“What should we call her?” The Minotaur broaches the question. “She looks like a Bambi to me.”
“Bambi? That’s a little… I don’t know. She’s pretty small. What about Squeak?”
“What about I punch you guys in the nose,” I growl. “My name is… Lisa.”
It might be Lisa. It might not be Lisa. Who can say?
“Lisa?”
They look at one another, and then shake their heads pretty much in unison.
“You’ll need a galactic name. Like Sprinkles.”
“Sprinkles! Yes!” The blond agrees enthusiastically.
They cannot possibly be for real.
“I have a name,” I protest.
“Yes, but your name is in your tongue, and to us it sounds like you’re making animal noises,” the blond explains. “It would be like…”
“Like if I had to bark like a dog every time I introduced my dog to someone,” I say, hating that I kind of get their point. “Except!” I add. “I’m not an animal, I’m not a pet. I’m a person. I’m sentient!”
“Oh, my god. She is so fucking cute,” the Minotaur says. “I’m a person! I’m sentient!” He does my voice in a little mimicry of my own. “She really thinks she is people.”
I want to slap his face, but I am not close enough and I am also really not sure how you would even begin to slap a Minotaur. He probably wouldn’t even feel it. I am wondering how many mythological creatures are actually just aliens. Do centaurs exist somewhere in space? That would be fucking amazing if so.
I look around the bar while they keep talking. I’m trying to spot something that looks mythical, something that indicates human history has always been interfered with by aliens in one way or another.
It’s kind of crazy to realize that the men with the wild hair and even wilder eyes might have been right all along. Earth has been a sort of sandbox for creatures of all kinds. But we were born there and we felt like we were dominant and it didn’t even fucking occur to us how small and insignificant we could be made to be by the right kind of intelligence.
Even I didn’t really consider it until this very moment, finding myself surrounded by so many various forms of alien life. We were lucky to be allowed the three hundred thousand years or sowe got, largely unmolested by aliens except the ones who hid in mazes and things of that nature.
I am having so many thoughts and feelings.
“I think she can probably eat this,” the tall man says. “It’s just sugar in water with a few amino acids and a touch of protein.”
I sip it dubiously, wondering if I’ll survive the taste, but knowing I am going to have to eat something at some point or start to starve.
“It’s a vanilla milkshake!” I exclaim. Then I look at the Minotaur. “Sorry,” I say.
“Sorry for what?” He seems entirely unaware of the series of linkages I just made, and I’m going to let him stay that way. It’s probably really rude to point out that there are animals that look sort of like him on Earth and we drink their milk kind of a lot and breed them up so they make even more milk, and then we make delicious things from it.
It’s actually really hard to justify being treated well by aliens when you consider how humans treat most other forms of life, so I stop considering it immediately.
“I think she likes it,” the tall alien says.
“I do. It’s nice. Thank you. What can I call you guys?”
They look surprised for a second, then they sort of shake it off. It really didn’t occur to them that I would need to be able to call them something. They truly think of me as a creature they just saved.
“My name is Sharp,” the tall man says.
They look at one another, and I realize that’s not his name at all. He’s just picked something he thinks will be simple enough for me to say and remember. I’d be mad at the condescension, but he did just save my life and get me a milkshake, or at least a milkshake adjacent beverage, so I let it slide.
“You can call me Boss,” the Minotaur says.
“And I am Kronos,” the barbarian says. “But if that’s too hard to pronounce, you can call me K.”
