Challenge #00647 - A282: Scary Handy

On an individual basis, moments when humans go from “big, scary, too strong and menacing” to “big, protective, safe and ok still a bit scary”

Just little things, like being able to catch a falling numidid, deflect a blow, walk or swim in currents that bowl over little guineafowl people, or bodily grab them out of the way of danger etc.

An adult Human was twice the size of a Numidid in relaxed posture. Four if the Numidid was in a defensive huddle. And if that Numidid stretched, they might have a hope of being slightly taller than two-thirds that of the human.

And that was just on average.

As with any species, there were variants. Smaller than normal Numidid and taller than normal Humans. Such was the case with Syriki the Small and Big Leeroy. Both were very quiet cogniscents and went on many scientific forays together.

Big Leeroy was huge. In both height and breadth. At the end of a long day, many colonists would see him lending his shoulder for the small black Bird as well as being her pack horse of sorts.

Syriki answered many questions from Kal'rike, all coming from concerned citizens who saw the giant, muscular human on her live streams.

Most frequent was, How did you tame such a big human?

Syriki laughed at that one. She didn’t tame him at all.

She’d been investigating some nodules on a branch too frail to hold even her small weight. He’d been underneath, foraging for samples in the undergrowth. Both minding their own business and making their own, muttered, Keep Calm I’m Here noises out of mutual respect.

When the branch snapped and Syriki screamed, she was underneath it. There was no time for her to unfurl her wings.

But the human had simply snatched her out of the air and transformed her inertia into a slowing swing before gently setting her, upright and dazed, onto the ground.

“All good, miss bird?” he chirped in broken Ulu.

Syriki huddled even smaller and practiced her Science Breathing. All she could think was that everyone in Kal'rike was saying life would be better without the humans on the planet.

Without the humans on the planet, she would be experiencing a snapped neck or broken clavicle. And a quick and lonely death in this jungle.

Humans on the planet had made her life longer, for a start.

She took so long at coming back to normal that Big Leeroy had taken his shirt off and used it as an improvised pseudowing to help her keep warm. He was cooing, “Be good, be good…” and gently patting her.

Syriki regained control and managed a shaky, “All good, kind ape,” in broken English.

That was the first day he’d carried her and her findings back to the Beach Path Hide. Humans were learning to communicate in a language their mouths were not made for. They easily sounded like they required an excess of remedial education. But day after day, they proved that they understood.

Though this human had not been seen at or visited the Beach Path Hide, he still knew where it was and knew it was where the Numidid could go to meet with other Numidid.

Syriki knew that the entire Human colony had more or less adopted her as their keet, despite her age. She hadn’t realised until much later that the Humans had taken to following her around and acting as her bodyguard.

It didn’t take her very long. The fifth time she saw or heard Big Leeroy shadowing her path was enough to allow her the realisation.

She hopped down to his eye-line and bluntly asked, “Good ape follow for make-safe Syriki?”

“Leeroy,” he said, tapping his chest. “Make good safe, pretty bird.”

It was a promise he kept throughout his life. Long after he really needed to. He even repeated his snatch-and-swing trick when one of her pre-fledged keets fell from her perch on the courtesy rail. Years and years after most humans were fluent in Ulu.

By then, Kal'rike was asking if she was going to invite him into her nest.

But no, they remained incredibly good friends.

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Attention Beta-readers [Yes, this means you!]

I have sent out to everyone concerned, the first draft of The Amity Incident.

If you did not get your copy of The Amity Incident[or if you need a different format], please email me at “cat @ internutter . org” [minusquotesminusspaces] and I will see what I can do.

Thanks for all your help, you lovely patient people.

I just saved 100K words

At 500 words a day, that’s 200 days of effort. I have 40 days worth of writing left to go.

That is, before I get to my target. I may go over.

Then I have editing and only three reliable beta-readers. Should I ask for more? Would I be asking for trouble? I’m pretty certain three is not enough.

Ugh, editing sucks.

Guess what Erika Syverson just sent me?

I’m dribbling.

Augh, it’s so gorgeous I wanna hug it.

What font says ‘cheesy horror’ to you?

There’s gotta be a few font pros out there who know their stuff and, even though I love me some horribad science fiction, I don’t often get to see the movie posters.

So what fonts would y'all recommend for the eventual cover of The Amity Incident?

Challenge #00587 - A212: Confusing Hilarity

Someone being chased by a goose while others laugh too hard to help.

The humans saw her coming in to the launch pole.

“Up! Up! Up!” They called, using their fleshy hands to gesture the same thought. “Danger! Up!”

She scrambled for the little platform before she dared look down. There, in one of the grazing paddocks, one of the humans’ domesticated avians was chasing a young human keet. Kid.

It was a large bird. Semi-aquatic, judging by the feet. And extremely hostile.

It had teeth on its tongue.

Siriki ran herself through her breathing exercises as she watched the interplay, below.

The humans were laughing, and did little to intervene. From what there was of the conversation, the kid had been advised not to go near the ‘tetchy goosss’. And now the juvenile was learning 'the hard way’.

One human, safely perched atop their ungulate stable, had a musical instrument. The tune ze played bought another chorus of laughter from the observing humans.

