Archive of Our Own

You don't remember the last time school was fun.

Or when much of anything was fun, really.

Your teachers say that things used to be different—back when there was more food to go around and there were a lot more Eridians in your classroom. No one had the energy to learn anymore.

You ask what happened to them and your teacher says that some of them got sick. Other's were taught by their parents at home instead. Some families went back underground like things used to be many, many years ago.

Before you were born.

That's a long time because you're only 31. You know how to count to over a-ten-something-hundreds, but your parent and teacher says it was longer than that. You try and make a new number on your hands, but you can't get your mind to come up with one big enough. It might just be because your one leg is funny and only has two fingers—you might need three for a really big number.

Before it got darker.

You still don't really know what that means—the concept of light and dark was something your young mind can't quite handle yet. It was something you couldn't hear and feel, but something other creatures could see. The plants needed it and so did some of the animals. How could something be there when you couldn't sense it in any direction? How was it all around you, but somehow not there at all?

Your teacher said it was a frequency from a big star; you could feel the difference between light and dark because one is warmer and the other is colder. The idea of warm being an object giving off heat sounds silly.

'If object is giving off heat, then why can't you see it?'

'The light comes from the Sun, but shines quieter every year. The heat coming off it less and less.'

'Why don't we just make a really big dome-house around the planet to keep the heat in?'

'Ask your parent—they're scientist.'

'I still don't get it.'

'You'll learn when older.'

So many of your classmates didn't get older.

Today at break, another student pushed you over.

They don't want to play with you because you're too small to play games with the other kids. Even though this is a class for smallest-medium Eridians, you were clearly behind all the rest.

Parent says people are mean about it because they're scared of things they don't understand. You're only small-medium, how could you get be scary?

They say they'll talk to the teacher again.

It happens again the next week.

Parent gets really sad sometimes.

You think it's because they miss their mate—the other students in your class all had two or more mates in their home that helped keep the kids safe.

You don't remember your other parent, but you have a lot of toys they made you. Some of them are for little kids and aren't as fun anymore. Parent got mad when you talked about getting rid of them. Something about having more from the others—maybe your grandparents, but you haven't seen them in a long time. You can't imagine them playing with those toys anyway.

'You were pebble when they left. It was long time ago.'

'Where did they go?'

'They were engineer sent to fix star.'

Parent only talks in short sentences when they can't find the words to use. They're really smart and should have a lot of words—you just turned 43 and your entire vocabulary book is filled out at school!

'When coming home?'

They don't answer. You think it was a really long time ago—one even longer than the over a-ten-something-hundreds. When you go to bed that night and parent thinks you're in stasis, you strain your mind to count as high as you can.

It's cold and hard to think. Memories that would be clear and vivid become short and choppy.

'What's astrophage?'

Your teacher already said you aren't allowed to talk about that, but Parent doesn't answer either.

You stay after class and clean off the writing project boards. Your teacher makes you help and prepare the weekly class' pool of food to share for families that don't have enough. The boxes are really heavy and make you sore.

You don't complain because you don't want to sound ungrateful—Parent had a job that was important and so got more than most. Special rationed food was given to Parent help make you bigger, but you don't think it's working. Maybe someone else could use it instead.

You turn 60 years. It's a big, special age and you've grown three inches in the last five years alone! Parent says you're becoming pre-middle-age and says something about 'trouble years.' You think that's dumb because you have good scores in class and almost always do your chores without asking.

'Use other word. Dumb is strong and not nice.'

'Used dumb because it's strong,' but you don't actually say that because it's time for your birthday present and Parent is happy today.

Parent gives you a special gift and says you're old enough to understand—a box of old tablets with pictures on them.

Photos of you as a big-hatchling are on the first one. Your first day of school when you were super small. A scan of your first class project that looks really bad—you don't know why Parent would hold onto it. The scribbles make you embarrassed; your name is spelled wrong in the top corner.

The second tablet makes you confused. Photos of when you were the smallest, and there's a few other Eridians there that you don't recognize.

'Why did you keep photos of baby me at group smallest-small care?'

Parent doesn't answer for a long while. They keep pressing the button on the tablet to go to the next photo.

'Those are your siblings.'

This might be the greatest gift of all.

