T'reka’s first communications with the others in her colony group/science base/whoever, after being around the humans for a while
“Uh. Trekker?” said Su-syn. “Your… thing making noise.”
T'reka checked it. It was the urgent-summons. And there was no time to get to her base. “I must checking in! No time. Running is too slow! If I fail, they burn continent.”
Su-syn grinned. “Not worries.”
It was called a Horss. A large herbivorous ungulate that could easily make five Humans. She thought humans moved fast. This moved faster.
T'reka held on with all claws to Su-syn’s back-coverings and marvelled at the motion. Despite being made biliously ill by it. The impossible quadruped ran on its middle digits’ claws. Fingernails. And it did so in a rolling, seesaw gait with two cogniscent life forms on its back.
It covered kilo-flights in instants. Before she knew it, she was blinking at her base camp.
“Up, Trekker. Go! Go!” The human casually threw her, standing, from the back of the Horss. “Save our skins!”
T'reka flew for the ladder, literally. Her own mad flapping made her gain half a depth, but it was half a depth less that she had to climb.
Even under the threat of curfew, she had never climbed so fast.
Up the ladder. Up the stairs. Up the other ladder to the main comms and simultaneously hit the talk button and grabbed the headset, cramming it against one tympanum.
“Kal'rike post! Kal'rike post! This is the genuine voice of T'reka the Mad. Code phrase…” There is was. “Bicep fossil jelly millet. I repeat, this is the genuine voice of T'reka the Mad, code phrase - bicep fossil jelly millet. Call off the attack. Call OFF any attack!”
Static. “We hear and rejoice, T'reka the Mad. Action has been given the come-back signal.”
Only then did she settle the head-set across her brow. Only then did she perch and make herself comfortable. “Initiating video feed for confirmation.”
She turned on the camera. Tweaked its pickup range. Smoothed down her feathers. Produced an amenable expression for the people watching on the other end.
“Greetings from Poison island,” she sang. “I have been made aware there is a problem?”
“You’re communicating with the humans!”
Casual. Treat it casual. After all, she did wander, daily, through many things venomous, poisonous and otherwise deadly. “Isn’t it amazing? They are excellent mimics and can be taught proper speech.”
“But… humans! We must seed the other planet and evacuate at once!”
“With respect, we do not have the resources. Further, I must humbly counter there is sufficient evidence that these humans are not monsters.”
“Where?”
“Sitting here. They came to me. Talked with me. One even rushed me home so that none would die. I humbly posit that these are abnormal humans. They are decidedly non-violent, for all their disturbing habits.”
“They must remain on the island. And you must restrain your communications to the humans you have already met. We expect a full proposal on this… this… vulgar-insanity of a proposal.”
“Which I will write tonight. I must also confer with the humans. They must know of this, too.”
“This is historical-insanity, T'reka the Mad. I trust you understand this.”
“Through to my ever-lasting spirit, sir,” she nodded. “True flight to you.”
He ended the comms after a formal, “True flight.”
Once the communication was completely over… T'reka allowed herself to shake and shudder and cry out her terrors. Such display would not have impressed her superiors.
And, at the other end of it, Su-syn was gently patting her back through the thickness of a blanket.
“All well?”
“All well,” T'reka answered. “How you get up?”
“Careful walk. You ladder small.”
Mental note. Humans were extremely adaptive.
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