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strange_naturesTitle: Cygnet
Rating: Teen for violence, I think.
Summary: A colony finds a mysterious alien child in the reeds of the riverbank. (This is the two 100 words drafts combined into a whole).
Warnings/Triggers: violence, blood, gore.
The cause of the previous night’s commotion was clear the moment the team reached the river: the wreckage of a battle-scarred ship lay half-hidden by the rushes, gleaming like the crushed remains of an iridescent insect in the morning sunlight.
Doctor Zhiva stepped impatiently into the shallows, his long limbs and slicked-back black hair giving him the appearance of a heron hunting for minnows. The ship was unfamiliar enough that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to treat any surviving occupants, but still he fidgeted for the security team to finish. The sooner he knew, the better.
His toes were numb by the time Security Chief Bevan was sure that the vessel was free from defensive measures; he’d lost feeling up to his ankles by the time the man surfaced from the wreckage holding a single, tiny body.
“Survivors?” Zhiva called to him.
Bevan didn’t answer right away, first settling the small figure onto a hover-gurney and pushing it in Zhiva’s direction. He followed it across the river, fording his solid bulk through the chest-high water as easily as the gurney sped across the surface. “Looks like an escape pod. Signs of a struggle inside as well as out. Poor little beggar was the only passenger.” Glancing back at the wreckage, he added, “It’s built for something much larger. I’d lay money on this not being an adult.”
Zhiva caught the gurney easily and triggered its diagnostics programme. The clamour of the recovery team’s efforts to drag the pod out of the water faded into the background while he checked his patient over: mostly humanoid; fifty-one centimetres tall. They could have been a Terran toddler, but for the way their tawny skin sagged on their small frame, the powerful jaw, and a number of mysterious lumps filled with a cartilaginous material. The gurney’s databanks couldn’t find a species match, but everything coming up pointed to Bevan being right about them having a lost child on their hands.
He sent the data he had to his clinic, nestled deep in the mountainside where the original colony-ship had buried itself almost a century before, and prepared the gurney for travel.
*
The growl emanating from under the cot sounded as though it belonged in the throat of some massive predator, not the fragile foundling they’d fished out of the river. Zhiva reconsidered taking a closer a look, but too many of his colleagues were watching. His professional pride was on the line.
He got down on his hands and knees and peered in at the little creature, provoking a violent crescendo in the growl. The child was pressed against the back wall, as far away from him as they could get, arching their misshapen spine and baring a half-set of baby teeth at him.
“Hello, little one,” Zhiva said as the child hissed at him, “we’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe with us.”
The only response was the swipe of a sharp-clawed hand in his general direction. Zhiva sighed and got to his feet, dusting himself off.
“Here,” Doctor Dawson said from the doorway behind him. “I’ve run everything against the samples. We’re going to need to add some supplements to their diet if their people don’t come for them soon, but this should do for now.”
He turned to see she was holding a tray with a selection of food for their small guest to choose from: fruit, meat, pastries, and a cup of water. He backed away and gestured for her to take his place, wondering whether the child would find her less threatening. She was significantly shorter than he was, but stockier. Maybe her golden hair, tied up in a loose bun, would feel more familiar?
The snarl that emanated from under the cot when she set the tray down indicated otherwise, and they both beat a hasty retreat.
One of the techs, Petersen, broke away from the crowd peering through the window, and asked, “What makes you so sure this is a child?”
As if in response, a plaintive wail of, “Ammmmehhh!” rose from the room next door.
"Aside from them screaming for their mummy?" Dawson muttered. She gestured at the viewing window. "The berths in the pod were ten times the kid's size, and there were signs of a struggle: blood and hair; the DNA is a partial match. I'm guessing a parent who didn't intend for their baby to travel alone." She held up a baggie, and added, "And then there's this."
Inside the plastic was a battered, dirty bundle of fabric. The shape was unfamiliar, a blob with far too many limbs, but it was obvious what it was: a much-loved toy.
Zhiva went to take it from her, intending to return it to its rightful owner, but she pulled it away and said, "Not yet, I want to run some more tests."
"It could calm the poor little mite down," he replied, unable to keep the frustration out of his tone.
"Trust me."
He sighed but relented. When it came down to it, he did trust her.
*
"How does an itty bitty little thing like that make all that big noise," Bevan said, not tearing his gaze away from the window. He'd been assigned as security after the results of Petersen foolishly attempting to drag the child out from under the bed, but his gruff, professional demeanor had melted roughly three seconds after getting a look at the 'threat'.
"I'd say their bark is worse than their bite," Zhiva replied, "but..."
"Pfft, it's not like Petersen's going to lose the fingers. Besides, the daft sod deserved everything he got, scaring the poor kid like that." He gestured inside the room. "Have they eaten yet?"
Zhiva couldn't even begin to keep the concern out of his tone: "No." It had been a couple of days, and the amount of noise the child was making was beginning to falter. Still an endless, heartbreaking loop of growling, sobbing, and plaintive calls for 'Ammeh', but quieter and quieter.
"And that's a problem."
Zhiva said, "Yes," even though the tone had made it clear that the question was rhetorical.
Bevan nodded, then, before Zhiva could react, he let himself into the room. The snarls from under the cot crescendoed again, albeit much weaker than when Petersen had made his doomed attempt at first contact, but Bevan didn't approach: he sat down by the fresh tray of food, picked up a gava fruit, and took a bite, crunching it with a noise so appreciative it had to transcend the species boundary. Then he set the fruit down, picked up a custard tart and took a bite of that too. "This is pretty good," he told the child. "Shame you don't want any, huh?"
He kept going, keeping up a running commentary in a gentle tone that Zhiva wouldn't have previously credited him with, until he'd tried a bite of everything on the plates, then he took a sip of water before launching into a collection of stories.
The kid obviously couldn't understand the words, but it seemed that they grasped the meaning, because the growls dimmed to little more than a token gesture.
