbit around space… forever. That, or…”

The executioner grinned as he secured the ropes on the small spaceship’s chair.

“…If you’re really unlucky, you land on planet Earth.”

***

Tika Madden looked around the house he had managed to secure this time around. Oasis Springs.

Had he had anything more of a choice, it would have been any other world.

He stared at the bland, dull interior of the house and sighed. It had been decades since he had landed here, and yet he still found himself unable to get used to this place.

This planet.

His new home.

He’d tried to find his place here. Oh, yeah, he had. And he had had his moments, too – though he wasn’t sure how much of an achievement those handful of moments were when you counted the decades he had spent here already.

It just never quite worked out in the end. The whole thing with Chaya Romeo was just one of many examples, Tika bitterly admitted. Boy, what a mess that had been.

And that hadn’t even been the worst of it. For one brief moment, he allowed his mind to trail to another instance, almost two decades ago, when…

No. He wasn’t quite ready to dwell on that yet. Didn’t think he’d ever be, either.

Then there was Cai Hatano. Tika couldn’t help himself: curled his lips into a fond smile as he thought about him. He had actually been one of the first (or was he the first?) Earthlings who accepted him, back when he just crashed on Earth. And over the years, even though they weren’t always in contact, whenever they did meet up, things easily reverted to how they had always been between them: relaxed and, most of all, fun. He figured Cai was mostly to thank for that one.

He still met up with Cai, sometimes.

The problem was: Cai was a vampire. And Tika… well, he didn’t much like vampires.

Hated them, in fact.

He was convinced it was supposed to be a natural rivalry. A mortal enemies kind of thing, between aliens and vampires. Sure, there were more… popular mortal enemies for vampires out there, in the form of stick-waving spellcasters and/or smelly canine-toothed mooncrafts. But this, Tika pressed, this was the real thing.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that over all the years he had “battled” the race of vampires before, he had never had much luck actually defeating them.

And so ultimately, Tika was stuck between a few resolutions he struggled to choose between. He wanted to,

1. Finally feel right at home here, on Earth;
2. Get rid of those evil, invasive species of vampire if he wanted to ever (see 1);
3. Go back home.

And unfortunately for him, none of those things were all that easy. They were, he admitted, fairly ambitious goals.

But if there was one quality Tika could actually pride himself on, it was his ambition. And so he got started on what he felt was the easiest to achieve item on his list: to go back home.

After all, he really had tried to fit in here on Earth, but it seemed as though no matter what he did, Earth just…

…It just really did not agree with him.

***

So… going back home. Right. That became Tika’s newest goal; and he really went for it.

He gave it his absolute all.

He spent every waking moment of his day in his front yard building the spaceship he was convinced he could build. Sure, he received a few weirded frowns every now and then. But that didn’t matter.

He should be out of here in no-time, anyway.

There was, however, one slight bump along the way. Bump wasn’t exactly the right word for it, he found. It was a… a minor inconvenience, if you will.

Well, no, that actually doesn’t fit either. When he heard the news that one of his actually successful one-night stands had resulted in the birth of two children, He didn’t care all that much.

But then their mother told him the children looked (and acted) “weird”, and that’s when Tika’s interest peaked and he decided to take a look. And sure enough, lo and behold…

These Earth-born children somehow managed to come out as aliens, much like he was.

At first, he couldn’t believe it. Then, when he finally forced his mind to comprehend the realization this new truth brought with, he immediately jumped to action and pressed the mother to allow the children to come with him.

After all, as a fellow alien, he automatically became the most logical choice of parent.

Now, this… it changed things. Suddenly, resolutions one and two began to sound a lot more welcoming. He had had no idea that copulation with humans could result in the birth of alien-born children… and, as he thought about the implications this newfound knowledge would have on his presence here on Earth, he realized that with these alien children – in many ways his kind – around him, he might not have to feel so alone anymore.

After all, if he couldn’t get back to Sixam, then maybe he should just bring Sixam to him.

And so Tika became a father to twins Emil and Fenne (unfortunately the children’s mother was resolute about them keeping these dull, Earthly names), and it was…

Well, it was a WHOLE lot harder than he had assumed it would be.

Oh yeah, it was hard alright.

Ultimately, as much as Tika tried to hold onto his first resolution, he inadvertently found himself straying back to the third one. Because in the end, rocket science was much, much less daunting than parenting.

Believe him.

So… back to the third resolution. Even with his children – he guessed the one thing he got lucky with was their independence, and the fact that with the two of them, they at least had each other – he went back to spending any moment he could spare on the spaceship in his front yard.

Any moment, by wind and weather.

And in the end, it paid off. Even he hadn’t dared to be optimistic enough that it might, but it seemed as though Tika had actually managed.

He was besides himself. Exuberant. Couldn’t wait to explore the vast, vast space he had once been doomed to venture for eternity.

And he was confident.

And so one morning he bid his otherwordly-yet-Earthly children farewell…

Voiced a contented “Goodbye, cruel world…”

And off he went.

All the while, Emil and Fenne were waiting patiently – and, in Fenne’s case, confidently – for their father to come home.

It did not take long for him to do so.

Perhaps parenting wasn’t the only skill he had made the mistake of underestimating.