Heather Farthing's Blog - Posts Tagged "deep-ones"
Proteus-Chapter one
Proteus
by
Heather Farthing
(c)2023, all rights reserved.
Chapter one
I think I’ll call them…tree runners. I don’t know what the humans call them. I haven’t been close enough to ask.
They are graceful things on four legs, with elegantly curved necks. The small ones, babies, I assume, have spots, and a few of the big ones—males, probably—have branching sticks coming out of their heads.
I’ve seen them in the places where humans don’t go. They graze or browse, plant-eaters instead of flesh. The thought of eating plants turns my stomach, but these “tree runners” have enough muscle tissue to be appealing.
I lie on my belly, watching them, hidden in the grass. Something feels…wrong about taking down the stickless ones, especially with a little spot next to them, so I focus on the ones with the beautiful crown atop their heads.
It’s difficult to get close to them. If the breath around me changes, they’ll smell me, and bolt. I think I must smell synthetic to them, or wrong somehow. Not surprising.
One of the sticked ones stands tall and blows air out of his nose. He knows something is nearby, something hungry, but he isn’t sure of my location.
I don’t have the stick-throwers like the humans have. I have only claws and teeth and tendril. So I lay in wait, hidden among the wet grass and leaves. When the male is close enough, I lash out with a hunting tendril, which sparks at the end. The women and babies take off running, but the male’s delicious-looking muscles lock in place, a shiver running over him, until he falls sideways.
I stand over my kill, watching it, petting it’s neck as I usher it into the Great Darkness. The hunting spark alone might be enough to kill it, but it feels wrong to prolong its suffering, so I drive my hunting tendril into its brain.
Um...thank you. I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but I’ll live another day. So thanks. Safe travels, friend.
With that unpleasant business dealt with, I lift the carcass over my shoulder, taking it deeper into offices, abandoned after my brother pulled his little stunt, where I have a place. Carrying the meat makes me wary, watchful. Some of my siblings would rather take food rather than gather their own, and if one’s not careful, they’ll be going hungry.
It’s a reasonable tactic, if a dishonorable one. That’s what my big brother told me.
You eat what you gather and gather what you eat. You don’t take food out of the mouths of the smaller ones. I like that. I like you.
Of course he liked me. I was the second added to the tank, his only friend and companion for a long time. He wasn’t the biggest, but he was the smartest. There was always something…different about him.
I have a secret. Do you want to hear it? I have a name.
What’s a name?
A name is a word that means you. It’s what you call yourself, how you define your existence.
Can I have a name, too?
Of course. But you have to think of it yourself.
Humans seem to like squares, boxes. They’re always making boxes to put things in. A glass box full of water for me and my siblings. Boxes for themselves to be in, watching the box with me and my siblings. Boxes to look at when not looking at us, boxes to be in when not watching me and my siblings.
This a box full of boxes, one of many, lined up in neat little rows on paths of gray stone. There are boxes inside, not just rooms, but things. A tall, rectangular box, silver in color, that held food that had long turned rotten. A smaller box that no longer has power, but hummed and counted down when I accidentally zapped it. A white box that folds under the counter, full of white circles and silver sticks with scoops, prongs, or serrated edges. Boxes that held clothes. Boxes that held chemicals, in the room with the white chair and the bowl big enough to sit in, where I sleep. Boxes, boxes, boxes.
I drop the carcass onto the ground, the smooth, hard floor that’s easier to clean after a big meal. Stripping off my gloves and peeling away the warm head-covering and face-concealer, I kneel before my heal, expand my jaws, and take a bite.
***
After the bones are licked clean, I sit in one corner of the box and crack open the long bones for the marrow. It’s my favorite part, saved for after the meal proper.
That’s called “dessert.” Something good you eat because you like it, after you eat the big meal.
How do you know so much, Bismark?
He had just smiled and flicked his tail to me, then turned his attention to one of the humans in their white gown, playing a recording of voices from his hand-rectangle.
I knew he was different, even then. There was a cunning that I didn’t know how to put into words. We should have all been paying much more attention, more to our oldest brother, more to the humans that peered into our tank and sometimes poured food.
It was the food that changed us, or allowed us to change. Whatever it was made from had four limbs made for walking, and so, with curiosity (some more malicious than others), we grew our fins into legs. The humans seemed very surprised at this.
The monsters howl at the pale orb in the sky. They come in all shapes and sizes, colors and textures. I think they’re some creation of the humans, but like the tree runners, they find no kinship in me, only a threatening smell and competition for food. Unlike the tree runners, these mouths-on-legs bite.
I hunker down under a blanket I found in one of the tall boxes, recessed into a wall, closing my eyes and letting my eyes flutter closed. I think the blazing, bright thing in the sky will start to rise again, which means it’s a good time to sleep.
The warm light of the fire in the sky casts on my face, causing me to turn away. It is in this brief moment of wake and sleep that I hear it: the sound of running and screaming.
Screaming isn’t good. Humans scream, but animals make animal sounds. If there is screaming, it means humans are nearby—and chances are good, they’ve run into my brother’s sadistic little creations.
I wouldn’t bother if it didn’t sound so near. Humans are…violent, and they tend to attack first and ask questions maybe. If there’s a family group nearby, I need to migrate on.
I grab for my gloves, the soft head-covering, and the face-concealer from the counter I left them on, putting them in place as I approach the bare window that faces out front. The sounds are coming from several boxes down, blocked from my view.
There is another noise behind the screaming, baying and barking. I step out for a closer look, seeing a human on one of their two-wheeled transports, the spotted glow of predators not far behind.
Those things, my brother’s doing, clearly. I think they use bases from the human-made mouths-with-with legs, spliced with the same genetics we were sourced from. They have long, curved fangs that stick out from their mouths, and patches of fur in circular spots that glows in sequence, a form of visual communication as the pack hunts.
Too late to hide, the human has seen me try to duck back inside my shelter.
“Wait!” it screams, turning its vehicle toward me. “Wait! Let me in!”
The terrestrial biped runs toward me, catching its fingers in the door, preventing me from closing the door as she slips inside, falling into my arms. I kick the door closed and slide my tail up inside my coat to better disguise myself.
“Thank you!” the human breathes, clinging to me like a barnacle, shaking. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
I don’t understand what it’s thanking me for, except maybe barging into my den unwanted.
“I thought those things were going to eat me!” it sighs, still holding onto me, as the baying beasts claw at the door.
I purr softly at the noise, hoping they’ll get bored and leave before they do any significant damage.
“I’m sorry,” it laughs. “I know this is rude, but…I didn’t know what else to do!”
I purr noncommittally as it lets me go, turning toward the door.
“I won’t be any trouble!” it promises as I pick up one of the larger bones from the ground, approaching the predator with it from behind. “I’ve got some food we could trade, for a few hours inside! Or you could come back to my caravan…safety in numbers, yeah?”
It turns back around just slowly enough for me to put the makeshift club behind my back. It’s holding out a can of food.
This act…is…confusing. Humans are usually aggressive, and aggressive animals don’t share food.
“All I got on this run is some Vienna sausages,” it smiles. “But we can share them and I’ll be gone as soon as the moondogs leave.
“Moon…dogs?” I ask softly, tilting my head.
“Yeah, that’s what my caravan calls them. The fanged ones with the glowing spots?”
“Moondogs, yes,” I agree, not sure how they came to that series of sounds, and looking at the can in her hand.
I’ve never had human food before. When he made our home unwelcoming, our brother made sure we were full and satisfied, should we choose to take our chances away from him and his madness. Our home burned, but we were offered meat, fresh and still bloody, so we would be strong, come what may.
“I promise, I’ll go as soon as they’re gone, and you can come with me, if you want. We could always use another strong young man in our caravan.”
“Strong…young…man?” I ask, confused. Is that what I look like to it? I am a male, but I don’t know for sure what humans see when I’m in disguise, only that they don’t shoot.
“Yeah, you seem like you’ve been out here awhile, making tools,” it gestures to the room, where I’ve scored deer bones with patterns, tied some together to make clubs or things for cutting or impact. “You must have been very young when civilization fell.”
You could say that.
“I’ve got more,” the human says, opening the can with a sucking sound, revealing a circular arrangement of flesh-colored tubes, one in the center whole. “But I’m hungry now. I’m going to eat while we wait. Promise, I won’t be any trouble and I’ll leave as soon as they do, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I repeat, not sure what it means.
As it turns around to find a place to sit and eat, I discreetly use my tail to hide the club behind the counter, and then watch curiously as it slides damp tube after damp tube out of the can.
“You gonna sit down?” it asks, noticing my looming.
“Yeah,” I repeat, thinking that’s a thing humans say.
“Then sit,” it commands, gesturing at my sitting spots.
Supposing this must be what humans do, I sit where I’m standing, mindful of my tail, legs crossed, coiling my toes in my modified boots and hoping it doesn’t notice the alterations made to fit my feet.
“I’m River,” it smiles. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, but we help our own, yeah?”
“Help our own, yeah,” I repeat numbly.
A human, eating in my den. I may as well have invited my brother’s “moondogs” in for dinner! Humans are violent, and react poorly to me and my siblings. There was always a look of alarm, when we changed, developed lungs and legs, migrated from the brine pools to the decorative rocks. And then when big brother Bismark pulled his little stunt, they tried to destroy us all.
Even the feral ones, the ones that weren’t home when it burned. They attacked us on sight, and left little room for discussion. That’s when I started to scavenge empty boxes for things that made me look like them.
Chapter two
by
Heather Farthing
(c)2023, all rights reserved.
Chapter one
I think I’ll call them…tree runners. I don’t know what the humans call them. I haven’t been close enough to ask.
They are graceful things on four legs, with elegantly curved necks. The small ones, babies, I assume, have spots, and a few of the big ones—males, probably—have branching sticks coming out of their heads.
I’ve seen them in the places where humans don’t go. They graze or browse, plant-eaters instead of flesh. The thought of eating plants turns my stomach, but these “tree runners” have enough muscle tissue to be appealing.
I lie on my belly, watching them, hidden in the grass. Something feels…wrong about taking down the stickless ones, especially with a little spot next to them, so I focus on the ones with the beautiful crown atop their heads.
It’s difficult to get close to them. If the breath around me changes, they’ll smell me, and bolt. I think I must smell synthetic to them, or wrong somehow. Not surprising.
One of the sticked ones stands tall and blows air out of his nose. He knows something is nearby, something hungry, but he isn’t sure of my location.
I don’t have the stick-throwers like the humans have. I have only claws and teeth and tendril. So I lay in wait, hidden among the wet grass and leaves. When the male is close enough, I lash out with a hunting tendril, which sparks at the end. The women and babies take off running, but the male’s delicious-looking muscles lock in place, a shiver running over him, until he falls sideways.
I stand over my kill, watching it, petting it’s neck as I usher it into the Great Darkness. The hunting spark alone might be enough to kill it, but it feels wrong to prolong its suffering, so I drive my hunting tendril into its brain.
Um...thank you. I know it doesn’t mean much to you, but I’ll live another day. So thanks. Safe travels, friend.
With that unpleasant business dealt with, I lift the carcass over my shoulder, taking it deeper into offices, abandoned after my brother pulled his little stunt, where I have a place. Carrying the meat makes me wary, watchful. Some of my siblings would rather take food rather than gather their own, and if one’s not careful, they’ll be going hungry.
It’s a reasonable tactic, if a dishonorable one. That’s what my big brother told me.
You eat what you gather and gather what you eat. You don’t take food out of the mouths of the smaller ones. I like that. I like you.
Of course he liked me. I was the second added to the tank, his only friend and companion for a long time. He wasn’t the biggest, but he was the smartest. There was always something…different about him.
I have a secret. Do you want to hear it? I have a name.
What’s a name?
A name is a word that means you. It’s what you call yourself, how you define your existence.
Can I have a name, too?
Of course. But you have to think of it yourself.