You were the only one in your class who didn't have at least one another sibling. It was a dynamic you didn't understand, but still found yourself wanting more than anything. You loved Parent, but it got lonely when it was just the two of you and they were always working.

You think about your quiet house having more Eridians in it. It makes you trill and your legs dance, happy happy happy.

'When do I get to meet them?'

Parent doesn't have words again. You think that may have been the wrong thing to ask.

'They're gone. They died when you were smallest.'

Oh.

Your hearts hurt so bad your stomach hurts too. The doctor Parent brought you to said that only happens when the emotion is too big for a small body. This emotion is big sad sad sad angry angry angry.

'How?'

'They got really sick.'

'Why didn't you take them to doctor?'

'They were born sick. There was nothing doctor could do.'

'Why?'

'Why doctors could not fix or why born sick?'

You say nothing. There's too much emotions that are bigger than you, an Eridian still small at 60 even though you should be pre-middle-big by now.

You wonder if maybe the sick made you smaller and made it hard to remember things.

Maybe the sick made your leg dumb.

'Why born sick?'

Parent touches the circle on their arm. They do that a lot when they're sad.

'Parent and mate not supposed to have clutch. Tried many times, but cells didn't fix selves. Finally, Parent fix. Was enough for little while, but was not enough.'

You vibrate long and slow and take in the pictures. The little pebbles on the tablet feel so small. The special health teacher that taught pre-middle-big class showed pictures of baby Eridians, and they weren't this small. Some of them look funny—one pebble has only 4 legs.

Maybe you could have been friends. Sometimes the other Eridians at class make fun of you for your bad leg. They would get it—34 fingers between the both of you meant you could make some big numbers.

Sad sad sad is replaced by angry angry angry.

'Parent-engineer could fix. Why leave?'

'Mate save the star to save you, only one pebble left.'

You don't want to talk about this anymore. You grab the other tablet and the photos are happier again.

Ignoring it doesn't make the angry angry angry go away. It might be better if Parent-engineer doesn't come back because you don't know if you could forgive them for leaving.

You think that you hate them, maybe. You don't tell Parent that because that word is even stronger than dumb.

When you pretend go stasis that night, Parent holds the tablet and cries for a long time.

School is canceled today.

You don't know why, but the neighbors came by and said to stay inside. Something important is happening—it must be really important because Parent still has to go to work.

It's not important enough that you don't have to clean the main room and food room, a fact emphasized by a note Parent left on the table.

Everyone is trilling and yelling outside. It's hard to focus. You take that as an excuse to not do your homework because Parent didn't remind you to do it.

No one tells you what is going on and it's hard to navigate the chaos with your leg. You almost get stepped on.

Parent doesn't come home tonight for the first time ever.

The neighbors say Parent is safe, but their job is very, very important to what's happening and they're busy. The mated triad invites you over for stasis, but you don't want to be a bother.

That night, you're unable to go into stasis because you're alone. You've never done that without Parent.

Tomorrow is your 68th birthday and you're not prepared do that alone, either.

Parent and their mate come home together.

They're not how you imagined. You expected someone big and scary and mean—something not quite Eridian at all, something easy to hate.

They're a foot taller than you and a bit smaller than the average Eridian, but their leg is the same as yours. You rumble and feel it over and over from across the room—one leg, thinner than the others and split down the middle. Where one finger should be, the separation of the hematite begins.

They're just like you.

Parent-engineer runs at you and you're lifted into strong, scarred arms like you see parents do with their hatchlings. They hold you tightly and hum even though you're not smallest anymore.

It feels familiar.

It feels safe.

There's nothing to hate—maybe it was stronger a word than you needed. Parent was usually right about those things.

Maybe this is what you were missing—the final piece.

'Grace Rocky save stars, promised to come home.'

Their voice sounds like a memory.

Parent's name is different now—this doesn't distress you. Names change a lot in your language and how Eridians refer to one another can vary from Eridian-to-Eridian.

Your 'friend' in class for smaller-medium never added '-friend' to your name, but you added '-Friend' despite knowing them for two weeks. It's an embarrassing memory and sometimes remembering it makes you jolt out of stasis-beginning.

Hopefully the name string doesn't change too soon.

