Challenge #02041-E217: Cautious Welcome
How would aliens with different lifespans play out alongside humanity? Can you please do an alien (instead of dog) version of this post? https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/comments/5wz4gy/we_are_like_elves_to_dogs/
Thanks! -- Anon Guest
For generations, Thack has watched over us. He is our Human and we are his crew. He has seen us all born. He has wept as we all passed of old age at anywhere between fifteen and twenty. He has taught us, protected us, and told us of his own family.
Thack has been a part of our crew for seventy-five years, and is leaving us today in favour of his Granddaughter, Human Grace. Many of you are upset about this, we know, but Human Thack has stayed with us well beyond retirement age and has reached the point where he is no longer able to perform his duties.
I know. It seems impossible, but Thack is too old to look after us. I hear he has plans to live on a little island near the equator of his home planet, and take up fishing. Join us in wishing him well. And Human Grace will be one of us soon. A guardian and guide and caretaker of our little ones. Learn her scent. Be kind. And I am certain that she will tell us how well her grandfather is doing.
Nix had her doubts about Human Grace. She was not Thack. And Thack had been a part of the Taeniol crew for... forever. He had been their guide, their guardian, and their heat pad in a pinch. It was ancient history when he was a young Human at an old Taeniol age of eighteen. He must have seemed impossible to Nix's great-grandmother, too.
Humans only seemed ageless and infinite. Nix had heard of some human variants who could live to their mid-hundreds. Thack's line was 'working on it', he said. Genetic predisposition had him living to one hundred and fifteen. Grace was apparently due to age out of life at one hundred and twenty-five. Such an impossible span of time away. She was barely a day past eighteen, now. Fresh-faced and youthful compared to her grandfather. And so small and light.
She would be taking breaks to have babies. Swapping out shipboard duty with her lifemate. When she caught one. There was plenty of time, and she had the option of in vitro gestation. A method of producing young that was growing increasingly popular amongst these wildcat mammals.
Nix was still blown away by the Human scale of time. An entire generation ago... one grandmother ago... Human Grace was a helpless infant. Now she was almost fully grown and contemplating reproduction. A literal lifetime. And she would live lifetimes more. Seemingly ageless and eternal.
For her children, and her children's children, Nix had the duty of gaining familiarity with Human Grace's scent. To becoming friends. To trusting this new Human with her young. Because Human Grace would be on board for a very, very long time.
Nix found Human Grace in a hatching ward, welcoming brand new Taeniol hatchlings under the supervision of their mother. And in Human Grace's expression, she saw Thack. That same look of breathless wonder. That same whispering gentleness when greeting the babies verbally. That same feather-light touch.
She even had a similar giggle when the little ones tested her for food value. "I'm not delicious or nutritious," Human Grace cooed. "Go to mama. Go on, now." And the same slow and careful motions as she handed the babies over to their families.
Nix relaxed. It would not be that difficult to get used to a new Human after all.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / epantha]
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