Humans seem to like squares, boxes. They’re always making boxes to put things in. A glass box full of water for me and my siblings. Boxes for themselves to be in, watching the box with me and my siblings. Boxes to look at when not looking at us, boxes to be in when not watching me and my siblings.
This a box full of boxes, one of many, lined up in neat little rows on paths of gray stone. There are boxes inside, not just rooms, but things. A tall, rectangular box, silver in color, that held food that had long turned rotten. A smaller box that no longer has power, but hummed and counted down when I accidentally zapped it. A white box that folds under the counter, full of white circles and silver sticks with scoops, prongs, or serrated edges. Boxes that held clothes. Boxes that held chemicals, in the room with the white chair and the bowl big enough to sit in, where I sleep. Boxes, boxes, boxes.
I drop the carcass onto the ground, the smooth, hard floor that’s easier to clean after a big meal. Stripping off my gloves and peeling away the warm head-covering and face-concealer, I kneel before my heal, expand my jaws, and take a bite.
***
After the bones are licked clean, I sit in one corner of the box and crack open the long bones for the marrow. It’s my favorite part, saved for after the meal proper.
That’s called “dessert.” Something good you eat because you like it, after you eat the big meal.
How do you know so much, Bismark?
He had just smiled and flicked his tail to me, then turned his attention to one of the humans in their white gown, playing a recording of voices from his hand-rectangle.
I knew he was different, even then. There was a cunning that I didn’t know how to put into words. We should have all been paying much more attention, more to our oldest brother, more to the humans that peered into our tank and sometimes poured food.
It was the food that changed us, or allowed us to change. Whatever it was made from had four limbs made for walking, and so, with curiosity (some more malicious than others), we grew our fins into legs. The humans seemed very surprised at this.
The monsters howl at the pale orb in the sky. They come in all shapes and sizes, colors and textures. I think they’re some creation of the humans, but like the tree runners, they find no kinship in me, only a threatening smell and competition for food. Unlike the tree runners, these mouths-on-legs bite.
I hunker down under a blanket I found in one of the tall boxes, recessed into a wall, closing my eyes and letting my eyes flutter closed. I think the blazing, bright thing in the sky will start to rise again, which means it’s a good time to sleep.
The warm light of the fire in the sky casts on my face, causing me to turn away. It is in this brief moment of wake and sleep that I hear it: the sound of running and screaming.
Screaming isn’t good. Humans scream, but animals make animal sounds. If there is screaming, it means humans are nearby—and chances are good, they’ve run into my brother’s sadistic little creations.
I wouldn’t bother if it didn’t sound so near. Humans are…violent, and they tend to attack first and ask questions maybe. If there’s a family group nearby, I need to migrate on.
I grab for my gloves, the soft head-covering, and the face-concealer from the counter I left them on, putting them in place as I approach the bare window that faces out front. The sounds are coming from several boxes down, blocked from my view.
There is another noise behind the screaming, baying and barking. I step out for a closer look, seeing a human on one of their two-wheeled transports, the spotted glow of predators not far behind.
Those things, my brother’s doing, clearly. I think they use bases from the human-made mouths-with-with legs, spliced with the same genetics we were sourced from. They have long, curved fangs that stick out from their mouths, and patches of fur in circular spots that glows in sequence, a form of visual communication as the pack hunts.
Too late to hide, the human has seen me try to duck back inside my shelter.
“Wait!” it screams, turning its vehicle toward me. “Wait! Let me in!”
The terrestrial biped runs toward me, catching its fingers in the door, preventing me from closing the door as she slips inside, falling into my arms. I kick the door closed and slide my tail up inside my coat to better disguise myself.
“Thank you!” the human breathes, clinging to me like a barnacle, shaking. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
I don’t understand what it’s thanking me for, except maybe barging into my den unwanted.
“I thought those things were going to eat me!” it sighs, still holding onto me, as the baying beasts claw at the door.
I purr softly at the noise, hoping they’ll get bored and leave before they do any significant damage.
“I’m sorry,” it laughs. “I know this is rude, but…I didn’t know what else to do!”
I purr noncommittally as it lets me go, turning toward the door.
“I won’t be any trouble!” it promises as I pick up one of the larger bones from the ground, approaching the predator with it from behind. “I’ve got some food we could trade, for a few hours inside! Or you could come back to my caravan…safety in numbers, yeah?”
It turns back around just slowly enough for me to put the makeshift club behind my back. It’s holding out a can of food.
This act…is…confusing. Humans are usually aggressive, and aggressive animals don’t share food.
“All I got on this run is some Vienna sausages,” it smiles. “But we can share them and I’ll be gone as soon as the moondogs leave.
“Moon…dogs?” I ask softly, tilting my head.
“Yeah, that’s what my caravan calls them. The fanged ones with the glowing spots?”
“Moondogs, yes,” I agree, not sure how they came to that series of sounds, and looking at the can in her hand.
I’ve never had human food before. When he made our home unwelcoming, our brother made sure we were full and satisfied, should we choose to take our chances away from him and his madness. Our home burned, but we were offered meat, fresh and still bloody, so we would be strong, come what may.
“I promise, I’ll go as soon as they’re gone, and you can come with me, if you want. We could always use another strong young man in our caravan.”
“Strong…young…man?” I ask, confused. Is that what I look like to it? I am a male, but I don’t know for sure what humans see when I’m in disguise, only that they don’t shoot.
“Yeah, you seem like you’ve been out here awhile, making tools,” it gestures to the room, where I’ve scored deer bones with patterns, tied some together to make clubs or things for cutting or impact. “You must have been very young when civilization fell.”
You could say that.
“I’ve got more,” the human says, opening the can with a sucking sound, revealing a circular arrangement of flesh-colored tubes, one in the center whole. “But I’m hungry now. I’m going to eat while we wait. Promise, I won’t be any trouble and I’ll leave as soon as they do, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I repeat, not sure what it means.
As it turns around to find a place to sit and eat, I discreetly use my tail to hide the club behind the counter, and then watch curiously as it slides damp tube after damp tube out of the can.
“You gonna sit down?” it asks, noticing my looming.
“Yeah,” I repeat, thinking that’s a thing humans say.
“Then sit,” it commands, gesturing at my sitting spots.
Supposing this must be what humans do, I sit where I’m standing, mindful of my tail, legs crossed, coiling my toes in my modified boots and hoping it doesn’t notice the alterations made to fit my feet.
“I’m River,” it smiles. “Sorry to barge in on you like this, but we help our own, yeah?”
“Help our own, yeah,” I repeat numbly.
A human, eating in my den. I may as well have invited my brother’s “moondogs” in for dinner! Humans are violent, and react poorly to me and my siblings. There was always a look of alarm, when we changed, developed lungs and legs, migrated from the brine pools to the decorative rocks. And then when big brother Bismark pulled his little stunt, they tried to destroy us all.
Even the feral ones, the ones that weren’t home when it burned. They attacked us on sight, and left little room for discussion. That’s when I started to scavenge empty boxes for things that made me look like them.
Chapter two
Proteus-Chapter two
Chapter one
Chapter two
The human has curled asleep under my sleeping window. I approach cautiously, sniffing. I don’t know if it’s a male or female, but it has longer brown hair, frizzed like one of my siblings zapped it. It is wearing a heavy yellow coat, to keep out the cold that seems to get worse every day. It breathes softly, making a small groaning sound now and again.
Apes, Bismarck called them disdainfully. They descended from tailless monkeys, and they think this entitles them to everything?
This human did not seem entitled. Maybe a little, when it barged into my home to hide from the moondogs. But then it seemed generous with its food, stacked in silver and blue towers in front of it.
I take one of them and examine it. It is round, cylindrical, with a picture of the flesh-tubes one one of the flat disks, with a garnish of some sort of plant, and the strange marks humans put on everything. My brother claimed to know what they mean, but never explained it to us, only saying the ones beneath our tanks said “Caution: Live Animals” and “Shock Hazard.”
There’s a pull tab on the top of the can, which is how the human opened it. I mimic its movements and pry away the metal shell, dipping my bare fingers and clasp one of the pinkish tubes with my claws, sniffing it. It doesn’t smell good, and it tastes even worse: slimy and salty and somehow tasteless at the same time, different from game meat, still fresh, bloody, and warm.
I gag and I retch, trying to choke it down, and then set the can by the sleeping figure, just in time for it to stir as I pull back and make a mad dive for my gloves and face-concealer.
“Oh, breakfast?” it asks. “How sweet, thank you.”
The human sits up and looks down at the can, pressing its lips together, swishing the can around.
“Started without me?” I asks. “What’s the matter, didn’t like it?”
I am behind the counter, concealing my tail and making sure my disguise is in place. At a distance, the humans don’t seem to be able to see it, but up close is another story.
I suppose I can’t be too hard on humans for being afraid. We look different, not just as a species, but from sibling to sibling, bits of biology that don’t seem to belong, interpretations of genetics based on what we’ve been eating. We must have looked quite the sight, stumbling out of the wreckage of our home, seeing the open sky for the first time. We learned quickly that just because something looks friendly doesn’t mean it is.
I hear its footsteps in front of the counter, its weight shift as it leans over the counter, looking down at me as I cringe beneath it.
“Are you okay?” it asks. “I know I said I’d leave as soon as the moondogs did, but then I fell asleep and it started raining…”
“Yeah,” I repeat blankly, nearly trembling from its proximity.
“You’ve been out here a long time, haven’t you?” it questions.
“Yeah, long time,” I repeat, hoping it’s the correct response.
It sweeps around the counter, prompting me to scuttle sideways and pull the hood low, to keep it from seeing my eyes.
“I don’t believe I properly introduced myself,” it observes, holding out a hand, gloved against the cold and rain. “I’m River.”
I’m quite sure it did identify itself as such, but it is nice to have a reminder.
“River,” I answer slowly, not sure what it wants with the hand.
“It’s a handshake,” it explains as I look away. “Here, give me your hand.”
I can’t imagine it means to take it off at the wrist, since humans don’t seem to be able to do that, so I extend one of my hands, and yelp when the human grabs me, scooting backwards, away from the unfamiliar touch.
“Like this, see?” it continues, moving our hands up and down.
A small spark flashes between us, silvery-purple. The human gasps in surprise, and pulls away, me pressed up against the box that used to hold food.
“Oh, static. Now what’s your name?”
I shake my head to show I don’t have one.
“You have been out here a long time,” it observes in a soft tone. “You were…what, eight, nine when the power grid went out?”
I honestly don’t know. Time didn’t mean much in the tanks, but I think humans count it from when it gets cold for awhile to when it gets cold again.
“Yeah.”
“I was around there, too,” it continues, taking a seat a few feet away. “I remember living in a house like this. We had air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter. I had snacks after school in front of the TV.”
“Tanks,” I murmur, face hidden under my hood and behind my forearms, crossed over my knees. “Brothers and sisters.”
“You remember the tanks fighting off the monsters?” it asks. “I remember watching that on TV before we had to evacuate. My dad thought the national guard was going to push them back and the cities would be safe.” There’s a small, wry laugh, like it’s thinking of something ironic.
I remember Father, the wall of eyes and teeth and flesh Bismarck showed me. The All-Father, the slice of something greater that was our progenitor. It called to Mother, begging to die, as the humans cut away at him to make us. Mother was in another room, a massive creature of writhing tentacles poked through with thick threads that kept her docile, kept her from recognizing her children.
There are others. We are just one piece of the whole.
“You should really think about coming back with me,” human-River observes in a gentle tone. “It might do you some good to be around people for a change.”
I shake my head. It would not be a good thing to be around humans, not for me.
A bright flash lights up the room in ghostly pale light, a loud crack following shortly there after. Suddenly, human-River is in my lap, clinging to me. After the thunder rolls over, it realize where it is and what it’s sitting on, and sheepishly slides away, taking its seat again.
“Sorry,” it murmurs, sounding flustered. “It startled me. Lightning is a big deal when you don’t have a house between you and it anymore.”
The flash means little to me, but I have seen enough to understand that it is a big deal to humans. The heat burns them, the current disrupts the heart, just like my last meal. They don’t like it.
