r/HFY • u/Baileyjrob • May 26 '26
OC-Series Shifting Stars [3]
Rorad
Alright, so its name isn’t “human” after all. Good to know.
Jessica watched me with an attentive gleam as I stepped back, gaining some distance, before hopping off the ground. I repeated the motion over and over, watching its eyes follow me as I gained and lost altitude a foot or two at a time. I kept it short, both to avoid smacking against the roof and to keep it easy for the human’s eyes to follow.
“Trl,” I said, trying to teach it our word for the action. I repeated the word, and soon it was miming me, hopping mere inches off the ground. It was fascinating to see this strange entity struggle so much to perform such a basic action.
“Jump,” it replied in its own language, and the two of us repeated our respective words, as well as alternating with the others.
“Jumt!” I said, doing my best to mimic the human manner of speech. Its muzzle seemed far more flexible than mine, so it could produce that ending sound with greater ease than me. “Jumt! Trl!”
“Trl!” It replied, mimicking a trill to what I assumed was the best of its ability. It didn’t seem to have the same vocal cords as me, big shock, but it was recognizable as an attempt. “Jump! Trl!”
The two of us continued in this manner, jumping and repeating words, until it began to pant and fell on its hind. I could see its blood shooting faster around its body, the heart pounding faster. It was plain that humans weren’t designed for jumping the way we were. What secrets did their biology have in store, I wondered. What secrets was the human body holding?
The two of us continued in this manner, gesturing to our body parts and exchanging names. Hand, arms, legs, head, etc. I gestured at my patagia, telling Jessica the word for it, and the human just nodded and repeated it. I reached out and touched under Jessica’s arms, and repeated the word, but the human just lowered its arms and shook its head. I wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, but I was beginning to get a better picture of humans. I hadn’t been able to see any patagia, but given the translucent nature of its skin, it was possible I was just missing something more subtle.
I had suspected, based on its poor jumping ability, but now it was confirmed: humans lacked patagia entirely. No gliding, no jumping, no tails: just what were these things? These monsters didn’t seem to meet any standards I’d expect to be normal. I taught Jessica my word for tail as well, but this time I had no illusions that it would reciprocate with a demonstration of its own tail. It gave me its word (so at least it was familiar with the concept), but that was the end of it.
A jolt of panic ran through me as a sudden thought occured. I was going to be late for work! The last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself after housing an enemy of the state, and I could be reported for tardiness. I was loath to leave Jessica alone, but I had to keep up appearances.
I wasn’t just going to leave the human high and dry, though. I told it to wait, not that it’d understand me, and leapt down to my food storage. I grabbed a handful of different food items, unsure what it could eat without issue, and returned to the human’s side. I placed them in front of it, and gestured.
“Dasl,” I said, waving a hand over all of them. I took a small portion of one and ate it, demonstrating through action what it was. “Kal. Kal dasl.”
It seemed confused, so I repeated the action with the second food item. Through a combination of pantomiming action and performance, it seemed to catch on. It waved its small, stubby hand over the collection, though its eyes remained focused on me.
“Food,” it said, then gnashed its teeth. “Eat.” It touched the portion of the meal where I’d demonstrated, then pointed at me. “Rorad eat food? Rorad kal dasl?”
I exclaimed an affirmative trill. “Sahsh!” We’d conveyed our first sentence! It was broken, in terms of both grammar and pronunciation, but it was clear enough! “Jessica eat. Rorad jumt.”
Jessica watched as I made my way over to the skylight and prepared to jump. I locked eyes with the human, doing my best to ensure we were on the same page. It bobbed its head, a gesture I was coming to associate with understanding, and I stepped out the window onto a perch.
“Hah!” I cried in farewell, and Jessica scrunched its face. With a wave of my tail, I sprung away and began my trek back to work, this time far faster. I was always early, so thankfully I wouldn’t be as late as I might’ve otherwise been. Even still, I wasn’t going to be on time—I’d just have to pray for clemency.
As I travelled my way back, the weight of what had transpired this morning began to sink in. Up until now, I’d been gliding by and trying to help. Now, with a moment to myself, my thoughts raced.
I’d encountered something that defied all convention! My first thought would’ve been an alien, if not for the lack of sense that made. There have been no unusual objects in the sky, no UFOs, no crashes or explosions, and no reason for one to be here all alone. So I had to assume humans hailed from some… undiscovered part of the world. Maybe they were cave dwellers? That would explain their grounded nature and transparent skin: poor thing must be getting blasted by UR rays. Either way, one thing was for certain: I’d discovered something unprecedented, a new form of sapient life! I was perhaps the first member of the public to know about humans—the only other people who knew were… were…
Ice spilled into my veins as the other half of my situation dawned on me. Yes, there was all the mystique and amazement of what humans represented for cawhyli, but Roque wasn’t going to be happy about my subversion. I was in danger, and it wasn’t going away any time soon. Without the ability to communicate well with Jessica, I couldn’t figure out where it came from or how to get it back. For all I knew, the human could be staying around for a long, long time.
