After a restless night of excited waiting, Killerie had woken up early, eaten a hasty breakfast, collected her luggage, and climbed in the van. Madeline apparently lived on a sleeping schedule that didn't quantify four in the morning as merely 'early', which meant Killerie had unwillingly taken a bath while her mom got ready to go. A long drive had followed, carrying Killerie far outside their normal range.

Now they were at the terminal with three suitcases and a satchel with what Madeline called a 'safety measure' inside, and Killerie was wriggling.

She couldn't help herself. She'd never been good at containing her excitement, and it spilled out of her soul through her bouncy alternating steps, her head bobbing from the movement.

The terminal was a massive, blocky structure bigger than any structure Killerie had ever seen. Oddly, she couldn’t see any planes or spaceships blasting off into space to meet with the interplanetary ships, but she couldn’t figure out how else anyone was supposed to get up or down.

The biggest source of her glee at the moment came from the terminal lady. Or at least, Killerie thought it was a lady. Because it was also an alien.

She was taller than Killerie, with mottled purple skin. Six bright blue eyes sat above a long snout loaded with teeth, and two triple-jointed arms gracefully tapped away on her keyboard. Killerie couldn’t see anything from the chest down (dressed in a very nice beige turtleneck), but whenever she moved it was unnervingly smooth.

All of which was secondary to the fact she was an alien!

Madeline walked back from talking to the alien, looking through the paperwork she’d been given. “Okay bean, are you ready to…”

She trailed off, taking in Killerie’s bobbling. An inevitable smile leaked onto her face. “You look ready to go.”

Killerie nodded, telekinetically seizing the handles of the suitcases that had wheels. “Who was that? Did she hiss when she said words with ‘s’ in them? What did she smell like!?”

Madeline chuckled as she grabbed the last of her luggage. “That was the desk agent, she didn’t hiss, and it’s not polite to ask about smell.”

Killerie pouted irritably, following her mom and dragging the suitcases along. The terminal’s hallways were brightly lit, with plenty of benches and places to sit. A few screens displayed starship arrivals and departures. There were a lot more people than Killerie had expected here, although most of them didn’t seem to care too much about her presence, which felt a bit odd.

Aside from the desk agent and Killerie herself, everyone else was human. Killerie would’ve been lying if she’d said she wasn’t disappointed, but they weren’t on the ship yet.

Killerie craned her head over Madeline’s shoulder, trying to get a good picture of the floor map she was looking at. The layout wasn’t particularly complicated - the lobby was one of the larger parts, but there seemed to be a good number of much bigger rooms further back in the building that didn’t have an obvious purpose, along with several unmarked… hallways? It was hard to tell what exactly they were for.

Unfortunately, the gift shop wasn’t marked, so the map was essentially useless as far as she was concerned. She backed off with an inaudible sigh. Excitement fading, she glanced up and found a shedling approaching them.

The centipede was bigger than Killerie, easily sixteen or fifteen feet long, but also thinner. A rippling green-blue pattern repeated down its back, flowing along the dense overlapping chitin plates. It had four mandibles instead of Killerie’s two, and a white circular device sat on the side of its neck, one identical to the one on her own neck.

It made a beeline for Killerie and Madeline, moving much faster than Killerie could. Coming to a stop before them, it pulled its legs beneath it and reared up, mandibles clacking rhythmically. A flat male voice came out of it. “Killerie of the Exceptional Mind?”

Killerie nervously glanced at her mom, and Madeline stepped in front of her. “Killerie Meredith Parker, actually. And I’m her mother, Madeline. Do you need something?”

The shedling silently stared at both of them, and Killerie wondered how many millions of others were watching them through his eyes. "You have never expressed a desire to leave the planet."

His words were almost accusatory, and Killerie nearly stepped forward in her mother's defense before Madeline spoke.

"My daughter and I are on our way to Grinatyz. We already reserved the tickets."

Her voice was polite, but Killerie felt like there was another conversation going on, one she didn't know the words to.

The shedling seemed a little stuck, as if he were thinking his words through. A deafening silence filled the hallway, drawing Killerie's attention to the fact that the other humans had left in very short order.

"Please follow me," He finally stated, and turned around.

Killerie glanced at her mom. Madeline's face was drawn in tense lines, stiff worry easing through the cracks. She noticed Killerie's gaze and smoothly relaxed, the anxiety vanishing as though it'd never been there. "We should follow him."

The sudden change unnerved Killerie. How many other worries had she missed?

Killerie did as her mother asked, her gaze flicking between Madeline and the shedling as they walked. A gentle patter of echoes followed the footsteps of both shedlings, with Madeline's shoes clacking on the ceramic floor.

As they walked, Killerie gradually began to notice a dull static in her ears. It was barely audible, a nearly silent thrum of activity that ebbed with the beat of her heart. It was… attractive, somehow. It brought feelings to the back of her mind that she didn't have names for, things she'd never felt before.

The shedling stopped in front of a large sliding door, neatly ensconced in the wall, and Killerie vaguely realized he was watching her. The door slid open without introduction.

