Iain

Iain opened his eyes and stared down or was it up at the crowds wandering below or above, feeling himself floating among the stars. The glowing ant-like beings looked like they were moving around like little lights, satellites among the start. All and all it was a pretty sight, and he figured he would enjoy it more if his skull wasn’t throbbing the way it was. He kind of passed in and out of consciousness, which seemed more a feature of his current condition and not a drawback. The throbbing in his head wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, more like experiencing a tide coming in and out of his mind leaving him feeling very spaced out. Yeah, that’s what it was, and funny, so he chuckled. Spaced out, in space, not suffering the agony of a hangover headache just mind expanded and floating.

Two vaguely familiar faces suddenly blocked his view. Very beaky noses, really, with tufts on their heads above those big schnozzes.

“Hey look, there he is like you said.” one said. “How did you know we were going to find him here?”

“I asked Skipper,” the other said, adding, “Dummy.”

The other seemed nonplussed at the insult.

“What’s he doing in the water?” It said. “It doesn’t look like his species' natural habitat.”

“I have no idea,” the twin failed at offering an opinion. “Maybe he devolving?”

Suddenly Iain felt himself pulled up out of the water by some pretty powerful arms, and up to a sitting position while warm liquid began the slow process of sloughing down his body, his clothes. It was an odd sensation which left him feeling a little embarrassed for some reason.

“Are you devolving?” Arl demanded to know.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Don’t think so,” Iain offered groggily looking at his hands, then lifted them up to the pair as evidence. “No webbing.”

It was the best he could come up with.

“We’ve been looking all over you for hours,” Arc said. “I had to call the ship and it didn’t like that at all. Where you been?”

Iain shrugged.

“I was just hanging out with the Reebles, you know, they rock and roll and they don’t fall down.”

Iain fell into a fit of giggles. Of course they fell down, they fell down a lot.

One of the pair leaned forward and took a sniff of his breath.

“You been drinking Arcturan Starbursts,” Arc told him.

His brother nodded.

“How did you know?” Ian replied, remembering he had had a couple, but was it two or three, maybe three. Three was not a couple, it was a ménage a trois? Maybe he’d had one of those.

“Oh you got that smell,” Arc told him. “And the color.”

Color? Oh, yeah, his hands did seem a little redder than normal, and warmer.

The pair laughed.

“Yeah. That’s all radiating from your pores and this fountain. It’s pretty pungent and visible in the infrared spectrum. I’m surprised you don’t notice it,” Arl offered.

His brother turned to look at him oddly.

“It’s not likely he has internal organs to do that,” Arc said, then glanced back to Iain. “And you claim you’re not a Mime.”

“I can hold my liquor,” Ian protested. “And what did I tell you about calling me a circus freak!”

That said, he must have had quite the night.

Ian thought back and a lot of it was kind of like a blur after the first drink he’d been handed. The green one. Especially after he got told by Rickie Reebles he should just tell the girls he was the bass player which the boys got into a fight with their actual bass player, some reptiloid over fact it only had three fingers. And then there was that three-breasted yellow and blue groupie...

To be honest, after that, Iain couldn’t remember much about the night except vague flashes of women with odd numbers of boobs, assassins trying to skewer him with hot pokers and fighting back to back to back with the Reebles, finally and coming up on top.

He looked at his right arm, which he was sure had been sliced, burned but there wasn’t much of a cut there at all, or maybe? He stared really close. Maybe there was something there that might have been a healed welt.

“I’m pretty impressed myself,” Arc told him as the two brothers helped him to his soggy feet. “There aren’t many species can handle even a single Starburst without liquefying their insides, let alone two. You know, all that radiation...”