“Are you disabled?” the orange alien asks.
“What’s your name? I’m Elijah, by the way.”
“You can call me Brad, I think. My name isn’t really a noise humans can make.” Then he growls, and I get the impression that’s his name.
“Cool. Brad’s a great choice. I lost a foot when I was a baby in a freak accident,” I explain, and the flink parents rub their hands together like little villains looking for a way to exploit my weakness. I bet they’re just trying to communicate their understanding and/or sympathy. I get sympathy a lot.
“Practice and experience would give you a lot of good ideas for selling to other disabled humans. Are there a lot of humans with missing body parts?” Brad asks curiously.
“Yeah, it happens all the time, but I wouldn’t say it’s common, ya know? Most people die with all their limbs intact. About point six percent of the population of humans have lost a limb through disease or trauma. I don’t know if that includes people who have toes and fingers amputated or if it’s just major limbs.” I never really cared about how the stats were being manipulated; the group leader of the support group I went towhen I was a teen ingrained that number in us so we would understand we weren’t alone.
“Even still, point six percent of nearly eight billion is a lot of humans. It’s a wonder you haven’t figured out limb regeneration yet. Don’t some of your animal species regenerate their tails and legs?” Brad finishes his drink (a large concoction of sugar, caffeine and whipped cream), and stands. “I’m getting another. Anyone else?”
Darcy appears on his array with an angry scowl on his pretty, made-up face. Huh, I bet whoever bags him when he finally decides to stop being lonely is going to be one of those sort of boring people who gets involved with a feral goth queen for the excitement. If I was into chicks, I’d totally go for a goth queen with black lips and a blacker heart.
“I just figured out my heterosexual type.”
Darcy’s glare morphs into confusion. “Your het type? What does that even mean?”
Brad grimaces, and instead of going for another drink, he walks right out of the shop. I guess he really doesn’t like Darcy.
“I was just thinking, if I was going to go for a girl, she’d have to be one of those feral goth queens, because I don’t think I’d ever be into a girl next door type, ya know? You’re hot, by the way.” He probably doesn’t need anyone stroking his ego, but he’s had a hard day, and the guy he was planning to fuck has been adopted by a flink who needed a nap, and that’s gotta be a splinter under his nail if there ever was one.
He smirks, stepping off his array.
The flinks suddenly start chirping like crazy, and the two adults jump up and down on their lower hands excitedly, except maybe they’re also a little afraid.
Darcy chirps back a couple of times, and the entire shop goes silent. He rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. I’m just here to find out what the fuck is happening with Elijah,” heexplains loudly. “And I will take a mocha frappe with an extra shot.”
The barista on the other side of the counter pulls a cup and writes his order on it, and someone else scrambles to the counter to pay for it. Honestly, that’s nice of them, but buying his drink out of fear—they look afraid—is not a good precedent to set.
“Nah, dude, this guy already owes me for dinner, I’ll buy the drink,” I say, getting up to intercept the poor alien trying to pay for Darcy’s drink.
The alien bows to me, so I bow back and then we get into a bow cycle until the alien gives up and I hand the barista my debit card. Huh, it totally works in space. That’s something to remember. The barista runs the card, then hands me the drink, and I take it over to Darcy who’s sitting where I had been. I sit on the arm of the chair, handing him the drink.
“How long are baby flink naps, anyway?” I ask curiously, reaching for my drink.
I think maybe I should learn not to mention the baby, because every time I do, I end up somewhere different. This time, when I pop back into existence, the planet has purple grass and little dragons flying around, buzzing like bumblebees from flower to flower. I mean, they look like dragons, but they’re about the size of my hand. One of them immediately lands on my shirt, clinging with its claws to the front of it over my belly button.
“This is a nice planet, baby. But we need to set some boundaries. Remember what we talked about before your nap?”
“Hey! Hey! You! What are you doing in the dragon fields? You can’t be there!”
I turn toward the voice shouting at me, and yep, it looks like the baby transported me into the middle of a fenced off field. The person looks like a furry version of a human, two limbs, two legs, face with wide set, but forward facing eyes and a nose—nobridge—with a mouth under it with large lips. Bigger than you’d usually get on a human face. Their ears are on top of their head and swivel a hundred and eighty degrees. They’re not wearing clothes, but why bother with clothes when you’re covered in fur, right?
“Hey, sorry. The baby flink brought me here. Is it ok if I walk out of the field with this little guy attached to me?” I point to the dragon. Another one lands on my pant leg. I point to that one too.
“Uh, yeah, just be careful not to trample any of the flowers. The dragons will eat you if you fuck with their flowers.”
I like that fuck is a universal sort of word. It’s comforting.
Carefully I walk through the field, making sure to step lightly and around all the flowers. I gain four more dragons on my clothes as I walk, but I make it to the fence where the person is without causing any damage to the flora. They help me get the little dragons off and then I climb the fence and offer them my name. “I’m Elijah. Sorry about the disturbance. This baby here likes to take me on adventures, and it’s illegal for me to take them off because it could kill them.”
“Jay,” the person replies. “No. Jay.” They look disgruntled. “Jay is not my name, it’s Jay. What the fuck?”
“Well, there’s a translation spell, right? Maybe it’s making it sound like Jay because that’s what I understand? Not sure why you would be hearing the wrong name, though.” That’s a mystery.
Jay sighs. “No. It’s not the translation spell. It’s my own damn fault. I can’t decide on a name and I keep changing it, but yesterday I thought I wanted to be Jay forever and I guess I forgot to update the magic about the name change. You can call me Jay. I’ll update the archive later.”