It still took an hour for the child to appear at the edge of the cot. They split their wild-eyed attention between the food, the viewing window, and the door, but gradually became more and more focused on the food, until finally they emerged from their hiding place. They didn’t take their eyes off Bevan while they crept clumsily across the floor on all fours, slow but sure, until they were close enough to reach out and grab the edge of the tray. Their retreat back under the bed was surprisingly rapid considering their shambolic gait, but it seemed they could put on a turn of speed when they needed to.
A moment later the room filled with the unmistakable, noisy crunch of gava fruit being consumed.
"See," Bevan said, sounding justifiably pleased with himself, "Itty Bitty just needed to be shown that it's food. Or that it's not poisoned - we don't know what level their mental development is at, right?"
"We're not calling them Itty Bitty," Zhiva said, very aware of how quickly a nickname could stick.
Bevan shrugged and turned his gaze back through the viewing window. "How about 'Moses'?"
Once people were made aware of the name's history it stuck firm.
*
Dawson returned with the toy a few days later, carrying a spray bottle in her other hand. She had a blanket around her neck, and a second one over her arm.
"Finally," Zhiva muttered. "Do I even want to know what took you so long?"
"Rub this all over yourself," she said, tossing him the spare blanket.
"That's not an answer."
She pulled a face at him and brandished her spray bottle. "I've isolated what I think is the parent's scent and replicated it - I didn't want to use the material I collected from the pod in case there were distress hormones, but this..." She trailed off, not needing to complete the sentence. "I say we give little Moses their teddy bear back first, let them settle before pushing our luck, but a blanket that smells like us and their mummy might help them accept that we're not big scary monsters who live above the bed."
Zhiva nodded appreciatively. That might actually work, and if it didn't then at least they'd tried. "I'll get another blanket," he told her. "For Bevan. He's gotten, uh, attached."
"I had noticed," she replied with a grin. "Wish me luck."
She entered the room slowly, talking nonsense to the child in the soft, gentle tones that seemed to calm them. She got another crescendo of growls in return, but the noise stopped the moment she took the toy out of the baggie and held it out to show them. She crouched down to set it on the floor, but before it touched the ground Moses shot from under the cot like a bullet and snatched it out of her grasp; they skidded and rolled, too clumsy and off balance to save themselves. Luckily their momentum ran out before they crashed into the wall, and they were able to get back up onto all fours, their toy tucked protectively underneath them, and hiss at her.
"It's all right, Moses; it's yours, I brought it back for you," Dawson said, gently. Holding her hands out in front of her, she slowly backed out of the room.
"Well, that's gratitude for you," Zhiva said as soon as she'd gotten her breathing back under control and rejoined him at the viewing window.
But inside the room Moses was still out in the open, clutching their toy to their chest and gazing thoughtfully up at the humans watching them: the first time they'd shown any interest beyond fear. After a moment they vanished back into the safety of their den, dragging the battered scrap of fabric with them.
The growls didn't start up again.
*
The next day Zhiva and Dawson left the treated blankets next to the tray of food and water, and were gratified to see them hauled beneath the cot. The sense of progress didn't last: the sobs and heart-breaking calls for 'Ammeh' filled the room again, even louder than before.
*
A fourth week passed, and there was still no sign of the escape-pod's mothership. Naval Intelligence reported that it likely originated from the other side of the Xevallian Neutral Zone.
The United Worlds were not going to poke that hornet's nest for a single baby, no matter how distressed the poor little being was.
Zhiva sighed as he set the tray of food down. There was no sense in losing hope that Moses' people would come for them eventually, but the colony had to resign themselves to having a long-term addition to their number. He shrugged his bag off his shoulder and started to pull out the soft, colourful building blocks he'd brought with him. Each block was different: some crinkled or rattled when touched, some played music, some lit up. So far the child hadn’t shown any interest in toys, but he was determined to keep trying to provide some mental stimulation.
He turned to leave and froze: Moses was between him and the door. He licked his lower lip, his mind suddenly full of memories of the injuries dealt out to Petersen: deep scratches and bitten-off fingers. But the child hadn't shown any signs of aggression beyond self-defense. They'd only protected themselves from what must seem like attacks by monsters.
"Hey," he said, softly, "these are for you." He crouched down to make himself seem smaller, picked up one of the bricks at random, and held it out. Blue and green lights started to pattern its surface, and the first bars of a nursery rhyme filled the room: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. It seemed very appropriate for the moment.
Moses tilted their head, their gaze flicking between the toy and Zhiva's face, then they started to warily creep forwards.
Zhiva didn't dare breathe as a tiny hand reached out. The vicious claws on the child's fingers were retracted into neat sheathes, not extended and ready to defend. That had to be a good sign, right? He kept his own fingers loose around the toy, not wanting to frighten Moses as they carefully took the offered building block and then sat back on their misshapen haunches to examine it.
Moses experimentally squished the soft foam between their palms, and grinned in absolute delight when the music started up again. They looked up at Zhiva, clutched the new toy to their chest, and said, "Sh'ka," before vanishing into the safety of their den.
Pushing further was tempting, but Zhiva retreated from the room. He needed to savour the breakthrough. The kid wanted to start interacting, even if it was going to be a slow and careful process.
They actually had a shot at being successful foster parents to their little mystery.
They just had to hold out until the family showed up.
*
The ships appeared without warning, disgorging their vicious cargo in a wave of violence. The first unprovoked attack.
“Pick on someone your own size!” Zhiva yelled at the Xevallian.
It barely gave him a backwards glance, its entire focus trained on the corner bunk where Moses was trying to shield an unconscious patient with his small body. The child should have been cowering away from the monstrous warrior, but instead he was baring his elongated canines and snarling, long and low, a habit Zhiva had thought he’d grown out of once he’d settled into the colony almost two decades before.
The Xevallian spoke into its communicator, and Zhiva’s own translator took a moment to toggle before providing: “Here is an Alulian whelp. Find the mother.”
