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From the Stars She Came

A relatively short RP session between me and my friend Phaze. My character, an alien named Tazzik, comes to Patterat's planet looking for land to terreform for her people. Somewhere along the way she realizes that maybe, there's more to life than industrial madness.

My entries are under dashes, and his are under stars. Enjoy. :>

---------- It had been such a nice break to see the Class M planet NG659 instead of the endless expanse of deep space. Tazzik was growing so bored of deep space. She let her head hang back over her chair and clacked her beak in annoyance, anything to get the black black and more black out of her face. When the automated jangle of her computer startled her from her daydreaming she had expected to see something mundane. An asteroid belt. A comet off in the distance, maybe. But no. Instead she got NG659, and it had been the most exciting thing to happen to her all week. Granted, all week had been comprised of her holed up in a tin can called a spaceship staring out at blackness, so anything had the honour of being called “the most exciting thing ever”. Tazzik was excited, and not just because finally she was going to feel real ground under her feet and real gravity pulling her down. Coming this far had been a gamble, and no one knew if it would even pay off. No one knew what NG659 looked like. No one knew what its climate was, its atmosphere. The planet had been picked up on long range scanners, and the task had fallen on poor Tazzik to go check it out. The gamble seemed to have paid off. NG659 was a beautiful planet. It had water, clouds. Organic matter littered its surface, something that in the past her people would have called ‘trees’. Continents and oceans. A new home, through and through. She set the ship towards the planet, entering its atmosphere not a moment later. Her computer had already calibrated a good landing site in a particularly lush jungle near the equator, and while the sight of so many organic plants clustered together made her feel uneasy, she donned her suit all the same and got herself ready for departure. Her computer told her that the planet’s atmosphere was breathable for her, and with her augmented respiratory system there was no danger if she deigned to wear a helmet. But she did all the same. Just in case, she told herself. Just in case of what, she didn’t know. But just in case, indeed. With trained reflexes that only came from years of work, she began her surveying mission, and took the first hesitant step away from her ship.

******** Patterat awoke to a frightful noise and the acrid smell of burning plants. He jerked his head to and fro, looking for an explanation. His antennae twitched and he curled them back, flinching at the stench. Finally his eyes gleaned an answer. A hefty hunk of metal, a few leaps away. Glimmering rockets on its rump still glowing, turning the encroaching greenery ashen in its wake. The dead leaves curled away and fell to the ground and the engines cooled, leaving the forest quiet and fragrant again. It was one of those visitors again. Patterat hadn't seen one in a long, long time and the occurrence was intriguing to say the least. The last visitors had left long ago, and they had only come to visit. He had sat and observed, intrigued by the aliens. Then they had left. Now he had something new to look at. Bouncing along a branch he slinked closer, antennae waveringing, taking in new, metallic smells from the long-legged stranger. He made little effort to obscure himself, in fact speaking aloud in his native clicks. "O'har har, migmar! Vivi bu Kilkif sensay!"

---------- Startled, she jumped back towards her ship and cast frightened eyes around herself, at the intense colours that made up this bounteous forest. Her eyes were not used to seeing so many colours all at once and they disoriented her. As a slyfthys she had grown up with shades of gray dominating her life. There had been colour. There had always been colour. But colour had always taken backseat to the steel synthetic hues of machinery. There it was, on a branch. Peeping at her in some alien dialect that she couldn’t understand. Bewildered, Tazzik calmed slightly and took a tentative step towards it, still dazzled by the intricate web of colours its skin took on. “I don’t… Know what you’re saying,” she said in a confused tone, stopping short of the clearing’s edge.

******* "English!" Patterat squealed. "Oh you speak english, I do too!" He slinked right up in her face and stared with those big, buggy eyes. He looked her up and down by shaking his head from side to side at an angle, proboscis lolling and manipulating his words. "It's not as fun as Kilkif, of course, nothing is, but I speak it. Hey if you want I could teach you, Keki heyhar that's silver stranger, that's you, keki heyhar, indub kerkin, ibdub beybi zizo tertin!" he started rambling, slinking around the branches around her head, prattling on aimlessly, throwing in english here and there without thought to it.

