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This may seem strange to you But bear with me, the point will become clear over time. This is just what I observed.

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It was like stepping into another world. It was an office building but somehow not. The first floor was the height of two. At the main desk was what at first glance was human but if you really looked you could see that it was in fact not a human by any means - the nose was wide and the nostrils were silted, the hair blue and the eyes had vertical pupils. Sue dragged Natalia to the desk.

“Hey, Sue, is this the Blank kid?”Its voice had an odd accent that Natalia could not place.

“Yup. How are you doin’ Shelia?”

“Good, Good. They are waiting for you up in the library,” Shelia said as she looked Natalia up and down then swished her tail, “she doesn’t look too excited.”

“She does not know yet…I better explain as we head toward the library,” Sue did not seem very concerned by the fact that an alien had just talked to her, alien was the best explanation Natalia could come up with for Shelia.

“So where am I?” Natalia asked.

“The safest place on earth… for us,” Natalia asked who “us” where, “oh, non-earth creatures. We are hunted by most earth creatures. You humans fear us. The animals fear us.”

“So that we can find out what happened to your parents. We only know that they were working from home when they and their house disappeared. I suppose you don’t know about their work,” she asked and Natalia shook her head; “well they work here. Not at whatever cover story you know.”

“Wait, is this... the government - “she was cut off by laughter.

“Government? If the government knew about this place they would charge in with guns ready to bag and tag us,” she calmed down a bit, “no, this is not government sponsored. This is private. Your parents were brought in about ten or so years ago… this place, this organization has existed for much longer than that. Most of us here were exiled or stranded nearby and the organization picked us up.”

Natalia could not believe any of this. The crazy old lady she met last night was an alien and her parents worked with aliens! As they were walking toward the elevator Natalia looked at every one. It was unbelievable. Not very many looked humanoid; most were animalesque. Most were bipeds, though. She saw someone that intrigued her the most - the face was canine the legs were canine and the torso was humanoid and… it had wings. Sue nudged her as they approached elevator.

“How do they all breath,” was the first question Natalia managed to ask.

“We only have those from planets with a similar atmosphere, come on in. Library, please.” And the elevator started moving. It dinged and thanked them on their way out. “Follow me; we need to talk to the benefactor.”

The library was huge. It was the entire floor and shelves where everywhere as well as computers. The shelves were floor to ceiling and the ceiling was once again about the height of two real floors. As they walked down the aisles Natalia noticed how strange these books are, they were every shape and color and were in every size - there was even one book that was as tall as Natalia was. She followed Sue through the rows of books, these aisles were not very easily navigated, there were many twists and turns  and some of the books poked out a foot from the edge of the shelves; Sue apparently knew where she was going. In the center of the place was a large desk with a rather small man behind it. The man was defiantly human.

“Mr. Barre, this is Miss Blank,” said Sue. She back up a few paces. The man looked up.

“Glad to meet you Miss Blank, have a seat,” he indicated one of the comfy chairs in front of the desk. He spun his chair around and pulled a file out of the filing cabinet that was to his left, “this is a file of all the books your parents where working on translating along with a native speaker.” He placed it on the desk, “They had set this assignment aside for a little bit of learning on their own… which is what we suspect they were doing when your home disappeared. Due to the fact that they were our only human employees, I have no one to help look for them. So I sent for you.”

Um, so what am I suppose to do?” Natalia had to ask and had a feeling of dread.

“We have reason to believe that they were working on a mass transporter unit and accidentally set it off. We need to send out a search party. You and a few who are willing to travel…if you wish to, that is,” he looked over his glasses at her.

“Of, of course I will… but how?”

“We will form a group and send you out on our ship. Sue, here is our captain and will lead the party. We have certain rules that say that if we are searching for one of a certain species we must have one of that species with the search team. That is you in this instance. We will have you guys set out tomorrow. Sue, why don’t you show her to the barracks.”

And so they left the library, Natalia with a sense of awe… and Sue left with a feeling monotony.