The static built to a buzz as the small group took in the sight of several hundred shedlings in a massive open room. Big ones, larger than Killerie and oddly familiar, huddled around a chunk of glowing technology that she couldn't identify. Small ones, only three or four feet long, scuttling between the legs of their companions. And above it all, half a dozen truly gigantic shedlings, their sheer size threading about the room. Any one of them had to be hundreds of meters long, but their care in avoiding the centipedes below was unmistakable. The floor was alive with motion, a wriggling chaos of perfectly timed steps and angled bodies.

"Do you feel different?"

At the shedling's question, Killerie realized her mandibles had fallen open and closed them, embarrassed. She'd gone her whole life without seeing another member of her species, and now there were maybe a thousand right in front of her.

Trying to ignore the persistent buzz, she focused on his question. "Not really? I don't think so… no?"

"Please answer definitively," the shedling flatly stated. For once the protective glare Madeline always had simmering below her smile was gone, replaced with sincere distress. Killerie found it unexpectedly terrifying.

"No," she firmly repeated.

The shedling visibly relaxed, its antennae falling to lay along its back. "Good. You may board the Khransis."

Madeline pulled Killerie into a hug the moment he left, planting a kiss on her forehead. Grabbing onto one of her upper legs, she started leading her back down the hallway, leaving the shedling room behind. She was walking a little faster than normal, enough that Killerie was forced into a half-jog. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course." Killerie replied, and then hesitantly added, "...Should I not be?"

A flash of vestigial concern crossed Madeline's face, replaced by warmth in a fraction of a second. "No, I suppose not."

Killerie tried to give her a smile, but it didn't really stick. "Mom, is everything-"

“Oh, look at that!” Madeline interrupted. Maybe a hundred feet away, the ceiling opened up into a giant cement dome, with a small rectangular room in the middle. An incomprehensibly complicated series of wires and circuits rose from the top, poles extending from the box and ending in the walls. A line of people impatiently waited behind the open pair of steel doors in the room's side, and a human attendant counted them in with a clipboard. "Do you know what that is?"

Killerie's worries were unwillingly drowned in the onslaught of inexhaustible curiosity that always accompanied new technology, and she skittered forward. "No, what?"

Madeline followed her, relief etched in her face. "That's what's getting us to the ship. Do you know what a tesser chamber is?"

"A what chamber!?"

Madeline smiled and it looked like a sunrise to Killerie. "It isn't exactly teleportation, but-"

"We're going to teleport to the ship?!"

Killerie's vocoder put a layer of fuzz over the words as it tried to adjust to her attempt at volume, and Madeline's grin only widened. "It's not teleportation."

"Well, what is it?" If Killerie had been bobbing before, this was a full on dance of excitement, scientific glee exploding from every chink in her carapace.

Madeline started explaining it as she got in line, gesturing for Killerie to quiet down a little. Killerie unsuccessfully tried to keep her legs still as they waited for their turn, ignoring the annoyed expressions turned her way. "Well, I don't know exactly how it works. It just… changes where you are.”

Killerie frowned. “But that’s teleportation!”

Madeline shook her head. “I don’t quite know how to explain it. It just puts you somewhere else, without moving you.”

Killerie paused, trying to wrap her head around that. “Wait, so I don’t move, and it doesn’t do atomic reassembly, but I’m just there? How does that…”

She trailed off as it sank in that Madeline really didn’t know how it worked, which was a bit bizarre. Madeline knew exactly how almost every device back home worked. In fact, her mom easily could’ve handled anything the nuisance elves threw at her. Which was… a bit strange, now that she thought about it.

Putting that aside, Killerie watched as a few more people at the end of the line went into the tesser chamber. The doors swung shut behind them with a solid click. A weird tingle shot up her spine, but before she could even process it the doors opened again.

The tesser chamber was empty now.

“I want to go in there.” Killerie immediately decided.

Madline gave her a pat. “We are, bean.”

It took nine minutes and three trips for Killerie and her mom to finally get in the tesser chamber. The interior was completely bare. The only things in it were the luggage and their owners, most of whom were pointedly not looking at Killerie.

Killerie started bobbing in excitement as the doors closed. What was it going to feel like? Was she going to see the whole universe at once? Was she going to be hurled through a wormhole at the speed of light, every atom in her body strung out as reality itself-

“Please disembark quickly and efficiently, and ensure that all baggage is secured. Have a nice trip!”

The doors opened along with the announcement, sending Killerie’s thoughts to a stuttering halt. She hadn’t felt anything. “We’re here already?”

People started filing out as Madeline sympathetically squeezed one of Killerie’s legs.

Killerie stopped paying attention at that point. The area outside the matching tesser chamber was luxurious, with a lush gray carpet and warm yellow lights set into the ceiling. It wasn’t what drew her gaze, though.

Killerie walked over to the circular window and stared out at the green and blue planet before her. One or two starships crossed over it, casting monolithic shadows onto its even green surface, an oval horizon curving around everything. She could barely make out the patterns of massive housing arrays, along with farms and shops and who knew what else. The green moon Werzky peeked out from behind Odman, a vivid green-brown of farmland and cultivation. More than anything else, she couldn’t believe how big it was, an endless curve enveloping the world. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t see where her house was. She’d expected scale, but not… not this.

Madeline walked up next to her, pulling the luggage along. “It’s quite the sight, isn’t it?”

Killerie wordlessly nodded. She never could have imagined that anything could’ve looked like… that.

It made her all the more excited for Grinatyz.