Outlander's Ride

By Keziah H. and Elijah H.

This article is a story written by Keziah, a writer on the Navigator, and Elijah, an NSA elementary student and her brother. The story highlights the relationship between a sister and a brother, and how they will always care for one another, even if they are worlds apart.

Coralie smiled at her pupils, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Ever since her parents had been killed by the Inventors and her brother had run away as a fugitive to the Outlands, her smiles were never genuine. If only I could know that he isn’t dead. I haven’t even seen him since I was seven.

“All right, everyone, let’s practice our speeches for when the Inventors visit. Bryzzit, you go first this time.”

A girl clad in a shimmering gold dress and tiara with purple hair in a hundred braids nodded her head, “I am thankful to the Inventors, our saviors, because they have made our nation greater and stronger each day, and overthrow their pathetic competition!” She grinned, “I am also glad Inventor Coyle is my uncle, so I can have wings, a private helicopter, and even have special privileges like dyeing my hair!” 

Coralie felt like she could get a headache just listening to that girl. Level Golds are so arrogant. Since the reign of the Inventors, everyone had been divided into social classes: Level Browns for the cast-offs and misfits of society, Level Blues for those who proved useful to the new government, Level Golds for the select few related to the Inventors and belonging to the new wealthy families, and the rarest of all, Level Diamond, reserved for only the Inventors themselves, the all-powerful rulers of this world. Coralie wouldn’t mind a pair of mechanized wings so she could soar across the sky, (though usually her hoverboard worked just fine) and she’d often wished she didn’t have to keep so many pointless rules. 

But most days, she was glad she was just a Level Blue. Especially for one reason: she owned the largest stash of illegal books in the world, inherited from her parents and their old friends. Being a Level Gold would make her far too high-profile for her liking. This fifteen-year-old tutor was going to be as careful as possible.

“Coralie?” Bryzzit asked with an eye-roll, not bothering to call her Miss Williams, “You haven’t told me my report was amazing yet!” Level Blues had to get used to insults and jabs, but from children? Bryzzit Coyle was the worst of them all. Still, Coralie felt sorry for her. She’d never get to learn that there was something better than this world. Coralie was just glad she was lucky enough to have her books, otherwise she might have been as ignorant as Bryzzit.

Coralie gritted her teeth as she came back to the real world. “Um…yes, Bryzzit, you did a wonderful job. The Inventors should be proud.”  They will be proud, because they praise outright flattery over effort and ability.

She hated this job. Yes, she was very good at it, and she loved books and teaching, but lying to spoiled kids just so the overlords of the world wouldn’t have her head? That didn’t sound like much of an existence to her.

Before the next kid could shock her with another terrible speech, Coralie raised her hand, “Children, please excuse me for a moment. I need to find your next textbook for us to study. I should only be gone five minutes, and you may all play on your armbands until I get back.”

The children cheered. Their holographic metal armbands allowed them to entertain themselves wherever they went, snapping pictures, projecting video games with so high of a quality that you could fool yourself it was reality, and designing their world to be anything they wanted. Coralie, personally, only used them for lesson plans. She was intelligent enough to realize that the government could see every move she made if she was using her armband. So when she went down into her classroom’s basement to find the book she needed, she used her lockpick to unlatch it from her arm. She was already on the Inventors’ Watchlist because of her parents. Any more trouble and she’d be toast. And a hidden camera zooming in on the hundreds of contraband books could bring nothing but trouble.

But as she opened the class’s book, History of the Inventor Empire, (which was nothing but propaganda), a mosquito flew up and stung her on the arm. At least, she thought it was a mosquito.

“Wait a minute… mosquitoes don’t sting! They don’t have tails.” As she ducked to avoid a second one, her jaw dropped. Those weren’t mosquitoes. They were some sort of weird, tiny blend of mosquito and cat…catsquitoes, maybe? And they were carrying something for her!

“Hi, little catsquito,” she said to one especially cute flying grey tabby. “What is this?”