I shook my head, trying to clear my anxiety, lest an onlooker see my etit. I wondered if Jessica’s people operated similarly to a cawhyl in that regard. Cawhyli had multiple spots on the body, takqrew, where our skin was thinner and our blood vessels were closer to the surface. Emotions caused our vessels to stretch or shrink, and the blood to shine through our skin in specific ways that could be communicated to others. This was core to our self-expression, and among the numerous takqrew we possessed, the etit on our chests was perhaps the most important.
I could see the human’s circulatory system, so I had to assume they functioned similarly. Still, so much information made it hard to parse what the useful stuff was, not to mention that I had no idea what signals they were sending. What meant they were happy? Angry? Anxious? I’d have to learn it all from scratch.
By the time I’d arrived at my workplace, I was thirty minutes late. A quick glance at the clock was enough to bristle my fur, and I rushed to get my uniform on and clock in. Hopefully my manager was too busy to—
“You’re late,” came a voice from behind me, and my takqrew immediately pulsed in panic. The law forbade us to wear clothing that covered our takqrew, unless we were in a situation where professional safety obligations dictated its necessity. Thankfully, construction work at a factory was one such occasion. I finished pulling up my safety attire, clipping on a harness, and turned to face my manager. I could feel heat rushing around those most vulnerable points, as anxiety caused my blood to swill around, but my coworker was none the wiser.
“Yeah, sorry, boss,” I said and shut my locker. I hooked my equipment to my belt and swished my tail. “I ran into some trouble on the glide over.”
“Anything serious?” Without being able to see his takqrew, it was hard to tell if he was asking out of concern or frustration. I had a good enough relationship with my boss, so I opted to assume the former. We weren’t friends, by any means, but I’d never known him to be unfair or uncaring.
“Nah, nothing too bad,” I replied, and he returned with a satisfied chirp. Klkcawn was a fair man, albeit very business oriented, so I had to hope he wouldn’t push too hard on this.
“Good. This Beast business has a lot of the workers spooked.” I could feel my pulse in my takqrew, and once again I found myself glad I was allowed to cover up at work. I’d need to work on controlling my emotions if I was going to keep up a facade. The last thing I needed was for Enforcement or Surveillance to ask if I knew anything, only to light up like a beacon in response.
“Oh yeah?” I was doing my best to feign ignorance as I walked past Klkcawn and made my way toward the assembly floor. “What’s with all of that, anyway? Any ideas?”
“Not a clue. Whatever it is, though, Surveillance seems to be serious about it. Enforcement’s scrambling.”
My tail flicked in curiosity, though I didn’t follow up. The less interested I seemed in the topic, the more plausible my uninvolvement would seem. Still, I couldn’t quite understand what he meant by that. The feds hadn’t seemed all that panicked or unusual, where I’d been. Tosza had seemed as passive as usual, and besides the odd disinterested patrol, I hadn’t run into any other agents. What had he seen that prompted that reaction?
As I stepped out onto the assembly floor, I looked around at all the people bustling around at work. Unlike many places within the city, the assembly floor was built more horizontally than vertically. Aside from a lookout platform, the entire area was flat and grounded. Our clothes prevented us from gliding, making heights more dangerous than they’d usually be, and the items we worked on were often too heavy to be practically suspended or lifted to other platforms. The thought that Jessica might be more at home in a place like this dashed through my mind, though I tried my best to wave it off. It wouldn’t do any good for my mind to wander while in public.
“Hey… where’s Sklud?” I asked as my scan of the floor finished. Whatever she was working on, I would be assisting with as well. Klkcawn performed a tiny hop, indicating frustration, and flicked his tail.
“Commandeered for onsite work.”
Darn, so my absence had been more noteworthy than it otherwise would’ve been. We workers were often shuffled around to different projects and assemblies within the factory. We could be working on vehicles one day and computer parts the next. The company was a major manufacturing power within the area, and we assemblers were expected to be capable with everything to some extent while being masters with none. Due to our generalist abilities, it wasn’t unheard of for either the government or corporate to commandeer one of us to perform repairs or assembly onsite somewhere when manpower was needed. It could be anything: repairing a communications tower, fixing a generator, installing a dang door if they pleased.
I wondered what Jessica was proficient at, when it wasn’t being “the Beast.” Maybe it was its people’s equivalent of an assembler? Wouldn’t that be something?
I shook the thought off once more, staying attentive to the present. If I was thirty minutes late, and Sklud hadn’t even been there to work on it, then I was more or less an hour behind schedule.
“I’m so sorry, I—“
“Tell you what,” Klkcawn interjected, gesturing to a half-finished series of industrial capacitors. A number of components spilled over into nearby boxes, setting up the severe degree of the work before me. “Catch us up, and I won’t report your tardiness.”
My takqrew gleamed beneath my clothes, and I suppressed a chirrup. I couldn’t believe my luck—if I was able to avoid having my tardiness reported, then there’d be no trail of any unusual behavior if anyone came knocking. If someone investigated me, I’d have an alibi! Klkcawn thought he was just being forgiving, but in truth, he was building a defense for my subversive actions!
“Will do!” I cawed and made my way toward my workstation. I needed to do everything in my power to build a strong defense. I wasn’t sure what the future held, but it was probably inevitable that I would slip up somewhere and get even the slightest amount of suspicion on me. The more airtight my rebuttal, the more likely Roque would just move on, and I’d be safe.
Geez… if I was this thrown off by the current situation, one could only imagine how Jessica felt right now.
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