Favuxo was entirely alone, more alone than he'd ever been. He was lying in the gutter at the side of a small road. No humans were within sight, and for the first time he could not sense the comforting presence of the rest of his species. Favuxo no longer had access to the thoughts of other favuxians, but he knew they must feel ashamed of him, that he had tried to protest against the Inabilin -- against the Elder.
Standing up and stretching his body, Favuxo found it disconcerting to imagine that he would spend the rest of his time inside such a confining vessel. He found it even more unsettling to imagine what a short amount of time it would be.
The idea of death was foreign to Favuxo. Until the Inabilin had been near, he'd never taken it seriously. Death was always that which happened to others, he never really understood that it would eventually happen to him. Perhaps because the Elder had so conditioned him, Favuxo's thoughts immediately turned to what the Elder had said about death: "Those who fear their own death should calm themselves. By its very nature, death cannot exist. Life approaches death, but can never reach it. Death is the end of life, and is therefore impossible without life. If something is impossible to reach, who can say that it exists?" The thoughts of the Elder no longer calmed Favuxo. He'd come to view them as nothing more than manufactured dogma of one who cared about nothing more than maintaining the calm of others.
Favuxo's goal, as a mortal, was to delay death for as long as possible. His stomach told him that in order to do so he would need to find food. Searching his pockets, he found that his species had provided him with enough money to last a month, or maybe two at the most. After that he would need to find employment.
It was easy enough for Favuxo to locate a fast food place. Once inside he randomly chose to order a chicken sandwich and a sprite, not knowing of anything in particular that he might find more or less offensive than anything else. He'd never before eaten human food. As a favuxian, he'd eaten only a few times before deciding that food was of no interest to him.
Favuxo sat down next to a middle aged man whose face was buried in food, and attempted to start a conversation: "Hello. There... there sure are a lot of buildings around here that have burned to the ground, aren't there?"
The man glanced up from his meal. "Energy blasts do occasionally set things on fire, ya know."
"I'm not from here... I mean, I'm just passing through town. Do you know of any cheap motels near here?"
"There's a place called the Blue Sky Motel. Turn to the left when ya go out the door here, and keep going 'til the second street on the right. You can't miss it." The man looked down at his meal again for a moment, and then back up at Favuxo. "My niece owns the place."
Favuxo found it strange that the man had no difficulty accepting him as another human. As he adjusted to this, he slowly became confident that he could act convincingly as a human; however, he still didn't believe that he understood what it was to be human.
The sky was slowly darkening, the sun nearly ready to dip below the horizon. Favuxo felt himself rapidly growing tired. He knew that as a human he'd require large amounts of rest each and every night, so he walked slowly in the direction of the Blue Sky Motel.
The motel room that Favuxo checked into looked nearly identical to the last room that he'd briefly inhabited on Earth. Partly out of boredom and partly out of habit, he turned on the television and searched for news stations. He found all the stations seemed to be news stations, featuring live coverage of rubble and dead bodies from various areas of the world. Favuxo realized then, watching the pictures of the destruction, that he no longer cared about what happened to the planet Earth. It puzzled him that he could lose interest in a situation when thrust into the middle of it. Favuxo turned the television off and, out of exhaustion, collapsed on the bed into a deep and dreamless sleep.