---------- She had not been expecting the little critter to suddenly spout out her language like a tiny little insectoid machine gun. Nor had she expected him to suddenly get right in her face and begin babbling inanely. Terrified of the creature’s lack of personal space she backed up a bit too fast and almost fell, her feet sinking into the soft earth. Her back came up hard against her ship and she shot the creature a most venomous of glares. “I do not want to learn your ridiculous language!” she shouted, voice echoing through the trees. A leaf from his constant movement dislodged and fell onto her beak, and disgusted that it had touched her she almost smacked herself right in the face in an attempt to get rid of it. “Kek kek dub dub,” she sneered, thoroughly annoyed that her surveying mission had been so rudely interrupted by what she could only describe as a living irritation.

******** "Ridiculous? What's ridiculous about it, it's all we know..." Patterat cooed quietly, slowing his movements and drooping his wings. His colors turned less vibrant and took on a duller hue at the change in mood and he backed away. He'd never been treated so harshly and the mockery was a stab to the heart. Looking her over once more, now much duller and less interested in talking, he saw something loose and shiney. Clinging to the heyhar's suit in a dangling motion, it was shinier than anything in the forest. So, swift as a dart, Patterat shot by her and clasped it, whisking past her in a streamlined shape before opening his wings and taking off into the canopy.

---------- He seemed to react adversely to her yelling and his vibrant, in her face colours dulled. Tazzik was pleased, mostly because he had finally stopped his abhorrent jabber and given her eyes a rest, to boot. Feeling the smallest iota happier, she reached for her side, only for the creature to dart forwards without any prior indication of movement and snatch her equipment before she could react. “HEY!” she yelled, furious, grabbing at her side. It hadn’t been anything important job wise; nothing more than a shiny little bit of home that she had brought with her. But what it lacked in usefulness it made up in personal importance. The slyfthys was miffed and took off into the jungle after him, leaving her ship behind in a haze of pure emotion. “You get back her you little kek kek buck fiz!” she roared, insulting him by mangling his language in such a way. The trees whipped past, grabbing at her with scraggly branch hands. Leaves and insects whipped in her face, all their vibrant colours filling her mind with an explosion of sensory input that made her colour ebbed brain hurt. “Where did you go?!” She had lost his dulled countenance amidst the abundant plant life. There was no answer and she kicked a tree in frustration, hurting herself more than the plant. “Where did you go?!”

******** The butchered words flew over his head and only drove him on faster through the trees. He darted up a trunk, wings tucked in, clutching his prize in his mouth by a chain. The stranger was faster than he would have thought and he had gone very fast in a very short time. Patterat's kind didn't have any predators, or prey for that matter. They weren't made to flee and the tiny creature was very much out of breath. So he came to a stop at the top of a tree, panting hard through teeth clasped around his useless trinket, trying to catch his breath. He wasn't moving anytime soon.

---------- He was gone. And, it would seem, she was lost. And angry. She swore under her breath and gave the same tree another kick, this time managing to leave a dent in its bark. Tazzik glared around at the surrounding jungle. Everything looked the same: chaotic. There was no rhyme or reason for the mess of flora that graced her aching vision. At least back on her home planet the forests and trees had been razed for grand cities and even grander roads, a planet of gleaming steel and glass. There she would never get lost, for everything was marked. There was no chaos, only order. Here, of all places, was the exact opposite. She grumbled angrily under her breath and tried to take a moment to calm her nerves. As a surveyor she was very underpaid. It was why they had chosen her, because they didn’t have to pay her too much. Her ship was sparse and her technology, however in love with it she was, was even sparser out here. Her suit had nothing to lead her back to her ship, and her ship could not find her. She didn’t even have any way to communicate unless she was sitting in the bridge. She kicked another tree, causing a rain of leaves to fall around her. She paid them no heed and set off in the direction that made the most sense, horrifically out of place. One step and she already tripped over an upturned root, almost falling flat on her face. “Damn it!” she yelled, frustration building up. She glared up at the sky, at the leaves waving in the wind. “When I get back home I’m never leaving ever again,” she muttered, her mood positively abysmal.