An Alulian whelp? The monster had to mean Moses, even if the bright hues of its alarm-crest seemed far out of proportion to the size of the threat. Moses had developed at the same rate as his Terran playmates until he hit the appearance of a ten year old, and then mysteriously stopped, struck down by an illness that left him comatose and grotesquely swollen if he ate anything containing the minerals he insisted on craving. A clumsy, shambling child. No match for a full grown Xevallian warrior.
At least they finally had a definitive answer as to whether he'd reached adulthood, Zhiva thought. He wanted to grab the Xevallian and force it to tell him everything it knew about this ‘whelp’, but preventing Moses from being shot was a more pressing concern. Zhiva hefted an IV stand with more confidence than he felt, and bellowed, “Leave him alone!”
The creature swung its weapon around to aim at him. He had barely enough time to see the tip light up before it vanished sideways in a blur, the gun cracking him across the forehead as it went. Zhiva slammed against the cold plascrete floor, pain tearing the breath from his body and leaving his shoulder numb. Hot liquid spattered his face. He flailed blindly while alien screeching hammered at his eardrums. There was a clatter to his left: the Xevallian had dropped its weapon. Zhiva grabbed for it, found a severed hand still clinging to the trigger and almost threw it away again in horror. He shook the hand free and scrubbed at his eyes; they came away blue with Xevallian blood.
Nothing could have readied him for the scene in front of him: Moses clung to the warrior’s back like a demonic kitten, teeth buried deep in its neck. Bone crunched beneath his powerful jaws; blood spurted, and Zhiva watched him swallow it down as though it was nothing more than fruit juice.
“Moses, stop!”
The only acknowledgement was a growl of dissent, and a flicker of golden eyes in a mask of darkest blue. Moses swallowed blood again and raked his trimmed toe-claws down the Xevallian’s back, narrowly failing to dislodge its spine.
Zhiva’s demands died in his throat. What kind of creature was an Alulian?
Noise from the corridor snatched his attention away. More Xevallians coming. He turned his weapon towards them and prayed he could make it fire, but he didn’t have time to stretch his fingers around the unfamiliar trigger mechanism before Moses abandoned his paralysed prey and launched himself at the nearest newcomer in a blur of blood and snapping bones, vanishing into the melee.
Zhiva couldn’t move, could only listen in mute horror to the cacophony of weaponfire and screaming monsters, as the innocent kid he thought he knew tore through the enemy like a terrier dropped into a pit of vermin.
A slow, creeping realisation made his gorge rise up in his throat: Xevallian blood was rich in all of the minerals they'd denied Moses for so long...
What had they done?
*
“I can’t get him off them,” Bevan muttered, his normally jovial face pale and drawn. “Doc, what have we raised here?”
Zhiva shook his head, still unable to find his voice. The Xevallian ships had been seen off by the Terran Navy; the clinic was crowded with the injured; and Moses was still eating. If the thing that remained could still be called Moses - a swollen blob that sat atop a pile of vanquished foes, tearing flesh to feed on blood-rich organs, crunching bones to get at the marrow. He hadn't attacked anyone who left him to his gruesome meal, but any attempt to separate him from it was met by mindless snarls and lashing claws.
The whispers varied: "He's saved a lot of lives". "We should shoot him now, before he runs out of Xevallians to chew on." "Are you mad, he hasn't attacked any of us!" "...Yet.”
The entire room fell into silence as the topic of conversation dropped a thigh-bone mid-chew and yawned, showing off his powerful jaws and long canines. He pulled himself to all-fours as best he could, dragged himself down the decomposing pile, and shambled across the floor towards Zhiva, his distended body leaving a dark blue trail of blood in his wake.
Zhiva froze, horror choking him. He loved Moses like a son: he was a sweet kid who didn’t deserve the health problems nature had dealt him. Playful and gentle, he read stories to the other children who found themselves in sickbay, and dreamed of one day being a doctor. This thing couldn’t be him, could it?
He remembered the blur of gold that had knocked the Xevallian’s gun to one side, saving his life. Moses’ first taste of blood. If he hadn’t...
This was all his fault.
He swallowed convulsively, trying to control his shuddering. Another whisper about pre-emptive violence galvanised him into pulling himself up and meeting Moses halfway, leaning down and picking him up. The wet squelch of swollen, gore-soaked flesh between his fingers made his gorge rise again, but he forced it down and held Moses close, trying to ignore the alkaline stench of Xevallian blood as he carried him through the wards and into his office. Even though he was sharing it with several patients his authority felt more secure within its walls, and hopefully retreating to his stronghold would see off any more suggestions about how to deal with the issue at hand.
“Moses, can you understand me?” he asked, hoping for some recognition, but there was no sign that the boy even registered the words.
Moses fought being placed on a cot, preferring to shamble under the desk and flop there in the dark. After several attempts at moving him, Zhiva gave in and let him settle, then buried his face in his bloodied hands and tried to think what to do. He didn’t have access to the treatments he normally used when the kid had gotten into a store of gava fruit, or any of the other foods that triggered one of his episodes.
Knowing what little he did now, Zhiva wasn’t sure whether he ever should have used them.
*
Zhiva woke to find a pulsating gold and blue mass beneath his desk. Bevan was seated on a chair in front of the office door, a gun laid across his legs, with no indication of whether he was supposed to be keeping Moses in, or keeping anyone who wanted to hurt Moses out.
“Any clue what’s going to come out of that cocoon, Doc?” he asked by way of a greeting.
What possible clue could he have? He'd never come across a life-cycle like this in his studies, or in the xenobiology databases he'd managed to search before he'd surrendered to sleep. “Something that terrifies Xevallians.”
“With good bloody reason, if that performance was anything to go by.”
*
Life returned to some semblance of normal: rebuilding started; the clinic emptied; and Zhiva had his office back to himself. Mostly. He left the cocoon alone, choosing to work at a trestle table instead of disturbing it. Curiosity burned at him, but the vibration or radiation from a scanner might cause damage, and he’d probably caused enough spending so many years preventing Moses from entering the next stage of his life-cycle.
