Page 41 of The Hornet’s Hucow Pet

“Challenge accepted.”

I laugh again, and her eyes sparkle so brightly I can’t help but sweep her into a deep kiss, all thoughts of food or anything else forgotten.

The only thing that matters now is making her sing with pleasure.

I return Nova to the hot spring that evening. There’s little light here beyond the natural, and the stars streak overhead in glittering brilliance.

Nova leans back against my chest as she floats, watching them sparkle.

She raises a hand and points. “That’s the Milky Way over there. Some of the photons reaching us now… may have bounced off of Earth. Maybe even back when the dinosaurs were still alive.”

I weave my fingers through her hair, spreading it in the water. “The puppets in your movie were impressive. Even though it was fiction, it really did bring dinosaurs back to life, in a way.”

“Yeah… humans love dinosaurs…” She sighs. “It’s cruel, almost. Twenty light-years is hardly any distance at all in galactic terms. You can put a telescope almost anywhere and find light from that little blue planet. But it’s gone. That light traveling through the endless void of space is all that remains…”

I massage the spring water into her scalp, drawing the rest of the sweat away. “How much of the cataclysm did you personally experience?”

“All of it,” she whispers. “The fissures. The typhoons. The mad dash onto the ark ships, unsure if we were going to be saved, enslaved, or slaughtered. And I watched it fall apart. I watched Earth turn into nothing.” Grief rings through her consciousness. I let it resonate with mine—not dampening it, but… spreading it out.

“That must have been terrible. I can imagine how I would feel if something similar happened to Zairion Prime. I would be devastated.”

A wry smile thins her lips. “Yeah. ‘Devastated’ is a pretty good word. I was just becoming an adult when it happened. I’d gotten accepted to my dream university. I was going to study abroad, travel the world… and then suddenly… it was all gone. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m remembering things right. That ice cream I used to love, was it strawberry or raspberry? That web comic I never finished—was the main character’s name Vincent or Vayne? Does it still exist anywhere? Supposedly, they took a copy of the entire internet. But they’ve never let us see it.”

“You speak so calmly of such painful things.” My fingers press around the back of her neck, releasing the tension there.

“It’s not like crying is going to fix it,” she says lightly.

“It might.”

She blinks. “Really?”

I nod. “It’s part of a quite complex process of physiological release. During emotion-driven crying, the tears contain excess neurotransmitters not present during eye watering due to physical irritation.”

She tilts her head back to look at me. “Do Arthropoids cry?”

“We do. Most sapients have developed some adaptation to remove excess neural waste during emotional distress. I believe Durindians are known to urinate.”

Nova laughs, as I hoped she would. “Maybe crying isn’t so bad, then. It’s better than peeing myself.”

I gently tap her nose. I love the way her cute face scrunches with confusion.

“What of your family?” I ask. “Were they unable to provide you comfort?”

“Yeah… that’s one way to put it. They didn’t like that I watched. Didn’t want to talk about it. They were all happy to take the ICSS advice to stop thinking about Earth. I couldn’t stand it. Eventually, I couldn’t stand talking to them. So I just… stopped. I don’t think we knew how to relate after that. We were assigned to the same city ship, but it’s so large, we… still ended up losing each other. Just… drifted apart.”

“Do you miss them?”

“As they are now? No. I only miss what we used to have.”

I trace random patterns across her chest. She’s so soft, so small. “What do you miss?”

“I miss our swing set and looking for shapes in clouds… I miss catching fireflies and toads…”

Tears well in her eyes, and I brush them away.

“Tell me about your family,” she says.

She’s been good, so I’ll indulge her with a change of subject for now.