Killerie awoke to the sound of someone talking.

The lights were darkened, a product of the artificial daylight cycle that the Khransis boasted, but a relaxing red light dully shone through the clouded panes of the window leading into the hallway outside. Lifting her head from the slightly scratchy nest she’d made at the foot of Madeline’s bed, she shook the sleep out and tried to listen. The voice was distinctly male, and a bit electronic.

“...notice. They’ve taken another fourty this week, Barak, when are the authorities going to step in!?”

Killerie craned her neck around, trying to find the source of the voice. Madeline was seated in the other room, her face cast in blue light as she intently watched the ‘flatscreen’. Her expression was focused, concentration hardening every line in her face.

“You tell me, but what are we supposed to do? Find a shedling and ask? When has that ever worked?”

“Okay, they might not be very… approachable, but-”

“But what!? They rolled over everything we threw at them and then sat on their tails for over a century! What’s their plan, eh? What exactly do they want with us!?”

Carefully extricating herself from the blankets she’d been wrapped in, she quietly crawled across the carpeted floor, making her way over to her mom while trying to listen at the same time. She had no idea how voices were coming from the flatscreen, but they were talking about shedlings and she wanted to know why.

“Barak, calm down, it’s-”

“I will not be calm! We’ve all been calm for far too long! More and more people are disappearing daily and the shedlings aren’t doing jack about it! The UEP-”

“Terrorists. Call them what they are.”

“-are getting worse and worse and we’re getting no response from the bugs at all!”

Sneaking around the edge of the room, Killerie took a look at the flatscreen. To her shock, there was a moving picture of two foreign creatures on it, but she didn’t have time to fully look at them before the screen abruptly went black.

She froze as she realized Madeline was looking at her, a semblance of something approaching alarm on her face. “How much of that did you hear?”

Killerie had to think for a moment. “Something about asking shedlings?”

Madeline’s face softened imperceptibly. Coming further into the room, Killerie approached the flatscreen and put her face close to it. It’d had a picture on it, kind of like the ones Madeline’s camera took back home, but this one had been moving and she wanted to know how. “How does this work?”

Her mom’s forehead creased. “We… should probably talk about it, then.”

Killerie tried to ignore the statement, fully aware that her antennae were beginning to twitch. “I mean, I know it uses lights, probably like tiny little lightbulbs, but how do they get it to sync? And how does the picture appear on it? Is it transmitted?”

Madeline briefly closed her eyes, then got off her seat and knelt beside Killerie. “...Killerie, how do you feel about people?”

The eagerness Killerie had been projecting faded. The experience she’d had at the pool the night before had been amazing, but… it was an exception. “They act weird when I’m around,” She tentatively put forth. “And… usually they’re scared of me.”

Madeline put her free hand on Killerie’s plates, shifting her position a bit. “That’s true. But do you know why?”

Killerie rested her head on the carpet, suddenly lacking the energy to keep it in the air. “Because I’m scary.”

Her mom flinched, closing her eyes with a shuddering breath. When she opened them to look down at Killerie, there were tears in her eyes. “No,” Madeline corrected. “It’s because shedlings are scary.”

Killerie gazed up at her mom, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “But I’m a shedling.” She paused as a sudden thought struck her. “I am a shedling, right?”

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Madeline sighed. “It’s complicated. Shedlings all talk to each other. It makes them hard to understand, and it makes it hard for them to understand everyone else. If they ever talk to someone else, someone like you or me, it’s always because they need something from us.”

“But… I don’t do that!”

“No, you don’t,” Madeline agreed. “You are your own person, bean. But people don’t know that until they talk to you.”

Killerie slumped. “But I’m not doing anything!”

“I know,” Madeline assured her. “But people aren’t usually kind enough to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.”

Killerie was quiet. Then, “Jason did, though.”

“And I can’t tell you how glad I am for that,” Madeline warmly replied. Without saying anything more, Madeline pulled Killerie’s head up into a hug. Killerie leaned into it, the same way she had always done, hoping the presence of her mom could banish the clouds in her thoughts.