As human-River takes its seat, I hold my hood down low again, feeling my claws pick at the inside of my gloves.
“Were you from around here?” it asks. “Some feral children stay pretty close to where they were when the power went out.”
“No,” I answer.
The truth is, I’m a genetically-engineered organism designed to run said power grid, made in an aquatic facility and left to fend for myself because I didn’t want to join my brother in his senseless slaughter. I was quite happy in my tank, thank you very much.
“Do you remember where you grew up?”
“Yes.”
It was a warm place, full of corals and bubbles and sand to play in. In those days, there was only my older brother, and the strange, air-breathing faces that came to peer into the water, sometimes dropping chunks of animal flesh.
I remember when I was placed into the tank with Bismarck, new and confused, wheeled in a miniature tank down a hallway of bright lights.
Where are you taking me? What’s happening?
“Sorry if I’m prying,” human-River sighs. “I find everyone has an interesting story, if you’re willing to share it.”
You have no idea.
I tense as the human reaches into one of its coat pockets, afraid it might be a weapon, but all it is a palm-sized sheaf of papers.
“Do you play?” the human asks.
“Play?”
I played with my siblings, rolled in the sand at the bottom of the tanks and hide-and-seek among the corals. We never needed hand rectangles to play.
“You know, Go Fish? Rummy? Poker?”
I tilt my head in curiosity, purring softly.
“I’ll teach you,” the human says, separating the papers into two stacks, then mixing them together with an interesting clicking noise. It does this a few times before handing us each a selection of cards.
“Okay, so I ask if you have a certain card like one in my hand, and if you do, you give it to me. Then you ask if I have a card, and if I do, I give it to you. First one to run out of cards wins, got it?”
“Got it.”
I look down, bewildered, at the cards with bright red and black patterns.
“Do you have any threes?” the human asks.
“Threes,” I answer, handing out a card, not sure what the point of this is, or if I’m doing it right.
“No, no, that’s an ace of spades,” the human chides.
“Threes. You know? It has the number three on it, or a picture of three items.”
I know how many things I’m looking at, but I don’t know the human words for how many. I fumble lamely at another card.
“That’s a five. You don’t know your numbers?”
My eyes go wide, hands shaking. I don’t know what the human will do if I disappoint it.
“No?” I blurt, trembling slightly.
“Hmm, well. I can teach you?” Its lips are pressed together, taking the cards and putting them back into a stack. It then reaches for mine, another spark hitting its fingers as I hand them over.
“Ouch,” it groans, rubbing the offending finger, but doesn’t otherwise react.
It places the cards down in a significant order, starting with a single red not-circle and then all the way up to two hands’ worth.
“This is a one, an ace when it’s a playing card,” it explains.
“One,” I repeat softly.
“Then two,” it continues, pointing at the next card.
“Two.”
“Good job. This is a three.”
We continue like this until we reach the end, and then start again. And then it flashes them up at me randomly so I can call out the numbers. And then we do it again, covering up the little pictures so the human can teach me the symbols instead.
“Did you go to school?” it asks, sounding confused. “You know, before?”
“No school,” I answer.
“That explains a lot,” the human sighs. “How long have you been alone? Do you remember the last time you saw your family?”
I shake my head, remembering a time when it was just me and one of my sisters. I don’t like it.
“Bad…pictures,” I sigh, pointing at my head.
“You don’t like to remember it, huh? Something happened?”
If humans help their own, I don’t want to tell this one about the number of siblings I’ve lost to humans, or starvation, or weather. But mostly humans, with stick-throwers and metal sticks that spit fire and metal.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me about it,” the human smiles kindly, shuffling its cards.
Another lightning lights up the room. The human doesn’t jump into my arms, but it does twitch slightly.
“I hope this ends soon. My family’s going to be looking for me.”
I stand up and approach the door, opening it wide to observe the sky, swollen and mottled gray, with white flashes where the lightning is. Water pours in torrents, pooling in mud and grass. I hold my glove out to it, remembering the simpler times in the tanks, but I suppose one can only be a child for so long.
“You’re lucky,” the human’s voice says from behind and a little beside me. “Having a house like this. It’s held up nice since it was evacuated.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, glancing back, looking at the spots on the ceiling where the rain comes through sometimes. I’ve lined it with hide from the tree runners, mouths-on-legs, and other things I’ve hunted for food.
“At least we can fill our water tanks,” the human continues. “Probably have enough for showers and laundry.”
I close the door against the wind and the rain. The human stands quietly beside me, wrapped in itself against the cold.
As I turn toward the human, I feel my hood shift. It must have moved when I stood up, or perhaps a little rain weighted it down in the wrong way. The point is, it falls away, exposing my horns and my eyes, and the human gasps.
“You’re…you’re a protean!” it squeaks, grabbing at one of the tree runner longbones.
Chapter three
Chapter two
The human has curled asleep under my sleeping window. I approach cautiously, sniffing. I don’t know if it’s a male or female, but it has longer brown hair, frizzed like one of my siblings zapped it. It is wearing a heavy yellow coat, to keep out the cold that seems to get worse every day. It breathes softly, making a small groaning sound now and again.
Apes, Bismarck called them disdainfully. They descended from tailless monkeys, and they think this entitles them to everything?
This human did not seem entitled. Maybe a little, when it barged into my home to hide from the moondogs. But then it seemed generous with its food, stacked in silver and blue towers in front of it.
I take one of them and examine it. It is round, cylindrical, with a picture of the flesh-tubes one one of the flat disks, with a garnish of some sort of plant, and the strange marks humans put on everything. My brother claimed to know what they mean, but never explained it to us, only saying the ones beneath our tanks said “Caution: Live Animals” and “Shock Hazard.”
There’s a pull tab on the top of the can, which is how the human opened it. I mimic its movements and pry away the metal shell, dipping my bare fingers and clasp one of the pinkish tubes with my claws, sniffing it. It doesn’t smell good, and it tastes even worse: slimy and salty and somehow tasteless at the same time, different from game meat, still fresh, bloody, and warm.
I gag and I retch, trying to choke it down, and then set the can by the sleeping figure, just in time for it to stir as I pull back and make a mad dive for my gloves and face-concealer.
“Oh, breakfast?” it asks. “How sweet, thank you.”
The human sits up and looks down at the can, pressing its lips together, swishing the can around.
“Started without me?” I asks. “What’s the matter, didn’t like it?”
I am behind the counter, concealing my tail and making sure my disguise is in place. At a distance, the humans don’t seem to be able to see it, but up close is another story.
I suppose I can’t be too hard on humans for being afraid. We look different, not just as a species, but from sibling to sibling, bits of biology that don’t seem to belong, interpretations of genetics based on what we’ve been eating. We must have looked quite the sight, stumbling out of the wreckage of our home, seeing the open sky for the first time. We learned quickly that just because something looks friendly doesn’t mean it is.
I hear its footsteps in front of the counter, its weight shift as it leans over the counter, looking down at me as I cringe beneath it.
“Are you okay?” it asks. “I know I said I’d leave as soon as the moondogs did, but then I fell asleep and it started raining…”
“Yeah,” I repeat blankly, nearly trembling from its proximity.
“You’ve been out here a long time, haven’t you?” it questions.
“Yeah, long time,” I repeat, hoping it’s the correct response.
It sweeps around the counter, prompting me to scuttle sideways and pull the hood low, to keep it from seeing my eyes.
“I don’t believe I properly introduced myself,” it observes, holding out a hand, gloved against the cold and rain. “I’m River.”
I’m quite sure it did identify itself as such, but it is nice to have a reminder.
“River,” I answer slowly, not sure what it wants with the hand.
“It’s a handshake,” it explains as I look away. “Here, give me your hand.”
I can’t imagine it means to take it off at the wrist, since humans don’t seem to be able to do that, so I extend one of my hands, and yelp when the human grabs me, scooting backwards, away from the unfamiliar touch.
“Like this, see?” it continues, moving our hands up and down.
A small spark flashes between us, silvery-purple. The human gasps in surprise, and pulls away, me pressed up against the box that used to hold food.
“Oh, static. Now what’s your name?”
I shake my head to show I don’t have one.
“You have been out here a long time,” it observes in a soft tone. “You were…what, eight, nine when the power grid went out?”
I honestly don’t know. Time didn’t mean much in the tanks, but I think humans count it from when it gets cold for awhile to when it gets cold again.
“Yeah.”
“I was around there, too,” it continues, taking a seat a few feet away. “I remember living in a house like this. We had air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter. I had snacks after school in front of the TV.”
“Tanks,” I murmur, face hidden under my hood and behind my forearms, crossed over my knees. “Brothers and sisters.”
“You remember the tanks fighting off the monsters?” it asks. “I remember watching that on TV before we had to evacuate. My dad thought the national guard was going to push them back and the cities would be safe.” There’s a small, wry laugh, like it’s thinking of something ironic.
I remember Father, the wall of eyes and teeth and flesh Bismarck showed me. The All-Father, the slice of something greater that was our progenitor. It called to Mother, begging to die, as the humans cut away at him to make us. Mother was in another room, a massive creature of writhing tentacles poked through with thick threads that kept her docile, kept her from recognizing her children.
There are others. We are just one piece of the whole.
“You should really think about coming back with me,” human-River observes in a gentle tone. “It might do you some good to be around people for a change.”
I shake my head. It would not be a good thing to be around humans, not for me.
A bright flash lights up the room in ghostly pale light, a loud crack following shortly there after. Suddenly, human-River is in my lap, clinging to me. After the thunder rolls over, it realize where it is and what it’s sitting on, and sheepishly slides away, taking its seat again.
“Sorry,” it murmurs, sounding flustered. “It startled me. Lightning is a big deal when you don’t have a house between you and it anymore.”
The flash means little to me, but I have seen enough to understand that it is a big deal to humans. The heat burns them, the current disrupts the heart, just like my last meal. They don’t like it.
As human-River takes its seat, I hold my hood down low again, feeling my claws pick at the inside of my gloves.
“Were you from around here?” it asks. “Some feral children stay pretty close to where they were when the power went out.”
“No,” I answer.
The truth is, I’m a genetically-engineered organism designed to run said power grid, made in an aquatic facility and left to fend for myself because I didn’t want to join my brother in his senseless slaughter. I was quite happy in my tank, thank you very much.
“Do you remember where you grew up?”
“Yes.”
It was a warm place, full of corals and bubbles and sand to play in. In those days, there was only my older brother, and the strange, air-breathing faces that came to peer into the water, sometimes dropping chunks of animal flesh.
I remember when I was placed into the tank with Bismarck, new and confused, wheeled in a miniature tank down a hallway of bright lights.
Where are you taking me? What’s happening?
“Sorry if I’m prying,” human-River sighs. “I find everyone has an interesting story, if you’re willing to share it.”
You have no idea.
I tense as the human reaches into one of its coat pockets, afraid it might be a weapon, but all it is a palm-sized sheaf of papers.
“Do you play?” the human asks.
“Play?”
I played with my siblings, rolled in the sand at the bottom of the tanks and hide-and-seek among the corals. We never needed hand rectangles to play.
“You know, Go Fish? Rummy? Poker?”
I tilt my head in curiosity, purring softly.
“I’ll teach you,” the human says, separating the papers into two stacks, then mixing them together with an interesting clicking noise. It does this a few times before handing us each a selection of cards.
“Okay, so I ask if you have a certain card like one in my hand, and if you do, you give it to me. Then you ask if I have a card, and if I do, I give it to you. First one to run out of cards wins, got it?”
“Got it.”
I look down, bewildered, at the cards with bright red and black patterns.
“Do you have any threes?” the human asks.
“Threes,” I answer, handing out a card, not sure what the point of this is, or if I’m doing it right.
“No, no, that’s an ace of spades,” the human chides.
“Threes. You know? It has the number three on it, or a picture of three items.”
I know how many things I’m looking at, but I don’t know the human words for how many. I fumble lamely at another card.