It looked like a small ring that shimmered a greenish hue. Inexplicably, she found herself compelled to hold it up to the light. But she was in the basement, so no light reached in. Quickly, she let her novel drop to the floor, and, taking the ring, hurried upstairs to a window. When she put the ring to the light, it projected a faintly glowing message that said: 

Please bring all your manuscripts and come to the nearest boat and go to Down Under. 

Then, you will soon see the Prophet. 

See you soon, Cory. 

From E

Coralie, surprised, let the first real smile slip from her mouth. Only her brother, Elisha, still called her Cory. This letter changed everything. She knew exactly where to go, and no one else would ever guess who “the prophet” or where “down under” was. There was just one problem. She was kind of high-profile right now. Since so many families had hired her to teach their children, if she disappeared now, it would look too suspicious. Then she realized that on the ring itself there was one instruction: Put it on.

So, she put it on, then she turned around, and, in a mirror, saw that she looked very different from her normal look. Her normal chestnut brown braids had transformed into one massive, long braid that was bright green. Her eyes and eyebrows were green, too!

“No, no, no!” Cory knit her brows in fear. What was wrong with this ring? She really didn’t want her hair dyed right now! It wasn’t that she fussed and fretted about her appearance, but as she knew very well, she was only a Level Blue. The Inventors would stop her immediately for a breach of the Appearance Code and then they would….She shuddered. It wasn’t good to think about things like that. Then she touched the ring again and it changed her appearance to long brown curls and chestnut eyebrows and still green eyes. The eyes were different from her normal dark blue ones, but that was fine. All she had to do now was think of a good excuse…

“Ah, yes!” she said to herself. Grabbing a piece of paper, she used her metal armband to look up a picture of a death certificate. She then printed it onto the piece of paper she held, using her own name and that day’s date for her date of death, since she figured no one would think to look for her if they all thought she had died. This would normally never work, but since luxury-loving Level Golds who got all of the high government positions didn’t bother to check for too much proof, it could pass. And unfortunately, people disappeared all the time in the hands of the Inventors.

Throwing her books, her small items, and her few sets of clothes that marked her as a Level Blue into a small backpack, she hopped onto her hoverboard and set straight to business. The hoverboard zoomed into the air until it reached the “boat” stop, which was really a landing pad for helicopters. Luckily, one was empty. Unluckily, it was the Inventors’ private helicopter. Notwithstanding this, she entered, but was unsure of what to do next. After all, you can’t exactly run off to an illegal area on a government-owned, auto-piloted vehicle, and she didn’t know how to hack. So she looked down at the ring and somehow saw another inscription that said, “Get on the boat and place the ring in the wing location.”

Though she didn’t have any mechanical wings (they were only for the Level Gold or higher people), she saw a small hole in the indentation where the wings would normally go. She popped the ring inside and watched as a keyboard appeared and said, “Hello, High Overlords, where would you like me to take you on your mission?”

Cory laughed wearily. I’m not an Inventor, and pretty soon this autopilot is going to realize it.

What on earth was she going to do? 

However, though she was panicking too much to notice, the ring had already instructed the database secretly. She was in the air, flying to the Outlands.

 Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the wilderness of Australia, in the Outlanders’ secret base…

“Why did you pick the color green!” shouted Elisha.

“Why not? She won’t look green when you see her. And I am willing to make a deal. If your sister can tame and train twenty sandcat teams, I am willing to make you and your sister a beast.” H, the man who was speaking, was the team’s genetic expert, able to use his skills to create new animals, hence the sandcats, catsquito messengers, and cerburi. With his animal skills and Elisha’s pure speed and accuracy in racing, they had made more progress on their quest to defeat the Inventors in ten years than in all one hundred and twenty years before.

“Dude, would it kill you to use names every once in a while? Her name is Cory. Cory. Got it?” Elisha was fiercely loyal to his friend, but sometimes he got very frustrated with him. Especially when H told him, not long after he joined the Outlanders, that he absolutely could not communicate with Cory until H had decided she was ready. Though she knew nothing of what was going on, H and Elisha were monitoring Cory’s progress each day, silently cheering for her when she learned more.

