Chapter Text
Back inside her lair is... ‘Emeral.’
With Sam and Carey tentatively behind me, I’m left to finally take in and process the alleged non-beast before me.
She sits up patiently and quietly like a cat on its back legs, though not without an uncertain sort of wobble. The creature has seemingly not actually moved from where we had left her, having instead made herself comfortable to... wait? Which would certainly be a feather in her cap if the sisters were selling and I were buying.
But: the only fact which matters is that the alien is not lunging for me, nor looming, or even doing... much of anything, just yet. If anything I would wager that she is thinking. Studying, considering, just as I’m now left to do. If anything at all, that makes her all the more dangerous.
Regarding the body worn by that analytical mind, she is everything that I had already been forced to take in, though finer details are now obvious. She lacks ears in the traditional sense thanks to her immense armor which I had first mistaken for some sort of exoskeleton. Her eyes and lips reveal the armor’s nature as plates surrounded by scales, themselves a brilliant green and pursed beige respectively.
Everything about her screams dangerous animal, from over-long claws and a tooth-filled snout, but there are signs beneath it all of something more. Most notably, her hands and feet are different in shape--and yes, despite sharing a purpose they are definitely hands and feet. What use would a mere animal have for hands? While the wicked blades tipping them would get in the way, I could easily see this being holding hands with another of her kind... concurrent to those terrible toes holding down screaming meat.
I was wrong, about her. She is neither bug nor beast. This Emeral is blatantly an apex creature like any human, but from a world far larger and more dangerous than ours has been for tens of thousands of years. A super-predator, a killer of megafauna while counting herself among that immense scale. A monster in the hen house, a dinosaur in our midst, a-
Lovely fruitcase. What an absolutely perfect, bananesque being.
The Frank is here. The Frank is nice. He smells of happy friendliness despite the odd pheromonal cocktail of confounding fear. He wears The Color, he smells of fruits, like a ginormous Gros Michel in all its rare splendor. The sisterlings have done well in preparing his visitation and presentation. We share stares as much as can be done with all two of him I must constantly reconcile. The Frank is Not Mine, nor is he anywhere close to being Kin, but I can certainly appreciate all that he is and brings forward! Investment is mine, in my Sam, perfect how he is for her most assuredly.
He is such a considerate young gentleman, to have waited with and for his Sam, but it is abundantly and blatantly clear that they had not departed for long-awaited consummation. Any refined discussions upon such matters will have to wait, for my could-be giggolo is in quite an uncertain position relating to his courtship. I must endeavor with all practicality to not endanger such pursuits, and restrict any friendshippening toward mundanely fun matters, like friendly discussions and displays of virtue and power.
There shall be no licking of the carnal variety and definitely no shoving of entire arms up egg-canals. I shift uneasily and will myself silent and demure, denying any patent horniness which is otherwise desperate for relief. No, my body; this man could not give us children, even if they would be strong, even if he was ours. No, we shall have to... wait. We must be patient, and thoughtful, and kind, and perhaps should not all work out then this man can point me to others.
Through one manner or another, my pound of flesh shall be paid. A warm body to tear into, to fill myself in all ways, to hold and cherish and hug and tumble and brush and fumble...
Now if only that second man beside him was not his mere reflection. A second Frank would factually resolve all conundrums involved quite neatly, but would a second Frank not wish to be a second for Sam? To have two consorts would be unthinkable, even if they were identical, and it is a fantasy surely worth much deliberation over its dubiosity. A fantasy due dreams and lonely nights, a man at each end, swapping places, swapping pleasures...
The potential considerations are many for how little time is allotted to me at this juncture in relations. This berry juice simply must be acquired and guzzled more often and on my own time, for even if answers are uncoming the questions certainly abound! Much value is there in mulling this wonderful substance, much value there is in continued reflections-
“What’s with her eyes?” Frank blurts and breaks the awkward silence of my trance. Double-visions resolve onto one being before me, lasting only a moment until replaced again by my truly-formed double-friendlings. One friend becomes two becomes three then four-
“They’re kind of like a cat’s,” Sam exposits for some reason. “The back pair can see better in the darkness or something, that’s why they’re-”
And finally she actually leans in to see.
“-uh, huh, normally, they’re the ones thin indoors, but they’re all... huh.”
Truly attentive, is she. My focus is strong. My focus is PURE. I have eyes not for my too-familiar surroundings, only she, my Carey, and the Frank.
“Wide as a begging baby’s?” Carey jests. “Damn, not beating the house cat allegations today I guess.”
‘Alligations?’ Alligators? Seen. Nature documentary. Deadly river beasts to be sure, yet nowhere near our waters. Slit eyes. Like mine. Scaled. Like me. Squat, stupid, boring imitations of perfection. House cat alligator? Strange!
“Am not house cat,” I affront in a clumsy shrug. “I pet Sam! Not she!”
