A Thing A Human Did

a thing a human did

It had been… Nine months, since we took a human in our crew. I knew what they looked like and how they behaved, but that was mostly from the manual and stories from some friends. All the normal things everyone knows. They had destroyed their world once, rebuilt it, and now dedicated their entire existence to… Stop that from happenning again. And also everything they do, have and make is either extremely useful or the most horrifying thing one could ever heard of. Just the basics.

Isa was the human’s name. A marine biologist. Our ship was one of the first ones to be made for life-keeping. Our job is to ensure that planets would still have life after the humans did their thing, a risky and complicated job, but an important one.

I had expected Isa to be small. Humans were small, from what I’ve known, but somehow that one was bigger and bulkier than me. Not as big as some others, but everyone was surprised, especially when she decided to cover her teeth in order to not scare us. She spoke in a soft tone and did everything with such delicacy we forgot how humans were.

And then, she reminded us of that.

First, she took in a seed and tried to make it grow. She would try to sing to it from time to time. I thought she was going to… To do that thing. When humans use their voices and things just start to grow out of nowhere. But, thank { }, that didn’t happen. She just kept talking to it for hours. I don’t know why she would try to communicate with it, and I was too afraid to ask.

Second, she would carry everything we deemed to be too heavy and couldn’t be carried by Ki. Some heavy things. I had to remind myself human sweat wasn’t poisonous to my species multiple times. I don’t know why, but I had to. Especially when Isa got sick and continued to work even when she was sneezing and producing muckus. That was disgusting. But then, once again, some humans would collapse before they dared to admit they had to rest.

And… And third thing. Yes. The third thing. I like her a lot, she’s my friend, but that was before we became close. Isa would collect random things to “preserve” them, and she would say those fancy words to try to classify creatures that were for no practical use. We would get to them sooner or later, but we had to have priorities. She didn’t seem to have these. She would just name and name and name everything, and somehow she remembered it all. And when one of the species became extinct once again, she would cry and write it down to remember. She would… Make them graves. I thought it was religious, but it wasn’t.

I would feel sad for them too. For the lost ones. I helped Isa with her graves, and I was the one to tell the others of who we had failed that time, and sometimes I would have to lie down and rest because it was too much. But not to the point of tears. Not to the point of my own body breaking itself down out of heartbreak and sadness. Isa got sick because of the ones we lost, and we had to care for her. I had to write things down for her so she wouldn’t try to work until she had passed out. I learned to take care of humans because of her heartbreaks with fish.

And then we… We lost too much. Sometimes we would lose some species, but not an entire planet. We were glad no deadly bacteria got to us, but we were all heartbroken. That thing ate an entire planet, and we couldn’t do anything.

Isa was the most affected. She… Vanished. Not literally, but she retreated to her own lab for weeks. We tried to keep her safe, to keep her healthy, but it was hard when we had to deal with our own failure.

One night I decided to stay awake. And then I decided to check on Isa, because she wasn’t coming to her “dinners” anymore. I did what the humans would do: Knocked on her door and waited for a response, but Isa wasn’t responding and I was worried, so I entered anyways.

She… She was trembling, but holding a thing. I asked her what was it, and she whispered for me to come closer. I did, and she asked me to hold it.

Of course, I didn’t know what to do, but I held that thing. It was mucky and wet and soft and, honestly, very disgusting, but… But I looked at Isa, and I was going to ask her what that was, but she was crying. That’s- that’s another thing humans do. They cry, and I knew they did, but that was the first time it looked so raw. I… For a moment, I thought that was blood. I had forgotten what human blood looked like, but then I remembered and I got even more scared. I was afraid of what Isa would do. Because an upset human is a problem for everyone.

But, but she just, she just looked at me. Looked at me with her face covered in those tears that multiple species were using for medicine, and pointed at that thing that was in my hands, and I knew that I shouldn’t have asked but I did it anyways. “What is this?”, and looked at that thing in my hands.

“It came from the seed”, she whispered to me. “It opened up after i fed it with the red devouring”.

“You fed that seed with a plague?”

“Listen to it”.

I did what she had asked me to. I listened to that thing. You know what it sounds like. It whispers things without words. It has something beating, and something singing, and another, last and quiet thing, growing.

What she said to me next is something I will never forget, because she was sobbing but smiling. It was a raw cry of hope.

“It’s the heartbeat of a planet”.

The Taken

This story was written in response to this post. I hope you enjoy :)

Nihijb had always been scared and alone. But nothing quite scared her as much as the rumours whispered in passing every now and again. It’d started to be more frequent lately.