******** The heavy metal of her suit collided with the tree and sent a tremor all through its trunk and branches. The branch on which Patterat was resting wobbled ever so slightly but it was enough to knock him out of his hiding spot and send him crashing to the ground. Panicked, he tricked to open his wings and enter a glide but he was far too exhausted and they collapsed against him just as soon as they met wind. The trinket flew upwards as he fell but stubbornly refused to leave his mouth. With a soft yet sickening thud he landed, the tiny silver object lodging itself into his throat and being swallowed, very much by accident. Patterat coughed and jerked, try to get it out as though he'd just swallowed poison. He was feeling very disoriented. "Vevvv," he croaked, groaning in pain.

---------- She had resigned herself to wandering aimlessly this alien forest when the creature had come crashing to the ground. Tazzik was both overjoyed to have found him and furious to see her possession had all but disappeared. Scowling she grabbed the fragile little animal and held him close to her face, peering down her long beak at him with malevolent cybernetic eyes. The darkness of her tinted visor was so alien in this lush, colourful jungle. “What did you do with it, you little thief?” she hissed, shaking the poor thing like a ragdoll but only succeeding in befuddling him even more.

******** "Veveeeer!" he squealed. "Not so rough!" She was grasping quite tightly and it hurt his tiny, boneless body. "I think I-" his speech was interrupted by a stuttered hic-KOP "I think I went and swallowed it, I'm sorry," he said finally.

---------- “You--You ate it?!” she screeched, indignation burning in her mind. “I’ve got half a mind to slit you open from head to tail and take it out by force, you flying pest!”

******** Patterat struggled in her grasp and tried to escape. "Wait, wait no don't! I'll spit it out see?" He made several attempts, a weird sort clicking escaping his throat as his proboscis lolled in and out. Nothing. "Okay, I can't I'm sorry! But don't cut me open! Why is it so important anyways??" he whined, still trying to squirm our of her grasp.

---------- For a moment she seemed to calm, and her tight grip loosened but an iota. “It’s… It’s a locket,” she said quietly. Her anger flared back just as strong a moment later. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now, you rat.” As if to accentuate her point she shook off one of her gloves and held an intricate mechanical hand close to his chest, her fingers hinging backwards with a motorized whine to reveal a small serrated saw blade. One of its teeth nicked the creature’s chest and Tazzik was pleased to see the tiniest speck of blood well up from between his supple scales.

******** Patterat squealed loudly, terrified at the sight. "KAKUL TETI You're, you're crazy! You'd cut someone open for a locket?! Why, why why?!"

---------- “No, I’d cut you open just on principle,” she seethed, holding him close to her face. “Now go find my ship for me or I’ll burn both you and your precious jungle right to the ground.” She opened her hand without another word and held him at arm’s length, waiting for him to make his decision.

******** "Don't do anything like that, teti! I bet you have no friends, acting like that." Patterat's first instinct was to run, the open canopy of the forest so delectably close. But her threats had sunk all too deep, and he was afraid to do anything else but obediently lead her back. He knew precisely where they had started and where they were, so he headed back in the right direction with a simple, shaky and mumbled; "It's this way."

---------- He obeyed her without a second thought and flittered off into the oppressive jungle growth, Tazzik in tow. She didn’t like the jungle and she didn’t like the overabundance of plant life and she had made that more than clear. It was all she could do to not cry out in disgust when a stray leaf or vine brushed up against her without warning, shivering in revulsion. “This planet will be much better when it’s bulldozed,” she muttered dejectedly. “Then I won’t have to worry about… Whatever the hell you are.” She waved a hand in the colourful little creature’s direction and tried to peer ahead through the flora, but was only met with the vibrant, unbroken expanse of the jungle. It almost made her feel sick, to be so out of her element.

******** Patterat landed on a branch and peered around, trying to get his bearings. He overheard her talking to herself, and heard a word he did not understand. "Bull-dose?" he inquired, before leaping off and continuing back.

---------- “Bulldoze?” she repeated, momentarily caught off guard by his curious tones. “Yeah, it means to take all this… stuff and just raze it all down.” She had made a generalized sweep of the hand, indicating everything around her, trying to convey the grand scope that came with the word ‘bulldoze’.

******** "So... destroy it? Destroy Kilkif! Why would you do that?" he inquired worriedly, momentarily stopping, more intent on getting an answer than he was on completing his task.

