Friendship Across Species

Kallista Wiseman (she/her)

Editorial Team Member

‘Friendship Across Species’

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to spooky season!

In order to usher in the time of aliens, vampires, and zombies, here's a quick excerpt from a story that I wrote called ‘Friendship Across Species,’ about a human and an alien called a Grisei as they travel the galaxy together.

Enjoy!

A lone starship slowly meandered through the stars, seemingly stopping by every planet and moon it came across. It was rectangular in shape, with blacked-out windows covering its one and only deck. There was no observable weaponry or great fortification, making it an obviously civilian ship in design to any viewer familiar with starships. However, it was none of this—not the unspectacular shape, boring grey color, or small size of the ship—that made it remarkable. It was, instead, the being that lived inside.

This ship belonged to a Grisei, also known as the Grey Ones. This species is known for their wandering tendencies, no observable connection to a home planet, and their rarity due to the unusual circumstances that led them to be born within stars, bequeathing them with the famed knowledge of past, future, and present.

It is within this ship that a Grisei of the present resides with their chosen trinkets and companion, a human named .

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Stellae clanged a tentacle-like limb against the temperature regulator with a loud clang. The machine had shut down suddenly during their descent to the planet of Alia, and Stellae endeavored to fix it before landing so that Terra could be comfortable during their absence.

Stellae made an imperceptible low growling sound when the machine wouldn’t start. With a purple spikey wrench clutched within one tentacle, they once again pried open the cover on the rusty white beast and began cycling through diagnostics and solutions as they tried to find the correct fix.

Attracted by the loud banging and frustration of her grey-scaled owner, Terra padded into the room wearing a pair of old socks and oversized fabrics, which humans apparently wore as ‘clothes.’

Terra—well, her real name was Emma, but Stellae had since renamed her after she had been recovered from an alien junk ship in the Tricoche sector—had become a companion to Stellae throughout their journeys, giving a much-needed break from the repetitive cycles Stellae had been performing since their creation.

         “Hello, Terra. I trust your hypnogram cycle proceeded well.” Stellae said, focused on the machine.

This displeased Terra, as she waved her arms about, tiredly trying to gain Stellae’s attention and finally settled on tapping on one of her tentacles until Stellae looked over. Terra gestured to be picked up so she could see inside the malfunctioning machine, and they put down the hatch to the temperature regulator with three scaled limbs and picked up Terra with a fourth.

Terra, to answer Stellae’s previous question now that they were paying attention, nodded up and down sluggishly, as if she were a mannequin being controlled by strings.

Stellae had never understood the human need for sleep to survive; the Grisei, their people, just went about time with no qualm or foundation. Each cycle lasted about five human years, stopping at the same places and meeting with the same people over and over. It could get quite boring, especially when you had been travelling it for eons of a seemingly unending lifespan.

However, in all their years of travel, Stellae had never seen a species like Terra. She was small in stature, about a tenth of Stellae’s full height, with a circular head ornamented by black fibers and a little button nose, which Stellae had deduced was for ingesting oxygen, a mineral native to many worlds that most species (save the Grey ones and a few others) needed to survive.

It was then that Terra began combing through the black strands with the small needle-like appendages attached to the ends of her arms.

She looked up at Stellae and spoke in her small voice, “Je pense que j'ai bien dormi, mais tu dois être plus silencieux.”

Stellae listened attentively; the language barrier had been difficult, especially when they had first become acquainted, but as time went on, they’d both learned small amounts of the other’s language, making communication easier, but not perfect. As of current, Stellae could only understand certain words of Terra’s fast chitter-speak, and they imagined it was much the same for Terra.

Stellae nodded, “Of course, my apologies about the noise. The temperature generator was on the fritz again, but it’s fixed now.” They gave the machine one last shake and nodded contentedly as it hummed to life.

Terra stayed silent, enjoying the heat emanating from the newly repaired temperature generator.

“We’re landing today. I have a reunion; I’m going to be gone for a while,” Stellae filled the growing silence., “Make sure you don’t leave the ship; this planet is not suitable for carbon-based organisms.”

The corners of Terra’s lips turned into a frown; she didn’t like it when Stellae had to leave. It was never certain when they’d be back, if at all, due to the fact that the Grisei didn’t operate the same way humans did. They were seemingly immortal beings born—no, created—inside stars with incomprehensible links to the concept of time itself.

In short terms, they were nothing like humans.

Even if Stellae was not specifically powerful or specifically important as a Grisei of the present, they were more than a human could ever be, and she worried that one day Stellae would get bored and dump her on the first planet they came across. That’s all this was to them: a form of entertainment, probably. They found her fascinating, which was good; fascination and interest kept her alive.

Emma was determined; she would not be left behind.

Not again.