No, he had to satisfy himself with waiting, and hoping that whatever came out would still be Moses, even if he was in a very different form.
But what possible form might he take? There was no clue in the databanks; Moses was still a species of one as far as Terran science was concerned. Just how far had the pod they’d found the child in travelled? And had the Xevallians destroyed its matching ship?
So many questions, too few answers.
He took to sleeping in his office, wanting to be close by when, or if, the big day came.
*
A thud roused Zhiva from his sleep. He sat bolt upright, clutching his covers, gaze flicking around the dimly lit room. A nightmare? But nothing seemed too awry. Then he heard the quiet whimpering coming from his desk. “Moses?”
Another thud, then: “Uncle Zhiva?”
The voice was so deep it bordered on unrecognisable, but the waver in it was enough to send Zhiva scrambling to his feet. He picked his scanner up from his trestle table as he approached. “Moses, are you all right?”
“I don’t know... M’stuck in something.”
Heart in throat, Zhiva gestured to brighten the lights, and peered around the edge of the desk. A flailing limb almost smacked him in the face, but missed and bumped the desk again. That explained the thud, if nothing else. He caught the limb on the next flail. It was sticky with a dark fluid, and bent unnaturally, as though the bone inside was soft and flexible. Running his scanner over it revealed a matrix, similar to the spongy tissue he inserted into a patient when a chunk of bone was missing. Strange. He followed the limb down to the cocoon itself until he found a split where a very human-looking, albeit blue-stained, nose and mouth had escaped their prison. Oh, thank the stars, he thought as he let out the breath he’d been holding. At least some of the kid was recognisable.
“Hold on,” he told Moses, “I’m going to get you out.”
“Why am I in here? What happened?!”
“It’s difficult to explain, I need you to stay calm while we get you out first, can you do that for me?”
“Um, no?”
Laughter spilled out before Zhiva could stop it. No matter how deep his new voice might be, only their little Moses could achieve that exact balance of sarcasm and earnestness. “Keep still, everything is going to be all right.” He swiftly ran his sensor over the exposed nose, then the bump of Moses’ cocooned skull, then down the line of his spine and his limbs, and finally one of the dribbles of blue fluid. Interesting.
Moses licked some of the fluid off his lips and swallowed, then licked his own nose and swallowed again. He froze. “Sorry, tastes good.”
“And why would you be sorry for eating something that tastes good?” Zhiva asked, already suspecting the answer.
“...Tastes like gava fruit.”
Of course it tasted like one of the forbidden foods; the fluid was crammed with the nutrients Moses had been craving for the past thirteen years. “Hold on,” Zhiva repeated, motioning the lights brighter, “I’m going to get something to catch it with.”
Finding a suitably large tub was easy compared to hauling the cocoon into it.
“Uncle Zhiva, what’s going on?”
“You ate the equivalent of a lot of gava fruit,” Zhiva murmured as he slid his fingers into the cocoon and pulled it away from Moses’ face. Using a scalpel, he carefully sliced through the leathery material until there was enough room to free the child’s head completely. Oh, he thought, now would you look at that.
“I’m really sorry,” Moses said, letting his cheek rest against Zhiva’s hand.
“Don’t be, I suspect you’re the one who is owed an apology.” The dark blue made it difficult to pick out details, but he didn’t need a good view to see the obvious: Moses had looked like a pre-pubescent child for years, but now his bright gold eyes gazed up out of a young adult’s face. Their strange little alien baby, all grown up at last.
Smart really, Zhiva thought, to spend puberty slumbering in a cocoon instead of living through a hormone riddled hell. “I think the fluid is a stockpile of nutrients you’re supposed to ingest now that you’re awake,” he said as he went back to cutting him free. “Most of your skeleton is soft right now, but it appears to be ready and waiting to start taking up what it needs to harden - you’re playing catch-up with your own growth spurt, little one.”
He paused in his work and gazed thoughtfully at the escaped limb. If the data from his scanner was correct then they were going to need more room.
*
The whoosh of the grav-ball court’s door opening was enough to distract Moses from the pile of gava fruit and dechil-seed pancakes he was gorging himself on. He beamed, and called out: “G’morning, Uncle Bevan!”
Zhiva was glad he looked up in time to catch the expression on his old friend’s face. He’d banned everyone from the court, worried that one of Moses’ fragile new limbs would be nudged or stepped on in a crush of curious onlookers, but he’d fully expected Bevan to override the lock and enter anyway. He wasn’t disappointed to learn he was right.
“Zhiva?” Bevan said uncertainly, his gaze flicking between him and Moses.
Smiling to himself, Zhiva went back to arranging the quills that protected his patient’s partially grown flight-feathers, aligning them so they wouldn’t interfere with the hardening process of the nearby bones, especially the delicate fingers and thumbs that protruded from the second joint of each wing. Those were definitely not vestigial; they already twitched and tried to grasp.
Moses was still stained dark blue from the amniotic fluid of his cocoon, but here and there his original tawny-gold showed through: in his new velvety fur, and patches of bare skin - skin that now fit his slim frame like a glove. He couldn’t stand yet, his four long legs still too pliable to support his weight, but when he did he would probably be around a metre and a half tall at the shoulder. His sternum and ribcage had hardened to form a deep keel that would eventually anchor his massive wingspan, and his spine now extended into a long, tapering tail, complete with a fluffy puff of feathers at the tip.
Overall he was a scrawny creature, all gangly limbs and big paws, but it spoke of late adolescence: that period after the growth spurts had done their work, but before a youngster started to fill out and put on their adult muscle.
A sapient species that started out humanoid, but ended up in a very different shape altogether. And the Earth-Prime historians were going to lose their collective minds when the details of Moses’ adult form reached them.
Zhiva sat back to examine his handiwork, wiping blue goop off his fingers, and said, “It seems our little duckling is now a swan, my friend.”
“Look, Uncle Bevan!” Moses announced, his voice so filled with delight that it still sounded childlike despite its new bass notes. “I’m a sphinx!”