People were hard. She wanted to be able to know people and have friends, but the closest person she could call a friend was Ciar, and he was just a nice barista in Coffee Shop. He was huge, though - she couldn’t imagine he thought she was threatening.

It all came down to being scary, as far as she could tell. Despite her mom’s reassurances, there was a very loud and very persistent voice in her head that perpetually told her people were going to run away. She’d been right so many times, there wasn’t any point in asking it to be a little quieter.

Was there?

Killerie glanced up at her mom, steeling herself for the question.

“What if people get scared anyway?”

“Ignore them,” Madeline firmly replied. “If they can’t see past your carapace, they’re not worth talking to.”

Killerie stared at the carpet for a few seconds. “And my fangs?”

Her mom smiled, rubbing the plates at the base of Killerie’s head. “And your legs, and your antennae, and every little bit of you. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Killerie’s mandibles split into an involuntary, bashful smile. “I did polish my chitin.”

Madline beamed. “I can tell! It looks great.”

Scrabbling over the carpet, Killerie pushed herself a little more securely into her mom’s lap. Madeline immediately got a better grip and hugged Killerie between two pairs of legs, managing to wrap her arms all the way around her considerable size as she began to gently rock back and forth.

Killerie’s mind slowly churned through the information she’d acquired, turning to shallower topics. “Mom, what’s the flatscreen for? What kind of aliens were the people who were talking? Wait, how does it work?”

Madeline sighed with a smile. “That could take a while to go over, cocoa bean.”

Killerie folded her legs under her, yanking a blanket over and tugging it onto her plates. She inquisitively stared up at her mother, black eyes glittering with curiosity. Madeline chuckled, pulling Killerie’s blanket further up and around her face. “Alright, here we go…”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The explanation had managed to hold Killerie’s attention for longer than she’d expected, and now it was well and truly late. Madeline was back in bed and fast asleep, if the rhythmic breathing was anything to go by. Killerie herself was back in her nest, and layers and layers of blankets were snugly wrapped around her body all the way from her tails to her neck. Only her head protruded from the pile, with Boris the dog carefully tucked under her teeth.

She was still thinking about the conversation the people had been having on the other end of the television - another new word, but one with a lot of interesting implications.

Killerie knew very little about shedlings, despite being one. Some of them were smaller than she was, and some of them were a lot larger. They were all telekinetic, and could talk to each other without using words. They all molted the same way she did.

Pulling herself inward, she hugged Boris tightly to her neck.

If she was a shedling, why wasn’t she allowed to talk to them?

Her antennae drooped down until she could see the hard white pieces locked around their tips. A pulsating blue glow emanated from just underneath the surface, a light so dim it would’ve been impossible to see in anything except the darkened room she was trying to sleep in. If the windows had been open, even the dull shine from the stars outside might have been too bright.

Reaching a pointed leg out, she poked one of the telepathy caps. A scarcely noticeable throb accompanied the click that followed, and she slumped with a sigh.

She had a weird urge to take them off from time to time, and she didn’t know where it came from. It wasn’t as though she could succeed - the caps were impossible to take off as far as she knew. Besides, the shedlings probably had a good reason to put them on her. They just never said what it was or explained why she was the exception.

Somehow, her mind turned to the conversation she’d heard once again, picking out random pieces of information and putting them together. People were disappearing. Fourty of them in a week. Nobody wanted to ask the shedlings to help.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Killerie focused as hard as she could on the end of her antennae and thought with all her might, hurling her silent wish into the universe. She thought about kidnapped people and panicking families and helping them somehow. She barely even noticed the buzz in the back of her mind, angrily fizzing in and out.

The throb in her antennae briefly intensified, and her eyes snapped open.

No shedling threw the door open and announced everything would be fine. No whispered message came back to her and told her the people were alright. No one offered to take the caps off and let her talk to the species she’d been born to.

However, wrapped in a nest of blankets and plushies, Killerie managed to finally fall asleep.