Challenge #01810-D349: Who's A Pretty Boy?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #fiction6 years ago

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Aliens vs (Talkative) Parrots -- TheDragonsBlaze

It had to be a human ship. Ugly. Functional. Battle-scarred and pitted with a million micrometeor impacts. But there was frozen precipitation and high winds incoming. Nothing could survive it better than a Deathworlder ship. So Tikkotz scurried inside and hoped that the human would be benevolent.

It was a huge space. Mostly made of metal, but there were softer areas. Seating. Bedding. Hangings, for some reason. There was no trace of the human, beyond that which they had left behind. And an avian sitting calmly on a perch. Actively in the process of destroying a nut.

"Fuk dis shit," said the avian. "Shaddup, Cocky."

It was GalStand, but... the context made no sense. "Greetings?" Tikkotz attempted communication. "My name is Tikkotz. Can you... comprehend?"

"Hallo, Cocky," said the being. Evidently, their name was 'Cocky'. "Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty..." They raised bright yellow head plumes and bobbed up and down.

Maybe it was like a child. "Where is the human this ship belongs to?"

"Cocky wanna scritch-scratch."

Handling a deathworlder, a deathworlder's... companion... or anything belonging to a deathworlder was... ill advised. To make an understatement so monumental as to call a supernova "a bit of a bang". But there was a tool for that in the human ship. A metal wand with a metal effigy of a human hand at one end, the fingers curved like it was about to grasp something. The wand extended via telescopic shafts.

This was the price of making friends. And that was a tool to avoid harm.

Tikkotz applied the hand end on Cocky, who was delighted. "Good? Good scritch-scratch?"

"Scritch-scratch," singsonged Cocky. "Scritch-scratch."

And behind Tikkotz, a human said, "Some alarm system you turned out to be."

There was a moment in which it all could have gone so horribly wrong... and then the human said, "Staying out of the weather, li'l Havenkin?"

Tikkotz bobbed hir neck in a sort of nod. "Yes. I was scouting and... I'm far from my ship. I thought I could borrow yours."

Through a window, they could all see that there was ice coming down out of the sky. Well. Mostly down. There was a strong sideways element to its fall.

The human looked out at it and said, "Yeah, that'd flakk you up."

Cocky said, "Fuk dis shit," a little more emphatically.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / DragoNika]

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