“That’s a five. You don’t know your numbers?”
My eyes go wide, hands shaking. I don’t know what the human will do if I disappoint it.
“No?” I blurt, trembling slightly.
“Hmm, well. I can teach you?” Its lips are pressed together, taking the cards and putting them back into a stack. It then reaches for mine, another spark hitting its fingers as I hand them over.
“Ouch,” it groans, rubbing the offending finger, but doesn’t otherwise react.
It places the cards down in a significant order, starting with a single red not-circle and then all the way up to two hands’ worth.
“This is a one, an ace when it’s a playing card,” it explains.
“One,” I repeat softly.
“Then two,” it continues, pointing at the next card.
“Two.”
“Good job. This is a three.”
We continue like this until we reach the end, and then start again. And then it flashes them up at me randomly so I can call out the numbers. And then we do it again, covering up the little pictures so the human can teach me the symbols instead.
“Did you go to school?” it asks, sounding confused. “You know, before?”
“No school,” I answer.
“That explains a lot,” the human sighs. “How long have you been alone? Do you remember the last time you saw your family?”
I shake my head, remembering a time when it was just me and one of my sisters. I don’t like it.
“Bad…pictures,” I sigh, pointing at my head.
“You don’t like to remember it, huh? Something happened?”
If humans help their own, I don’t want to tell this one about the number of siblings I’ve lost to humans, or starvation, or weather. But mostly humans, with stick-throwers and metal sticks that spit fire and metal.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to tell me about it,” the human smiles kindly, shuffling its cards.
Another lightning lights up the room. The human doesn’t jump into my arms, but it does twitch slightly.
“I hope this ends soon. My family’s going to be looking for me.”
I stand up and approach the door, opening it wide to observe the sky, swollen and mottled gray, with white flashes where the lightning is. Water pours in torrents, pooling in mud and grass. I hold my glove out to it, remembering the simpler times in the tanks, but I suppose one can only be a child for so long.
“You’re lucky,” the human’s voice says from behind and a little beside me. “Having a house like this. It’s held up nice since it was evacuated.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, glancing back, looking at the spots on the ceiling where the rain comes through sometimes. I’ve lined it with hide from the tree runners, mouths-on-legs, and other things I’ve hunted for food.
“At least we can fill our water tanks,” the human continues. “Probably have enough for showers and laundry.”
I close the door against the wind and the rain. The human stands quietly beside me, wrapped in itself against the cold.
As I turn toward the human, I feel my hood shift. It must have moved when I stood up, or perhaps a little rain weighted it down in the wrong way. The point is, it falls away, exposing my horns and my eyes, and the human gasps.
“You’re…you’re a protean!” it squeaks, grabbing at one of the tree runner longbones.
Chapter three
Proteus-Chapter three
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Knock knock knock.
The noise against the door makes me jump, curled inside of the big bowl in the darkened room, among my soft blankets and threadbare pillows.
“I think you’re a bit confused,” the human says cautiously. “You’re the bloodthirsty monster, I’m the lone damsel in distress. I should be hiding from you.”
Knees at my chin, I stay quiet, hoping it will leave, like it should have done a long time ago.
I don’t want any trouble. I just want it to leave. And what is “damsel” supposed to mean?
It knocks again.
“Go,” I growl. “Go home caravan, leave potean-me be.”
“You do talk! Not just mimic!” the human shrieks in surprise.
I petulantly mimic the noise of the blast that killed my sister, and her death cries and gurgling. The human seems to take a step back.
“Look, if you were going to hurt me, you’d have done it when I doze off. Now come out so I don’t feel like I’ve chased you away in your own home.”
I make the noises again.
“You can’t be serious,” the human growls dryly. “You’re the shapeshifting, electricity-using monstrosity, and you’re afraid I’ll hurt you? That’s not how…that’s not how any of this works!”
“Human-River monstrosity!” I growl. “Protean-me just be alone. Go.”
“Do you have any idea how absurd this is? You could have fried my eyes out, eaten me whole, worn my face back to my caravan and eaten them, too, and you’ve locked yourself in a bathroom so I won’t hurt you?”
I’m beginning to wonder just how much human-River actually knows about us.
“Look, um…” it murmurs, light breaking beneath the doorframe. “I just…don’t want to be afraid anymore…and…I don’t think you do either…so…come out and let me teach you Go Fish?”
I sit quietly for a few seconds, contemplating the wisdom of its words. The first humans we met when we were turned out of our home attacked us first. That set a precedent that continued until there was only me. I suppose it…might be nice to have one human that doesn’t want to kill me.
I unfold myself from the bowl and unlock the door, sliding it open just a crack.
“Go Fish?” I ask quietly.
***
“You win!” human-River exclaims as I put the last of my cards aside.
“I win!” I repeat, the tip of my tail wagging with excitement.
When I catch her staring at it, I self-consciously slam the hem of my coat over it, and then draw it inside, along my back.
“What do you look like?” human-River asks, then flushes suddenly, like she shouldn’t have asked that. “I’m sorry…I mean…proteans all look different, so…I just…”
I draw back into myself again, knees at my chest, held tight by my arms.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to!” human-River says quickly, sitting up on her knees and reaching out with her hand. “I’m just curious, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, though.”
“Uncomfortable, though,” I reply softly, tugging at the lapels of my coat.
Not even my siblings have seen me since I’ve been on my own. I’ve changed a lot, and humans tend react…poorly.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Here, let’s play something else…” Her eyes gaze around the room.
I raise a finger, suddenly with an idea, and take off my gloves, revealing stormy-striped and spotted skin, not quite scaled, and long, hooked claws. I hold up my palms and beckon her close.
“Wow,” she blurts, looking at my claws.
I drop my hands, looking at the formidable hooks, and a scant amount of webbing leftover from my days in a tank. As I move to make a motion to put my gloves again, she intervenes.
“No—no, go on, what were you going to show me?” she asks.
Reinvigorated I hold up my hands, and beckon her to do the same. As she comes closer, my tail wags from under the hem of my gray coat.
“Like this?” she asks, holding her hands up, palm toward me.
“Like this, yes,” I confirm, pushing my palms out until she catches on, pushing her palms against mine.
“You’re…warm,” she muses. “I expected proteans to be…cold-blooded or something.”
“Stay,” I warn. “Still be.”
A gentle hum runs through my electrocytes. The energy flows through me, pushing against her palms. She smiles in delight as her frizzy, brown hair raises off her shoulders and floats in a cloud about her head. Grinning, she pulls away to touch her hair, creating a loud snap and a bright flash.
She flings backward, jumping against the wall, and I am crouching on the counter, trembling.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I mumble. “Protean-me sorry, spark bad, scary, sorry, sorry.”
“Calm down,” she sighs, sitting up and rubbing her hands. “It just surprised me, is all. I’m not hurt.”
“Sorry, human-River,” I tell her again.
“You did tell me to be still,” she points out. “I think I did something like that in a museum, once.”
“Sorry, human-River,” I say again.
“Stop being sorry and come down,” she sighs, standing up and approaching me, reaching out one of her soft-skinned, blunt-nailed hands.
I look up at her curiously. I shocked her and she still wants to touch me? Such a peculiar human. Most of them kept their distance when shocked, accidentally or not, by one of my siblings.
After a moment of hesitation, staring blankly at her hands, she picks my gloves off the floor and hands them too me.
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she says in a soothing tone. “It was an accident.”
“Accident,” I repeat, not sure on that one.
“Yeah, you know, when something bad happens, but nobody meant for it to happen,” she explains as I put my gloves on, take her hand, and climb down from the counter. “Sometimes things just happen, and sometimes people aren’t careful.”
“Protean-me aren’t careful,” I agree, reflecting on how I shouldn’t have shown off like that.
“No, you did fine!” she laughs. “You told me to be still! I’m the one that moved!”
I mimic her laughter quietly.
“Can you do that for any sound?” she asks, looking stunned.
“Any sound, yeah,” I answer in her voice.
“Okay, yeah, don’t do that,” she commands. “That’s really creepy.”
“Sorry, creepy,” I answer quietly, sitting on the edge of the counter and dropping her hand.
“No, just…my voice,” she explains quickly, offering her hands again. “Anything else is fine.”
I make the noises I hear from birds in the early light hours. This makes her smile.
Once I’m down from the counter, my ribbon-like, barbed tail just barely not hiding inside my coat, she asks what to do next. Not wanting to use my electrocytes again, I give it some thought, and then ask for her cards.
“Cards,” I say, pointing at her pocket.
“Okay, yeah, sure,” she replies, handing the deck over to me.
I flip through it, pick out three aces, the red one she called “hearts” and the two black ones. I hold up all three cards, then put the two black ones symbol side down, then hold up the heart. I then place it symbol side down, and then mix them up quickly, trying to hide which ones I move where. She seems to have difficulty picking them up from a flat surface, but my claws make it easy.
“Okay, I have a protean teaching me to play three card monte. Alright,” she laughs.
I like it when she laughs.
She studies my hand movements until I’m finished, clearly trying to keep track of the heart. It takes her more than one try to find it, but as the game progresses I make it even harder by reshuffling during every failure.
“That’s hardly fair!” she smiles.
The rain is beginning to let up a little by this time so, regrettably but inevitably, it is time for human-River to begin getting ready to go. She eats some of the flesh-tubes, offering me a few cans for my trouble, eliciting an uncontrolled retching noise.
“Yeah, not everybody likes them,” she muses. “Ordinarily I’d say ‘you don’t have to like them, they just have to keep you alive,’ but you seem to be doing well enough.”
Feeling like I should do something to return the gesture, from the pile of my pretty trinkets, I offer a sliver of bone scored with the first thing I saw upon leaving home: that bright light in the sky.
“Oh, thank you,” she smiles. “You don’t have to…”
I wave her hand away to show that I insist. She tucks it into a pocket where I sense the warmth of her heart, and then looks up at me and takes a deep breath.
“Well, since you’ve been such a gracious host, I feel like I still owe you. So…would you like a name?”
I tilt my head quizzically.
“Name self?” I ask, thinking about what Bismarck told me about names.
“Some people do,” human-River explains. “Some people reach a turning point in their lives and pick something that suits them, but humans are generally named by our parents.”
I think of my parents, flesh and eyes and teeth and tentacle, and wonder if Bismarck spared them. He might have, seeing kinship there, or he might have seen himself as the great savior freeing them from their prisons forever, hard to say.
“Well, I was thinking…if you like it,” human-River continues, “about a man called ‘The Master of Lightning.’ It came to me when you did the hand thing…there’s a famous picture of him sitting in his lab under machines all lit up with electricity, and he’s just…drinking his coffee or reading his newspaper or whatever.”
I don’t know what “coffee” or “newspaper” is. I do know machines, placed near the tanks for the humans to stare at, or in them to keep the water clean. Some didn’t seem to do anything but light up, but the longer the lights were on the happier the humans got.
“His name was ‘Nikola,’ so…” she breathes. “If you like it, I thought it could be your name, too.”
“Nikola,” I repeat, tasting the world. I think of my electrocytes, how the humans seemed to like me the most to make the lights come on, how it feels when I’m hunting, or the rare time I’ve had to use myself to ward off rival males or scavengers.
“Master of Lightning,” I tell her. “Nikola-me likes.”
She laughs softly. “If I ever see you again, I’ll work on teaching you English.”
“Yes, please,” I agree. “Teach English.”
The door to my den explodes open like the tanks when the humans turned on us. Three large humans barge in, brandishing the weapons that spit fire and metal, smelling of fear and rage.
As an automatic response, my electrocytes open. Electricity crackles around me.
“Calm down, Nikola, I got this,” human-River states in a worried tone. “Dad, I…”
The big one in front levels the stick of his weapon at me. I cast my palm at him, sending electricity up it to make him drop it. In error, I take my eyes off the other two, and the one on my right levels his weapon at me.
The last thing I remember seeing is the beautiful shards of glass catching the light as I am thrown through the window.
Chapter four
Chapter two
Chapter three
Knock knock knock.