---------- “Why would I?” she asked back, honestly confused by the tiny thing’s view on the matter. She paused where she stood and stared at him curiously. “Well… It wouldn’t be me. All I do is survey. But… why wouldn’t I?”

******** Patterat seemed equally confused by her question. He approached her as though to emphasize his response, colors shifting to a whiter spectrum. "Well, people live here. Critters live here, and flowers live here. So destroying it would kill lots of things, wouldn't it? That doesn't seem like something worth happening, to me."

---------- “People?” she parroted. “You mean you? You’re not a people, you’re a… lizardy thing. And why does it matter? Bull dozing all this would mean a new place for my people to live. Why do I need to worry about anything else?”

******** Patterat had nearly led them back, the stranger's ship being in full view in the clearing just a few leaps away. "You're not a people," he words echoed. He bounded up towards her and hovered in her face, quite peeved. He returned her slander with nothing but a question. "What is 'people'?" he asked, uncertain if he was asking something philosophical or merely clarifying the english word with which he wasn't entirely familiar.

----------

“What are people?” Her ship lay just in front of her, the charred edges of the clearing still adrift with delicate strands of bluish smoke. At this point she wasn’t quite sure if the thing’s questions were honestly interesting or aggravatingly infuriating. What did classify a person? She was a person, through and through. What else could she be, if not a person? “I’m a person!” was her response, full of confused emotion as it was. “A person is… A person has to speak to be a people! And think. And have emotions… And…” She trailed off. This tiny flying creature, so much smaller than she was, displayed clearly all of the attributes she had just described. Her confusion made her angry, because she didn’t know why she was confused in the first place. “You know what?” she stated after a moment, taking a step into the clearing. “You’re not a people because you don’t wear clothes. End of story.” She grabbed him before he could respond and entered her ship without another word, haughty in the fact that she had found a way to not think of the flying pest as a person anymore. Once inside it was only a few short minutes before he found himself in a cage on a table, surrounded no longer by the song of nature but the cold sterile noise of machinery.

******** "Well if your people are 'people' all the time, wouldn't they go extinct?" Patterat laughed, smirking as he was very much put off by her deluded answer. Before he could do anything else, she grabbed him and roughly threw him in a gorge of shiny, metal bars. A roof formed above him and Patterat began to panic. He was trapped.

---------- “That doesn’t even make sense,” Tazzik snapped, dropping the cage with little subtlety onto the cold hard surface of her workspace. Wordlessly, now in the comfort of her own ship with the alien jungle safely away from her, she stripped herself of her suit and took a seat in front of the cage, her head propped up on her hands. For a moment, she stared down at him, unsure what to do to retrieve her locket. Despite her earlier threat, she didn’t actually want to cut him open. Mostly because it was a messy process and she preferred to keep her ship meticulously clean. The dirt she had tracked in from outside was bad enough and she would have to clean that in short order, before it spread whatever vile contagion that no doubt slept waiting in its tainted dirtiness. “Okay, since you seem dead set in pretending you’re a person,” she said suddenly, curious despite herself to learn more about the creature that had stolen her belonging. “People have names. Do you have one?”

******** "Patterat, Patterat of the Dratter, and I want to go home. LET ME OUT!" he squealed, very much put off by having been separated from his home. The cold, colorless world that had taken shape around him was something he had never seen, and it scared him very much.

---------- “Spunky, you are!” she exclaimed, surprised by the sudden outburst that issued from his mouth. “Calm down, Patterat. I’ll have you out of there once I figure out how to get my locket back.” Unconsciously her hand went to her neck, but without her locket draped across her neck she had nothing to play with, nothing to set her mind to ease. The lack of the one thing that had never left her possession put a damper on her mood and she spun her chair around, watching the interior of her ship whirl around her. “Won’t your planet be so much nicer when it’s like this?” she asked, drearily. Being in space for so long was tiring, and the little bit of action she had experienced made her feel fatigued. She stifled a yawn. “Then you won’t have to worry about anything other than being where you have to be on time. Having enough money… Having enough food. Getting to work without getting killed in the process… Industry workers do face a lot of danger every day.” She paused for a moment and stopped spinning, staring at the furthest wall. “Sounds like a great place, doesn’t it?”

