Darcy snorts. “Sure. C’mon, punkin. Let’s take this baby back to their parents.”
I can’t argue with that, but hopefully the baby isn’t so attached that they won’t go to their parents and keep me like Darcy seems to think might happen.
“Look at you!” a yellow alien with orange stripes says, jumping in front of me. They have a tail and what looks like several sets of breasts under a tan shirt. Their pants are high waters, showing off clawed feet that are probably useful for gripping tree branches (they look like bird feet with the foreclaws and hind claws but more mammalian). “You’re a human! You even smell human!”
“Is it polite to go around sniffing people?” I ask curiously. “I don’t mind; I’m just asking.”
“We estari rely on our sense of smell, and it’s impossible not to smell everyone anyway, so yes. It’s totally polite to scent your neighbors,” the alien replies easily.
“Nice. I don’t have that kind of sense. In human culture, it’s rude to stink things up with body odor or with cologne. There’s a happy medium in there, but people who smell strongly enough to be scented from more than a foot away are considered problematic. Or old. A lot of old people use too much perfume.”
The alien opens their mouth to reply, but Darcy interrupts. “This is my human, and he has a baby flink in his hair whose parents are anxiously awaiting their return. Get out of my way.”
The alien sniffs at Darcy, announcing as they walk back to their stall, “Come see me when you’ve ditched the blood witch.”
“Since he’s my ride home, I’m not sure I’m going to see you again,” I reply, following Darcy along again.
Darcy glances at me over his shoulder. “Anyone here could get you back to Earth. I ain’t yer nothing.”
“Well, you brought me here; that sort of makes you responsible for my return.”
“I ain’t taking responsibility for anyone but myself and the people I’m paid to be responsible for.”
I don’t have much in the way of cash, but I reach into my pocket and pull out the quarter I keep there just in case I need one. I hold it out in front of him. “Here.”
His face does a lot of speaking as he takes the quarter, and most of what it’s saying is not at all polite. “What’s this for?”
“I’m paying you all the money I have on me to get me back to my apartment. Well, as close as possible, anyway. I’ll be happy if you get me in the same city.” I have my wallet in my pocket since I hadn’t had time to really do much before the flink jumped me, so at least I have my MetroCard.
Darcy looks at the quarter, raises his brow at me, and then pockets it. “Usually I charge more than this.”
I smile at the way the corners of his lips turn up. “That's all I have. I have a little cookie jar with some cash saved up if you want that when we get back to my apartment.”
The space station's lights go out and the next thing I know, a clap of thunder brings me to a beach overlooking a gorgeous orange ocean or very large lake, while the wind breezes through my hair and smells like ozone.
“Chirrup!”
“Oh sweet baby, did you not like the space station? We were almost to your parents.”
“Chirrup!”
I glance around as the baby’s arms strangle me a bit. There are other people on the beach. Not human people, but they’re wearing clothing and have umbrellas, so they’re people of an alien species. They’re all varying shades of blue—notblue-blue, but gemstone blue. They even shine a bit, like they all have little sapphires in their skin. Well, some of them have aquamarine and tourmaline skin sparkles. Their eyes vary as much as human eye color does—brown, black, pink, orange—and they’re all about human size with stubbier arms than we have but extremely strong and thick legs. Their toes are all as long as fingers, and they use them as much as they use their hands (which have three fingers and a thumb, same as their feet).
They all look very surprised and a little freaked out to see me. I don’t blame them for that; I’d freak out if some random alien just popped in for a visit during my beach day.
“What is it?” one of the closer ones asks their neighbor.
“I don’t usually get mis-gendered, because I’m pretty clearly a cis dude, but if you’re looking for pronouns, I use he/them. Also, my name’s Elijah. Some people call me Eli. It’s not my favorite, though.”
“It talks!” another one exclaims.
“No, no, my pronouns arehe/they. Do you know pronouns?”
“Excuse me, we know what pronouns are—I, you, it, we, them—but we don’t know what you mean when you say he/they—those words are foreign to us.”
“Oh, so it’s like a language translation thing—huh. I guess you’re not actually speaking my language.”
“You’re speaking ours,” the person replies. “Well, an antiquated version of it, anyway.”