Each scoffs in their own little humanly way. The Frank’s is... what does it mean? It is not like theirs. What are theirs? Irrelevant. Frank day. Frank matters.
Wide my pupils go, taking in every speck of possibility to his body no matter the confusion. Enormous burst my nostrils, scenting all that he is. Keen are my ears, angled by my head just so as I lean in... to hear... his heartbeat. The blood of the Frank. The whispering of his lungs. His bare intake, his squelching innards, his fear, his disdain, his SHOCK, his horror-!
Whap. “Personal space, girl,” Carey reminds with... some sort of old cat toy. No pain, barely any sensation; her discipliner it remains, a false feather upon a stick neither wood nor metal. Bendier than a punched bone, yet far less brittle than any mentioned...
What? Oh.
Who? Yes, the Carey. Because I got carried away.
The display cannot go awkwardly un-chuckled by Frank. “Are you sure she’s... okay? You said she was, what, sleeping? If she were a human I’d say she was drunk as a skunk, and her breath smells weirder than usual.”
“Bah,” the thwapper spits. “We help her brush her teeth. Can’t do anything about the odor she leaves on everything she likes! Which you’re seeing the source of, by the way. And yeah, she just gets like this sometimes.”
More times, if it can be helped. Can help myself to it. To get it. The juice. The good stuff. Will bring in much food in fungi-... fun-? Fungus ability. Fun-guy-able!... Fungib-whatever. Give cut meat for good meals for store food for good meals. Home blech-o-nom-ics. For good! Sam juice.
“Nah, that can’t be right,” he asserts. “You can just tell me if she’s on her alien period or whatever. Assuming you’re right about her being a girl...”
Sam almost faints and Carey blushes purple. The Frank shines with contextually awkward pride, yet insight may hold he has ‘gotten one over’ upon the Carey. Whatever that means.
“It’s pretty clear she’s a girl,” Carey scoffs, “and you don’t ask something like that! You’ve just met a girl and you’ve asked if she’s on her wacky xeno period! This is almost as bad as the time you-”
...Am. Not human silly bleeds. Works? Who cares. Just does. Grown horns-ey. Eggs, no man, not even the Frank. Different wacky!
“Seriously, have you checked or something?” I tune back in to them. “Could be like, I dunno, a bird or a lizard.” He ogles my non-existent breasts with a sneer and bypasses my finely-textured belly for my tone hips before shying away in near disgust--either at he, or me. Bodes poorly; good taste he has, but in Sams only.
The Carey Smirk is obvious even through a pinched side-eye. “Well, you might as well go down and check if you’re so set on this hill,” she dares in spite of a dubious squeak released by the Sam in the room. “She’s naked!”
This sends me glancing down. Oh. Am naked. Forgot dress.
He more liberally side-eyes her than I do. “I’m good,” he crosses his arms, portentially forcing a last glance to my pressed pit... and belching hormonal fear to confuse my matters further. What was a ribbing contest has gone far below the chest and any actual ribs, down past the belt and upon matters too early for approach yet too awkward to reproach.
For it the question--or something in it--has struck a nerve; something clear not in anything specific from her expression or manner, but all in her entirely human conception that is words.
“I get this is weird, Frank,” Carey begins, “but please just give her a chance. I know she’s a giant alien, yes she’s naked, and yes she... ate people, but she’s so sweet now that we’ve, um... broken that awful behavior. She thought she could eat people to get their intelligence and that we were basically really clever ‘big game.’ Literally just could not have known better, and I helped her!”
“Really not selling me on this,” he curtly drops.
Sam is silent during this little petty minor argument, and so, my Carey continues talking me up. “It’s been MONTHS since she did anything even remotely bad, and I just want to get both of you a new friend!”
New friends? A great idea from the Carey. The concept pulls me in and back on track, tears me down from my juicy tower, my meaty thoughts, overriding higher conceptions and long-term plans and short-term requests as I reach out and hug him.
Whatever he had been saying, whatever I hadn’t the mind to catch, bursts free like a scentspeech sign’s refreshment. Any opinions or objections he had had are dashed against my chestplate, meaningless in contents, meaningful only in significance...
The feather has me briefly tighten before falling back under the assault of sensation! I catch one hazy glance of Sam pulling back a recovering Frank before any errant limbs may renew assaults, Carey herself going on the warpath upon my plates’ edgings!
“No crushing friends! Apologize!”
Barely can I retaliate, barely can I utter sense, barely can I control and contain the spasms induced by blessed, wretched feedback, barely-oh-barely can I feel something welling deep within me, something new, something growing. Something to be unpacked later, something great.
A milestone. Not just in my family, but in my life. Sharp gasps run parallel out of the admittedly warranted tickling and from the realization that my spinal brain is finally growing in.