******** "When it's like this?" he echoed, taking a cursory glance around. The tiny world around him was bleak, smooth-surfaced and grey. Patterat had never been surrounded by something so.... lifeless before. He had always lived in a world rich in color, where even the tiniest and most insignificant of things was abounding with life. Now that ever present pulse was gone, cut off. And she intended to make the entire world like this? "You're serious? NO NO NO! Everyone will die!" he exclaimed, twitching his head, looking around in a panic as the vibrant colors of his scales and wings fleeted and blended to the rest of the ship; grey and colorless. With nothing living around him he felt very lifeless indeed.

---------- NG659 had already proven itself to be a good planet for future development. It had everything necessary for the slyfthys race to expand: large land masses and even larger oceans, stable tectonic plates, an agreeable atmosphere. Despite herself it made Tazzik feel kind of queasy to think of the consequences that would come with developing here. “It won’t be pretty,” she said, talking less to Patterat and more to everything at once. She continued to lazily spin around in her chair. “First we’ll have to lay down new foundations, by burning all the forests. Trees get in the way of development, after all. The pollution from the machines will no doubt poison the water and boil the oceans, and kill everything that lives down there. The sky will probably turn yellow after a few years, and when it rains it’ll burn anything that’s unprotected. Mountains will have to be blasted away. Swamps will have to be concreted over. Rivers will be rerouted.” When she stopped turning she found she was looking at Patterat, his vibrant colours as washed out as her entire life. Her superiors back home were no doubt waiting for her answer: was the planet good or not? She hesitated, staring at the creature that had called himself one of the Dratter. “You’re not a people because you don’t wear clothes,” she said after a moment, sighing. “It’s what I’ve been told all my life by my own people: ‘Tazzik Crankwhistle, you’re not a real person because you don’t have cybernetics yet.” It’s the only reason I got the eyes and the arms. It was all I could afford at the time. I was looking forward to getting my legs done, too, but that’s too expensive.” She turned the smallest of degrees, staring no longer at Patterat but at the command console, glowing softly in the muted light of her ship. All she did was stare, for she no longer wanted to call home.

******** "H-how can you say all that with such a straight face," he whimpered, aghast. "Don't you care that everyone will die? Don't you care about what you're destroying. You're murderers and you don't care..." Patterat had never had a reason to be so disgusted with anyone and the emotion was unfamiliar to say the least. It was unpleasant, but he made no attempt in masking it. "I didn't know any alien people could be so selfish," he finished quietly, circling once in his terrible new home before sitting heavily on the steel floor. There was no escape, after all.

---------- She stared at him, having already accepted his fate so readily, so easily. It was almost hard to tell where the cage ended and where the little flier started, his colours having melted so quickly into the same silvers and grays that comprised her limited range of vision. Hesitantly she wheeled her chair over to the command console and stared at that, too, drumming her hands on the console’s smooth surface. Never before had she felt so terribly conflicted. It would have been so easy to call it in and leave, never having to set foot on NG659 ever again. Just wipe it from her memory and refuse to dwell on it ever again. Instead she was stricken by the words of that not-person lizard and his very real emotions. Angry at herself for disobeying her own people she drove a fist into the wall and abruptly stood, casting a steely stare over at Patterat in his cage, still unsure what to do when there were suddenly so many options.

******** Patterat looked up momentarily, surprised by the loud CLANG of mechanical violence coming from the stranger. She was angry. He did not know why, but he found himself stricken by the fear that she would take that violence to him, as well. She seemed to merely stare instead, standing in place. He put his head back down and tried to ignore her. Tried to imagine himself back outside. Back where the abundant greenery caressed him from all sides. Back where the air was fresh and fragrant instead of filtered and chemical. The change in atmosphere wasn't just discomforting, it was sickening. It felt as if something very vital was missing from his air supply, even if he hadn't exactly expired yet. But to tell the truth, it made him very nauseous, sending ripples of blackest black trembling through his greyed scales. The tiny creature convulsed once, finally spewing out a tiny, nectar-covered object onto the cold floor of his cage and whimpering from the pain of the act.

