Moriarty never liked activating his emergency flight boosters, it took a lot out of him and he was already pretty tired from impersonating a fleshy human this morning. He managed to control them enough to guide his body to a mountainous area far away from where his ship was. He tried to glide in as best he could, but this area was full of trees, hills, and unfortunately, jagged rocks. His landing was perilous, but once back on ground, he put his legs, arms, and head back to their normal orientation and checked his scales. There were a few indents and scrapes here and there, but with a little pushing, prodding, and lubrication they found themselves aligned normally and flat again
He sighed.
Trees, rocks, rodents, emptiness. When he studied earth, he thought it was kind of interesting. Much more interesting than his home planet. He just didn’t realize how empty earth was.
It must be nice to have all of this space, he thought.
His first moments on earth had been chaotic and although he nearly died multiple times, being in the emptiness now made him feel peace. He took a deep breath. Earth even smelled good.
I could get used to this.
Moriarty started to wander through the trees and rocks and hills. He vaguely remembered something about ‘forests,’ so that’s where he assumed he was. Moriarty was enjoying the forest, and wasn’t in a hurry to get back to that place with the humans trying to kill him, although he knew he would have to find and fix his ship and get back home at some point. But not now.
He came upon water flowing on the ground. He knew this was a ‘river.’ He carefully stepped toward it and stuck his foot in. He jumped back at the coldness, but after giving his foot a moment to recover, decided to drop it in again. Eventually he got so used to it he put his other foot in and let it rest. Moriarty closed his eyes and imagined being back home and the coolness of its air.
He was snapped back to present day at the sound of a roaring beast. He opened his eyes and running full speed toward him, through the water, was something Moriarty thought he recognized; a bear.
Having exhausted most of his energy from his first boost flight, Moriarty did all he could do; turn and run. As his feet slammed against the dirt, all he could think of was training. He remembered bears. He did not remember how fast bears were. He wasn’t even sure they covered that. Moriarty wasn’t the fastest being, but he was hoping he was fast enough.
He ran over boulders and downed trees, and zig-zagged through perilous cliffs. At some point, Moriarty looked over his shoulder and the bear was gone. He wanted to celebrate this tiny victory, but he had a new problem. The sun was starting to disappear. He cursed himself for not remembering that days on earth were shorter than his days, but there was little he could do about it now. His best bet would be to keep walking and occasionally use his glowing scales as a guide, if absolutely necessary. Moriarty would be able to trudge through the forest since his eyesight was mostly normal in the dark, but he would have to now be on the lookout for bears, and any humans that were hunting him, he supposed. He tensed his muscles and shone light from under his arms to help him lead the way.
He was wandering for a while trying to think of a plan. Now that animals and humans were hunting him, he knew he would either need to hide, or get his ship back as fast as possible. Given that he didn’t know where he was, he dug into his memory from training and recalled there were a few creatures on earth that he could go to if he needed help. Seeing as how his situation had not improved, it was his only plan. He recalled one specific being in North America that he thought he might have been close to; he would just have to walk through the forest for some time to get to him. Moriarty turned off his light and picked up his pace.
He was on his way to see bigfoot.