These events take place just Astra Fauna: Expeditions, but it’s barely referenced.
USA copies
International copies
Note: These are unedited. Typos and grammatical errors may be present but if/when I turn these into an official book, those will be addressed by my editor. Right now, these serve as little worldbuilding and character development snippets for both me and you to enjoy. I’m just playing here. :)
Often, the object of our desire exists in a nebulous realm of both perfection and unobtainability. It dwells on the edges of our senses, taunting us.
In Taqriel’s case, this object was the last box of crisps.
Not just any box of crisps, this one was made specifically from insect protein and Taq had not had the pleasure of indulging in such a delicacy in an extremely discourteous amount of time.
The crisps stood behind the glass paneling on the highest shelf in the supply pantry in the Ghazen dormitory, where all recipients of the grant had been called in for debriefing.
Anyone was allowed to get food from the pantry, either snacks or ingredients, between meals which were prepped by a staff member at designated times. This was not one of those times.
She sighed and peeked around. She was alone, aside from the sun which was just starting to brighten the world with a new day. It was the perfect time to acquire her last snack of the day…
Then in the silence she heard a faint “click”. The door to the supply pantry opened and a second click flooded the room with artificial light.
Taq’s four ears shifted towards the doorway and she heard a soft tapping of nails on the hard floor. She was just about to make her presence known; it would not have been nice to scare someone who thought they were in the pantry alone, when Veidat emerged from behind a shelf into the same aisle Taq was in.
They saw each other and Veidat made a chittering noise in her throat, jumped back, and vibrated her wings. Taq waved and smiled, “Hey there! My bad. I didn't mean to startle you!”
Exhaling and running the palm of her right primary hand over the two antennae on her head, Veidat held up a singular finger with her left primary hand. Then she used her secondary hands to switch on a device in her wrist.
She made a series of what sounded like clicks, chirps, and buzzes and the little wearable device on her wrist said with a slightly robotic tone, “Why were you standing here in the dark?! I did not expect you.”
Taq shrugged, “it’s predawn, it’s hardly dark.” Veidat made a soft noise that Taq couldn’t place as amusement or annoyance, so she continued, “I was trying to get a snack before bed. I just got in. I’m starving. Haven’t eaten in an hour.”
Veidat inclined her head, “I understand.”
Taq didn’t know Veidat well. True to her reputation, she’d run off on her mission before getting to know any of the other grant recipients. She knew them peripherally, of course, from various missives, papers, profile photos, professional biographies, and other things of that nature, but she’d never actually been in the same room as them before.
Taq didn’t feel much in the way of fear, but she could absolutely understand why members of the Locas Mass could be perceived as intimidating.
The males of the species were rugged individuals, fantastic workers, stronger than they looked, and stood about a head and shoulders taller than Taq.
But Veidat, being female, towered over them. She was brilliantly yellow with petal-like protrusions along her long partially-spiked limbs. Taq only came up to her knee if she was thinking generously of her height. Veidat stood in a relaxed but ready stance that reminded Taq of her friends who were far more athletic than her. “I wonder if she’d want to play in…?” she found herself wondering, when she noticed a shift in her companion.
Veidat’s antennae drooped as her posture changed, she closed her stance and tucked her wings closer to her body. Placing her primary and secondary right hands on her left arms, she clicked a few times and the synthetic voice of her wearable said, “I did not intend to frighten you. I am sorry” She squatted down to be closer to Taq’s height.
“Oh! No! I wasn’t scared. You didn’t come off that way. You’re fine.”
“You are smaller than me. You do not need to be afraid. I am not here to do harm.”
“Of course you aren’t!” Taq said, “I know you aren’t. You've written a dozen papers on baby oceanic mammals and their parents - which are pretty good, by the way - that sort of person isn’t exactly what I’d call, “high risk”, then again, I don’t think most people are high risk, maybe in a bad mood, sure, but…”
Veidat’s antenna rose and criss-crossed each other, “You read them?” The synthetic voice of the wearable didn’t convey the surprised and pleased tones Taq detected in her chirps.
“Absolutely! I read them as you put them out. Kindichi sounds neat. Maybe I could go sometime.”
“I think you would be well received. They talk a lot. You talk a lot.”
“One of my finer skills,” Taq grinned, “Now back to the matter at hand. I can’t help but notice that, out of this entire room of food, you came here, to this spot - quite quickly, I might add, and, obviously, you aren't here to harm me, as you say, and I do, one hundred percent, believe you, which begs the question - why are you here?”
Veidat stood and pointed, “I want to eat those.”
She was, of course, pointing at the most wonderful, most rare, box of delicious, amazing crisps that Taq had ever seen in the past few months.
“I see,” Taq said, trying to act casual, “So, are you going to fly up and get them?”
Veidat made a soft noise that sounded disappointed, “My contract forbids flying in interior spaces that are less than seven meters. I am worried that if I try to jump, I will damage the panels, or my head.”
Her multi-faceted eyes looked down at Taq, “You are going to climb up to them?”
Taq grumbled, adding, “My contract forbids climbing on any surfaces designated for food preparation, so…”
“And the lifts are still broken?” Viedat asked.
“They get fixed tomorrow, errr, today, this afternoon.” Taq replied
Veidat clicked and Taq snickered as softly as she could when the wearable tactfully didn’t translate that utterance.
For a moment they both stood and stared at their prize.
“Hey, uhhh, so kinda an odd question but, mind if I ask you something?” Taq shuffled a bit as she said it.
Veidat inclined her angular head, her antenna drooping slightly and said, with a hint of trepidation in her clicks. “You can ask me.”
Taq continued, “Are you actual royalty for your people, or is that, like, a catch all phrase for females of your species? It’s been hard for me to tell based on what people have written about your species and it seems like it’s both, but I wanted to check with you, about you, specifically.”
Veidat made a noise that Taq was certain meant amusement and replied, “Yes. That is a complex answer.”
“So you are royalty, or, like their leader, or something, official like that?”
There was a short pause, a small exhale, then, “No. I am not that.”
Taq relaxed, “Okay great!” She grinned, “because I figured this would be super rude to ask someone who was, royal blood or an elected official, but…Can I climb on you? Or, if you don’t want that, maybe you could pick me up? I bet if you picked me up or I climbed on you, we could open the panel and get the crisps.”
There was a pause.
A long one.
Her antenna slowly crossed again and since Taq didn’t really know what that meant, she continued, “then we split the crisps 50/50, and go play tiles!” Taq waited, studying Veidat’s face for any hints of how her request would be received.
Squinting the muscles around her eyes into what appeared to be the approximation of a smile, Veidat replied “I am not designated for food preparation. Yes. You may climb me.”