---------- It was a pleasant surprise to see Patterat finally disgorge the locket onto the floor of his cage. The hard edge faded and Tazzik just felt tired and guilty. She should not have gotten so angry at him in the first place, and little by little she was starting to feel that she never should have even come here. Gently she lifted his cage and carried it back outside, this time purposely forgetting her suit despite the shiver of fear that the jungle incited in her. She propped open the cage door, took the locket, and retreated back inside, leaving Patterat alone back out in the world he belonged in. Inside she inspected the tiny object and sighed, still at a loss as far as her job was concerned. Instead of sitting on her chair she sat right where she was, on the floor in front of the door, and sighed exactly once. Her fingers fiddled with the locket she had never been able to get open and she did nothing at that point other than exist.

******** The door of his metallic hell had finally been opened. Patterat was back outside, back home. He breathed in gratefully, finding with the relief that the nauseated feelings faded with each breath. Tentatively at first, he slinked his way outside and touched the ground. He was afraid, somehow, that this was a ruse. That he wasn't really free and that the door would close just as abruptly and unexpectedly as it had opened. But it didn't. A rush of vivid colors swathed over his skin, washing out the greys and returning him to his natural state. He bounded up the nearest tree, laughing at the sheer pleasure he gleaned from it. Then he stopped, and realized he wasn't as anxious as he should have been. The stranger, who called herself Tazzik, had foreshadowed a terrible future for the forest. One she played a part in; that would raze every tree to the ground and replace it with concrete, industry. Was it really going to happen? Patterat's smile quickly faded and he returned to the ship. She was still there, sitting at the foot of the door, fiddling with that trinket. Patterat was no expert in reading alien emotions, but even he could see the hints of something. Remorse? Maybe. He desperately wanted to believe so. Surely there must be something I can do, he thought fervently. Something that could change her mind. So he crawled back to the foot of the ship, slowly and respectfully, dulling his colors not out of emotion but to spare her the shock. His vibrancy seemed to peeve her, he realized. She didn't seem to notice his presence, gaze still fixed on the locket. Intriguing that something so small merited so much attention. "So...," Patterat began, still uncertain. He didn't know what to say and merely thought to strike up a conversation. "Why is that so important?

---------- Even when he had been granted freedom, the creature whose existence screamed colour and life came slinking back. Tazzik paid him no heed, her mind transfixed by her locket. He asked a question, something that she wasn’t sure she could answer, and it took her a moment to process his words. “Why is that so important?” “I’m not sure,” was all she said, fingers playing with the broken hinges that had turned the tiny trinket from a locket into a prison. “I don’t even know what’s inside…” How long had Tazzik held fervently to her chest this tiniest of charms? As long as she could remember, and then some. She knew it held something very, very important, even while the memory had long since fled. But what, of all the universe, could warrant such intense emotions in her mind she hadn’t the faintest ideas. “My parents gave it to me,” she explained quietly. “Told me to never let it out of my reach. At one time I could open it, but that was many decades past, and the hinges rusted and broke over the years.” All Tazzik knew was that the locket was important, and she had never let it out of her sight for nary a second. When Patterat had stolen it with so little thought, the onslaught of emotion had been intense and had frightened even her. She had felt angry, livid, and above all, scared of whatever fate would befall the small charm. “I don’t know why it’s important,” she repeated quietly, hugging it close to her chest. “I don’t know.”

******** The show of sentiment was unfamiliar to the colorful creature, who had never had a need for material possessions in all his long life. He still didn't have an answer and was more curious than ever why, why a tiny piece of refined metal could evoke such emotions. Patterat was confused. The stranger Tazzik had mentioned that once it had opened, and was now forever closed. Could it be that something inside spoke of its true value? Patterat wanted to know. She seemed to be lost in thoughts, clutching the trinket to her chest with her eyes glazed over. It was a remarkable change from the powerful, terrifying captor he had witnessed earlier, and he found himself feeling much more brave. He slunk over to her crouching form, eyeing the trinket in her hands. He twitched his tiny, golden needle of a claw stuck it between the fine seem of the locket, edging it around in a precision Tazzik herself could never attain. He continued to do so until he heard the tiniest of clicks.