Rating: Teen for violence, I think.
Summary: A colony finds a mysterious alien child in the reeds of the riverbank. (This is the two 100 words drafts combined into a whole).
Warnings/Triggers: violence, blood, gore.
The cause of the previous night’s commotion was clear the moment the team reached the river: the wreckage of a battle-scarred ship lay half-hidden by the rushes, gleaming like the crushed remains of an iridescent insect in the morning sunlight.
Doctor Zhiva stepped impatiently into the shallows, his long limbs and slicked-back black hair giving him the appearance of a heron hunting for minnows. The ship was unfamiliar enough that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to treat any surviving occupants, but still he fidgeted for the security team to finish. The sooner he knew, the better.
His toes were numb by the time Security Chief Bevan was sure that the vessel was free from defensive measures; he’d lost feeling up to his ankles by the time the man surfaced from the wreckage holding a single, tiny body.
“Survivors?” Zhiva called to him.
Bevan didn’t answer right away, first settling the small figure onto a hover-gurney and pushing it in Zhiva’s direction. He followed it across the river, fording his solid bulk through the chest-high water as easily as the gurney sped across the surface. “Looks like an escape pod. Signs of a struggle inside as well as out. Poor little beggar was the only passenger.” Glancing back at the wreckage, he added, “It’s built for something much larger. I’d lay money on this not being an adult.”
Zhiva caught the gurney easily and triggered its diagnostics programme. The clamour of the recovery team’s efforts to drag the pod out of the water faded into the background while he checked his patient over: mostly humanoid; fifty-one centimetres tall. They could have been a Terran toddler, but for the way their tawny skin sagged on their small frame, the powerful jaw, and a number of mysterious lumps filled with a cartilaginous material. The gurney’s databanks couldn’t find a species match, but everything coming up pointed to Bevan being right about them having a lost child on their hands.
He sent the data he had to his clinic, nestled deep in the mountainside where the original colony-ship had buried itself almost a century before, and prepared the gurney for travel.
*
The growl emanating from under the cot sounded as though it belonged in the throat of some massive predator, not the fragile foundling they’d fished out of the river. Zhiva reconsidered taking a closer a look, but too many of his colleagues were watching. His professional pride was on the line.
He got down on his hands and knees and peered in at the little creature, provoking a violent crescendo in the growl. The child was pressed against the back wall, as far away from him as they could get, arching their misshapen spine and baring a half-set of baby teeth at him.
“Hello, little one,” Zhiva said as the child hissed at him, “we’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe with us.”
The only response was the swipe of a sharp-clawed hand in his general direction. Zhiva sighed and got to his feet, dusting himself off.
“Here,” Doctor Dawson said from the doorway behind him. “I’ve run everything against the samples. We’re going to need to add some supplements to their diet if their people don’t come for them soon, but this should do for now.”
He turned to see she was holding a tray with a selection of food for their small guest to choose from: fruit, meat, pastries, and a cup of water. He backed away and gestured for her to take his place, wondering whether the child would find her less threatening. She was significantly shorter than he was, but stockier. Maybe her golden hair, tied up in a loose bun, would feel more familiar?
The snarl that emanated from under the cot when she set the tray down indicated otherwise, and they both beat a hasty retreat.
One of the techs, Petersen, broke away from the crowd peering through the window, and asked, “What makes you so sure this is a child?”
As if in response, a plaintive wail of, “Ammmmehhh!” rose from the room next door.
"Aside from them screaming for their mummy?" Dawson muttered. She gestured at the viewing window. "The berths in the pod were ten times the kid's size, and there were signs of a struggle: blood and hair; the DNA is a partial match. I'm guessing a parent who didn't intend for their baby to travel alone." She held up a baggie, and added, "And then there's this."
Inside the plastic was a battered, dirty bundle of fabric. The shape was unfamiliar, a blob with far too many limbs, but it was obvious what it was: a much-loved toy.
Zhiva went to take it from her, intending to return it to its rightful owner, but she pulled it away and said, "Not yet, I want to run some more tests."
"It could calm the poor little mite down," he replied, unable to keep the frustration out of his tone.
"Trust me."
He sighed but relented. When it came down to it, he did trust her.
*
"How does an itty bitty little thing like that make all that big noise," Bevan said, not tearing his gaze away from the window. He'd been assigned as security after the results of Petersen foolishly attempting to drag the child out from under the bed, but his gruff, professional demeanor had melted roughly three seconds after getting a look at the 'threat'.
"I'd say their bark is worse than their bite," Zhiva replied, "but..."
"Pfft, it's not like Petersen's going to lose the fingers. Besides, the daft sod deserved everything he got, scaring the poor kid like that." He gestured inside the room. "Have they eaten yet?"
Zhiva couldn't even begin to keep the concern out of his tone: "No." It had been a couple of days, and the amount of noise the child was making was beginning to falter. Still an endless, heartbreaking loop of growling, sobbing, and plaintive calls for 'Ammeh', but quieter and quieter.
"And that's a problem."
Zhiva said, "Yes," even though the tone had made it clear that the question was rhetorical.
Bevan nodded, then, before Zhiva could react, he let himself into the room. The snarls from under the cot crescendoed again, albeit much weaker than when Petersen had made his doomed attempt at first contact, but Bevan didn't approach: he sat down by the fresh tray of food, picked up a gava fruit, and took a bite, crunching it with a noise so appreciative it had to transcend the species boundary. Then he set the fruit down, picked up a custard tart and took a bite of that too. "This is pretty good," he told the child. "Shame you don't want any, huh?"
He kept going, keeping up a running commentary in a gentle tone that Zhiva wouldn't have previously credited him with, until he'd tried a bite of everything on the plates, then he took a sip of water before launching into a collection of stories.
The kid obviously couldn't understand the words, but it seemed that they grasped the meaning, because the growls dimmed to little more than a token gesture.
