Page 90 of Strange Lights

His baby can’t wait any longer, still sleeping in the last waiting pod. He’s going with her. He doesn’t mind that the journey will be extra cramped because they’ll need double life support crammed inside; they’ll both be asleep for most of it. She looks peaceful. Her own Helper companion is curled around her wrist. He barely makes it inside before the pod closes, launching into the dark void. A brief glance through the window gives him a glimpse of another pod, cruising along a slightly different path; the distance between them growing. A fleet of lifeboats drifting in a stormy sea⁠—he hopes some of them survive it. Orion waits for the bright flash in the distance behind them, says a silent goodbye to their ship and those still left aboard, and heads off into peaceful oblivion, trusting the little robot curled around his fingers will wake him when they’re close.

Orion isn’t sure what goes wrong this time, but he wakes to yet another crisis. Coming to with a gasp, startled from stasis unceremoniously, he finds the little robot curled around his fingers frantically squeezing and running checks on his vitals, all it is capable of doing to help him. The escape pod is cracked open, ruined, a twirl of smoke rising into the air from its shell and a small fire crackling around the wreckage. Orion searches for the baby before he feels the bruises and aches set in. Baby, awake and panting, seems unharmed, only scared and confused. His own body feels beaten and strangely light.

But they’ve made it; they’re alive, on solid ground. Strange ground. And gravity feels different, light, as if he could leap and bound farther than he ever has before. The night is darker here, the colors different. The air smells overwhelmingly delicious but feels wet on his tongue. There’s only one moon, but he can still see well enough. It’s complete sensory overload.

Shockingly loud sounds and pounding hooves are everywhere. Run, hide, his senses tell him. But he can’t because of the creatures; they are everywhere, so many of them. Something bowls right over Baby. She cowers silently. Rage clouds Orion’s mind, and he reacts, thinking only to protect her.

He’s no longer prey; he’s predator. And to his surprise, when he bites into the neck of the creature, it falls with little effort on his part and no fighting back. Some of the other creatures flee, but many mill about stupidly, and Orion feels powerful. He feels what it’s like to be the monster in the night. He stops being afraid. The baby at his feet senses his change of mood. She can smell the air, and she’s already drooling, a hungry gleam in her eye. She, too, darts toward a creature, copies his movements to bring one down for herself.

Orion’s species aren’t natural carnivores. On their home planet, they harvest plants; their sharp teeth are for piercing the tough outer shells of the vegetation to get to the sweet and soft insides. But this creature is like a moving plant. Full of delicious liquid. It tastes almost like the tree sap, the kind they feed the babies. It will be enough for him for now and the baby, enough to tide them over.

This is the moment Orion falls in love with this planet, as he stands guard while Baby eats. He sees her hunger fully fade for the first time since he’s known her; she has not just enough, but excess. The herd of creatures hasn’t even fully dispersed yet. Some of them linger nearby, not even bothering to run or hide or be quiet. No more rations; they can have as much as they want. Orion can survive here. He and Baby can thrive.

The surroundings are alien, but he doesn’t bother to analyze them too hard; he only devotes attention to vital things like shelter, safety, places to dart in the unfamiliar foliage, and hiding spaces. The wreckage of their escape pod, the smell of his kill, will draw any nearby predators; of this Orion is sure. His gut tells him this planet is safe enough, that the Beasts are not here. But that’s no reason for carelessness. He’s not about to let them fail now, so he keeps his eyes up, constantly scanning for danger.

The fire burns out quickly, leaving only a thread of smoke in the air by the time the company Orion expected appears out of the darkness. This life, too, is loud and obvious. Safety. It all screams, “Safety!” The planet is safe if its life-forms can afford to be so careless and loud in the darkness. Orion and the baby have plenty of time to dart into the nearby shadows. Hide, silent, still.

Different creatures, two of them. The larger carrying a little light that shines across the patches of ground. Orion tenses, ready to pick up Baby and run if he has to. She’s watching as avidly as he is, as silently. The fear rolls off her in palpable waves. Orion sniffs the air but catches no scent of the Beasts. And these creatures are much smaller than Beasts. Not any larger than him or Baby. They smell unfamiliar, but not bad. Not delicious, like this prey they found.

The beings are communicating with each other, Orion realizes, as he listens. He’s good at observing and deducing things about unfamiliar creatures now; he’s had to be to make it this far. The larger being points and gestures, and the smaller one asks something in reply. When the little one stumbles, the larger one catches it, steadies it.

Brother, Sister, Orion thinks suddenly with a pang. They look nothing like his brother and sister, but their interactions remind him unexpectedly of the family he lost. Of how he feels about Baby. The big one points to the sky, at the stars glimmering there.

“Orion,” it says.

Orion. Orion. Orion.

Orion rolls this unfamiliar word in his head over and over, looking at the stars where he came from. Where Mothership is flying, maybe on the way to them already. He likes it, this strange word. He decides Orion will be his new name to match his new life.

But the smaller being catches sight of the mess Orion and Baby have made of the things they killed. Fur and horns and hooves, all familiar concepts but jumbled in a new way on this strange planet. Orion feels a blip of sadness and guilt. He doesn’t want to be a beast or monster here; he resolves to survive, to make his home here, but not like the Beasts do. Orion only wants to be a part of things, not take them over. But how to explain that? He’ll have to learn the language. He starts to plan.

