"Ta-da!" I cheer as eight of my ETEs all carry ghost trap corpses into the Resident Gem cave. "You guys can eat these, right?"

My chat with the chieftain of the Resonant Gems has, so far, been horrifyingly awkward but not anywhere approaching dangerous. The poor man is desperate and tired, and I can tell he wants me to be exactly what I say I am. I can hardly blame him for being suspicious, considering that I'm offering him a bunch of free stuff for what seems to be no reason. Honestly though, I think things are going pretty okay. As long as I don't talk too much about the surface or let my mouth run off without directions from my brain, maybe I can actually make some friends here.

Now that I've actually brought them both food and proof that I can kill the terrifying invisible ambush predators that nearly got one of their own people, things should go a lot more smoothly.

"H-how did all of you kill so many? How did you find so many?"

I allow myself a bit of smugness, since I have clearly earned it.

"I have ways of hearing things that you do not," I intone mysteriously. "Not even ghosts can hide from me."

"This is truly an incredible boon," the Resonant Gem chieftain says, unable to contain the relief in his words. "But it is our tradition that Hunters and Warriors eat their fill of any beasts they slay before sharing the remainder. Please, partake first."

Yeah, that's not happening. I lucked out that the scouts beforehand were too busy paying attention to their injured warrior to notice how fucked up my eating strategy is.

"Nah, I'm good," I dismiss. "I ate earlier, and three day's run time is about my weight limit for flying anyway."

A ripple of confusion flows through the gathered Sthrenslians.

"I am not sure I understand," the Chieftain says.

"Oh… huh, I said the word 'flying' in English," I mutter to myself. "...And you don't really have a concept of 'run time,' nor context for why flight would have a weight limit. Um, you can ignore all that. But for future reference, 'flying' is my word for the action of remaining suspended in the air without touching the ground. So this is flying…"

I land.

"...And this is not flying."

"Oh, I see. Never before have I witnessed a creature capable of walking on air the way you do."

That's interesting. I mean, flight is not a very useful adaptation in the cramped tunnels that connect most Sthrenslian caves, but surely there are large, natural caves that have a bat-like equivalent? I'm no bat-biologist, but I'm pretty sure bats are super important to cave biomes because they go and gather nutrients from outside the cave, then bring those nutrients back and shit some of it out. Otherwise, since caves don't get sunlight, they wouldn't have any energy entering their system. Something has to supply it to them. ...I guess whatever it is just doesn't fly? That's reasonable enough, assuming there is a large enough replenishing food source close to natural cave mouths on this planet. Either that or Sthrenslians just don't go to natural cave openings.

Well, whatever the case, the food is then distributed among the gathered Sthrenslians. I notice that it isn't being cooked; I'm immune to food poisoning, at least so far as I know, but I don't believe Sthrenslians are that lucky. Again, though, I have literally never seen them use fire, and I have heard the True People refer to fire as something satanic in a very different manner to the 'hell just has a lot of it' way I'm used to seeing from Christian iconography. I need to figure out a way to discreetly ask questions that I think might be blasphemous, and I need to figure it out fast.

Speaking of blasphemy, things could be worse with the True People, but I wouldn't call them great. Hsthressis and I are both in separate rooms and under guard. Sthrenslian prisons, if that's what this is, are kind of funny in that they don't have doors or bars or any sort of cell that could actually keep anybody contained. Instead, they just have us under constant guard. And you know what? That actually makes sense. Literally every Sthrenslian comes equipped with everything they could ever need to dig a tunnel out of prison, because digging tunnels is kind of their entire thing. You would have to guard all the Sthrenslian prisoners anyway, why waste time building a door?

...That or they just don't know how to make doors, because I'm not sure I've seen one. Either way, I'm going to take the fact that I'm in prison as maybe not the best sign.

"Hey," I greet the guards. "So, any idea how long I might be stuck here?"

"Silence, demon," one of them grunts.

Yeah, that's definitely not a good sign. Oh well, if this makes them feel better then that's fine by me. Hsthressis, however, is more than a little pissed off by this. The way she responds to it catches me by surprise, though.

"Hey," Hsthressis thinks to herself in what I can only describe as an attention-grabbing manner. "Evelyn. When you said you hear me, is this part of what you meant? You'd better tell me if so."

Well, fuck. She figured it out. But it's only fair that I give her an honest answer.

Yes, I cause her to believe she hears in response. Sorry.

"Shit, this is creepy," she thinks back at me. She also thinks a lot of other things, but I try my best to ignore them. "So we can still do the mental communication thing that I did back before I even had a body? That was part of the soul-link thing?"

That's a good enough explanation, I guess, I confirm.

"Why do you always do that?" she asks. "You give like these half answers that kind of mean yes but mostly don't?"