It still took an hour for the child to appear at the edge of the cot. They split their wild-eyed attention between the food, the viewing window, and the door, but gradually became more and more focused on the food, until finally they emerged from their hiding place. They didn’t take their eyes off Bevan while they crept clumsily across the floor on all fours, slow but sure, until they were close enough to reach out and grab the edge of the tray. Their retreat back under the bed was surprisingly rapid considering their shambolic gait, but it seemed they could put on a turn of speed when they needed to.
A moment later the room filled with the unmistakable, noisy crunch of gava fruit being consumed.
"See," Bevan said, sounding justifiably pleased with himself, "Itty Bitty just needed to be shown that it's food. Or that it's not poisoned - we don't know what level their mental development is at, right?"
"We're not calling them Itty Bitty," Zhiva said, very aware of how quickly a nickname could stick.
Bevan shrugged and turned his gaze back through the viewing window. "How about 'Moses'?"
Once people were made aware of the name's history it stuck firm.
*
Dawson returned with the toy a few days later, carrying a spray bottle in her other hand. She had a blanket around her neck, and a second one over her arm.
"Finally," Zhiva muttered. "Do I even want to know what took you so long?"
"Rub this all over yourself," she said, tossing him the spare blanket.
"That's not an answer."
She pulled a face at him and brandished her spray bottle. "I've isolated what I think is the parent's scent and replicated it - I didn't want to use the material I collected from the pod in case there were distress hormones, but this..." She trailed off, not needing to complete the sentence. "I say we give little Moses their teddy bear back first, let them settle before pushing our luck, but a blanket that smells like us and their mummy might help them accept that we're not big scary monsters who live above the bed."
Zhiva nodded appreciatively. That might actually work, and if it didn't then at least they'd tried. "I'll get another blanket," he told her. "For Bevan. He's gotten, uh, attached."
"I had noticed," she replied with a grin. "Wish me luck."
She entered the room slowly, talking nonsense to the child in the soft, gentle tones that seemed to calm them. She got another crescendo of growls in return, but the noise stopped the moment she took the toy out of the baggie and held it out to show them. She crouched down to set it on the floor, but before it touched the ground Moses shot from under the cot like a bullet and snatched it out of her grasp; they skidded and rolled, too clumsy and off balance to save themselves. Luckily their momentum ran out before they crashed into the wall, and they were able to get back up onto all fours, their toy tucked protectively underneath them, and hiss at her.
"It's all right, Moses; it's yours, I brought it back for you," Dawson said, gently. Holding her hands out in front of her, she slowly backed out of the room.
"Well, that's gratitude for you," Zhiva said as soon as she'd gotten her breathing back under control and rejoined him at the viewing window.
But inside the room Moses was still out in the open, clutching their toy to their chest and gazing thoughtfully up at the humans watching them: the first time they'd shown any interest beyond fear. After a moment they vanished back into the safety of their den, dragging the battered scrap of fabric with them.
The growls didn't start up again.
*
The next day Zhiva and Dawson left the treated blankets next to the tray of food and water, and were gratified to see them hauled beneath the cot. The sense of progress didn't last: the sobs and heart-breaking calls for 'Ammeh' filled the room again, even louder than before.
*
A fourth week passed, and there was still no sign of the escape-pod's mothership. Naval Intelligence reported that it likely originated from the other side of the Xevallian Neutral Zone.
The United Worlds were not going to poke that hornet's nest for a single baby, no matter how distressed the poor little being was.
Zhiva sighed as he set the tray of food down. There was no sense in losing hope that Moses' people would come for them eventually, but the colony had to resign themselves to having a long-term addition to their number. He shrugged his bag off his shoulder and started to pull out the soft, colourful building blocks he'd brought with him. Each block was different: some crinkled or rattled when touched, some played music, some lit up. So far the child hadn’t shown any interest in toys, but he was determined to keep trying to provide some mental stimulation.
He turned to leave and froze: Moses was between him and the door. He licked his lower lip, his mind suddenly full of memories of the injuries dealt out to Petersen: deep scratches and bitten-off fingers. But the child hadn't shown any signs of aggression beyond self-defense. They'd only protected themselves from what must seem like attacks by monsters.
"Hey," he said, softly, "these are for you." He crouched down to make himself seem smaller, picked up one of the bricks at random, and held it out. Blue and green lights started to pattern its surface, and the first bars of a nursery rhyme filled the room: Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. It seemed very appropriate for the moment.
Moses tilted their head, their gaze flicking between the toy and Zhiva's face, then they started to warily creep forwards.
Zhiva didn't dare breathe as a tiny hand reached out. The vicious claws on the child's fingers were retracted into neat sheathes, not extended and ready to defend. That had to be a good sign, right? He kept his own fingers loose around the toy, not wanting to frighten Moses as they carefully took the offered building block and then sat back on their misshapen haunches to examine it.
Moses experimentally squished the soft foam between their palms, and grinned in absolute delight when the music started up again. They looked up at Zhiva, clutched the new toy to their chest, and said, "Sh'ka," before vanishing into the safety of their den.
Pushing further was tempting, but Zhiva retreated from the room. He needed to savour the breakthrough. The kid wanted to start interacting, even if it was going to be a slow and careful process.
They actually had a shot at being successful foster parents to their little mystery.
They just had to hold out until the family showed up.
*
The ships appeared without warning, disgorging their vicious cargo in a wave of violence. The first unprovoked attack.
“Pick on someone your own size!” Zhiva yelled at the Xevallian.
It barely gave him a backwards glance, its entire focus trained on the corner bunk where Moses was trying to shield an unconscious patient with his small body. The child should have been cowering away from the monstrous warrior, but instead he was baring his elongated canines and snarling, long and low, a habit Zhiva had thought he’d grown out of once he’d settled into the colony almost two decades before.
The Xevallian spoke into its communicator, and Zhiva’s own translator took a moment to toggle before providing: “Here is an Alulian whelp. Find the mother.”
