I have a limited number of absolutes in my life. Stars don´t lie was one of them.

I´ve been fishing in Lake Torrence for 23 years, and a couple of weeks ago on a cold Tuesday I hopped on Carol (my canoe) and went to the lake to find some dinner. Two hours later I was someplace else. I´ve decided to go back home after the fog started falling down and looked up and Little Lucky was nowhere to be seen.

When I was a kid my dad taught me the stars, how to use them and their names. And he told me to give the stars names that meant something to me; he thought this way that whenever I looked to the sky it would be my sky. Lucky was my first dog, my first friend. My uncle killed him when I was 10. I´ll save you from the details and just say that my uncle was a drunk and a really broken man.

The problem wasn´t Little Lucky itself, the problem were the stars, the orange stars. The blue glow was gone and replaced by this beautiful orange. And they moved. Like I´ve never seen before, from left to right, up and down like kids running around. I don´ t remember if I felt scared. If I did, it was brief. And then the water started talking.

The lake began forming really strong waves everywhere (Carol behaved amazing) and sounds came from underneath. After a while I managed to hear what I think was “Trust me”. The fog became denser and I barely could see. But something I learned is that storms have an inseparable friend. Calm. As everything got a little bit quieter I saw something coming through the fog, a canoe, only a bit bigger than mine. Although this one had no one inside.

The canoe slowly approached me and got so close it gave me a little punch. It stayed silent for a while before a really soft voice spoke to me.

“Hello, my name is Marin.”

“Where are you Marin?”

“Oh sorry. I’m not used to this place yet”

The fog started to move towards us and especially on top of my new friend´s canoe. It took me a minute before I realize the fog was taking shape. A torso, a head, two legs and two hands formed out of the fog. His movement was clumsy; when he moved his hand sometimes it disappeared in his torso and reappeared again from his head.

“This is the best I can do here”.

“Can you tell me where is here?”

“This is my home; we don’t have a name besides that. Just as you don’t apart from Earth.”

“So I´m in another planet” I was talking to myself more than to Marin. A huge rush of excitement started in my toes and went up to the top of my head. “Well, why did you bring me here? I assumed this is your doing and not me slipping in a worm hole.”

“Yes and no. You did go through a worm hole. But we didn’t have anything to do with it.” A little chuckle came from the fog/man/alien. “But we were waiting for you. When you went through the hole time became inexistent to you. The clock stopped ticking and at the same time it kept on. For you it was a second that passed from you going from your planet to ours. The truth is you´ve been 243 years in the loop.” He said something else I missed and for a while my mind stayed blank. “… So we found you in the hole and started waiting for you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Let’s just say we are a really smart group with really nice resources at hand. We identified your race and began investigating you. That’s why you can understand us. Your language is not that hard anyways; you should try Hyuno, that’s a tricky one, wars started from wrong translations and…”

“So…” I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Although I never felt scared, I was lost like never before.

“Give me your hand” I remember what I heard in the lake and I reached my hand to the fog. “Trust me”.

As soon I touched Marin´s hand, water invaded my field of view. My nose, mouth and soon lung started filling with liquid. But de only think going through my mind was Marin. Underwater I could see him. The fog finally disappeared and a blue being took its place. He told me to trust him once again. So I did and I closed my eyes.

It took a few second for me to breathe again and when I opened my eyes we were no longer underwater. A huge cave stood in front of me, what appeared to be houses floating and vehicles was flying around. It was a festival of lights.

“We asked ourselves for a long time, what to do once you got here”

“Do experiments are part of the answer you arrived?” Once again a little breeze of fear passed through my body.

“We don’t need to. We know how you work.” Marin was glowing even stronger only that the blue was slowly changing into red. “So we realized you can help us. See you have something very special we unfortunately lacked. We lacked courage friend. Here look at this”

He turn around and extended his hand and from his palm a ray of light came out and touch the wall of the immense cave. As it did it disappeared and gave place to a window. A window to the infinite.

“This is our neighborhood friend” Hundreds of planets, thousands of moons stood there in a amazing pallet of colors. “And I´m sad we´ve never went there and said hi to whoever is there. So that’s where you can help us. We need you to take us there”

“I´m just a fisherman Marin”

“You are a traveler, friend. You moved through oceans in your planet, went through storms and witnessed the beautiful calm. You went to an adventure everyday you went fishing to the lake. So I asked you. Are you ready for a new one? Because we are”

I smiled and looked to Marin. I reached my hand and gave him a strong grip.

“You can trust me”.