Parent becomes Parent-Adrian to differentiate between the two, and Parent-engineer becomes Parent-Rocky. The names are changed by the latter and all together, your collective plural becomes '♫♩♩♫♭.'

You've never had to be separate to become a whole before.

♫♩♩♫♭.

It feels right.

You thought it was a pet.

Some people at class have one to keep them company. Parent-Adrian always said you couldn't have one because only two Eridians couldn't give it the attention it needed.

You asked why Parent-Rocky brought home a pet as a gift and they immediately said that was rude. So was calling him an it, that he was just like you, just really soft and squishy and wet and… not.

The alien was a Human from Earth—a planet very, very far away. His name was 'Doctor-Captain-Ryland-Grace-Rocky-Adrian-courting,' but they were close enough to just call him Grace in shorthand.

Grace was a friend who saved their life and the entire planet.

This makes the human become a celebrity very quickly.

You're one of the few Eridians who are allowed to see Grace. Parent-Adrian pulls you from school when the other kids started asking too many invasive questions. At first you liked the change of positive attention, but both of your parents said it wasn't true-nice.

They brought you to a new, special building with a lot of doors and doctors. After minutes of trotting down long hallways, you enter a room with a lot of tubes, wires, and loud machines you don't recognize. Something smooth beeps and you scramble backwards at the loud noise.

Parent-Rocky says that Grace's species has a lot of different technology than they do and even though Humans are very different than Eridians, it's still important to be nice.

You try to keep your thoughts nice, but beyond a thick barrier with vents and tubes of all sorts going through is the weirdest thing you have ever seen.

He doesn't do much. The top of him moves up and down repeatedly, but that's it. You wonder how a Human could save your star if all they did is up-and-down.

Grace looks like an Eridian if you don't hear beyond the surface. He's long and thin, and doesn't have a lot of layers to his body.

Parent-Rocky says that when he wakes up, he'll stand up and be tall.

You try and run through all the possibilities of this creature standing upright and they're all crazier than the last. He has more features on one side than the other, but he's still so flat. He isn't covered in rock, but his front middle area has bumps under his outer crust that bulge out sharply. How does he balance?

You want to poke him, but the doctors said you can damage him by just being in the same room.

No one is to go beyond the barrier except the weird machine with arms and medicine-pokes.

Your parents tell you Grace gets better everyday, but sometimes he's so sick that he has no energy for visitors. Those are the days only Parent-Adrian or Parent-Rocky go.

Eridians take care of mated-family-unit when sick—it's a promise you make when coming together.

Your life is changing so quickly and you expect to be scared, but there's nothing but comfort and stability. Everything falls into place.

Soon, they've learned to go beyond the barrier. You think the suits are silly and watching Parent-Adrian and Parent-Rocky learn to walk in them makes you trill and chirp with laughter.

Now that Grace can sit up, he is a lot taller. You notice he gets squishier and his soft crust gets thicker each time you visit.

Grace makes a sound to communicate with you for the first time and you're terrified. You felt him from across the barrier a long time ago and counted at least ten orifices—something Parent-Rocky has since told you not to do because humans were very private about that—and had no idea which one was going to make on-purpose sounds.

You don't understand him until he pulls out a large, folded thing on his lap and moves ten (!) fingers on one of the pieces. Grace pulls out a little piece, connects a wire to the machine, and makes sounds into it.

Your language comes out of a speaker.

'Name is Doctor-Captain-Ryland-Grace-unmated. Understand?'

Two hands come up and shake back and forth as you repeat the name back excitedly. The translator isn't the exciting bit—you had a classmate that couldn't hear well that needed something similar—but the name.

Your parents had referred to Grace as 'Doctor-Captain-Ryland-Grace-Rocky-Adrian-courting' around you.

Exciting! Unofficial courting meant that once Grace was better, he was going to come home. Your family unit would be big and whole as they finished the process.

'Understand, happy happy happy!'

What you assume is your voice translated to Human comes out of the machine. It's a lot deeper than you really sound, but Grace seems happy. You notice that Eridian is much longer than Human, so the translator makes it take a long time to get long strings across.

You talk for a long time. The Human is thrilled to learn about your school and home. You draw him pictures of home that aren't very good, but Grace loves them anyway.

'When Grace come to family unit home?'