It must have had historical significance, since it was music that came about during chase scenes in their local performances.

One day, they may enlighten her to the meaning of 'Yackety Sax’.

The human juvenile, once adequately repentant, got rescued without any harm done. And much joking from the observers.

If she needed any further proof that these were deathworlders… this event would have been it.

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The cover… evolves

I’m going to have a hard time NOT using bleeding font for the title because it all looks SO cheesy-horror-flick… which is exactly what I’m aiming for :D

I was having a really bad day until this turned up in my in-box. Now I’m stoked :)

Writing Prompt

The first encounter of T’reka and her people with Big Bird (or any of the Muppets, really, because why wouldn’t they still be around?)

(#00572 - A197)

Still relatively impaired by her injured leg, T'reka stared in amused confusion at the screen.

It was a program meant for juvenile entertainment and/or education (it was hard to tell, with humans. It may be both and something else), she could tell by the puppets. And it was a locally-produced show, because she recognised some of the people teaching children the human alphabet.

Some of the creatures made into puppets were impossible. The stylised talking frog, for example, had to be a figment of someone’s imagination. Likewise, the giant yellow bird.

And it was a sign that the humans desired Numidid interaction that they included a remarkably accurate puppet Numidid into their show.

They called the imaginary bird Kipkip and aped her -and her fellow scientist’s- curiosity about everything human with unnerving accuracy.

This was art imitating life, to teach their young about the world and the people who shared it.

On one hand, it showed a marked goal of sharing information that could be cast in a positive light. On the other hand, it showed scientific curiosity as completely normal.

She was going to catch hell from Kal'rike when Administrator Ser saw this…

“You’re awake early,” murmured Siriki. “…or I’m late.”

T'reka checked the wall chronometer. “I’m awake early, be at ease.” She asked, “Do you see the same thing on the screen as I do?”

Siriki looked. “Oh dear. Administrator Ser isn’t going to like that…”

T'reka slumped into her nesting. “And here I was, hoping it was a hallucination.”

“It could pass as one,” said Siriki helpfully.

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T'reka taking shape, care of fabulous artist, Erica Syverson.

These are ROUGH SKETCHES folks. Her rough sketches are enough to make me want to pack in my pencil and quit doodling forever.

And if you’re bothered by the sketchy lines making T'reka look old in the second pic, you can pretend it’s Elderly!T'reka recounting exciting tales of her youth to enraptured grand-keets while a human tries not to laugh in the background.

Challenge #00560 - A185: Surprises

From that original post that started the whole Amity thing: “What if every alien race has nothing but docile, harmless animals on their planets and they look at us with our sharks and bears and wolves and wasps and venomous snakes and just think “Holy shit! How do you guys survive?!””

T’reka’s people found and seeded the planet with their own wildlife and plants, presumably all fairly docile and harmless. What was the reaction on first discovering, not the humans themselves, but the results of humans also seeding the planet/just the island with Earth flora and fauna?

Scientists, according to the greater culture of Hu'lu'a, were idiots. They alone would wander out into a new world just after landing and poke at things that may be dangerous just to see what they’d do.

T'reka missed out on being in the first wave of explorers on this new planet of Ru'ku'la despite her bunk-mates’ insistence she sign as soon as possible. Discovering new things was why science existed. And exploring their future home before it all became civilised.

Even the second wave got their chance.

But T'reka was too slow. Or too unknown to make it that high up the list of expendable souls. She got to be amongst the fourth wave, with harvesting tools and protective gear, taking soil samples and examining the microflora and microfauna and, if she was lucky, the mycota.

And yet, she was the one who discovered the bloodsucking insect, by the ill fortune of being bitten by it.

The first sample was smashed, of course, but she had the fortitude to withstand the bite of a second one and caught it life. The hideous rash it caused would, physicians assured, heal and fade.

Which was how she wound up in isolation, being the subject for other scientists in full hazmat protection as they analysed every last micrometer of the rash on her lower-right leg.

By the time it healed, and the DNA of the flying bloodsucker ran its paces through the analysis computers, she’d missed everything good. Which left her in the windowless cubicles of Data Analysis. Student work. She couldn’t decide whether it was good fortune or bad that that insect had found her delectable.

But then the analysis started showing… anomalies.

The nucleotides were showing traces of… polluting DNA. It was almost as if another planet had seeded this one. With a far more hostile biota. Native forms of food plants on this planet had traces of… poison.

Not enough to do significant harm, but caution was generally advised when picking wild herbs.

And more ominously, some combinations usually relied upon turned out to be increasingly or exponentially toxic.

The new settlement of Kal'rike changed at the news. No longer a relaxed and huddled sprawl where every citizen had five cubic Flights of their own. It huddled inwards and grew upwards.

There was hazardous life, out there.

And those in charge devoted the scientists full attention to identifying, isolating, and if possible, eliminating it all.

To that end, they sent out probes to at least photograph most of the offending life forms.

Which was how they discovered Toxic Island in the first place. A land mass absolutely brimming with a tropical jungle’s worth of hazardous, toxic life.

T'reka found it enrapturing.

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