38 Strange New Home #2
The sounds the beings make as they flee are quite obviously alarm calls.
Orion and Baby run in the opposite direction.
Better to observe and plan some more before attempting more interaction, Orion thinks.
The last word the little beings scream is the second word Orion learns on this planet.
And the second name he claims for himself.
“Chupacabras! Chupacabras!”
Orion and Baby live a nomadic and largely nocturnal life for a long time.
Everything Orion sees and learns and practices, he tries to teach to Baby.
They only have their two little robotic companions to help.
And they do help, a lot, but their Helper companions are children themselves, by their reckoning.
And there’s just so much to learn. What food to eat, where to find it.
Where to seek shelter. The languages of the planet’s inhabitants.
Orion learns to admire the humans, the beings that rule this planet.
They’re more violent than his own species, yet they aren’t like the Beasts that destroyed his planet.
Everything else is fairly harmless, as he and the baby are hearty creatures.
Their own gentle planet seems harsh compared to this paradise.
There are plenty of mistakes and near misses, though.
Some creatures taste terrible; sometimes Orion and Baby find little hunting and are hungry.
But it’s never as bad as before. Sometimes they are spotted, chased, hunted.
But it’s easy to get away from the humans; they aren’t as clever and deadly as the Beasts.
They’re intelligent and advanced, but they haven’t yet evolved into a true spacefaring species.
Orion hopes the Beasts never find this place.
He wants to find a way to warn the humans, to implore them to be more careful.
If they knew of the destruction on his home world, maybe they’d listen.
But he’s too wary to interact with humans yet.
He decides that to fit in, they need to look the part.
But the baby is an inexperienced chameleon.
Even Orion, who has always been a gifted camouflager, is still learning and practicing, and the change into human skin is larger than anything his kind usually attempt.
It isn’t as simple as a skin-texture change or retracting spines for a few hours.
It’s delicate fingernails and soft finger pads instead of sturdy and nimble webbed claws.
There’s no tail for balance and grip, and it’s thin skin instead of glittering scales.
Even his eyes don’t see quite as well when they’re human.
The humans are as varied in appearance as his own species.
At first, he thinks they’re like chameleons too.
The first time they learn about clothes, Orion feels as young and clueless as Baby.
He nearly yelps with surprise and horror, peering through the window on a routine reconnaissance mission, thinking the human is peeling off a layer of its own skin.
The baby next to him makes a rare, small noise of surprise.
He can’t really blame her, but he doesn’t entirely hide his frustration, hushing her immediately.
The human, most unfortunately, spots them after this, and their night is cut short.
Ending in the exhausting process of running and hiding, moving on to a new nesting area sooner than expected.
Orion keeps practicing his human mask. Even when he gets it, he just doesn’t quite get it.
And Baby is entirely hopeless at it. Orion practices and practices, and even once he thinks he has it, speech doesn’t come easy.
So he practices and practices that too. The first few trials are failures he has to flee from.
He first approaches a smaller human. One he imagines might be a similar age to himself.
He’s not entirely sure what gave it away, but it’s a while before he tries and fails again. And again.
He steals clothes, and that helps, but he knows he still doesn’t have it perfected.
And he hates the clothes; they scratch, cling to his body in strange ways, dull his senses.
The baby loathes them, and he can do nothing to convince her it’s a necessity to blend in.
Her lips curl into a silent warning, and she flares her spines anytime he approaches her with clothes; eventually he gives up.
It isn’t like she’s anywhere close to wearing a skin that can blend with the humans, anyway.
Orion hears many things as he learns the languages of humans.
Some things he hears make his heart soar and stoke that little ember inside him.
Rumors. Some of the other children have made it here to this planet.
He searches, quietly, slowly. But it’s hard to find creatures whose nature is to blend in, who have known little in their short lives besides running and hiding.
The ones who have made it here are experts at that; they are good at self-sufficiency and surviving.
This is how he’s tricked. Lured to a spot where he’s sure one of his brethren has been living.
Orion knows a lot about the dangers now.
He’s listened carefully. He knows about cages, about laboratories, and experiments.
He knows about bad people. Orion’s learned to be wary and distrustful, even of the ones who seem all right on the outside.
Orion was right in some ways about how like chameleons the humans can be.
Most wear some kind of disguise, some kind of armor.
And there are some who wear the worst sort of mask.
Some who are more like Beasts wearing human skin.
These are the ones Orion fears in the same way he fears the Beasts.
Orion doesn’t know what happens to the missing child he has been tracking down; he doesn’t even catch a glimpse of them before he and Baby find themselves cornered.
He’s tracked the rumors and sightings of a strange creature.
He’s followed a trail of distinctively consumed blood-drained prey and found a recently abandoned nest. Orion is impatient and slightly desperate to find another survivor.
But he realizes too late someone else has found this missing child first.
Baby’s inability to change enough to blend in is ironically her saving grace.
She’s hiding, silent and cowering still, exactly as he’s always instructed her, when he stupidly emerges into the open without a second look, thinking he’s right on the trail.
The safety of this planet has made him overconfident.
The nest he walks right into, soaked in the familiar smell of his kind, is itself the trap.
He’s ensnared before he has a chance to run.
The last he sees of Baby is the flash of her eyes in the darkness.
The sound of her silence is the last he hears of her. Orion never even knew her true name.
He is alone.