The noise against the door makes me jump, curled inside of the big bowl in the darkened room, among my soft blankets and threadbare pillows.
“I think you’re a bit confused,” the human says cautiously. “You’re the bloodthirsty monster, I’m the lone damsel in distress. I should be hiding from you.”
Knees at my chin, I stay quiet, hoping it will leave, like it should have done a long time ago.
I don’t want any trouble. I just want it to leave. And what is “damsel” supposed to mean?
It knocks again.
“Go,” I growl. “Go home caravan, leave potean-me be.”
“You do talk! Not just mimic!” the human shrieks in surprise.
I petulantly mimic the noise of the blast that killed my sister, and her death cries and gurgling. The human seems to take a step back.
“Look, if you were going to hurt me, you’d have done it when I doze off. Now come out so I don’t feel like I’ve chased you away in your own home.”
I make the noises again.
“You can’t be serious,” the human growls dryly. “You’re the shapeshifting, electricity-using monstrosity, and you’re afraid I’ll hurt you? That’s not how…that’s not how any of this works!”
“Human-River monstrosity!” I growl. “Protean-me just be alone. Go.”
“Do you have any idea how absurd this is? You could have fried my eyes out, eaten me whole, worn my face back to my caravan and eaten them, too, and you’ve locked yourself in a bathroom so I won’t hurt you?”
I’m beginning to wonder just how much human-River actually knows about us.
“Look, um…” it murmurs, light breaking beneath the doorframe. “I just…don’t want to be afraid anymore…and…I don’t think you do either…so…come out and let me teach you Go Fish?”
I sit quietly for a few seconds, contemplating the wisdom of its words. The first humans we met when we were turned out of our home attacked us first. That set a precedent that continued until there was only me. I suppose it…might be nice to have one human that doesn’t want to kill me.
I unfold myself from the bowl and unlock the door, sliding it open just a crack.
“Go Fish?” I ask quietly.
***
“You win!” human-River exclaims as I put the last of my cards aside.
“I win!” I repeat, the tip of my tail wagging with excitement.
When I catch her staring at it, I self-consciously slam the hem of my coat over it, and then draw it inside, along my back.
“What do you look like?” human-River asks, then flushes suddenly, like she shouldn’t have asked that. “I’m sorry…I mean…proteans all look different, so…I just…”
I draw back into myself again, knees at my chest, held tight by my arms.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to!” human-River says quickly, sitting up on her knees and reaching out with her hand. “I’m just curious, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, though.”
“Uncomfortable, though,” I reply softly, tugging at the lapels of my coat.
Not even my siblings have seen me since I’ve been on my own. I’ve changed a lot, and humans tend react…poorly.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Here, let’s play something else…” Her eyes gaze around the room.
I raise a finger, suddenly with an idea, and take off my gloves, revealing stormy-striped and spotted skin, not quite scaled, and long, hooked claws. I hold up my palms and beckon her close.
“Wow,” she blurts, looking at my claws.
I drop my hands, looking at the formidable hooks, and a scant amount of webbing leftover from my days in a tank. As I move to make a motion to put my gloves again, she intervenes.
“No—no, go on, what were you going to show me?” she asks.
Reinvigorated I hold up my hands, and beckon her to do the same. As she comes closer, my tail wags from under the hem of my gray coat.
“Like this?” she asks, holding her hands up, palm toward me.
“Like this, yes,” I confirm, pushing my palms out until she catches on, pushing her palms against mine.
“You’re…warm,” she muses. “I expected proteans to be…cold-blooded or something.”
“Stay,” I warn. “Still be.”
A gentle hum runs through my electrocytes. The energy flows through me, pushing against her palms. She smiles in delight as her frizzy, brown hair raises off her shoulders and floats in a cloud about her head. Grinning, she pulls away to touch her hair, creating a loud snap and a bright flash.
She flings backward, jumping against the wall, and I am crouching on the counter, trembling.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I mumble. “Protean-me sorry, spark bad, scary, sorry, sorry.”
“Calm down,” she sighs, sitting up and rubbing her hands. “It just surprised me, is all. I’m not hurt.”
“Sorry, human-River,” I tell her again.
“You did tell me to be still,” she points out. “I think I did something like that in a museum, once.”
“Sorry, human-River,” I say again.
“Stop being sorry and come down,” she sighs, standing up and approaching me, reaching out one of her soft-skinned, blunt-nailed hands.
I look up at her curiously. I shocked her and she still wants to touch me? Such a peculiar human. Most of them kept their distance when shocked, accidentally or not, by one of my siblings.
After a moment of hesitation, staring blankly at her hands, she picks my gloves off the floor and hands them too me.
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she says in a soothing tone. “It was an accident.”
“Accident,” I repeat, not sure on that one.
“Yeah, you know, when something bad happens, but nobody meant for it to happen,” she explains as I put my gloves on, take her hand, and climb down from the counter. “Sometimes things just happen, and sometimes people aren’t careful.”
“Protean-me aren’t careful,” I agree, reflecting on how I shouldn’t have shown off like that.
“No, you did fine!” she laughs. “You told me to be still! I’m the one that moved!”
I mimic her laughter quietly.
“Can you do that for any sound?” she asks, looking stunned.
“Any sound, yeah,” I answer in her voice.
“Okay, yeah, don’t do that,” she commands. “That’s really creepy.”
“Sorry, creepy,” I answer quietly, sitting on the edge of the counter and dropping her hand.
“No, just…my voice,” she explains quickly, offering her hands again. “Anything else is fine.”
I make the noises I hear from birds in the early light hours. This makes her smile.
Once I’m down from the counter, my ribbon-like, barbed tail just barely not hiding inside my coat, she asks what to do next. Not wanting to use my electrocytes again, I give it some thought, and then ask for her cards.
“Cards,” I say, pointing at her pocket.
“Okay, yeah, sure,” she replies, handing the deck over to me.
I flip through it, pick out three aces, the red one she called “hearts” and the two black ones. I hold up all three cards, then put the two black ones symbol side down, then hold up the heart. I then place it symbol side down, and then mix them up quickly, trying to hide which ones I move where. She seems to have difficulty picking them up from a flat surface, but my claws make it easy.
“Okay, I have a protean teaching me to play three card monte. Alright,” she laughs.
I like it when she laughs.
She studies my hand movements until I’m finished, clearly trying to keep track of the heart. It takes her more than one try to find it, but as the game progresses I make it even harder by reshuffling during every failure.
“That’s hardly fair!” she smiles.
The rain is beginning to let up a little by this time so, regrettably but inevitably, it is time for human-River to begin getting ready to go. She eats some of the flesh-tubes, offering me a few cans for my trouble, eliciting an uncontrolled retching noise.
“Yeah, not everybody likes them,” she muses. “Ordinarily I’d say ‘you don’t have to like them, they just have to keep you alive,’ but you seem to be doing well enough.”
Feeling like I should do something to return the gesture, from the pile of my pretty trinkets, I offer a sliver of bone scored with the first thing I saw upon leaving home: that bright light in the sky.
“Oh, thank you,” she smiles. “You don’t have to…”
I wave her hand away to show that I insist. She tucks it into a pocket where I sense the warmth of her heart, and then looks up at me and takes a deep breath.
“Well, since you’ve been such a gracious host, I feel like I still owe you. So…would you like a name?”
I tilt my head quizzically.
“Name self?” I ask, thinking about what Bismarck told me about names.
“Some people do,” human-River explains. “Some people reach a turning point in their lives and pick something that suits them, but humans are generally named by our parents.”
I think of my parents, flesh and eyes and teeth and tentacle, and wonder if Bismarck spared them. He might have, seeing kinship there, or he might have seen himself as the great savior freeing them from their prisons forever, hard to say.
“Well, I was thinking…if you like it,” human-River continues, “about a man called ‘The Master of Lightning.’ It came to me when you did the hand thing…there’s a famous picture of him sitting in his lab under machines all lit up with electricity, and he’s just…drinking his coffee or reading his newspaper or whatever.”
I don’t know what “coffee” or “newspaper” is. I do know machines, placed near the tanks for the humans to stare at, or in them to keep the water clean. Some didn’t seem to do anything but light up, but the longer the lights were on the happier the humans got.
“His name was ‘Nikola,’ so…” she breathes. “If you like it, I thought it could be your name, too.”
“Nikola,” I repeat, tasting the world. I think of my electrocytes, how the humans seemed to like me the most to make the lights come on, how it feels when I’m hunting, or the rare time I’ve had to use myself to ward off rival males or scavengers.
“Master of Lightning,” I tell her. “Nikola-me likes.”
She laughs softly. “If I ever see you again, I’ll work on teaching you English.”
“Yes, please,” I agree. “Teach English.”
The door to my den explodes open like the tanks when the humans turned on us. Three large humans barge in, brandishing the weapons that spit fire and metal, smelling of fear and rage.
As an automatic response, my electrocytes open. Electricity crackles around me.
“Calm down, Nikola, I got this,” human-River states in a worried tone. “Dad, I…”
The big one in front levels the stick of his weapon at me. I cast my palm at him, sending electricity up it to make him drop it. In error, I take my eyes off the other two, and the one on my right levels his weapon at me.
The last thing I remember seeing is the beautiful shards of glass catching the light as I am thrown through the window.
Chapter four
Proteus-Chapter four
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to put my ribs back together. Learning to live and hunt on land permanently is a difficult task, but the feeling, while familiar, is no less unpleasant.
The neckbones are new, though. I don’t believe I’ve ever had to put those back in alignment.
“He was harmless. We spent the afternoon playing Go Fish!”
“They’re infiltrators, River. That’s what they do. You were being manipulated.”
“No, Dad, when his hood fell off, he—”
“Enough! You’ve had a rough night, you’re tired, and you need to eat something other than canned sausages. Go get some stew, then lie down in your cabin, and you’ll feel better.”
“He was my friend!”
“I’ll make a nice pair of waterproof boots for you to remember it by. Now go.”
I don’t think I want to be boots, but sitting upright now seems unwise. I should wait until there are fewer humans nearby. Since they’re hostile, I feel like I should take River with me when I go, so they don’t hurt her.
The cloth lying over me flies away. I sense a presence nearby, smelling of sweat and skin oil and humanity.
“Damn. Did you bag this yourself?”
“No,” human-River sighs. “Jason did it.”
I hazard to discreetly open my eyes and look through the slats in the box (again, boxes) I’m in, and watch the humans as I am brought away on wheels. It is fascinating, seeing how humans live in their natural environment. They socialize, young ones play, they attend to their clothing in metal buckets.
Humans are social animals, moving in herds, the most basal of which is a family unit consisting of a male, a female, and their offspring. Like any animal, humans need food, water, and familial bonds. Their little melodramas play out before me, mated pairs arguing, young squabbling, but there is also joy, sounds of laughter, smiles of delight, words off affection and instruction.
There is also a kind of stoic fear, given by the few who notice the box, and my still form inside.
“Jason got a protean?” some ask incredulously, staring gape-mouthed.
I hold as still as possible, smelling humans, unfamiliar animals, and a warm smell I can’t identify. I take in what I can from the box, biding my time.
Eventually, I am taken to a shady spot. The four-legged animal at the front of the box is unhooked and lead away. The human that spoke to River comes back, my eyes closed as soon as I sense its approach.
“They said you took a shotgun to the chest,” it muses thoughtfully. “But you don’t look dead at all. Means your hide’s in good condition.”
I am quiet and still as the human paces around the box, mumbling to itself. It rummages through things, making lots of noise. This part of the territory smells like fresh meat and blood, which is enough to make me hungry.
“Should be enough for a nice pair of boots…”
I’m not unfamiliar with the skinning of animals. My own face-covering is made from the flayed hide of one of the tree runners. I do not, however, wish to be a pair of boots, so as soon as the human sounds sufficiently far away and distracted, I use my secondary arms, freed from the confines of my coat, to heave myself upward and slip under the box, clinging to its underbelly.