Humans. Deathworlders. Sentient life from the most dangerous, least habitable corner of the galaxy. Beings that liked to take the ones who no one kept an eye one. The outcasts and lonely were abducted by them. Every time one of them saw someone they could take without a protective being willing to take them on for this person’s sake, they would do just that.

People were not sure what happened to the Taken. They did not return to talk about it, and everyone only whispered about it - but everyone knew it was happening. No matter the planet, no matter the race, no one without strong backing was safe.

Nihijb was not safe either. She was right there, the perfect victim. That was why she was listening more closely to the speculations.

The Taken were probably forced to work for the humans. They might become test subjects or food - though humans apparently had officially claimed they would not condone such behaviour from anyone, that they would start a war to end that kind of thing.

Many suspected that the Taken were trained. Made into soldiers. A gigantic, brainwashed, interspecial army ready at the fingertips of those humans. But the human ambassadors emphasised that there was no army.

Nihijb shuddered at the thought that she might end up like that. That was the worst thing other children had taunted her with: That they hoped she would be taken and vanish as part of that gruesome mystery forever.

It was cold the night it happened. Cold and dark. Darker, actually, than her home planet with its midnight sun usually was. The clouds must have been rather thick.

The human was hurrying by the ally Nihijb was sitting in, her breath held anxiously to try and go unnoticed. The human, tall and clothed in a garment Nihijb recognised as a dress fluttering in the nightly winds, froze regardless. And as she could feel both her hearts to speed up in terror, she wondered whether this human’s ears were keen enough to hear it. She had heard they had creepily keen senses.

The human approached slowly, strangely enough keeping a polite, reassuring distance from the terrified Ne’av. They even sat down in a way Nihijb was sure they could not stand up from quickly.

Or maybe they just knew it looked like that and they were trying to lower her guard. Might be that, too.

The human flashed their teeth, and Nihijb nearly fainted. Before she could stutter out an apology for whatever offence she could have committed, they spoke with their strange, flown voice that sounded like the whispers of the winds: “Hi there, little one. What are you doing here all alone? Do you need help finding home?”

Nihijb had heard a rumor that humans could hear when one lied. So lying was futile. But if she spoke truthfully, she would be revealing herself as the perfect victim she was.

“I… I don’t want to leave this place.” That was not a good answer. But the winds had the words echoing through the ally, and she knew she could not take them back.

Yet the human did not answer to the defiance an unresponsiveness she’d shown them, looking around the ally instead. “It’s a nice ally. Seems… comfy? It’s warmer than right outside it, at least. And it’s clean… somewhat.”

Nihijb had not expected them to agree with her. She had expected many things, but none of them had been so… positive? Approachable?

"Say, little one, this… isn't where you live. Right?"

The weird windy voice was soft, compassionate. Nihijb did not know how to feel about that. But for now, she decided to answer truthfully since that ought to be better than angering the beast in front of her: "I just… Don't want to go back there."

The human's face-fur did something funny. Their eyebrows, was it? Since when was fur supposed to move around your face? Was it sentient? Nihijb hoped not, that'd be beyond terrifying.

"That's not good… What made you not wanna go back?"

Nihijb shuddered, pressing against the hard wall behind her and lowering her eyes sadly. She did not want to say it, didn't want herself to admit it out loud. As if that'd make a difference. She knew it didn't, and she knew she should not defy a human, but…

No. Defiance was let go once before, surely that must've been the worse decision. "I am" - Nihijb sighed - "hated. By the gods. The missing limb I was born without is proof of that. That's why they… I don't… I promise I wasn't… But…"

Somehow the human must have understood her absolute gibberish response that Nihijb herself didn't fully know the meaning of. At least the human… summed? Hummed? Something like that. A response, maybe in their home world language.

"So they abuse you at home. Because you were born missing an arm and are considered hated by your gods now?"

Nihijb nodded, sadness sounding inside her heart like the ever present rustling of the leaves on the fertile ground. The human pressed their lips together, and she was not sure what it meant, but that was the moment the fear installed by the rumours came back with a vengeance. There was only one direction this could go, and it was not a good one.

"You can say no if you don't want to."

A sentence Nihijb had not expected to be directer at her ever, much less by a human. But one that reassured her nevertheless. A lot.

"But I would like to offer you a way out of this life." They reached forward, their claw stopping a decent distance away from Nihijb, talons turned to face towards the earth. Showing their wrist. A strangely pacifistic gesture to come from a deathworlder.

