Ka’hagool looked down at the animal as it fell flat on the table and stopped moving, his arms hurting from carrying such a large beast. Even more so as it flailed around and its pack or herd worked together to try and stop them. He was mildly impressed but then looked down at the goo the animal wretched onto its hand, not really knowing if it was able to harm him he quickly walked over to a cleaning station and dunked his hand into it, and swished it around. The washing station was filled with plants and fish that love to eat toxins and just gross things in general. It always made Ka’hagool’s skin crawl and armor quake.
“Fuck! These animals are really strong-“
Zahan’Vandal walked over to him and with gentle clacking of her mandibles on his face, a form of affection to a special someone. She backed up a bit and started to speak. “What’s wrong? The animals giving you some trouble”
He returned the favor, but because his are so small he just tapped the tip of his face to hers and just looked down at the animal on the table, motioning to it with his claw. “It and its really is giving me a ton of issues. They’re hard to get a hold of, their heavy-”
“Didn’t you pick them up with ease a bit ago?” Zahan’Vandal said with her mandibles clicking together in a confused manner.
He stopped what he was saying and nodded, folding his arms. “I mean that is true, but we aren’t built like you. I can only do a bit of physical labor like that for short amounts of time and those things are heavy for a dude like me.” He lifted the animals arm and wiggled it around. “And that stuff that’s on its body is very irritating! It gets in the way!” As he wiggled around the animals hand they heard banging coming from the cage.
They both turned to face the cage, seeing both the animals in the cage making sounds at them. The one with yellow fur was up at the glass of the cage, baring its teeth at us as it banged its arm on the glass, it was making loud obnoxious noises in a strange pattern unrecognizable to them. The bigger one with orange fur wasn’t as aggressive as the other one but it was clear it was disturbed in a way, making softer sounds at the yellow one. Zahan’Vandal and Ka’hagool looked at each other then back at the animals, the orange one had taken the yellow one from the glass and got it to calm down. Bringing it into a hold with its two arms, and with its paws? Claws? Who knows, it used them to stroke the yellow one's hair, it soon started to lead water from its eyes and also hold the orange one in the same manner. Ka’hagool chirped and started to speak once more.
“Quite intelligent. Makes me wanna deep dive on them.” He said with increasing enthusiasm.
She glanced over at the animal that was on the table, it’s sleeping, presumably. “Well, you can do that with this one right here, I am quite interested to see you get back into tinkering with something that got you going again.” The excitement in her voice was palpable.
He quickly squeezed and faced the table and the animal sleeping on it and used his long middle legs to tap the top of the table, their almost bug-like feet ending making a pattering sound. The sounds he made were close to one of the larger flying animals on their planet that honked, squonked, and clunked its long sharp beak together to make this horrifying deep reverberating hollow sound that shook all Anoke to their core. But Ka’hagool was just making the silly honking sound. “You are correct! I just gotta make sure I don’t kill it and have our big book next to me at all times!” He looked back at Zahan’Vandal, still honking as he spoke. “I could even have a new page added into the big book! A new section entirely! The Animals of… what should the name of this planet be.”
She interjected very quickly, “The planet already has been named by the federation. Our Queens found it first and named it Soil.”
“... soil… is that really the name we’re going for here?” Clear disappointment radiating from his words.
“I mean yeah. All four of the queens said so. What? You got a better name?”
He practically screeched when she said this, “Of course I have a better name! Look I love the Queens as much as the next Anoklid but they really suck at naming things.”
“I care for you but you gotta be mindful of your words. What if you go on a rant when one of the queen's boy toys are near you?”
He waved his claw at her in a dismissive manner. “Like she would really do anything to me.”
She was silent for a bit before she nodded in agreement. “I mean you are correct there. So? Speak. What do you think a better name would be.”
He started to speak as he fiddled with the objects that the animal was on them, quite irritating seeing how well made they were. “Well I do have to say they were pretty close to picking a good name. But soil? Soil of all the things. God I can only think that the reason they named that poor place that is because they had soil for brains. Couldn’t they think of any better name? But since the place is so close to the sun, kinda like how we’re named Anoklids because our planet is named Anoke and that means many moons right.”
She nodded her head, “Yes that is true.”
“And how the word Solnid means sun.”
“Yes.”
“So why don’t we just name the planet Solnidic.” He finally said, stopping his horrid squawking.
Zahan’Vandal just looking at him and her antenna flicked and her tail started to wag. She nodded, “That's pretty smart. I will make a note for the Queens to decide on a send to the Federation.”
He practically jumped with joy at this statement and turned his attention over to the animal, finally taking off all of these things that it was wearing and started to observe its body.
“Huh- how strange. It has a pattern on the rest of its body as well.” He said as he moved the animal around and used its middle legs to feel the skin. Noticing that it had no fur in many places. The only places that did have it was the top of its head, and some sparse fur from the hips down.
