Roasted hearts of human pray!
Tyler jumped back as Blorb came screeching, panicked, out of the mess hall, wings flapping uselessly.
Blorb wasn’t her real name, just a nickname the humans had given the four foot avian alien. You needed a beak and hollow skull bones to resonate sound in just the right way to pronounce her true name. But Blorb was the closest human approximation.
She leapt up, her clawed feet (which also served as hands for her race, since her wings were only good for gliding on the strong wind currents of her home world) dug into his arms. Luckily, Blorb only weighed as much as a small child or the two of them would have taken a hard tumble. “Human-Tyler, save yourself! Human-Cathy has turned FERAL! SHE’LL EAT US ALL!” Blorb was so panicked she was losing feathers from her madly flapping wings. She jumped off Tyler’s shoulders, managing to glide all of four feet before landing on the ground. She took off running, hitting her top speed before she even reached the first intersection. She was gone, but the echoes of her panicked screeching continued to echo.
Tyler cocked an eyebrow and looked back at the mess hall door. Cathy, turning feral? What on earth Could that mean?
The door slid open to reveal an empty cafeteria, there was no one but Cathy eating what looked like a salad, and an abandoned bowl of fried grubs (probably Blorb’s meal).
Cathy waved to him, “Hey, Ty.”
Tyler looked at her, then around the room and back to Cathy. Certainly no feral behaviour was going on. “So, Blorb tells me you’ve, and I quote, ‘turned feral’. You finally come back to the meat eaters?”
Cathy smirked, “Vegetarian for life,” as if to illustrate the point she took a big lettuce leaf and tore into it. “Funny thing,” she said between bites, “I was just telling Blorb about how my mom sent a care package from home. Usual stuff; vids, some new entertainment disks and a load of stuff we can’t get here. She sent my favourite,” she paused to stab her fork into the salad. When she pulled it up she had impaled a small greenish white vegetable of many layers. “A jar of roast Artichoke hearts. They’re better fresh, but I take what I can get.”
Puzzle pieces were starting to falling into place for Tyler. “You told Blorb this and then she freaked out?”
Cathy’s grin grew a little wider, “I don’t think she knows what an artichoke is. She might have focussed a little on the ‘roasted heart’ part of the description.”
Tyler helped himself to a cup of coffee. The puzzle was coming together. “And you didn’t tell her?”
Cathy shrugged, “I meant to, but she ran off screaming before I had chance.”
Tyler sat opposite Cathy, “You didn’t think to go after her and explain before she finds a panic button to press?”
Cathy gave a non-commital shrug, “ I’m eating, besides-“ she cupped a hand to her ear, Tyler listed too. From somewhere in the facility they could hear Blorb’s warning cries. It was difficult to make out but it sounded something like “She’ll eat us all!”
Cathy leaned back in her chair, satisfied, “It’s hilarious.”
*********
Cathy, Tyler, Blorb, and other colourful characters will becoming part of my own little literary universe for my short humans are weird stories.
It’s why I stuck in otherwise unnecessary details about Blorb, it’s world building.
I think I’ll call it the Station J-12 series. No reason, I just like the sound of it. Whether it’s a space station, or planetary station, I haven’t decided yet.
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