The computer reads aloud the funny-sounding words and despite it being a short string, Grace frowns at the folded machine. You're not quite sure what you said wrong.

The computer translates that he's tired and needs to rest.

When you're going into stasis that night, it dawns on you that you said the wrong name. You're not quite sure what it translates to in Grace's language, but you might have accidentally given away too much.

Oops.

Grace doesn't come home.

They can't have Grace boxed off in a tiny room—Humans needed to move or they would get sick—so they ended up moving home to Grace.

Parent-Adrian and the Eridians he worked with made an entire bio-dome off the coast closest to your small village—an entire little mini Earth for Grace to live in. There's a house that connects to a tunnel at the perimeter for ♫♩♩♫♭ to enter.

You even got your own little suit, specially made so your bad leg could be supported. They're tight against your hematite and allow for significantly more movement than the first ones Parent-Rocky made. You can even move all 14 of your fingers and feel the textures of things like you weren't in a barrier. You quickly realize the texture of sand is just as terrible as you remember and hard to be stable on. The three of them make stepping plates on the sand so you can keep up.

When Parent-Adrian and Grace aren't in the lab saving the star, you spend time together in the bio-dome. Your favorite thing is to play the board game in Grace's house where you have to knock the other pieces off the board. The grown-ups always win, but you're getting better.

The entire bio-dome ordeal is a massive and a grand gesture, so it doesn't shock you want the end string of Grace's name becomes '-Mated.'

It's a little gross. You thought Parent-Rocky and Parent-Adrian were physical when they got home, but the introduction of a third party makes it worse. The Human does a loud movement where he presses his mouth orifice against the thin xenonite barrier—what he calls a kiss—and it's wet and really weird. He does it to you and you laugh and kick your little legs at the tickling.

You like seeing Parent-Adrian happy. They're so lively and energetic when they aren't having the really big emotions. They didn't grow bigger, but the larger family unit meant they could all share the emotion between them.

Grace, no longer relying on the translator, laughs at your 'gross gross gross' when his fingers hold Parent-Adrian's. It's not the same as an Eridian laugh, but you decide that you like the high frequency chirp Humans make just as much.

You wonder what the frequency feels like.

Things go back to normal.

The suits get better.

Grace gets stronger quickly—Parent-Adrian gives him special medicine that makes it easier for him to be on Erid.

Life returns back to as normal as it can be.

"Frequencies and wavelengths are along a spectrum of electromagnetic what?"

Parent-Grace calls on one of the many excited hands that fly up in the air.

'Radiation!'

'That is correct!'

School is pretty boring today.

Parent-Grace says they're going to do something fun tomorrow, but they have to learn the actual science today first. You just want to get to the exciting stuff, but Parent-Rocky says that good things come to those who wait.

You press the pen down on your paper and copy the messy drawing Parent-Grace translates onto the board. It's one long squiggle, getting less chaotic as it goes down the line. You think your drawing is a little better than his.

"Those frequencies can be seen as different colors by me, but you guys don't have that." Parent-Grace's voice comes through in Eridian on the speaker, but you don't need that to understand anymore. You're 72 and your vocab means 'super awesome,' a word the Human taught you from Earth that means good good good.

'What does color feel like?' The Eridian behind you calls out.

"Hands," Parent-Grace lightly reminds and draws a few lines under the squiggle on the board. "They don't feel like anything—the light is recieved by the human eye and sends that information to my brain. It shows up as a different color of light, gradually changing like temperature going from cold-to-hot. Colors range from red-to-violet and everything human eyes can see is one of them."

On the board, the Human writes the names the colors. He bends down to write numbers under it and the xenonite jewelry on his hands clinks against the hematite callouses on his forearm as he works.

"Your outer crust is this frequency." He points to one of the students in the front row and circles 'GREEN.'

You write it neatly on your own page as the entire room erupts into chaos around you. Hands wave back and forth and legs stomp excitedly to get called on.

For the rest of the class, Parent-Grace goes through every Eridian and shows them exactly where their colors fall on the spectrum. He says you're a colorful bunch.

Finally, he calls on you.

"You," Parent-Grace circles several spots on the middle of the board, "are mostly brown. Your lucky leg is a pretty dark blue."

Though you can't see or feel it, but the star shines brighter far above you.