An Alulian whelp? The monster had to mean Moses, even if the bright hues of its alarm-crest seemed far out of proportion to the size of the threat. Moses had developed at the same rate as his Terran playmates until he hit the appearance of a ten year old, and then mysteriously stopped, struck down by an illness that left him comatose and grotesquely swollen if he ate anything containing the minerals he insisted on craving. A clumsy, shambling child. No match for a full grown Xevallian warrior.
At least they finally had a definitive answer as to whether he'd reached adulthood, Zhiva thought. He wanted to grab the Xevallian and force it to tell him everything it knew about this ‘whelp’, but preventing Moses from being shot was a more pressing concern. Zhiva hefted an IV stand with more confidence than he felt, and bellowed, “Leave him alone!”
The creature swung its weapon around to aim at him. He had barely enough time to see the tip light up before it vanished sideways in a blur, the gun cracking him across the forehead as it went. Zhiva slammed against the cold plascrete floor, pain tearing the breath from his body and leaving his shoulder numb. Hot liquid spattered his face. He flailed blindly while alien screeching hammered at his eardrums. There was a clatter to his left: the Xevallian had dropped its weapon. Zhiva grabbed for it, found a severed hand still clinging to the trigger and almost threw it away again in horror. He shook the hand free and scrubbed at his eyes; they came away blue with Xevallian blood.
Nothing could have readied him for the scene in front of him: Moses clung to the warrior’s back like a demonic kitten, teeth buried deep in its neck. Bone crunched beneath his powerful jaws; blood spurted, and Zhiva watched him swallow it down as though it was nothing more than fruit juice.
“Moses, stop!”
The only acknowledgement was a growl of dissent, and a flicker of golden eyes in a mask of darkest blue. Moses swallowed blood again and raked his trimmed toe-claws down the Xevallian’s back, narrowly failing to dislodge its spine.
Zhiva’s demands died in his throat. What kind of creature was an Alulian?
Noise from the corridor snatched his attention away. More Xevallians coming. He turned his weapon towards them and prayed he could make it fire, but he didn’t have time to stretch his fingers around the unfamiliar trigger mechanism before Moses abandoned his paralysed prey and launched himself at the nearest newcomer in a blur of blood and snapping bones, vanishing into the melee.
Zhiva couldn’t move, could only listen in mute horror to the cacophony of weaponfire and screaming monsters, as the innocent kid he thought he knew tore through the enemy like a terrier dropped into a pit of vermin.
A slow, creeping realisation made his gorge rise up in his throat: Xevallian blood was rich in all of the minerals they'd denied Moses for so long...
What had they done?
*
“I can’t get him off them,” Bevan muttered, his normally jovial face pale and drawn. “Doc, what have we raised here?”
Zhiva shook his head, still unable to find his voice. The Xevallian ships had been seen off by the Terran Navy; the clinic was crowded with the injured; and Moses was still eating. If the thing that remained could still be called Moses - a swollen blob that sat atop a pile of vanquished foes, tearing flesh to feed on blood-rich organs, crunching bones to get at the marrow. He hadn't attacked anyone who left him to his gruesome meal, but any attempt to separate him from it was met by mindless snarls and lashing claws.
The whispers varied: "He's saved a lot of lives". "We should shoot him now, before he runs out of Xevallians to chew on." "Are you mad, he hasn't attacked any of us!" "...Yet.”
The entire room fell into silence as the topic of conversation dropped a thigh-bone mid-chew and yawned, showing off his powerful jaws and long canines. He pulled himself to all-fours as best he could, dragged himself down the decomposing pile, and shambled across the floor towards Zhiva, his distended body leaving a dark blue trail of blood in his wake.
Zhiva froze, horror choking him. He loved Moses like a son: he was a sweet kid who didn’t deserve the health problems nature had dealt him. Playful and gentle, he read stories to the other children who found themselves in sickbay, and dreamed of one day being a doctor. This thing couldn’t be him, could it?
He remembered the blur of gold that had knocked the Xevallian’s gun to one side, saving his life. Moses’ first taste of blood. If he hadn’t...
This was all his fault.
He swallowed convulsively, trying to control his shuddering. Another whisper about pre-emptive violence galvanised him into pulling himself up and meeting Moses halfway, leaning down and picking him up. The wet squelch of swollen, gore-soaked flesh between his fingers made his gorge rise again, but he forced it down and held Moses close, trying to ignore the alkaline stench of Xevallian blood as he carried him through the wards and into his office. Even though he was sharing it with several patients his authority felt more secure within its walls, and hopefully retreating to his stronghold would see off any more suggestions about how to deal with the issue at hand.
“Moses, can you understand me?” he asked, hoping for some recognition, but there was no sign that the boy even registered the words.
Moses fought being placed on a cot, preferring to shamble under the desk and flop there in the dark. After several attempts at moving him, Zhiva gave in and let him settle, then buried his face in his bloodied hands and tried to think what to do. He didn’t have access to the treatments he normally used when the kid had gotten into a store of gava fruit, or any of the other foods that triggered one of his episodes.
Knowing what little he did now, Zhiva wasn’t sure whether he ever should have used them.
*
Zhiva woke to find a pulsating gold and blue mass beneath his desk. Bevan was seated on a chair in front of the office door, a gun laid across his legs, with no indication of whether he was supposed to be keeping Moses in, or keeping anyone who wanted to hurt Moses out.
“Any clue what’s going to come out of that cocoon, Doc?” he asked by way of a greeting.
What possible clue could he have? He'd never come across a life-cycle like this in his studies, or in the xenobiology databases he'd managed to search before he'd surrendered to sleep. “Something that terrifies Xevallians.”
“With good bloody reason, if that performance was anything to go by.”
*
Life returned to some semblance of normal: rebuilding started; the clinic emptied; and Zhiva had his office back to himself. Mostly. He left the cocoon alone, choosing to work at a trestle table instead of disturbing it. Curiosity burned at him, but the vibration or radiation from a scanner might cause damage, and he’d probably caused enough spending so many years preventing Moses from entering the next stage of his life-cycle.