Uh, sorry. I tell her. I just like being very exact in how I speak and explain things? And most of the time you're using analogies that are adjacent enough to correct to be helpful, but they are not... denotatively accurate, I guess. We have a BIG culture gap, and I forget that you just don't know the same stuff that I know a lot of the time. We have a lot of words that explain concepts which don't exist in your language because you just… haven't had the requisite philosophical or exploratory revolutions to codify them, I guess? So I sort of talk myself into corners where I want to give a more detailed answer but I would just be trying to explain something that makes no sense using something else that makes no sense, so I give up and just allow the partial understanding. But I don't want to make the claim that your partial understanding is a complete one, so I say stuff like that.

"Okay you're going to have to start over there because literally none of that made sense," Hsthressis thinks at me.

I sigh physically, and also send her the impression of a sigh.

Sorry. Basically, when I answer like that I'm saying 'that's wrong, but it's close enough.'

"There you go, that made sense. Close enough is fine by me."

I grumble at that, as the very idea of it offends me. Exactness matters, clarity of language matters! But I am in a situation where I would need to give Hsthressis years of schooling to get her to understand what I'm saying, and I get the distinct impression she would not at all be interested, and also that half of it would be blasphemy.

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You are less concerned about the mind reading thing than I was afraid of, I comment, changing the subject.

"Oh no, don't get me wrong, this is freaky as fuck," Hsthressis says. "I'm just bored and have nothing else to do other than chat."

Huh. You know what? Opportunity seen, opportunity seized.

Why don't your people have any fire? I ask.

"Aaahahaha holy shit," Hsthressis laughs, both mentally and out loud. "Okay, to anyone with any doubt that you are a demon, that question clears it. Starting a fire in the domain of Sss fucking kills everyone, Evelyn. Don't even talk about it."

What?

But there's hardly anything flammable here, I point out. Fire safety would be the default, not the… hmm. Actually, how does 'everyone die?' Is it by being burned, or something else?

Hsthressis twists her tendrils into a smile.

"Nope, I guess you figured it out with whatever your fancy pants demon knowledge is. Nah, it's obvious that touching fire hurts, but everybody dies without ever getting near it if you start one. It fills the air with poison that only demons can survive."

...Okay, cool. So they don't have fire because of a religious assumption. I hate every part of that!

Okay, well, there are so many things wrong about that, I grumble. For starters, there are toxic byproducts of fire but they absolutely kill demons as well. The problem you are running into is the fact that you don't have enough air circulation down here. If you just dig a chimney shaft to the surface, all of the poison would leave through there and everyone would—

"Ha! 'Dig a shaft to the surface.' That would just let all the demons inside. We aren't stupid."

Hsthressis, you literally already have a path to the surface somewhere. If you didn't, all of you would have already suffocated from natural respiration.

"Sure, whatever. Look, Evelyn, I'm interested in your fire god stuff, don't get me wrong. Sss seems… lame? But I'm not suicidal. Dark immortality deals are a totally different thing from risking the death of my whole clan. I'm not THAT dumb. Besides, what would be in it for me?"

...Oh my god. Hsthressis is going full satanic bargain on me. This absolute edgelord. 'Yeah, I know you're a demon, but it's cool. Let's make deals!'

For the record, whatever you think I'm doing is not at all how it works, and if it somehow WAS it would be a terrible idea.

"Uh-huh. Whatever you say, demon!"

I send her a general feeling of indignance and then ignore her after that, my many above-ground bodies scrambling to plan the food supply of every Sthrenslian that will need it. In short, I don't really like my current setup. I feel like I would be cutting things very close, and I am already running out of sloths to hunt nearby. The conclusion is obvious. I need to expand.

I don't want to expand, especially not when I'm still gathering enough of a food stockpile to grow my protective OMNIDOME. But I do need to get more food output, now. I have a good reason to. There are people who need my help, so that's what I'll do.

It's getting late in the day, finally. I start making plans for tomorrow: use my new ESTOLs to protect the ETB squad as I attempt to explore the poisonous zone I got stonewalled at a while ago. At the same time, I need to think about the place that is most likely to contain large amounts of replenishable food. If this planet is anything like mine, that's going to be the ocean. So my second order of business is going to be designing a fully aquatic body, which should be fun! I always wanted to be a mermaid when I was a kid.

Before I know it, night is falling. I once more assemble Fort Moosh to protect me as I drift off into sleep in a big cuddle pile of me. I've decided that it’s okay to use my brain-altering abilities to sleep better at night; I need sleep and there's very little I hate more than being stuck awake in a panic spiral. Besides, it's no different from using sleeping pills, which lots of normal people do.

After flooding all of my brains with sleeping chemicals, I only belatedly realize that I included Hsthressis in that number. Together, we all fade into slumber.

...

"And you really wear these all the time?" Tara presses, pulling and tugging on the outfit I lent her. "My goodness, it's so itchy! How can you stand it?"

