Corvayne was woken up by Wick hollering at him and Horton to get topside on the radio. He was pulling his spear from the notch along side the bed when he caught what the screaming was about. He looked over at Hari snoring gently next to him and extracted himself from her and hopped into his discarded pants and grabbed a jacket, not expecting to be really needed after going up to verify the word Wick kept belting out.

“CORVAYNE! UFO! HORTON! UFO!”

He twisted open the hatch by his room and popped out into the cold night air, fingers of chill finding their way past the fluffy collar of his jacket. Stars surrounded them, bright like he had seen out in the desert on patrols but with far more colors, reds and blues and purple washes behind the countless bright points. He felt the rushing wind and low grumble of the truck pushing through the desert and took a deep breath of clean desert air, then looked for either the UFO or his lover, and saw Wick first. She had strapped herself into the gunner's seat with a blanket and goggles, waving then swiveling back to track whatever it was she saw. There was a railing Corvayne could pull himself along from the hatch to the chair, so he leaned against it and scanned horizon.

With all the stars it took him a moment to notice the glittering object, perhaps two miles out. It wasn't the third moon, which was on the other side of the truck drifting between the slivers of the other two setting moons. He guessed the object was two or three miles away, maybe half a mile off the ground. It was bright enough some of the far off stone mesa faces were lit by it's passing. It was moving slightly away from them he thought, shrinking a little as he watched.

Horton joined them and spotted it in half a second of poking his head out from the hatch. “Oh wow!”

Corvayne looked between them. “Take a picture.”

Horton snorted. “UFOS almost never properly let you take a picture-”

Wick fumbled with her coat and got her camera out. There was some clicking as she took a few pictures. She lowered her camera, looked, then pulled out her phone and started recording a video.

Horton had his own camera, snapping a few pictures, then pulled out a sensor. Corvayne turned back to the disc. It looked like it was moving pretty fast and smooth. Maybe it was using A-grav?

Horton sniffed. “EM readings are nearly dead, just a spike right at the light spectrum and a little heat. Like, animal level of heat.”

Wick took out binoculars. Corvayne just adjusted his ring a little, squinting. The disc had subtly changed directions.

“It might come over! Remember, UFOs got crazy on Mud when people started doing nuclear tests! They had UAF all over nuclear test sites. We probably are the first nuclear power source on the planet!”

As if it was listening, the disc started getting larger faster. Corvayne rubbed his chin, then scratched his back. He felt something crumble on his back as the itch faded. “Uh, and you are sure they won't be hostile?”

“Oh well, UFOs that attack people is a very small subset of all encounters, and normal people seemed to be able to resist getting taken, so as long as we have mend for the chemical poisoning or radiation damage they sometimes do...”

Horton added from behind Corvayne. “I am actually curious if a standard UFO could actually abduct someone who has leveled up. Many people say that they were paralyzed right before the encounter happened.”

Wick nodded. “Hypersonic projection is one theory. The other one is that the occupants are telepathic and can lock down someone's motor functions.”

Corvayne looked at the disc that was now clearly tracking along with them, perhaps a mile away and getting bigger as it drifted their way. “So perhaps we should go... inside?”

Horton and Wick started talking at the same time.

“This is the chance of-”

“-any Ufologist worth their salt would want to experience-”

“I've waited YEARS for this shit to happen!”

“-Curious to see if it's actually sleep paralysis rather-”

“Out of your FUCKING mind!”

Corvayne cleared his throat. “Well, we have about fifteen seconds to decide.”

Horton dove into the truck while Wick wiggled. “Uh, hey! Horton you craven fake! Corvayne! Help me outta this chair!”

He undid the straps and lifted her by the armpits out of the chair as suddenly the top of the truck gleamed under intense light.

“Too late.” Corvayne muttered as he looked up where the spinning glittering disc was flying, matching the truck's speed perfectly. It was about fifty feet above them. It was difficult to look at it as the disc was so bright it was blinding. It was almost totally silent, with just the faintest of chimes and humming from it.

Corvayne squinted and there was an sensation, a sort of awareness of him of this object, a connection, and with it a certainty that the disk was looking at them, looking at him. Not him, as a stranger, but HIM him. It was a magnificent object, a thing of beauty and both startlingly real but also dream like in that he couldn't see more of it than the constant shifting blinking of lights. Then there was a faint hum and it started speeding off, slightly north of the path they were tracking between rock monuments.

Everything felt muted as the light faded, then the noise of the truck came back and he remembered to blink, a dark spot etched onto his vision from looking at it for too long.

He then noticed Wick was holding onto him tightly, and he took the opportunity to squeeze her. She pushed her way out of his arms. “Corvayne! What are you doing? Get the radio! AFTER IT!”

They lost sight of the disk after following it in a line for about ten minutes, but at Wick's insistence Grunt kept the truck going in a straight line the direction it flew.

Corvayne wasn't that excited to stay up in the cab and watch a nearly endless patch of dirty roll at them, even with Wick in a manic mood, so instead came down and played cards with Horton and Lady Blood Claw. Spears sat down after the first hand, and asked a bunch of questions about the rules that Corvayne figured he'd just try to learn by doing.

She lifted her hand of cards, watery fingers not leaving marks on the cards despite looking like bluish hose streams. Her more defined face looked happy to be included. “So this game, you can trade one card if you and the person trading put another chip into the pot?”