The humans footsteps approach. I see them, upside-down, pacing the wet grass, standing near the box, silently and still. It shouts several words I don’t know, and then runs at breakneck pace somewhere else.
From here, I don’t know what to do. It’s only a matter of time until someone looks under here, but I don’t know the territory well enough to navigate through it. I need somewhere to run, to hide.
Glancing around under the box for other feet, I lower myself onto my secondary arms, and then roll onto my belly taking another survey. The place they have put me is another box, one soft and made of cloth, casting shadow over hanging pelts and draining animal corpses.
I lick my fangs. Having to regrow bone always makes me hungry.
Unfortunately, I seem to be in the middle of the den. I’m going to have to bypass a lot of humans if I’m going to get out of here not strapped to someone’s feet.
One of my other brothers, who stayed with Bismarck, could change the color and texture of his skin. That would be useful right about now. As it is, I’m a sub-human-sized stormcloud creeping from under the box into the cloth box, hardly discreet.
I resist my hunger, to keep moving and not be distracted by the hanging bodies, the delicious blood draining away into buckets. Why humans would do this, I’m not sure. Serve the blood as a beverage, perhaps?
The tubes of my tongue scrape the roof of my mouth. I’m thirsty, too.
I creep behind and under things, avoiding the touch of the light and staying to the shadows. My mottled gray coloring works best in the dark, which makes me miss the rain and the cloud cover. Fortunately, the humans are busy with their own lives and probably aren’t expecting me to be in the heart of their territory.
Crouched behind a stack of red and white, plastic boxes, I pause to take a breath. I really don’t want to have to fight my way out of here.
A murmur is beginning to move among the adults. A smell of fear is starting to permeate the air. The females are grabbing young and taking them into the boxes, the males are taking up weapons.
They know.
I need a place to go, where they won’t look until nightfall. But how am I supposed to know how these things think?
If the skittishness wasn’t beginning to permeate the herd, this might be fascinating. I have never seen so many humans, packed so tightly. I would love to observe them, the way they live, their habits and behaviors. Unfortunately, humans are even more dangerous in large groups, and any animal protecting young is violently defensive.
Smelling for the places with the fewest human smells, I sneak around as best I can, under boxes, on my belly, behind structures. I pause behind a shelter, scratching uncomfortably at the scabby scarring the weapon left behind, still raw and sore.
A small noise draws my attention. Something small stands little more than a grasp away, a juvenile, barely more than an infant, staring wide-eyed from beneath a mop of golden hair, cropped at the ears.
I don’t know how to speak to it, if it speaks. I don’t know how to beg for silence, and I’m reminded of the small, spotted tree runner with their spikeless mothers I didn’t want to hunt.
The little creature reaches a small hand, pointing a single outstretched finger at me, mouth agape.
I close my eyes and take a breath. The little thing is so vulnerable, all soft skin and dull teeth and no claws, not even any venom glands or electrocytes to protect it. Animals with young so vulnerable should not leave them to wander alone.
I run, bolting on all six limbs, trying to disappear into the next obstacle, the little creature standing still behind me, watching. Heedless of the danger, I throw myself within the nearest box, which smells too much of human sweat and musk than I’d like, but I’m running out of options.
As luck would have it, despite the thick smell of human, the box is empty. It’s full of cloth, clothing and body coverings, dangling from hooks and packed in more boxes and plastic.
This will help. This will be a big help.
At a distance, I pass well enough. Up close, they might notice the knots in my shoulders from my secondary arms, the protruding bumps from my spikes. River didn’t seem to expect me to be a protean, which is a good trait for me to exploit, if I can. Camouflage, the way the corals looked like brightly-colored rocks, the way the spots on the small tree runners blended them into the trees.
With luck, I can use these to walk right out of the den. As long as I don’t get too close to them, I should be able to pass unnoticed. I’ll have to migrate again, leave my pretty things and bone fragments and hides behind, but I’ve started out with less before.
I start digging through the soft fabrics, looking for things that fit or can adapt. Humans have only four limbs and flat feet, which makes it difficult to use their clothing without some creative modification. The tough, blue material is nice because it’s sturdy, but it’s also difficult to tear, making it equally suitable to cover my spikes as it is difficult to accommodate my ankles. Shoes are probably out of the question.
There is a noise at the door, a soft clicking. Someone is approaching.
I dive behind the racks of clothing, crouching behind boxes. The figure moves about, carrying a large box, which it sets down on another stack of boxes, and begins drawing out white, wide-based hooks and spearing torso coverings onto them.
I wait, watching patiently. This could take awhile, and the longer they’re in here, the more likely they are to notice. There isn’t enough space for me to slink back to the door unseen. I’m going to have to make a choice here.
With its back to me, I step over the boxes I’m behind, creeping like the eight-legged string dancers, approaching the person. My primary hands cover the mouth, leaving the nose free for breathing, my secondary around the waist. Hunting tendrils restrain the arms and legs at the wrists and ankles.
I smell fear, and I’m reminded of my hunger. The wounds in my chest are sensitive and burn slightly against the fabric of the human’s coat, reminding me why I’m hungry despite a good kill not so long ago.
The human’s feet are above the ground, shoes dangling. It kicks and struggles, but can’t move much, held in place by me. It squeaks and whimpers, unintelligible noises dying inside the mouth.
A drill from a tendril to the back of the skull, maybe a good twist to the neck. It won’t suffer, and it won’t make enough noise to attract any more.
The white spots and stripes along my sides begin to pulse with light, an affect of the shadows, but also a remnant of ancient hunting tactics that don’t know I live on land now.
The six slit nostrils at the end of my snout open, taking in the smell, of fear, of sweat, of recent rain and soil and open air and thick forests.
My tendrils slacken, the tight grip around the waist easing up. I lean in close, behind the ear, and whisper one of the very few human words I know.
“River?”
Chapter five
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to put my ribs back together. Learning to live and hunt on land permanently is a difficult task, but the feeling, while familiar, is no less unpleasant.
The neckbones are new, though. I don’t believe I’ve ever had to put those back in alignment.
“He was harmless. We spent the afternoon playing Go Fish!”
“They’re infiltrators, River. That’s what they do. You were being manipulated.”
“No, Dad, when his hood fell off, he—”
“Enough! You’ve had a rough night, you’re tired, and you need to eat something other than canned sausages. Go get some stew, then lie down in your cabin, and you’ll feel better.”
“He was my friend!”
“I’ll make a nice pair of waterproof boots for you to remember it by. Now go.”
I don’t think I want to be boots, but sitting upright now seems unwise. I should wait until there are fewer humans nearby. Since they’re hostile, I feel like I should take River with me when I go, so they don’t hurt her.
The cloth lying over me flies away. I sense a presence nearby, smelling of sweat and skin oil and humanity.
“Damn. Did you bag this yourself?”
“No,” human-River sighs. “Jason did it.”
I hazard to discreetly open my eyes and look through the slats in the box (again, boxes) I’m in, and watch the humans as I am brought away on wheels. It is fascinating, seeing how humans live in their natural environment. They socialize, young ones play, they attend to their clothing in metal buckets.
Humans are social animals, moving in herds, the most basal of which is a family unit consisting of a male, a female, and their offspring. Like any animal, humans need food, water, and familial bonds. Their little melodramas play out before me, mated pairs arguing, young squabbling, but there is also joy, sounds of laughter, smiles of delight, words off affection and instruction.
There is also a kind of stoic fear, given by the few who notice the box, and my still form inside.
“Jason got a protean?” some ask incredulously, staring gape-mouthed.
I hold as still as possible, smelling humans, unfamiliar animals, and a warm smell I can’t identify. I take in what I can from the box, biding my time.
Eventually, I am taken to a shady spot. The four-legged animal at the front of the box is unhooked and lead away. The human that spoke to River comes back, my eyes closed as soon as I sense its approach.
“They said you took a shotgun to the chest,” it muses thoughtfully. “But you don’t look dead at all. Means your hide’s in good condition.”
I am quiet and still as the human paces around the box, mumbling to itself. It rummages through things, making lots of noise. This part of the territory smells like fresh meat and blood, which is enough to make me hungry.
“Should be enough for a nice pair of boots…”
I’m not unfamiliar with the skinning of animals. My own face-covering is made from the flayed hide of one of the tree runners. I do not, however, wish to be a pair of boots, so as soon as the human sounds sufficiently far away and distracted, I use my secondary arms, freed from the confines of my coat, to heave myself upward and slip under the box, clinging to its underbelly.
The humans footsteps approach. I see them, upside-down, pacing the wet grass, standing near the box, silently and still. It shouts several words I don’t know, and then runs at breakneck pace somewhere else.
From here, I don’t know what to do. It’s only a matter of time until someone looks under here, but I don’t know the territory well enough to navigate through it. I need somewhere to run, to hide.
Glancing around under the box for other feet, I lower myself onto my secondary arms, and then roll onto my belly taking another survey. The place they have put me is another box, one soft and made of cloth, casting shadow over hanging pelts and draining animal corpses.
I lick my fangs. Having to regrow bone always makes me hungry.
Unfortunately, I seem to be in the middle of the den. I’m going to have to bypass a lot of humans if I’m going to get out of here not strapped to someone’s feet.
One of my other brothers, who stayed with Bismarck, could change the color and texture of his skin. That would be useful right about now. As it is, I’m a sub-human-sized stormcloud creeping from under the box into the cloth box, hardly discreet.
I resist my hunger, to keep moving and not be distracted by the hanging bodies, the delicious blood draining away into buckets. Why humans would do this, I’m not sure. Serve the blood as a beverage, perhaps?
The tubes of my tongue scrape the roof of my mouth. I’m thirsty, too.
I creep behind and under things, avoiding the touch of the light and staying to the shadows. My mottled gray coloring works best in the dark, which makes me miss the rain and the cloud cover. Fortunately, the humans are busy with their own lives and probably aren’t expecting me to be in the heart of their territory.
Crouched behind a stack of red and white, plastic boxes, I pause to take a breath. I really don’t want to have to fight my way out of here.
A murmur is beginning to move among the adults. A smell of fear is starting to permeate the air. The females are grabbing young and taking them into the boxes, the males are taking up weapons.
They know.
I need a place to go, where they won’t look until nightfall. But how am I supposed to know how these things think?
If the skittishness wasn’t beginning to permeate the herd, this might be fascinating. I have never seen so many humans, packed so tightly. I would love to observe them, the way they live, their habits and behaviors. Unfortunately, humans are even more dangerous in large groups, and any animal protecting young is violently defensive.
Smelling for the places with the fewest human smells, I sneak around as best I can, under boxes, on my belly, behind structures. I pause behind a shelter, scratching uncomfortably at the scabby scarring the weapon left behind, still raw and sore.
A small noise draws my attention. Something small stands little more than a grasp away, a juvenile, barely more than an infant, staring wide-eyed from beneath a mop of golden hair, cropped at the ears.
I don’t know how to speak to it, if it speaks. I don’t know how to beg for silence, and I’m reminded of the small, spotted tree runner with their spikeless mothers I didn’t want to hunt.
The little creature reaches a small hand, pointing a single outstretched finger at me, mouth agape.
I close my eyes and take a breath. The little thing is so vulnerable, all soft skin and dull teeth and no claws, not even any venom glands or electrocytes to protect it. Animals with young so vulnerable should not leave them to wander alone.
I run, bolting on all six limbs, trying to disappear into the next obstacle, the little creature standing still behind me, watching. Heedless of the danger, I throw myself within the nearest box, which smells too much of human sweat and musk than I’d like, but I’m running out of options.
As luck would have it, despite the thick smell of human, the box is empty. It’s full of cloth, clothing and body coverings, dangling from hooks and packed in more boxes and plastic.
This will help. This will be a big help.
At a distance, I pass well enough. Up close, they might notice the knots in my shoulders from my secondary arms, the protruding bumps from my spikes. River didn’t seem to expect me to be a protean, which is a good trait for me to exploit, if I can. Camouflage, the way the corals looked like brightly-colored rocks, the way the spots on the small tree runners blended them into the trees.