"Mm-hmm," I confirm again. The two of us are riding the bear back bareback as Tara complains nonstop about the indignities of not being a nudist. Maybe I'm just hungry and tired, but it's starting to grate a little.

"And they're very loose around the waist, you know. Your pants keep slipping down and I have to hold them in place."

"MMM-HMM," I confirm more loudly.

"Tight around the chest, too. How do you wear this all the time? I can hardly breathe."

I inhale deeply and let out a long-suffering sigh. It has been a long-ass day of stress and weirdness, and even I have a limit.

"Look. Tara. Can we stop talking about my clothes? I'm not proportioned like a supermodel, so you're going to have to get your own if you want them to fit. Okay? Let's talk about something else."

Tara blinks her absurdly perfect blue eyes, tilting her head in a way that bug-her never would or could have.

"Okay, I suppose," she allows. "Apologies. I'm just… new to all this, yes? Your species is very strange, very frail. Skin is so… sensitive. And your muscles are so weak!"

"Yeah, we pretty much specced all our evolution points into big brains and sweat," I agree.

"Evolution… points? Is that a thing?"

"Not really, no."

Tara continues to plod along as Tara and I sit in silence. This has been such a strange fucking day. My emotions have entirely overloaded at this point, leaving nothing but an all-encompassing exhaustion. What else is there left to say?

I bottle my urge for introspection temporarily—it's a bad idea to do that in a bad mental state—instead forcing my mind to move towards interesting, inherently enjoyable topics. For example: what the fuck is Tara? She's not some cute little bug, oh no. She's not even a massive beautiful alien bug. She is a massive beautiful alien bug and a cute little bug and a bunch of tiny bugs and a bear and a fucking supermodel, and... a hive mind.

A goddamn hive mind. Wow. Tara said she wasn't one before coming to Earth, but after only a couple months she has who knows how many bodies and a good chunk of them are perfect copies of Earth creatures. And the copies are too good, especially if this is Tara's first human body like she's implying. That's absurd, isn't it? If she was designing the bodies from scratch they should be falling hard into uncanny valley or outright absurdity, but thinking back there is no way the human body I just saw was an imitation. Same with this bear. She didn't just copy appearance, she copied everything. Inside and out.

"Tara…" I manage to ask, "how did you make all this, anyway? The bear and stuff. Can you intake DNA samples to extrapolate whole creatures? Do you have some kind of scanning ability, or something?"

There are probably plenty of non-harmful ways to determine biology, especially in the light of crazy hive mind super-creatures and whatever unknown thing with likely-faster-than-light travel capabilities made her one.

"Not… exactly," Tara admits, filling my belly with dread. "As best I can tell I have to, ah, absorb fresh biological material. I gain knowledge of biological function by deconstructing it, I suppose."

She stays terrifyingly still while she says those words, as if not trusting herself to react. That, if anything, is the most frightening reaction she could have made. Fresh biological material. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This isn't supposed to be a horror movie. Things were different. Tara is kind, Tara is funny. She cares about people, and she absolutely sees humans as people. So why?

Why is she eating them!?

My mind descends into a panicked loop. Tara has a human body. Tara learns about bodies by absorbing them. So Tara killed and ate a human. Right? Is there a more sensible conclusion than that to draw? Maybe she dug up a grave or found someone recently dead or something, but... still. It's everything I have to not run screaming. The way Tara is reacting, the way she subtly joked about killing someone earlier today... it's all passing through my head over and over. My best friend just openly admitted to being a murderer and a cannibal. I'm shaking. I want to throw up. Oh god, this is it. I didn't pay enough attention, I was just trying to have fun with a hyper-intelligent advanced alien monster and now it's too late. She's spying on people, she has human bodies, she can be eating and replacing anyone in the world…!

No. Calm down. Calm down! Don't make assumptions. Characters in the movies always lose their heads and jump to dumb conclusions and that's when everything goes to shit. At those key moments, the whole audience knows what the hero should say, right? Dramatic irony. Everyone knows it's all about communication. But every time, the hero fumbles it, gets mad, or fails to find the words, and everything falls apart. If even a single hint of what I've been trying to teach Tara about fiction means anything, I need to focus and ask.

"Tara," I say, trying to pretend that there's any chance she doesn't notice my whole body shaking. "Sorry if this sounds like it's, y'know, coming out of nowhere or something, I just... um. Did you kill someone?"

There it is. The question is out there. We skipped the stupid part of the movie that's entirely uncomfortable dramatic irony. She can just say no, I'll try to awkwardly laugh it off and not pretend this is an enormous failure of my trust in her, and we can go back to having fun times as illegal roommates. That's how it should go. But when I see the look on her face when she turns to me, my heart drops like a stone through my stomach. I already know what she's going to say.

"Yes," she admits. "I did."