Lady Blood Claw nodded. The tall alien, despite giving Nyx grief for his skipper cap, was wearing a dealer's visor. “You can't look at the card, so part of the game is figuring out if someone is lying. Which is why I don't play with anyone who can read my moods, and Corvayne because he's bad at reading my face, and a newbie.”

“Hey!” Corvayne frowned. “I think I get what your face is telling me.”

LBC for a moment emoted a new pattern, gray and blue zig-zags that raced across her skin for a half second, but then returned to her gray base tone and smirked. “Is my face telling you that you're going to lose again?”

Corvayne shrugged, making a note to himself to record that new pattern. “In a card game it's mostly chance if you get the cards you want. Reading the faces doesn't matter too much since people always think they are going to win, otherwise why play?”

Spears shook her head. “You didn't ever play cards with us, did you? It makes me wish I still had some of the cards Spaces-Torn-Asunder made. It was supposedly based on magical duels...”

Horton held a hand up. “Don't talk about it. You'll summon-”

Gary was already behind her. “Oh man, water people have something like Magic Cards!?”

Corvayne didn't understand that but he put his hand of cards down then gestured between his would-be deciple and Spears. “Gary, I don't know if you met her, but this is a fellow Watcher. I should say, she's a Watcher I'm an exile, but-” Corvayne saw that Gary looked a little confused. “She's as good if not better than me with a spear.”

“Ah! She's master's rival!” The larger man bowed to her. Spears smiled and bowed politely back. Gary turned to Corvayne. “I won't ask her for training, I don't wish for you and her to develop some sort of feud. Can I watch when you have matches?”

Spears laughed politely. “Of course you can watch! And I don't think Corvayne would be mad at all for us both to train you. Any two Watchers are two halves of a whole when they fight. Partners and Friends.” Her eyes turned to look at him, glittering a slightly darker sapphire color.

Corvayne couldn't help but mutter, “I never heard that before.”

Picking his hand back up, he had a pair of high rockets and the Ace of Moons, but his red cards were a three of suns and a four of stars. It was sort of like poker but there was a blue suite, planets, that only had face cards, and one of the winning hands was one of each suite and something about ascending cards with having a higher value moon card over a planet card beat a double.

“Dude! Corvayne! Two of YOU training me? That will be awesome!”

Corvayne put his cards down when LBC raised. “I don't think it will be exceptional. Also I want to stress that I don't want to put anyone under the same conditions I learned to fight under. It made me profoundly miserable.”

A little heat had entered his voice and he saw both Spears and Gary lean away. LBC put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze while laying out three of a kind to take the pot. Corvayne heard something between muttering and water boiling from beside him, but Lady Blood Claw smoothed it over with an invitation.

“No need to hover Gary. Let's play cards. Corvayne, it's your turn to ante.”

Her gentle request got him to blink and look at his hand, then push forward a few Cascadian coins, about half a full credits worth.

Spears looked sheepish as she pushed a single chip of blue essence into the pot. “I'm sorry. I know it's weird. But I am looking forward to sparring. I remember you always pushed me to get better! You were really good, I thought you didn't like me because you had a secret girlfriend.”

“Hey!” Horton exclaimed, then pointed a finger at the hexagonal blue crystal.

“Is it too little for ante?” Spears reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of the tiny blue flakes with a few green ones mixed in.

Horton snorted. “Too big! Don't you have credits? You can't raise us to three credits.”

Spears looked down then up. “I don't have anything smaller...” The water turned pink for some reason on her cheeks.

Corvayne took the credit and a half on the table and just pushed the pile to Spears-Like-Water. “I think we can make change with this.”

Lady Blood Claw nodded. “Spears, I'll give you some change, or we can switch to blue essence chips.”

That perked her up. “Oh, I'm so sorry. I honestly didn't get to make or spend any money in the city, so I was worried it was too little, to be honest.”

Horton shook his head. “If we are going to bet, we have to follow rules, or things get nasty. Credits are lower stakes than essence, same reason. Nothing personal.” He said while waving his hand, all in a gruff manner that suggested he was annoyed by every part of the entire exchange.

Gary laughed and patted Horton's shoulder, which made the man look practically volcanic with ire. Gary had no idea. “See! That's why I like you guys! All buddies!”

Lady Blood Claw and Horton seemed to take turns demolishing them at cards for an hour or so before the truck started to slow. Corvayne started to stand to go check what had changed when Horton tapped a panel on the table and the screen behind him flared to life and displayed that they were moving along a road that weaved between small streams and fenced off fields with greens poking out.

The screen changed to the frontal view and Corvanye could see a village built around and likely inside the rock pillars ahead.

Corvayne looked at the other card players. “I wonder if they saw the UFO... wait what did Hari call it? NMO? Hopefully we don't go driving another hundred miles cross country.”

Spears beamed. “Look at how colorful those buildings against the rocks are! I hope we meet some new friends.”

Corvayne could see people starting to gather facing the truck as it ground to a halt, and it looked like quite a few of them had spears and bows.

LBC didn't look like she missed that detail, folding her arms as she put her feet up on the table. “I hope this goes smoothly.” She frowned a little.

Gary looked around. “I hope we don't get drawn into some sort of fight.”

Horton swept up the credits and essence chips he had won on the last hand into a messenger bag, injecting a moment of empty levity into his voice. “Well, since we're making wishes, I hope they are all elvish volleyball players! But since I don't see any trees or nets around here, I'd say we shouldn't hold our breath on any of that crap.”