No, he had to satisfy himself with waiting, and hoping that whatever came out would still be Moses, even if he was in a very different form.
But what possible form might he take? There was no clue in the databanks; Moses was still a species of one as far as Terran science was concerned. Just how far had the pod they’d found the child in travelled? And had the Xevallians destroyed its matching ship?
So many questions, too few answers.
He took to sleeping in his office, wanting to be close by when, or if, the big day came.
*
A thud roused Zhiva from his sleep. He sat bolt upright, clutching his covers, gaze flicking around the dimly lit room. A nightmare? But nothing seemed too awry. Then he heard the quiet whimpering coming from his desk. “Moses?”
Another thud, then: “Uncle Zhiva?”
The voice was so deep it bordered on unrecognisable, but the waver in it was enough to send Zhiva scrambling to his feet. He picked his scanner up from his trestle table as he approached. “Moses, are you all right?”
“I don’t know... M’stuck in something.”
Heart in throat, Zhiva gestured to brighten the lights, and peered around the edge of the desk. A flailing limb almost smacked him in the face, but missed and bumped the desk again. That explained the thud, if nothing else. He caught the limb on the next flail. It was sticky with a dark fluid, and bent unnaturally, as though the bone inside was soft and flexible. Running his scanner over it revealed a matrix, similar to the spongy tissue he inserted into a patient when a chunk of bone was missing. Strange. He followed the limb down to the cocoon itself until he found a split where a very human-looking, albeit blue-stained, nose and mouth had escaped their prison. Oh, thank the stars, he thought as he let out the breath he’d been holding. At least some of the kid was recognisable.
“Hold on,” he told Moses, “I’m going to get you out.”
“Why am I in here? What happened?!”
“It’s difficult to explain, I need you to stay calm while we get you out first, can you do that for me?”
“Um, no?”
Laughter spilled out before Zhiva could stop it. No matter how deep his new voice might be, only their little Moses could achieve that exact balance of sarcasm and earnestness. “Keep still, everything is going to be all right.” He swiftly ran his sensor over the exposed nose, then the bump of Moses’ cocooned skull, then down the line of his spine and his limbs, and finally one of the dribbles of blue fluid. Interesting.
Moses licked some of the fluid off his lips and swallowed, then licked his own nose and swallowed again. He froze. “Sorry, tastes good.”
“And why would you be sorry for eating something that tastes good?” Zhiva asked, already suspecting the answer.
“...Tastes like gava fruit.”
Of course it tasted like one of the forbidden foods; the fluid was crammed with the nutrients Moses had been craving for the past thirteen years. “Hold on,” Zhiva repeated, motioning the lights brighter, “I’m going to get something to catch it with.”
Finding a suitably large tub was easy compared to hauling the cocoon into it.
“Uncle Zhiva, what’s going on?”
“You ate the equivalent of a lot of gava fruit,” Zhiva murmured as he slid his fingers into the cocoon and pulled it away from Moses’ face. Using a scalpel, he carefully sliced through the leathery material until there was enough room to free the child’s head completely. Oh, he thought, now would you look at that.
“I’m really sorry,” Moses said, letting his cheek rest against Zhiva’s hand.
“Don’t be, I suspect you’re the one who is owed an apology.” The dark blue made it difficult to pick out details, but he didn’t need a good view to see the obvious: Moses had looked like a pre-pubescent child for years, but now his bright gold eyes gazed up out of a young adult’s face. Their strange little alien baby, all grown up at last.
Smart really, Zhiva thought, to spend puberty slumbering in a cocoon instead of living through a hormone riddled hell. “I think the fluid is a stockpile of nutrients you’re supposed to ingest now that you’re awake,” he said as he went back to cutting him free. “Most of your skeleton is soft right now, but it appears to be ready and waiting to start taking up what it needs to harden - you’re playing catch-up with your own growth spurt, little one.”
He paused in his work and gazed thoughtfully at the escaped limb. If the data from his scanner was correct then they were going to need more room.
*
The whoosh of the grav-ball court’s door opening was enough to distract Moses from the pile of gava fruit and dechil-seed pancakes he was gorging himself on. He beamed, and called out: “G’morning, Uncle Bevan!”
Zhiva was glad he looked up in time to catch the expression on his old friend’s face. He’d banned everyone from the court, worried that one of Moses’ fragile new limbs would be nudged or stepped on in a crush of curious onlookers, but he’d fully expected Bevan to override the lock and enter anyway. He wasn’t disappointed to learn he was right.
“Zhiva?” Bevan said uncertainly, his gaze flicking between him and Moses.
Smiling to himself, Zhiva went back to arranging the quills that protected his patient’s partially grown flight-feathers, aligning them so they wouldn’t interfere with the hardening process of the nearby bones, especially the delicate fingers and thumbs that protruded from the second joint of each wing. Those were definitely not vestigial; they already twitched and tried to grasp.
Moses was still stained dark blue from the amniotic fluid of his cocoon, but here and there his original tawny-gold showed through: in his new velvety fur, and patches of bare skin - skin that now fit his slim frame like a glove. He couldn’t stand yet, his four long legs still too pliable to support his weight, but when he did he would probably be around a metre and a half tall at the shoulder. His sternum and ribcage had hardened to form a deep keel that would eventually anchor his massive wingspan, and his spine now extended into a long, tapering tail, complete with a fluffy puff of feathers at the tip.
Overall he was a scrawny creature, all gangly limbs and big paws, but it spoke of late adolescence: that period after the growth spurts had done their work, but before a youngster started to fill out and put on their adult muscle.
A sapient species that started out humanoid, but ended up in a very different shape altogether. And the Earth-Prime historians were going to lose their collective minds when the details of Moses’ adult form reached them.
Zhiva sat back to examine his handiwork, wiping blue goop off his fingers, and said, “It seems our little duckling is now a swan, my friend.”
“Look, Uncle Bevan!” Moses announced, his voice so filled with delight that it still sounded childlike despite its new bass notes. “I’m a sphinx!”
