Home Away From Home

“Berk!” Button lets out a happy bark and hurries around the scooter to run up to you, her little titties jiggling all the way. Stopping just short of actually touching you she looks up at you. “A real live man in my little den. I can’t believe it.”

“I can’t believe it either.” You say. “A real live dog girl. This is wild.”

“Hey! I’m not that old yet. Geez.”

“Huh?”

“You really don’t know a lot, do you?” She says. “We’re whelps until 18, pups until we’re 30, and THEN we’re dogs.” She crosses her arms. “Pff. Dog he says.”

“Pup, sorry.” You say through a smile. Her getting offended somehow only made her more adorable.

“Thank you.” She gives a nod. “We pups are very sensitive about that. Those of us who even make it to doghood usually don’t get long.”

Your smile fades as the grim reality underlying that statement hits home. Dear God, a race of disposable people? It chilled you to your very soul. Speaking of chilled. “Hey, uh, it’s getting a bit nippy in here.”

She giggles and points at your nips. “I see that! Come on Jesse. Let me show you our place.”

After closing and latching your hiding trunk you follow her to the open panel on the wall watching her tail wag back and forth in front of you as you still didn’t quite believe what was happening. Had everything gone to plan it would have been weeks until you met an actual alien, but here you were just a couple of hours in and you were already rooming with one.

When Button gets to the crawl space she grabs the removed panel at the top and motions you to go in first. “Just follow it and take a right at the intersection. I need to close up behind us and then I’ll be right there.”

“Sure.” You peer down the dimly lit crawlspace then get down on your hands and knees.

You are just crawling forward when Buttons says. “Jesse?”

“Huh?” You look up to find yourself eye to tip with the pups little peen. You blush and quickly avert your gaze. When she sees you blush she blushes too. “Oh! Um…nothing. Go ahead.”

You nod and hurry on your way. The space itself is about waist height with a similar width so you have little trouble moving through on your hand and knees. Every so often there is a line of glowing dots along the plain gray walls that provide just enough illumination so that you weren’t going blindly. As you hear the click of the panel behind you being pulled into place you make a hard right turn and continue on. It is not long until you see the intersection that Button referred to up ahead. Wider, taller, and better lit than the tunnel you’d come from it formed something of a room, though you still couldn’t stand straight within it. There were hatches on each of the four walls as well as hatches on both the floor and ceiling. The hatch to the right stood open.

“Right through there.” Button says as she catches up to you. She was much quicker on all fours than you were.

“I just thought, maybe I should I wait for my sister.” You say. “She’s bound to come looking for me.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll know when she comes down.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll see.”

With Button right behind you you crawl on down the tunnel which had a downward slope and lead to another hatch, this one left slightly ajar. Warm air can be felt wafting through the opening. You pull the door open to see a large circular room roughly twice your height across. You hadn’t known what to expect but what struck you most about Button’s den was how much it looked like a campsite. Leaning against the wall was a mostly empty framed backpack with a couple articles of clothing strewn over it. Not far from that was a sleeping mat with pillow and blankets in a messy bundle on top. To the side of the bed area was a tiny fold out table with various items on and around it. Some of the items, such as the eating utensils, comb, etc, were familiar and others were not. Across the room sat a jug of water along with a small bucket, a cup and some square red washing cloths. In the center of the room like a campfire glowed a globular light source suspended above and metal sphere that was open like a flower. It all brought back memories of how you and El used to do indoor and backyard ‘camp outs’ back in the old days.

As you enter you then notice two things simultaneously. The floor had a bit of give to it, like a dense foam mat, and was warm to the touch unlike the cold, hard crawlspace you’d just come from. Secondly the ceiling, well, there was no ceiling. The space above yawned into darkness. Just above head height you notice the bottom edge of a door set into the wall.

“This is the elevator shaft.” You whisper.

“Yep. We’re under the lift.” Button says as she comes in and closes the hatch behind her. “As I said, if your sister comes looking we’ll know about it. When the lift comes down keep your head down.” She runs a hand along a faint line that was drawn all around the room about four feet off the floor. “Stay below this line and you’ll be fine.”

“Good to know.” You look about at the gear. Nothing looked scavenged or stolen from the hold, you suspected this was all stuff Button had brought with her. “Camping supplies. You really were running away, huh?”

“I’ve been planning this since my eighteenth cycle.” She says. “I knew my chances of acceptance were slim. I’ve got everything I need to stay on the run for awhile. And don’t worry about being trapped in here either. We pretty much have this whole level to ourselves, just have to bundle up a little. We gotta go up a deck for food, water and waste disposal but as long as you’re careful it’s pretty safe.” She then runs out and spreads her arms wide and twirls in place. “So what do you think Jesse? Will this do?”

Hands on hips, with a smile and a nod, you look around. Camping out in an elevator shaft was certainly not how you thought you’d be living aboard a spaceship, but it sure beat being crammed away in Elsie’s tiny room. “I like it! My home away from home.”