"Stay calm. Believe it or not, this is normal."

Arizona watched a trash can hit a telephone pole from her booth at Grandma's Grits. Agent Henry's face peered up from the screen of her laptop, her eyes smiling, like nothing was wrong. Arizona was pretty sure something was wrong.

"This does not seem normal. Everyone is freaking out." In the background, a car windshield smashed. Arizona jumped. "See, things are breaking. Things do not break when it's normal."

Agent Henry shrugged. "It's just a tornado. It'll be over soon. Trust me, I grew up in Kansas. We had them all the time."

Arizona did not know what a tornado was, but she did not really want to ask. It seemed violent, possibly deadly, and not something she ever wanted to see again. Suddenly the lights flickered, then went out completely. The only sources of illumination were her computer, another customer's telephone, and the dim, gray light from outside. The image on her screen began to glitch.

"The electricity is gone," she told Agent Henry. "Human systems are so breakable. My little sister could do better."

Agent Henry chuckled. "Isn't you power generated from dragons? It doesn't matter. Call me when this blows over."

As she said goodbye to Agent Henry and closed her computer, she thought about last time she had seen wind like this. Her city, with its 50-mile wide protective dome, never had anything more extreme than a drizzle. The only ones who ventured outside were freighters and social outcasts living in settlements in the surrounding cliffs. Arizona, however, was a diplomat's chauffeur and personal technician, second best in her school but supposedly too rebellious to work inside the dome.

One day, when she had dropped the diplomat off in another city and was heading home, she ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere. She had landed and radioed for help, but before it could arrive, the wind came. Boulders the size of her speeder were flying around her. Then, suddenly, a hole had opened up in the sky. She blacked out as she was sucked upwards. Next thing she knew, she had crashed in the Arizona desert.

Arizona had never wanted to see wind again. But here she was, in a diner on Earth, trillions of miles from home, stuck in the middle of a wind storm. She had never felt more alone.

Arizona’s morning had started with a rather loud whack. Then another. Then frustrated grumbling.

“Arizona, I know you can hear me. Come down from there.” It was Agent O’Connor, Agent Henry’s boss, and neither he nor his slap-happy clipboard sounded excited to be here. She figured it was best to get this over with, so she jumped down from the tree. She’d been up there since 2 am, when her apartment had become too cramped and too boring to stand.

“Hello, Agent O’Connor. What can I help you?” That didn’t sound right.

“Why were you in a tree?”

“I was bored, so I came here. It is a very nice place to watch from.”

Agent O’Connor sighed and rubbed his eyes exasperatedly. “You can’t just leave at night. It’s too dangerous.”

“Why?” Arizona did not like Agent O’Connor. He was always telling her what to do.

“Well, first of all, you are blue.” She looked down at her hands. Her palms were human-colored, but her arms were covered in shiny turquoise scales. She immediately panicked, causing her palms to turn blue, too. She took a deep breath to prevent her head combusting, and turned her arms back to human.

“Second of all,” Agent O’Connor continued, “your friend from back home escaped from a containment facility 5 miles down the road sometime in the last week. You have to be careful.” Oh no. Very, very oh no. Arizona could feel herself panicking again, but she successfully pulled herself together before she turned blue.

“He is not my friend, dumb human, he is a government watchman who is trying to either brainwash me or kill me. You do not understand, so you cannot tell me what to do. Goodbye.” She burst into flames for a split second then stomped off back to Pointe Place.

Agent O’Connor stood grumbling for a moment before walking quickly in the other direction. Little did they know they’d had a witness: Ollie Henderson was slumped against the base of a playground structure, stunned into open-mouthed silence.

Arizona was frustrated. Very, very frustrated. It was everything she could do to keep her head from
catching on fire again. Last time she had lost her cool (literally) she had almost singed the ceiling.
She groaned at the thought of having to explain the seared ceiling to the building manager. Potential
unnecessary human interaction was the only thing keeping her hair from bursting into flames.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the humans. She'd crashed in the southwestern desert six months ago
after falling through a wormhole, and in that time she had learned of both humanity's relative stupidity and
kindness. Agent Henry, the government worker she reported to, was one of the best. She helped Arizona
pick a human name and made her macaroni and cheese when she was homesick. Most of the residents
of this town, though, were nosy at best and downright hostile at worst. It was a huge contrast with her
own planet, where everyone ignored strangers and rarely went outside.

The source of her frustration was the stupid cold box where she was supposed to keep her food.
It was not working and getting warmer by the minute. She had tried everything she could think of:
attempting to interface it with the command module she’d pulled from the wreckage of her spacecraft,
fishing a wire through the weird plastic pipes in the back, even unplugging it from the wall and plugging it
back in. That’s what Mr. Evans had done when her little wireless connection box had stopped working.
Mr. Evans! Maybe she could ask him.

She ran down the stairs to the lobby. “George Mendoza, where is Mr. Evans?”

George the doorman looked up from his newspaper. "Ah, hello, Arizona. Mr. Evans isn't here anymore."

Arizona frowned. "Where did he go?"

He smiled at her sadly. "He passed away this morning. Coco found him in the parking deck."

"That is very unfortunate. I am sorry." She paused for a second. George kept looking at her sadly. "Well,
goodbye, George Mendoza." He waved halfheartedly at her, but she was already gone.

Back at her apartment, Arizona's frustration had been partially replaced by sadness. She grumbled and
kicked the stupid cold box as she passed it. The machine clunked to life, stopping her in her tracks.
Earth was such a weird place. But maybe, just maybe, she could get used to it.