“I yield!” breaks free from my revelatory ecstasy; “I’m-am sorry! Clever humans, fine weapons, I apol-go-gise to the Frank!”
Carey relents, I rise free, and have--in my display--utterly decimated any aura of mystique and power before the Frank, slack-jawed as he is in our Sam’s less consumptive grip.
“This,” he iterates, “has got to be the most effeminate bullshit I’ve ever seen. You’re tickling a giant alien with a cat toy, because she hugged me too hard.”
Gone! Disarmed am I, and with it goes any sense of shock and horror... for which there are few remedies at my disposal, ‘Plan Ate’ becoming plainly necessary now that Plan A is out the window.
“The giant alien,” he continues beyond Sam’s embrace, “which viciously killed multiple people... because she literally didn’t understand ‘friends, not food’? And then painted a giant mural about the terrible things she did, and is now here, being introduced as an absolute, complete mess... because you, Carey, want us to be friends?”
He is worse than shocked! He is baffled, eyes crunched, maw gaped, a scoff coming free with every new observation as he casts his gaze about my den. Yet ignorant, is he, for one simple fact:
All the best friends are formed over food.
“That’s insane and I think I’m going to be up all night thinking about it,” is all that I can sum the situation up with. Immediately is something shoved into my hands from nearby, Carey’s own retreating back from its dart.
“Well!” she butts in. “I think that this is as good a time as any to let you two actually get to talking now that the ice is broken and the air is cleared; I’ve got some stuff to look into today. We made flash cards!”
Indeed, I find: cards.
Flash cards.
Little pieces of cut-up cardboard with short phrases and questions written upon them in permanent marker. Flash cards, to interview an alien dinosaur with, to be ‘my friend.’
Wordlessly I hold one up not toward the absurdity given form, but instead to the woman behind it all, the woman who has come behind the slaughter and domesticated the beast.
...And so, the card questions: ‘Do you like pancakes?’
She only shrugs. “You should have seen how fast she was ripping around out back earlier!” Without any elaboration she ushers an awkwardly white and forcibly neutral Sam back out into the hall despite any half-turned protests of mine, finally sealing me in after all this time with... her. The alien.
“...So, um-”
And then the door bursts back open. “Behave!” Carey stabs at the metaphorical elephant before leaving again just as swiftly as she interjected.
Well, the only way out is forward. Or the back hatch, but I’d need to get through ‘Emeral’ to escape that way. And besides, it would probably be very muddy, my boots having been left upstairs.
I shuffle awkwardly and awkwardly shuffle for a flash card, reading it out. “What is your... ‘favorite color’? Really? Ugh, Carey...”
Yet, the creature beams her surprisingly pearly whites. “Yellow!” she stumbles. “Good color, even had’ve good du-ress but forgot to wear!”
Rather humanly she gestures with an over-corrected shoulder lean across the room to a mass of yellow fabrics, beyond the couch she’d been sleeping on when we arrived--a blatantly bespoke work of scrap steel and recycled upholstery heaped with cushions. Her actual target hinted toward is what appeared at first glance to be part of the room’s haphazard storage as a discarded curtain or five is apparently and allegedly actually a garment for the creature.
The theme of the space is becoming consistently clear, with the question begged on if Goose is in the know enough to have made the gargantuan lounger.
“Sam made! Good giv’d!” she proclaims with regard to the drapes. “V’or Ch’istmess. Gave them two paper, one hard giv’d too. Should see big one; was in hall!”
The surprisingly friendly and excited alien flinch-earningly lunges a wicked grasper toward but past me at the door. Taking the invitation, I step back without any consequences to quietly open it--revealing neither Fairbanks sister, and instead an empty passage. From upstairs comes quiet discussion about a ‘paper’ exposited by Carey to Sam. With trust shielding my back I glance around and see it: what I’d never actually looked at too thoroughly is not sloppily painted bark and is instead a single, large and solid piece of armor.
A quick glance back inside has me jerk in shock over the apparently stealthy alien now far too close, far too eager to show off one blatantly paler-brown half of her breast. From where the plate meets her keel bowing inward up to a shoulder it is clearly much paler than the rest, leaving very little wonder from even the short glance I had as to where it came from.
My recoil is steadied on the frame and she nearly shoves me out by her head alone, giving me all the encouragement I need to actually check out the grim art piece.
On it in blotches and pours is a sea of white primer, forming snow banks and falls alike. Lineworks identify basic mountains and hills, while more deliberate arrangements of color hold trees and houses in prominence with ragged attempts at scaling for distance. This alien’s mind expressed to the world, Gold River as seen from the surrounding heights. One height in particular: that of the mural’s eventual site...
“Holy shit,” I can’t help but mutter in wonder with all things confirmed. “You... and that...”
Jolting fear interrupts any further admiration--an alien head grinning wide with pride asserts itself to a side, distracting for a claw at the other...