With luck, I can use these to walk right out of the den. As long as I don’t get too close to them, I should be able to pass unnoticed. I’ll have to migrate again, leave my pretty things and bone fragments and hides behind, but I’ve started out with less before.
I start digging through the soft fabrics, looking for things that fit or can adapt. Humans have only four limbs and flat feet, which makes it difficult to use their clothing without some creative modification. The tough, blue material is nice because it’s sturdy, but it’s also difficult to tear, making it equally suitable to cover my spikes as it is difficult to accommodate my ankles. Shoes are probably out of the question.
There is a noise at the door, a soft clicking. Someone is approaching.
I dive behind the racks of clothing, crouching behind boxes. The figure moves about, carrying a large box, which it sets down on another stack of boxes, and begins drawing out white, wide-based hooks and spearing torso coverings onto them.
I wait, watching patiently. This could take awhile, and the longer they’re in here, the more likely they are to notice. There isn’t enough space for me to slink back to the door unseen. I’m going to have to make a choice here.
With its back to me, I step over the boxes I’m behind, creeping like the eight-legged string dancers, approaching the person. My primary hands cover the mouth, leaving the nose free for breathing, my secondary around the waist. Hunting tendrils restrain the arms and legs at the wrists and ankles.
I smell fear, and I’m reminded of my hunger. The wounds in my chest are sensitive and burn slightly against the fabric of the human’s coat, reminding me why I’m hungry despite a good kill not so long ago.
The human’s feet are above the ground, shoes dangling. It kicks and struggles, but can’t move much, held in place by me. It squeaks and whimpers, unintelligible noises dying inside the mouth.
A drill from a tendril to the back of the skull, maybe a good twist to the neck. It won’t suffer, and it won’t make enough noise to attract any more.
The white spots and stripes along my sides begin to pulse with light, an affect of the shadows, but also a remnant of ancient hunting tactics that don’t know I live on land now.
The six slit nostrils at the end of my snout open, taking in the smell, of fear, of sweat, of recent rain and soil and open air and thick forests.
My tendrils slacken, the tight grip around the waist easing up. I lean in close, behind the ear, and whisper one of the very few human words I know.
“River?”
Chapter five
Proteus-Chapter five
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Human-River gapes as I dig through the hanging clothes.
“Nikola? You’re alive!” she gasps.
I don’t want to tell her about the proper way to kill us, about the one brother that died from a wound to the right spot at the back of the head, but how the rest of my siblings died when a sickness took them after the injury, or they couldn’t eat enough to heal properly.
River has been kind and fair, but I won’t tell her that.
“Protean,” I remind her, checking a shirt for how well the shoulders stretch.
“But you’re dead!”
“Protean.”
“But you weren’t breathing!”
“Protean!”
“He double tapped!”
“PROTEAN!” I shout, turned on her, secondary arms and hunting tendrils raised defensively.
She backs away, hand over her mouth, shaking slightly. My mandibles are open, revealing the sharp, squid-eater’s teeth along my lower palate, my figure hunched, spiked tail lashing the air. Her smell of fear spikes.
A sickishness turns my stomach. I don’t like the way she’s looking at me.
I go back to the racks of clothing, holding up a shirt with no sleeves speculative.
“You’re…you’re…you should definitely be wearing pants!” she mumbles, turning sideways and holding a hand at her eyes, like shielding from rain sideways.
I cock my head curiously. I didn’t need clothing until I needed to keep the cold away, or disguise myself, but humans, possibly derived from warmer climates, always seem to. The attendants at home always wore extra layers, namely a thin, white coat that would never insulate heat in any circumstances, white gloves, a blue face-hider and transparent eye-shields.
Diving into one of the boxes, she triumphantly throws an oversized pair of baggy, tough blue pants at me, which have enough room to accommodate my raised heels and clawed feet. The waistline rubs against my tail, fixed with a flick of my secondary claws, tearing open the seam so I can fit.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, tension in her stance.
“Leaving,” I answer simply, sorting through the racks with all four hands, hunting tendrils receded.
“No, I mean…” She shakes her head and sighs, then stares at the exposed flesh of my chest. “Sorry…he…um…he thought he was protecting me.”
Familial protection is common among animals. This doesn’t surprise me, and I can’t rightly be angry about it. How would I have reacted, if I had found one of my smaller siblings, in the company of an armed human?
Still, my ribs hurt and the healing skin across my chest itches.
“Here, let me help,” she states, approaching me from behind, looking up at the racks.
She reaches up to grab at the hooks, then pulls away, a look of vacancy in her eyes, which linger on my spine and shoulders. She stares from the greater spikes on my shoulders and hips, poking through the material in my pants, to the way my secondary arms connect seamlessly to my shoulders. A warm, soft-skinned hand is placed against the thicknesses where my tendrils sleep, almost sore from unfamiliarity with touch.
“Diamondback,” she mumbles softly, a string of syllables I can’t discern.
I purr softly and she seems to snap back to herself.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just…” She makes a grunting noise in the back of her throat, and takes a hook from the rack and shows it to me, made from a thinner version of the material in my pants, with buttons down the front.
“I think you can get…one set through here, and then…”
I take the shirt from her and put it on, rotating my secondary arms beneath my primaries. I can’t button it properly like this, and it’s a bit tight with my secondaries folded against my back, but it will do.
“That works, too,” she nods, then goes back to her searching. “A hoodie? If you don’t need your extra arms…all the good stuff has been passed out already…”
Eventually she manages to gather enough to hide my extra arms and numerous spikes (likely a leftover from the tree runners), good enough to conceal my form but hardly practical for survival.
“I think we can get you to my wagon, and then you can lay low there until nightfall,” she explains, pulling the hood of a greenish intermediary between shirt and coat over my horns. Her eyes linger on my mandibles, twitching with nervousness rhythmically against my lower palate.
“Sorry scary,” I tell her consolingly, trying not to spook her, since humans frighten easily.
“It’s okay,” she replies evenly, pulling a cloth over my snout and then tightening a string beneath my chin to hold everything in place. “You’re in an unfamiliar place and you’re hurt. It’s okay to be afraid.”
I tilt my head in confusion, but she’s already checking outside the door.
“Alright, follow me, stay close, and don’t speak to anyone,” she orders, waving for me to follow.
It’s a painstaking crawl through the herd to get to her shelter. Humans don’t climb or leap, so direct paths are often beyond them, made all the more winding because she is deliberately avoiding her pack.
I jump, my hunting tendrils straining against the disguise, when someone shouts across the thoroughfare at us.
“You two better get inside! There’s a protean loose!”
“Thanks! We’re on it!” human-River smiles, her hand raised high as some sort of signal.
“You did good,” she whispers soothingly, patting my left hand, her eyes flickering over where my tendrils bulged through the fabric. I seem to have popped some seams.
Silently, I keep following her, until we reach a snubbed, yellow vehicle with black stripes and exposed rust. The front end has been hollowed out and replaced with a bench, and the windows along the front and sides covered.
She ushers me inside, into the shadows. This place smells like her, her space, her den. There isn’t much room, but it feels cozy, all she needs contained inside this little room.
“Over here,” she beckons, squeezing past me. At the back, there is a raised platform, layered with blankets and cushions, and she crawls over it to pull a shade over the window, balanced on her knees, her coat along her form.
“You can rest here,” she explains, hands over her head on a handle at the ceiling. “Keep the shutters closed and no one should see you.”
I climb into the nest that smells like her, a bit too high for my comfort, but soft and peaceful, like the incubator from the time before the tanks.
“I’m going to go get you some food,” she continues, pulling on the handle, revealing a metal shutter that encloses the nest. “Don’t open the doors or windows, don’t answer if anyone knocks.”
When she’s sure I’m in place, she pulls the shutter down, sending me into deeper shadows. My chest itches, sore under the knitting skin, and my ribs hurt. My tail flops against the footwall, and I am surprisingly at peace.
In the heart of a herd of feral humans.
My whole body tenses, but I close my eyes and take a deep breath, thinking of the smell of trees and fresh blood and distant tree runners. Until nightfall, patience.
***
The shutter opens, and my tendrils are at the neck of something warm that moves in the shadows.
“It’s me, Niko,” human-River pleads, her voice cutting through my dreams.
I pull my tendrils apologetically back inside my disguise. They came out of my sleeves, so didn’t do too much damage, which would be a disappointment, since River was so kind to offer.
I smell something warm, organic, pleasing but unfamiliar. River rubs at her neck, and I hope she doesn’t bruise.
“Wow, jumpy,” she muses, sitting a bowl of…something in front of me.
“Sorry scary,” I tell her, regretfully, feeling…grimy.
Ignoring me, she turns to the bowl. “Venison stew. It’s not the best…sorry about that.”
I pick up the bowl experimentally, finding it warm to the touch, but not alive-warm. It’s full of a brownish fluid that isn’t blood, but smells organic and meaty, with chunks of brown, discs of orange, and parabolas of green. My six nostrils take in the steam, which is pleasant enough, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.
“What’s wrong?” River asks, sounding alarmed.
I don’t have the words to answer, but I hold up the bowl and do my best with, “Warm?”
“It’s…stew. Have you never had stew before?”
I look at her blankly.
“Um…it’s venison—deer meat—put in a pot with water and vegetables, then cooked over a fire.”
I tilt my head to one side.
“It’s good. Sort of. Try it.”
She hands me a scoop-shaped utensil, expecting me to do something with it, and then watches me stare at the bowl, which I sniff again, before sticking the four tubes of my tongue into the fluid and take a hesitant sip.
It’s…salty. It tastes like meat, but…not. There’s a bitterness that might come from exposure to fire, but a spiciness that doesn’t come naturally to animal muscle, and some things that might be plants.
River looks a little pale, staring at my tongue with wide eyes and twisted mouth.
I retract my tongue back into my mouth and wipe my snout with the back of my sleeve.
“Is scary?” I ask cautiously, having trouble looking her in the eye.
“C-can I see it?” she asks quietly.
Perplexed, I open my mouth wide, opening my mandibles and dropping my lower palate, then stick out my prehensile tongue, split four ways at the end, each with a circular, tooth-lined opening, good for sucking blood.
“It’s like you have a lamprey hydra living in your mouth,” she blurts, making a noise that might have been a giggle.
“Can you taste with it? Them?”
“Taste,” I repeat, not knowing the word.
I pull my tongue back in, putting the bowl aside, still holding the metal scoop, and covering my snout with cloths. Humans are skittish and jumpy, and it wouldn’t do to frighten her in an enclosed space.
“Don’t like it?” she asks, looking down at the bowl. “I don’t blame you. Wilma’s…not a good cook.”
Self-consciously, I hold the back of my hand over my snout, still holding the scoop.
“Well, pull up your shirt, let me get a look at your chest,” she sighs, setting a white box (why all the boxes?) onto the nest and opening it up.
Obediently, I pull the fabric up over my chest and to just under my collarbone, exposing the scarred, sensitive flesh, thin and raw under newly-forming skin.
“You look like you just skinned your knee instead of got shot at point-blank,” River muses, rubbing something synthetic and sticky onto the tender skin, making me wince. “It might sting a little, but this’ll help prevent infection and scarring.”
When she’s done, she puts the little white tube back in the box, and waves at me to put my disguise back down.
“And you just…shake it off?” she asks. “Just get back up again after a few hours?”
“Protean,” I remind her amiably, looking at the bowl and remembering how hungry I am.
“Hmm, proteans,” she smiles. “Feared throughout the land, shapeshifting abominations that can call lightning from the sky, unafraid of death, and masters of Go Fish.”
My mandibles flex slightly, confused at her unfamiliar words.
“Thank you…um…I mean…my brother…” she mumbles. “If I was minding my own business playing cards, and someone I didn’t know put a hole in my chest and blew out my living room window, I’d be out for blood. So, um…thanks for not…hunting him.”
