[I take it you’re referring to its current lack of absolute terror?] says Shokyu the Mighty.
“I believe that is what I said.”
[I see you’ve also—somewhat arbitrarily, I note—assigned it a gender.]
“Just a convenience.”
[I’ve long noticed that female is your default], says Shokyu the Mighty. [You seem to think that everyone you meet is a female until proven otherwise. Not every species has a female variant, you know. Not even most.]
“And I have long noticed,” says Shenya the Widow, “that you are becoming more argumentative in your middle age.”
[I’m well within my functional lifespan, and it’s my job to mention facts as they are relevant.]
They watch the tiny Human for a few moments in silence.
“See?” says Shenya the Widow, gesturing toward the figure when a particularly tall stack of tools crashes to the deck. The Human chirps and smacks its hands together several times as it looks to Shenya the Widow for approval. “Look at that. She is too intelligent to be a male.”
[Now that’s just offensive.]
“Don’t blame me, blame the covenant that raised me,” says Shenya the Widow with the wave of a blade. “But it should please you to learn that I hold several views that would be considered scandalous by my…”
She trails off as a package of adhesive rolls across the deck to wobble and fall at her feet. She looks up to find those strange tricolored eyes looking directly at her. Black inside brown-gold inside white. Shenya the Widow has been wondering how Humans communicate emotions without mandibles, and her current theory is that it’s the eyes: their size and shape, those mobile lines above them, that fluid they leak sometimes. Disgusting, but quite a lot of material to work with.
She lifts the roll with one delicate blade and shows it to the Human. “Adhesive!” she says, enunciating very carefully. She says it twice more. The Human does not repeat it, but holds out a small pudgy limb toward her. Slowly, carefully, in a manner she judges least likely to startle the tiny thing, she rolls the tape back toward it. It watches the roll return to tap gently against its foot, then looks up at her and makes some sort of noise.
“Do you think that horrible sound is…laughter?” muses Shenya the Widow. “Some indication of happiness?”
[One would hope so], says Shokyu the Mighty. [Otherwise this is a terrible game.]
* * *
#
Shenya the Widow crouches, her limbs forming a cocoon of softened blades. She waits.
She feels a tiny touch, and then what she has come to identify as a minor laugh. A giggle. She ignores it. She knows the thing touching her is moist and covered in horrific blood-filled skin, but somehow that does not disgust her quite so much as of late. The delicate touch comes again, from two limbs this time, and harder. Again, she ignores it. Finally it comes a third time, with all the force a twelve-kilo organism can provide. This time Shenya the Widow unfolds like a black and gleaming blossom—slowly, slowly, careful not to injure the little one with a razor edge.
The Human shrieks and runs and falls, then scrambles to its feet only to fall again. It is making that sound again…some kind of indication of joy, she is almost sure. If it were not so similar to its sounds of terror it would be easier to tell the difference.
With slow, exaggerated movements, Shenya the Widow pursues her prey. She makes sure each step clacks against the bare floor and hisses gently so the little one knows right where she is. The juvenile runs around a bulkhead corner and waits, still giggling.
“Where is she?” hisses Shenya the Widow in exaggerated Standard. “Where did she go?”
A small head pokes out around the corner, the strange three-colored eyes gazing straight at her, and then pulls back with another giggle.
“Could she be…up here?” she asks, extending herself upward to check the cabinets in the upper bulkhead. More giggling. Could she be…over here?” she asks, folding herself to look in the space directly across from the child, who is nearly collapsing with joy. “Could it be—”
[This is ridiculous], says Shokyu the Mighty. [It’s right there.]
“Ah,” says Shenya the Widow, turning away in a show of utmost dejection. “Perhaps she has exited the airlock and perished horribly. Then I shall never find her.”
A shriek behind her nearly sends her through the hull. She whirls, blades aloft, very nearly ending the life of the tiny figure shadowing her steps. The juvenile leaps up and down, oblivious to its narrow escape, striking its tiny forelimbs against each other. Shenya the Widow consciously relaxes each joint one at a time, beginning at the ends of her many limbs and working her way inward.
[Close call], says her implant.
And now a Human has wrapped her arms around a Widow’s lower extremities, giggling, while the Widow watches with complex emotions. Though she has moved on from unadulterated revulsion, an embrace is something different from a touch.
“All right,” she says gently, glancing around the common area as if afraid someone might see. “That is sufficient.” She softens her blades before attempting to peel the little one off her carapace.
The child hides her face against the smooth expanse of chitin. She chirps, then makes a contented sound that vibrates directly to Shenya’s hearts.
[I’m not sure I know how to tell you this], says Shokyu the Mighty, [but it’s possible that you are dying. Your biochemistry is doing some very strange things.]
[I am not dying], says Shenya internally. [I am simply feeling…unwell.]
[I hope it’s nothing that Humans can catch.]
Shenya the Widow clicks her mandibles in absentminded agreement, but her thoughts are already elsewhere. Deep in the hidden recesses of her hunter-killer brain, certain chemicals are being manufactured and released in concentrations strong enough to kill many species, and indeed even many Widows. Shenya the Widow is unwell indeed…and she is embarrassed to find that she almost welcomes it.
The change has not been nearly as upsetting as she always imagined it would be. It began with her dreams. She used to have normal dreams, the everyday slaughter-dreams that every young Widow is expected to have. But now she has found that the farther her ship progresses in its inexorable journey home, the less lethal her dreams become. Now it is a common occurrence for her to wake with blades soft and a mind empty of murder and mayhem…
And worst of all, she doesn’t mind at all.
The Human has run away again, chasing one of the holograms that Shokyu the Mighty once suggested as playfellows. They were a wonderful idea, but she will never admit it. Shenya the Widow watches her stumble around the deck with a strange feeling in her hearts.