"Come with me? I have a lot of blue-ra- uh… movies we can watch. There's a few other kids like you staying with me, too. I know goind with a stranger isn't ideal. And I'm no therapist or educationalist, but I oughta be able to do better than those people. I promise you can go any time you want, so…"

Nihijb was not sure what it was. Maybe the way the human sounded so nervous. Or the safe distance they had kept the entire time. Or their compassionate gaze. But as she contemplated the deathworlder before her, who'd been the first one to talk to her like an actual person, she suddenly couldn't help but feel that they were right. Maybe the brainwashing had begun already, but she somehow believed this human that her life would be better with the deathworlder than her homeworlders.

Nihijb ended up taking the human's hand.

On the ship, she found about seven other people waiting for the human. A blind ocheraha and an ocheraha she could not see anything wrong with that looked very similar to the first one. A kjek'kr covered in scars. A sethuzu without any glowing marks. A rorrlchra with purple feathers. An adult hehehit making weird motions with his hands with a questioning look on his face. And another human, this one with red fur on their head and clothed in what appeared like one of those "suits"?

"This child will stay with us for now. Everyone, please be nice to her." The human in a dress turned to Nihijb, bearing their teeth a bit again. "Welcome to the Neverland - Fahijet chose the ship's name based on her favorite movie." The hehehit grew red, so Nihijb supposed that was Fahijet.

The other human let out a sigh, though, statling Nihijb. "Honey, we have to stop adopting homeless alien children now." Their green eyes took in Nihijb and suddenly the human made a chocked sound. "… Right after this one. Hello, my precious little friend. I'm sure my big idiot of a wife forgot to do the introductions, so allow me to do it! Welcome to the family, princess."

"I am not a princess?" That was all Nihijb could answer, because… Wow. Just, wow.

"Well, to me you are. You're my little princess now, so that's that." The human bared their teeth too, and Nihijb suspected it was actually some kind of friendly gesture.

For some reason, it felt as though she would not regret her choice.

A very happy week later, she asked Fahijet why the humans were not simply revealing the truth about the Taken. She answered with her hands - hand speech, that was what it was, she was mute - that the humans said it was too bothersome. "But I think they do it to protect us. The rorrolchra and many others wouldn't let people like Ruirem, people like us go otherwise."

Nihijb had lost count of the how many-th time it was that she started crying since entering the Neverland with her new mom. But not once had those tears been sad.

Nihijb didn't have to be scared nor alone anymore.

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painted-daisy-l0l

3 years ago

Looking back, the first sign that something's wrong was that the human had been gone for hours. There aren't many place to go on a spaceship, and yet Gyali was unable to find her.

Now xe spots the human, Alex, as she's hurrying down the long corridor with a brown paper box in hand and a huge smile on her face. Gyali long ago learned to be suspicious of that smile.

"What's in that box?" Xe steps in front of the human, glaring at said box.

Alex's grin widens, showing all teeth and making Gyali shudder. "Wouldn't you like to know." She coos at the object.

Gyali's scales flutter in confusion. "Yes, that's why I asked."

"Oh. It's just... Stuff."

If possible, Gyali's suspicion levels rise even higher. "What stuff?"

The human shrugs, the movement rattles whatever's inside the box, muffled sounds of scattering emerges from it. The human winces. "Sorry, sorry!" She hushes the box. "It's... Come, I'll show you."

Gyali reluctantly follows after the human. Xe doesn't really want to know, not really. But xe's the human's supervisor, so it's not like xe has any choice, does xe?

They hurry down the remainder of the corridor, the human silent as death, while Gyali's steps echo heavily around them despite xir small size. When they reach Alex's quarter, she lets Gyali in first, then firmly shuts the door. She carefully places the box on her desk, then beams down at Gyali.

"They must have been here since we ported at Earth."

The box opens, and Gyali jumps backwards with a screech. The human doesn't even flinch, the sound must have been over her hearing levels... From the box, two small, furry creatures look up with round, black eyes, both of them baring sets of small, but sharp looking teeth. The creatures are terrifying, yet the human watches them with such adoration, of course she does.

"They are mice." Alex says, as if that explains anything. "I haven't seen one in ages. They are harmless, don't worry."

Gyali continues to worry. "Where did you get them?"

"In the garbage cabin. I was just in time, the cat was hunting them, but I managed to catch them first!" She smiles proudly.

Gyali's scales slowly rise into a defensive position. Xe knows what a cat is. The humans' pet predators, vicious and deadly creatures, absolutely banned from all intergalactic ships.

"What cat." Xe squeezes out.

Alex freezes.

"Alex? What. Cat."

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painted-daisy-l0l

3 years ago