The bigger being protectively throws out an arm to hold the littler one. Brother. Sister. Orion is sure of that now. And he doesn’t want to hurt them, doesn’t want to be the dark beast in the woods who fell from the sky. Maybe they can help him. Orion hesitates, moves forward, trying to make his mouth form the strange sounds. Orion, Orion, Orion. But it’s more difficult than he expected, and it doesn’t come out right, doesn’t sound at all like the sound the being made.

The beings turn toward the movement; light flashes unexpectedly across Orion. The light hurts his eyes, and he hisses in pain, inadvertently baring his fangs. He lunges quickly over the little one to shelter her.

The sounds the beings make as they flee are quite obviously alarm calls. Orion and Baby run in the opposite direction. Better to observe and plan some more before attempting more interaction, Orion thinks. The last word the little beings scream is the second word Orion learns on this planet. And the second name he claims for himself.

“Chupacabras! Chupacabras!”

Orion and Baby live a nomadic and largely nocturnal life for a long time. Everything Orion sees and learns and practices, he tries to teach to Baby. They only have their two little robotic companions to help. And they do help, a lot, but their Helper companions are children themselves, by their reckoning. And there’s just so much to learn. What food to eat, where to find it. Where to seek shelter. The languages of the planet’s inhabitants. Orion learns to admire the humans, the beings that rule this planet. They’re more violent than his own species, yet they aren’t like the Beasts that destroyed his planet. Everything else is fairly harmless, as he and the baby are hearty creatures. Their own gentle planet seems harsh compared to this paradise.

There are plenty of mistakes and near misses, though. Some creatures taste terrible; sometimes Orion and Baby find little hunting and are hungry. But it’s never as bad as before. Sometimes they are spotted, chased, hunted. But it’s easy to get away from the humans; they aren’t as clever and deadly as the Beasts. They’re intelligent and advanced, but they haven’t yet evolved into a true spacefaring species. Orion hopes the Beasts never find this place. He wants to find a way to warn the humans, to implore them to be more careful. If they knew of the destruction on his home world, maybe they’d listen. But he’s too wary to interact with humans yet.

He decides that to fit in, they need to look the part. But the baby is an inexperienced chameleon. Even Orion, who has always been a gifted camouflager, is still learning and practicing, and the change into human skin is larger than anything his kind usually attempt. It isn’t as simple as a skin-texture change or retracting spines for a few hours. It’s delicate fingernails and soft finger pads instead of sturdy and nimble webbed claws. There’s no tail for balance and grip, and it’s thin skin instead of glittering scales. Even his eyes don’t see quite as well when they’re human.

The humans are as varied in appearance as his own species. At first, he thinks they’re like chameleons too. The first time they learn about clothes, Orion feels as young and clueless as Baby. He nearly yelps with surprise and horror, peering through the window on a routine reconnaissance mission, thinking the human is peeling off a layer of its own skin. The baby next to him makes a rare, small noise of surprise. He can’t really blame her, but he doesn’t entirely hide his frustration, hushing her immediately. The human, most unfortunately, spots them after this, and their night is cut short. Ending in the exhausting process of running and hiding, moving on to a new nesting area sooner than expected.

Orion keeps practicing his human mask. Even when he gets it, he just doesn’t quite get it. And Baby is entirely hopeless at it. Orion practices and practices, and even once he thinks he has it, speech doesn’t come easy. So he practices and practices that too. The first few trials are failures he has to flee from. He first approaches a smaller human. One he imagines might be a similar age to himself. He’s not entirely sure what gave it away, but it’s a while before he tries and fails again. And again.

He steals clothes, and that helps, but he knows he still doesn’t have it perfected. And he hates the clothes; they scratch, cling to his body in strange ways, dull his senses. The baby loathes them, and he can do nothing to convince her it’s a necessity to blend in. Her lips curl into a silent warning, and she flares her spines anytime he approaches her with clothes; eventually he gives up. It isn’t like she’s anywhere close to wearing a skin that can blend with the humans, anyway.

Orion hears many things as he learns the languages of humans. Some things he hears make his heart soar and stoke that little ember inside him. Rumors. Some of the other children have made it here to this planet. He searches, quietly, slowly. But it’s hard to find creatures whose nature is to blend in, who have known little in their short lives besides running and hiding. The ones who have made it here are experts at that; they are good at self-sufficiency and surviving.

This is how he’s tricked. Lured to a spot where he’s sure one of his brethren has been living. Orion knows a lot about the dangers now. He’s listened carefully. He knows about cages, about laboratories, and experiments. He knows about bad people. Orion’s learned to be wary and distrustful, even of the ones who seem all right on the outside. Orion was right in some ways about how like chameleons the humans can be. Most wear some kind of disguise, some kind of armor. And there are some who wear the worst sort of mask. Some who are more like Beasts wearing human skin. These are the ones Orion fears in the same way he fears the Beasts.

Orion doesn’t know what happens to the missing child he has been tracking down; he doesn’t even catch a glimpse of them before he and Baby find themselves cornered. He’s tracked the rumors and sightings of a strange creature. He’s followed a trail of distinctively consumed blood-drained prey and found a recently abandoned nest. Orion is impatient and slightly desperate to find another survivor. But he realizes too late someone else has found this missing child first.

Baby’s inability to change enough to blend in is ironically her saving grace. She’s hiding, silent and cowering still, exactly as he’s always instructed her, when he stupidly emerges into the open without a second look, thinking he’s right on the trail. The safety of this planet has made him overconfident. The nest he walks right into, soaked in the familiar smell of his kind, is itself the trap. He’s ensnared before he has a chance to run. The last he sees of Baby is the flash of her eyes in the darkness. The sound of her silence is the last he hears of her. Orion never even knew her true name.