Alien Pets, Trisha McNary [free novel 24 .txt] 📗

silly and was glad there was no one around to hear him.

Can they even hear me? he wondered. Can they only hear adults? The adults say the trees talk at a rate of one word per hour. Am I talking too fast for them? Why do I expect that I’d be able to understand them anyway? Everyone says only the adults can hear them.

But M. Hoyvil didn’t give up easily. He focused his mind on the low telepathic humming noise, trying to make some sense out of it. After a few minutes, he began to hear something distinctive within the steady hum. A tone that he focused on. And as he focused, the tone developed into something that sounded like the beginning of a word.

Now, instead of a static-filled buzz, M. Hoyvil heard, “Taaaaaa…”

Could that be part of one of their one word per hour words? Or am I just fooling myself because I want to hear them talk to me? he wondered.

M. Hoyvil didn’t know the answer to that question. But he knew that if the trees were really talking, it would take hours for them to speak even a short sentence. He kept listening. He focused on the sound and waited for the next word. As he listened and waited, he fell into a deep sleep.

In that sleep, M. Hoyvil dreamed he was back on the Verdante planet. Not underground where the Verdantes lived but up on the surface standing beneath its towering trees. A gentle wind cooled his face and ruffled his hair. In the whisper of the wind, he heard voices. Many voices that spoke the same words but in different tones that harmonized with each other. The musical message wasn’t delivered one word per hour. It was slowed down just enough that M. Hoyvil could understand.

“TAAAAAAKKE…HERRRRRRR…TOOOOOOO…SPAAAAAAACE.”

 

End of Alien Pets

 

hypnoSnatch
(chapter 1)

Xeno Relations

by Trisha McNary

 

Copyright © 2019 Trisha McNary

Published by Trisha McNary

All Rights Reserved

 

 

Cover art by Heather Hamilton-Senter

 

Chapter 1

Several hours later after the space ship landed, Antaska sat engulfed in the deep cushions of an enormous blue chair. Three other humans sat facing her in similar chairs arranged around a floating stone table. Flickering flames crackled in a huge stone fireplace nearby, muffling their voices. The chairs faced the far side of the large, cavernous room. There, ten-foot-tall, beautiful, and pale green Mistress Bawbaw lounged on an enormous adult Verdante-sized divan.

The three resident humans kept their words soft and sparse, and Antaska took a cue from them, answering and speaking in the same way. The conversation moved at a slow pace. Many pauses to sip a hot brown liquid from delicate but hard plasti-mold cups. More pauses to nibble crumbly food items provided on small plates on the floating table.

“So tell me my dear, have you bonded yet?” Tabxi, an elderly human female, asked Antaska.

Antaska considered the question. ‘Bonded?’ She looked toward Tabxi and Vorche, an elderly man sitting next to Tabxi. On Vorche’s other side was a younger man, Zapop, whose soulful golden eyes were focused across the room on Mistress Bawbaw. Antaska’s turned to look at each of the humans. Her slight movement swished and rustled satiny petticoats under a voluminous gray skirt.

She thought about her regulation tan space ship suit with regret. So comfortable, so quiet.

But her telepathic cat Potat had insisted that she could not wear it. “No! You can’t go to this party in your ship suit!” Potat had said. “Wear the weird dress they left in here for you, or they’ll be offended.”

Antaska’s thoughts returned to the present question.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you mean,” she finally answered.

“Let me explain,” said Tabxi, leaning forward. “I’m talking about that mysterious bond that happens when two beings of two entirely different species meet for the first time and become so attached to each other that they stay together for the rest of their lives--the life of the shorter-lived one anyway. I mean that kind of bond.”

“Oh! I know exactly what you mean,” said Antaska with quiet excitement in her voice. “When I first met my cat Potat, right away, I felt so attached to her that I wanted to keep her with me forever. But I knew I was going to space, and it was best not to take a cat along. I kept planning to take her to the shelter, but for some reason, I could never do it, and we ended up staying together. So yes, I have bonded. I bonded with my cat.”

“She means, ‘have you bonded with M. Hoyvil yet,’” said Zapop in a loud whisper.

“M. Hoyvil? Why would I bond with M. Hoyvil?” Antaska asked in confusion.

She turned toward Zapop, again with a rustle of skirts. But his eyes were already back on the gigantic Verdante woman. Without removing his eyes from Mistress Bawbaw, he lifted his cup to his lips. He sipped and sighed, Antaska already forgotten.

Tabxi resumed the conversation. “Well, you did agree to be M. Hoyvil’s companion for the rest of your life didn’t you? After just one meeting?”

“Yes, I did, but…” Antaska began.

“But there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what all Earth humans do when they’re adopted by a Verdante, and that’s not a problem. The reason I’m asking you this is that sometimes some humans take the bonding too far, in my opinion.”

A snort escaped from the somewhat large nose of Zapop, who sat slouched back in soft tan pants and a brown knit sweater. He pulled his attention away from Mistress Bawbaw for just a moment and absently scratched the furry chest hair that showed at the top of his comfy sweater.

“Yes,” said Tabxi, “many humans become so attached to their Verdante Master or Mistress that it interferes with their forming a normal human relationship.” She looked meaningfully at Zapop. Antaska looked at him too. Zapop looked at Mistress Bawbaw.