“It’s entirely smooth and well… squishy,” he then squished its arm and felt something hard inside of it. Its antenna flickering with blue and moving to attention. “Oh? It has bones kinda like a very few of the mammals on our planet… or maybe they aren’t bones, who knows!”
He soon took a look at its face, using its middle legs endings to feel its face seeing how he was already using a lot of strength to hold this animal up. Being interested by its flat face with no snout or nothing. Just a little protruding nose, mouth that slightly has its flaps poking out, and nothing else. Taking one of its claws it opened the animal's mouth and looked inside, observing its oral cavity and taking notes with one of its middle legs.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jade watched in shock and horror as the alien opened, a now naked agates mouth and started to poke and prod in there. She turned away from the view of what was happening and started to wander around the cage, hand on her face and stress swelling up in her chest. She turned to Carnelian who was looking extremely stressed, his face pale, its color now similar to Jade's normal skin color, which is obviously too light for him. She quickly walked over to him, speaking in that soft kind voice he always loved to hear.
“Are you okay? No wounds?”
He shook his head, but looked more frazzled than injured. “I just- this whole situation is just… awful and I just-” He couldn’t even finish what he was about to say before he brought his hand to his face and just held it there, holding the bridge of his nose. “Like what are we supposed to do,” He motioned to the large alien out the cage, standing at the table, Agate flipped on his back as the alien stared hard at him, writing something down on a tablet or something. “We can’t do anything against that! It’s huge! It’s- it's probably smarter than us! And we’re in space goddamnit, we have no grounds to even be able to do something about this situation!” He yelled a bit too loud, something he didn’t expect, clear by the look on his face, he groaned and walked to the wall and just plopped himself down on the ground and leaned against it, tears welling up in his eyes.
Jade was feeling just as scared and worried as he was at this moment, and he was right. They couldn’t even do much about this. Stuck in a cage, held captive by aliens much larger than them, she felt helpless as his words sank in and started to make her tears pool in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away and sat next to him and sighed, turning to face him as he looked out the cage at Agate. She grabbed her face and turned him to face her, she held her composure the best she could… she needed to after all. The man she loved was scared, and she needed to be his rock, she thought. He took a deep breath and spoke.
“Look CarCar. I know we’re in this scary place… and shit can go fucking wild at any moment based on what we know right? But like, they don’t seem like they're going to hurt us. More like their curiosity? Like how a kid would be about a new puppy.” She said, watching as Carnelian's worried face slowly calmed down, his tears dripping down his face. She smiled and kissed him softly on the cheek and continued, her voice soft and calm as it could be, her arms and hands slightly shaking. “We still don’t know what they want but, if what I say is true then maybe if we don’t act up we’d be good?”
Carnelian watched her silently, his heart pounding against his chest as her words filled her ears. They calmed him even though he was sure she was just as scared as her. That thought just made him feel bad for not helping her like she helped him at this moment. So he sat up slightly, took her hand off his face and brought the back of her hand up to his lips and pecked it slightly. Then lifting his soft orange eyes that held a strangely strong gaze up to her sharp green eyes that seemed to be wading in false confidence. He knew her yet was still getting to know her deeper within this romance that they’re cultivating, learning the manners in how she spoke, gazed around, and even blinked. With his free hand he gently wiped away his own tears, leaving a sparkly look to his eyes. He was barely holding it together. She quickly looked away from his gaze and to the wall behind him. She was embarrassed and that made him smile slightly as he spoke up, voice wavering and sad from crying and stressing out.
“Thank you Jade. I- I’ll keep that in mind.”
She glanced back at him for a few seconds before she leaned back on the wall as well, looking out into the room. Watching as the Aliens poke and prod at a passed out Agate.. It sent shivers down her spine wondering if the same was going to happen to her and Carnelian as well.
The two were silent until she spoke up once more. “This sucks ass, we were supposed to go to college.”
Carnelian moved his head to face her a bit and snickered, leaning his head on her shoulders. “Yeah. But hey, it’s kinda funny in a way.”
She put her arm over his shoulders and moved him closer, turning to look at him a bit, eyebrow raised. “Hmm? In what way?”
“Well if we went to college, we would have let Agate behind and that’s what started that little fight earlier.”
“Oh right yeah you’re correct about that.”
“But with us here, the three of us. We both can try and like, fix things with him and each other better.” He made a slight laughing sound. “Like… It might be hard but I think we can become better friends because of this.”
Jade stopped looking at him and went to stare at the strange purple plants that looked more animal than plant. She then made a devilish grin and giggled.
“Ahh you might be right, man. Who knows! Not me, not you, and definitely not Agate!” A big grin was on her face, warming both Carnelian and Jade's heart. They didn’t need to say anything, but they knew.
That they had each other's backs.
All three of them do.
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