“Why should I use names when everyone calls me H? My name isn’t that hard to pronounce. It’s just Hartford Moonstalker the Eighteenth.”

“You never told me to call you that,” Elisha, or Eli, as some people called him, mumbled.

“Please don’t tell Cory that my name isn’t H. Because I prefer being called H.”

“Sometimes I just can’t get you, mate,” Elisha laughed. Though he wasn’t Australian, his many years in the Outlands had given him a hint of an accent, too. “One minute you tell me something, the next you deny it wholeheartedly.”

Sneaking into the room, attempting to be silent, Sirius came and laid his massive three heads on H’s lap.

“Hello, Sirius,” H. ruffled the three heads of the fluffy, horse-sized Cerberus. “Please tell me you didn’t eat the cake that I made for Cory, the one Elisha told me to make.”

Unfortunately, Sirius looked suspiciously like he had eaten a large pile of cream-colored cake icing.

Sirius yip-clicked in the doggy code he’d learned from H, saying, “The cake was good. Could have used a little meat, though.” And with that, he released a giant burp from each of his mouths.

In the same code H replied to him, “First, that cake was for the guest that is coming. Second thing, if you want to go drifting tomorrow, you need to have better manners than that.”

The dog whimpered, “Please, I’ll make another cake for the pretty lady, just don’t make me have to sit here all alone while you all have fun.”

“Then you and I need to make another cake right now, and give you a bath.”

The dog whined a reply,  “I’m fine with all of that. But why do I need a bath? I got one two months ago.”

“My point exactly,”  H rolled his eyes at his pampered pooch. “Come on, if we hurry, we can get everything done before she gets here.”

Meanwhile, Cory was still stuck, waiting for further instructions. She turned the ring over and over in her hands, hoping it contained further secrets, but nothing was there.

“Well, Inventor, are you going to give me directions or not?”

Coralie sighed, knowing she was in big trouble. “No, I’m not an Inv-”

“But my systems say that you are an Inventor. They are the only ones with this access--” The voice cut out and the familiar voice of her brother came in through the speakers. “Please calmly grab your belongings, because you are somehow being tracked. Go through your stuff, and if it has a tracker of any kind, throw it out the window. That should break it. I can’t wait to see you soon, little sis.”

Coralie leafed through her backpack twice but found absolutely nothing. She even checked her hoverboard. Before she was about to throw her hands up in frustration, she swatted her leg.

“Ow!” she yelped. “Nasty bugs!” But as she bent down for a closer inspection, she realized it wasn’t an insect at all. The thin stream of blood oozing from her ankle was caused by a circular electronic button embedded in her flesh. She ripped it out in an instant- and then screamed a second later as tears of pain appeared in her eyes.

“Bad idea,” she groaned to herself. Maybe she could get it healed up later. But for right now, the blood flow wasn’t threatening her life or her consciousness, and she had bigger problems to deal with. She flung it out of the helicopter, hoping it landed right on some rude Inventor’s head. Then, the helicopter blades stopped spinning, the copter itself stopped moving, and the door opened wide, giving her a lovely peek at her new home- the Outlands.

Another voice came through the speaker that she didn’t know.  “We have been awaiting your arrival. Cory, your brother is quite interested in you. I hope that you will like my dog. He made you a cake.”

Cory’s stomach began dancing pirouettes at the thought of food, especially good food. And she was very excited to be seeing her brother again. Also, she did love dogs. She jumped out of the copter, without even one thought of her leg, which was still actively bleeding. Racing headlong through the Australian sand, she was grinning like a dingo and probably being as silly as one, but she didn’t care. She was home.

Keziah H. lives in East Africa with her parents, two brothers, and a mischievous puppy named Bandit. This is her fourth year at Northstar but her first year at the Navigator. She likes to read almost any book she can get her hands on, but especially fantasy books. She also enjoys creative writing, coming up with awesome ideas with her brothers, and playing outside. She has been writing stories ever since she can remember and hopes to be an author when she grows up.

🖋️Creative Writing, PopularEIC NSA2024-2025, April 2025 Publication