“Zapop!” Tabxi addressed him sharply but quietly.

“Huh?” he asked, vigorously shaking the shaggy brown hair on his head as if to clear it.

“Doesn’t Antaska look lovely tonight in her becoming gray dress?” Tabxi asked him.

Zapop turned toward Antaska and looked her up and down.

“Why, yes she does. As you know, that dress is one of my favorites. She wears it well,” he answered before his eyes pulled back to the enormous green voluptuous sight of Mistress Bawbaw.

“So, Antaska, do you think you might be interested in forming a romantic bond with an affectionate but lonely human male here on the Verdante planet before you take off into space?” asked Tabxi.

Antaska froze. Her gray eyes narrowed, and her kicking feet stiffened.

“Someone to think about on the long, tedious days of the voyage. What do you say?” Tabxi pressed.

Antaska looked at Zapop again. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the conversation. Antaska’s mind felt blank. She could not think of a good answer.

What is going on here? Antaska wondered.

She felt uncomfortable.

I wish Potat were here. She’d know how to handle this, she thought wistfully.

At that moment, the little gray and white cat was fast asleep on a pillow on Antaska’s round bed in her round dome-covered room.

Just before going to sleep, Potat had complained to her telepathically. “Those annoying trees are sending me another message! It’s less of a bore to hear it from dreamland. That booming collective one-word-per-hour voice is too tedious! Don’t they know cats live and think at seven times the speed of an Earth human?”

A telepathic sigh.

“Oh well. I’m five hours short of my seventeen hours’ sleep today anyway. Sorry I can’t go with you, but I think you’ll be safe enough without me this time. I smelled some evil reptiles when we landed on this planet, but they aren’t close by right now.”

Then Potat had curled up in a small furry ball, asleep in an instant.

Once again, Antaska pulled her mind back to the present to answer Tabxi. “Well, I don’t really know what to say,” she said lamely.

“Ah! That means you might consider bonding.” Tabxi’s soft voice held the satisfied tone of one who had scored a victory.

Vorche’s space-tanned balding head nodded as if pleased, and Zapop’s younger brown-haired head nodded too, his attention back on the humans. Zapop uncrossed his legs and leaned toward Antaska.

All three humans looked at Antaska, as if waiting for her to say more.

“Well…well…,” she began, “actually, thank you, but we were encouraged in space prep school not to get involved romantically because I’ll be in outer space for the next hundred years, you know, and that kind of involvement would only result in a painful separation,” she finished in a rush, proud of herself for being so diplomatic.

“But maybe the Verdantes would let you take him along with you,” Tabxi pressed. “I’m sure M. Hoyvil wouldn’t mind.” Vorche smiled and nodded in agreement.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Antaska.

“Well, of course he won’t mind. You know he’ll be out every night this week at the Verdante adolescent social events looking for his future life mate. That’s all he’ll be thinking about,” said Tabxi. And Vorche, Zapop, and Tabxi all chuckled.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Antaska. “I meant I just don’t know about that.”

“Well then, what do you know about?” asked Zapop with a slight growl in his voice.

Suddenly, Antaska felt even more coldness in the room. Extreme coldness. Emotional coldness.

The other humans sat silent, waiting for her answer, sipping and nibbling. They didn’t seem to notice the coldness. Tabxi straightened her already straight dark blue fabricated-wool skirt. Her wrinkled hands, darkened almost black, evidenced a long-time spacer’s exposure to starlight. Smooth-skinned Zapop scratched behind a large ear, absently twitching a foot at the same time, and then turned back toward Mistress Bawbaw.

Antaska looked across the room. Master Meeepp and another enormous Verdante man had entered the room and were storing large unidentifiable objects in compartments in the walls. They kept at least six feet apart, but they had raised the mental barriers that blocked them from reading each other’s thoughts.

Instinctively, Antaska rubbed the tawny skin on her bare upper arms, but it made no difference. The movement tracked Zapop’s eyes sideways from Mistress Bawbaw to Antaska’s toned arms. Then up to shapely shoulders and bright pink hair, lustrous in the fire’s glow, that brushed the shoulders. Small dusky mouth, pointy nose and chin. Just for a second or two.

Antaska, unaware of Zapop’s brief stare, looked at Master Meeepp, in brown work clothes instead of the bright red ship suit that adult Verdantes always wore on space ships. Lethal muscles bulged under plain brown cloth. From this distance, she could see the sharp features in his deep green face, large upward-slanted blue-green eyes now hard and narrowed. For once, he looked less like an eleven-foot-high mountain and more like a humanoid--a dangerous humanoid.

The Verdantes far surpassed humans in technological and physiological advancement. But to Antaska, seeing them so silent, huge, powerful and brooding, tense with unspoken emotions, gave them the feel of humanoids at a barbaric phase of development. Raw, earthy and animalistic. Culture shock threatened to raise its dizzying head. Antaska took a deep breath and pushed it away.

Across from Master Meeepp on her humongous divan, un-Earthly beautiful Mistress Bawbaw stretched perfectly shaped large pale green arms above her head. Alabaster statue-like sensuality in