I tilt my head again, wishing I knew more about how humans speak. The ones at home rarely spoke directly to us, and it was Bismarck that was the best and watching and listening. This is one of very few times I’ve wished I was more like my brother, who always seemed to know what the humans were saying or doing.
I glance again at the bowl, feeling the emptiness inside. I’ve had to regrow a lot of flesh and bone, so hunger is a given, but if River is put off my by mouth and tongue, then I wouldn’t want to scare her in her den. A frightened human is unpredictable.
“I think I promised you English lessons,” she smiles, taking a seat on a tall box across from me. “Um…I don’t know where to start. I guess I could read to you?”
Before I can come up with a sufficient answer, there is a knock on the entrance. Before my tendrils can even respond, River has pushed me back into the nest, pulling down the shutter.
“In a minute!” she calls, tugging hard where the shutter won’t budge.
I hear the entry grind open, and the heavy footsteps of a male human.
“Get your gun and go get to the mess,” the familiar voice of the older one that came for River barks.
River sighs. “Is it the protean again? I’m telling you, if Mitch didn’t steal the carcass, the poor thing probably wandered off to die.”
“Ain’t the protean,” he growls. “We’re under attack.”
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Human-River gapes as I dig through the hanging clothes.
“Nikola? You’re alive!” she gasps.
I don’t want to tell her about the proper way to kill us, about the one brother that died from a wound to the right spot at the back of the head, but how the rest of my siblings died when a sickness took them after the injury, or they couldn’t eat enough to heal properly.
River has been kind and fair, but I won’t tell her that.
“Protean,” I remind her, checking a shirt for how well the shoulders stretch.
“But you’re dead!”
“Protean.”
“But you weren’t breathing!”
“Protean!”
“He double tapped!”
“PROTEAN!” I shout, turned on her, secondary arms and hunting tendrils raised defensively.
She backs away, hand over her mouth, shaking slightly. My mandibles are open, revealing the sharp, squid-eater’s teeth along my lower palate, my figure hunched, spiked tail lashing the air. Her smell of fear spikes.
A sickishness turns my stomach. I don’t like the way she’s looking at me.
I go back to the racks of clothing, holding up a shirt with no sleeves speculative.
“You’re…you’re…you should definitely be wearing pants!” she mumbles, turning sideways and holding a hand at her eyes, like shielding from rain sideways.
I cock my head curiously. I didn’t need clothing until I needed to keep the cold away, or disguise myself, but humans, possibly derived from warmer climates, always seem to. The attendants at home always wore extra layers, namely a thin, white coat that would never insulate heat in any circumstances, white gloves, a blue face-hider and transparent eye-shields.
Diving into one of the boxes, she triumphantly throws an oversized pair of baggy, tough blue pants at me, which have enough room to accommodate my raised heels and clawed feet. The waistline rubs against my tail, fixed with a flick of my secondary claws, tearing open the seam so I can fit.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, tension in her stance.
“Leaving,” I answer simply, sorting through the racks with all four hands, hunting tendrils receded.
“No, I mean…” She shakes her head and sighs, then stares at the exposed flesh of my chest. “Sorry…he…um…he thought he was protecting me.”
Familial protection is common among animals. This doesn’t surprise me, and I can’t rightly be angry about it. How would I have reacted, if I had found one of my smaller siblings, in the company of an armed human?
Still, my ribs hurt and the healing skin across my chest itches.
“Here, let me help,” she states, approaching me from behind, looking up at the racks.
She reaches up to grab at the hooks, then pulls away, a look of vacancy in her eyes, which linger on my spine and shoulders. She stares from the greater spikes on my shoulders and hips, poking through the material in my pants, to the way my secondary arms connect seamlessly to my shoulders. A warm, soft-skinned hand is placed against the thicknesses where my tendrils sleep, almost sore from unfamiliarity with touch.
“Diamondback,” she mumbles softly, a string of syllables I can’t discern.
I purr softly and she seems to snap back to herself.
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just…” She makes a grunting noise in the back of her throat, and takes a hook from the rack and shows it to me, made from a thinner version of the material in my pants, with buttons down the front.
“I think you can get…one set through here, and then…”
I take the shirt from her and put it on, rotating my secondary arms beneath my primaries. I can’t button it properly like this, and it’s a bit tight with my secondaries folded against my back, but it will do.
“That works, too,” she nods, then goes back to her searching. “A hoodie? If you don’t need your extra arms…all the good stuff has been passed out already…”
Eventually she manages to gather enough to hide my extra arms and numerous spikes (likely a leftover from the tree runners), good enough to conceal my form but hardly practical for survival.
“I think we can get you to my wagon, and then you can lay low there until nightfall,” she explains, pulling the hood of a greenish intermediary between shirt and coat over my horns. Her eyes linger on my mandibles, twitching with nervousness rhythmically against my lower palate.
“Sorry scary,” I tell her consolingly, trying not to spook her, since humans frighten easily.
“It’s okay,” she replies evenly, pulling a cloth over my snout and then tightening a string beneath my chin to hold everything in place. “You’re in an unfamiliar place and you’re hurt. It’s okay to be afraid.”
I tilt my head in confusion, but she’s already checking outside the door.
“Alright, follow me, stay close, and don’t speak to anyone,” she orders, waving for me to follow.
It’s a painstaking crawl through the herd to get to her shelter. Humans don’t climb or leap, so direct paths are often beyond them, made all the more winding because she is deliberately avoiding her pack.
I jump, my hunting tendrils straining against the disguise, when someone shouts across the thoroughfare at us.
“You two better get inside! There’s a protean loose!”
“Thanks! We’re on it!” human-River smiles, her hand raised high as some sort of signal.
“You did good,” she whispers soothingly, patting my left hand, her eyes flickering over where my tendrils bulged through the fabric. I seem to have popped some seams.
Silently, I keep following her, until we reach a snubbed, yellow vehicle with black stripes and exposed rust. The front end has been hollowed out and replaced with a bench, and the windows along the front and sides covered.
She ushers me inside, into the shadows. This place smells like her, her space, her den. There isn’t much room, but it feels cozy, all she needs contained inside this little room.
“Over here,” she beckons, squeezing past me. At the back, there is a raised platform, layered with blankets and cushions, and she crawls over it to pull a shade over the window, balanced on her knees, her coat along her form.
“You can rest here,” she explains, hands over her head on a handle at the ceiling. “Keep the shutters closed and no one should see you.”
I climb into the nest that smells like her, a bit too high for my comfort, but soft and peaceful, like the incubator from the time before the tanks.
“I’m going to go get you some food,” she continues, pulling on the handle, revealing a metal shutter that encloses the nest. “Don’t open the doors or windows, don’t answer if anyone knocks.”
When she’s sure I’m in place, she pulls the shutter down, sending me into deeper shadows. My chest itches, sore under the knitting skin, and my ribs hurt. My tail flops against the footwall, and I am surprisingly at peace.
In the heart of a herd of feral humans.
My whole body tenses, but I close my eyes and take a deep breath, thinking of the smell of trees and fresh blood and distant tree runners. Until nightfall, patience.
***
The shutter opens, and my tendrils are at the neck of something warm that moves in the shadows.
“It’s me, Niko,” human-River pleads, her voice cutting through my dreams.
I pull my tendrils apologetically back inside my disguise. They came out of my sleeves, so didn’t do too much damage, which would be a disappointment, since River was so kind to offer.
I smell something warm, organic, pleasing but unfamiliar. River rubs at her neck, and I hope she doesn’t bruise.
“Wow, jumpy,” she muses, sitting a bowl of…something in front of me.
“Sorry scary,” I tell her, regretfully, feeling…grimy.
Ignoring me, she turns to the bowl. “Venison stew. It’s not the best…sorry about that.”
I pick up the bowl experimentally, finding it warm to the touch, but not alive-warm. It’s full of a brownish fluid that isn’t blood, but smells organic and meaty, with chunks of brown, discs of orange, and parabolas of green. My six nostrils take in the steam, which is pleasant enough, but I don’t know what I’m looking at.
“What’s wrong?” River asks, sounding alarmed.
I don’t have the words to answer, but I hold up the bowl and do my best with, “Warm?”
“It’s…stew. Have you never had stew before?”
I look at her blankly.
“Um…it’s venison—deer meat—put in a pot with water and vegetables, then cooked over a fire.”
I tilt my head to one side.
“It’s good. Sort of. Try it.”
She hands me a scoop-shaped utensil, expecting me to do something with it, and then watches me stare at the bowl, which I sniff again, before sticking the four tubes of my tongue into the fluid and take a hesitant sip.
It’s…salty. It tastes like meat, but…not. There’s a bitterness that might come from exposure to fire, but a spiciness that doesn’t come naturally to animal muscle, and some things that might be plants.
River looks a little pale, staring at my tongue with wide eyes and twisted mouth.
I retract my tongue back into my mouth and wipe my snout with the back of my sleeve.
“Is scary?” I ask cautiously, having trouble looking her in the eye.
“C-can I see it?” she asks quietly.
Perplexed, I open my mouth wide, opening my mandibles and dropping my lower palate, then stick out my prehensile tongue, split four ways at the end, each with a circular, tooth-lined opening, good for sucking blood.
“It’s like you have a lamprey hydra living in your mouth,” she blurts, making a noise that might have been a giggle.
“Can you taste with it? Them?”
“Taste,” I repeat, not knowing the word.
I pull my tongue back in, putting the bowl aside, still holding the metal scoop, and covering my snout with cloths. Humans are skittish and jumpy, and it wouldn’t do to frighten her in an enclosed space.
“Don’t like it?” she asks, looking down at the bowl. “I don’t blame you. Wilma’s…not a good cook.”
Self-consciously, I hold the back of my hand over my snout, still holding the scoop.
“Well, pull up your shirt, let me get a look at your chest,” she sighs, setting a white box (why all the boxes?) onto the nest and opening it up.
Obediently, I pull the fabric up over my chest and to just under my collarbone, exposing the scarred, sensitive flesh, thin and raw under newly-forming skin.
“You look like you just skinned your knee instead of got shot at point-blank,” River muses, rubbing something synthetic and sticky onto the tender skin, making me wince. “It might sting a little, but this’ll help prevent infection and scarring.”
When she’s done, she puts the little white tube back in the box, and waves at me to put my disguise back down.
“And you just…shake it off?” she asks. “Just get back up again after a few hours?”
“Protean,” I remind her amiably, looking at the bowl and remembering how hungry I am.
“Hmm, proteans,” she smiles. “Feared throughout the land, shapeshifting abominations that can call lightning from the sky, unafraid of death, and masters of Go Fish.”
My mandibles flex slightly, confused at her unfamiliar words.
“Thank you…um…I mean…my brother…” she mumbles. “If I was minding my own business playing cards, and someone I didn’t know put a hole in my chest and blew out my living room window, I’d be out for blood. So, um…thanks for not…hunting him.”
I tilt my head again, wishing I knew more about how humans speak. The ones at home rarely spoke directly to us, and it was Bismarck that was the best and watching and listening. This is one of very few times I’ve wished I was more like my brother, who always seemed to know what the humans were saying or doing.
I glance again at the bowl, feeling the emptiness inside. I’ve had to regrow a lot of flesh and bone, so hunger is a given, but if River is put off my by mouth and tongue, then I wouldn’t want to scare her in her den. A frightened human is unpredictable.
“I think I promised you English lessons,” she smiles, taking a seat on a tall box across from me. “Um…I don’t know where to start. I guess I could read to you?”
Before I can come up with a sufficient answer, there is a knock on the entrance. Before my tendrils can even respond, River has pushed me back into the nest, pulling down the shutter.
“In a minute!” she calls, tugging hard where the shutter won’t budge.
I hear the entry grind open, and the heavy footsteps of a male human.
“Get your gun and go get to the mess,” the familiar voice of the older one that came for River barks.
River sighs. “Is it the protean again? I’m telling you, if Mitch didn’t steal the carcass, the poor thing probably wandered off to die.”
“Ain’t the protean,” he growls. “We’re under attack.”