---------- There was a tiny little click, the almost imperceptible whine of ancient hinges grinding against each other, and a moment later the locket had popped open with a certain vigour that made it seem almost happy to be free again. Tazzik flinched and almost dropped the tiny thing. She had not been expecting it to open any time soon and had been quite content to just own the trinket until whatever time it decided to impart its mysteries unto her. But here it was, in her cold steel hands. Open at long last. Tenderly she brought it up to eye level and stared, confused. She had expected pictures. Maybe written words of long gone encouragement. But this was wholly different. It was something dead but preserved in all its organic glory, a blush of bright purple veins set into an old, old leaf of bluest blue. “What is this?” she whispered, feeling very reverent despite the apparent mundane reality of the locket’s secret.

******** "Ooh, a leaf, I can see why someone would care about a leaf," Patterat explained, satisfied that the mystery of why someone could care about a random chunk of metal was solved. "But why would you care that much, there's leaves everywhere!" he added, looking around at the indeed, very abundant foliage.

---------- Instead of looking at the forest that Patterat seemed very proud to live in, Tazzik found herself staring in its place at the tiny little leaf. It was like none of the flora here, that much was certain. It was alien from this place, and yet heart-breakingly familiar at the same time. “There’s no leaves on my planet,” Tazzik explained, her voice low. “This can’t… I mean, my people burnt them all down… We’re taught to hate things like this, because they bring chaos to order.”

******** "No leaves? How do you live??" Patterat suddenly cried, almost sarcastic, like the statement was just so appallingly ridiculous it could not be taken seriously. Tazzik returned his laughter with a solemn expression, keeping her eyes fixed on the tiny bit of matter kept alive inside its metal shell. His smile faded; she was serious. There were really no leaves? No trees? Nothing at all? But... how? Patterat struggled for an answer that seemed impossible to give. Clearly the thing inside the locket was very rare, indeed. Perhaps it was once abundant, and this technology-dependent stranger came from a world that was once much like his. He remembered her ship, the glossy grey world she had come from, where nothing grew. He stared back towards the forest, twitching his head to and fro between the jungle and her ship, before finally coming to rest with his indecision. "No leaves, no trees, nothing," he whined. "You're going to do the same thing here, aren't you?"

---------- “I… Don’t want to,” was all Tazzik said, before finally closing the locket and looping it around her neck where it belonged. She stood and made her way to the command console, her mind finally made up. A few deft strokes of the keys later and she was in touch with her superiors, the lack of a viewscreen lending only their imperious, annoyed voices. “Tazzik Crankwhistle,” came the thin, curiously steel voice of her boss. She flinched, knowing full well that she was late in her assignment. “I do hope you come bearing good news. NG659. Fit for development?” “I…” she hesitated and glanced back at Patterat. Though her mind was set, she was finding it difficult to speak up to her boss. “Negative, sir. NG659 is… Too volcanically active. Unfit for development.” Lying did not come naturally to her and her voice stuttered abnormally. There was a pause from the other end, an interval of radio static where all she heard was the steady background noise of the universe. Then… “Is that so. Well, good thing we sent you. Your payment will be sent in due time.” A burst of static and the transmission cut out, and surprised that they had believed her, all she could do was look over at Patterat.

******** Patterat found the exchange of words hard to understand; many were ones he had not heard before. But despite the difficulty he understood the meaning. She had lied. For him. The tiny Dratter smiled in that curious, insect way, "Thank you," he said, the light, happy vibrations returned to his voice.

---------- “You’re welcome,” was her simple reply. Distracted, she glanced down at her locket and twirled it between her fingers, smiling vaguely. “Thank you, Patterat. For helping me remember what’s most important.”

******** "I don't really know what that means, but you're welcome!" he yelled, trailing off into his own language, he began to warble a tune, something happy and very relieved. He looked back once, pausing for a moment before turning tail and flying back into the forest.

----------

His sudden switch to his own language and the bright colours he had reverted to annoyed the slyfthys to no end but she reigned in her irritation and smiled at his retreating form. Now was as good a time to go home as any, but for the moment, she was content to just enjoy what NG659 had to offer. So instead of hurrying like she usually did, she took a seat at her ship’s door, on the top step, and watched the trees waving in the wind. They still made her uneasy and she had to fight the compulsion to run back into her ship and slam the door shut, but there was a certain beauty about it all that made her feel happy. She sat, and she watched. And she smiled. Because home could wait.

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