Humans are Weird - Deep Lore
“Mooooooo.”
The low, round sound was coming from Mary’s bedroom, followed by the sound of two human females giggling, before repeating. Sift paused and shifted the basked in her claws as she listened to the sound in interest. She then carefully walked forward to the counter and shifted on her tail to get the height necessary to shove the basked up onto the human-height counter, finally resorting to shoving it the rest of the way with her snout. That done she dropped down to all fours and scampered to the bedroom door and the source of the odd sounds, pulling her datapad out of her carry pouch as she went. She just remembered to pause and thump the door with her tail before entering.
“Come on in Sift!” Mary called out cheerfully. “I’m not decent but it nothing you haven’t seen!”
Sift gave a rumble of amusement as she stood on her hind legs to open the door and trotted into the bedroom. The morning sun was streaming through the window and Mary, still looking exhausted even days after the mammalian birthing process, was sitting on the soft mass of her bed. Her younger sister Martha, was sitting on an equally soft ‘chair’ a sitting surface with added structure to support all those extra-long joints humans had, holding Mary’s hatchling to her center of mass. Martha was jiggling around in a rather deliberate looking manner that Sift made a mental note to ask about later.
“May I smell the hatchling?” she asked as she scrambled towards the little one.
Both humans laughed with delight and Martha held the round little human down and out to give her easier access as Mary verbalized her consent. Sift rested her front claws on Mary’s knees and pressed her snout into the delicious hatchling smell for a long moment. Her tali waved in delight.
“It is astounding,” she finally said when she could pull her snout away. “He smells nothing like one of our hatchlings, but it is still identifiable as a hatch-ling smell.”
“Oh!” Martha said, sitting back up and rearranging the little one against her center of mass. “Maybe its like how all babies look cute to all species? Like with big eyes and chubby appandages? But with smell. Maybe there is a universal cute smell?”
“A neotenous scent profile?” Sift speculated, tilting her head at an adorable little squeak that came from the hatchling. “That would be an interesting study.”
She glanced back at Mary to ask about the last time she had smelled a reptilian, or perhaps a Shatar hatchling but started and blinked. In her eagerness to greet the hatchling she had missed the fact that Mary had something attached to her mammary glands. They were clearly some kind of vacuum pump-bag, on paying attention Sift could hear the soft thrumming of the active pumping, and the storage container was gradually growing as it drew a rich yellow fluid out of the glands. Mary caught the direction of her attention and grinned, lifting up the large glands with her hands and repeating the low, round sound Sift had heard when she first entered.
“Moooooooo!”
Martha burst into giggles at the sound and Mary only stopped to laugh and Sift found her tail flicking with amusement at the shared humor despite her confusion.
“What is that sound you are making?” she asked, shifting away from Martha and the tantalizing scent of the hatchling to address the new mother.
“Oh, it’s just-” Mary paused and her face when slightly slack as she thought about her answer. “It’s just a sound you make when pumping out your excess colostrum,” she said.
However the slow tempo of her words and the tones indicated a bit of uncertainty.
“I think it means that the mom is a bit frustrated at being so busy with pumping and nursing and all that,” Martha offered. “Oop, baby needs a dipey!”
The younger human jumped up to change the waste restrainer on her nephew and Sift turned her attention back to Mary.
“Yes,” Mary agreed as she removed the, presumably now full, containers of fluid from the peak of her mammary glands and placed them in a refrigeration unit beside her bed. “That is how Mom always used it, and the aunties, but I actually don’t know where it comes from.”
“It is not a reproduction of the sound the pump makes?” Sift asked.
“I don’t think so,” Mary said. “Now you got me curious, give me a moment.”
The human reached for her data pad, presumably to look up the historical source of the sound and Sift scampered over to assist Martha is making soft noises at the now clean hatchling. Sift had just caught the hatchling’s attention with a clicking noise made with her tongue on her teeth, that had also set Martha laughing when Mary gave an exclamation of surprise.
“Where does it come from?” Martha asked without looking up from playing with the hatchling.
“Well!” Mary said. “Back on the home-planet there’s this absolute giant of a species that they still use for meat and milk products. It was and is the backbone of the milk industry, has been for as long as we remember historically too, looks like.”
“Like a bit goat?” Sift asked.
“Way bigger,” Mary said, and turned the datapad around to show a truly massive animal standing next to a human.
Sift gave a gurgle of astonishment.
“They eat way too much to have been viable during the first transforming efforts,” Mary went on. “So they never got popular in the colonies, much easier to keep and tweak goats, but they do have a few live specimens at some of the bigger agricultural universities.”
“That is why I’ve never seen one in a human colony,” Sift speculated.
“Anyway, moo is the onomatopia of the sound this animal makes,” Mary said. “So it’s kind of a tradition to make it when you collect your milk.”
“But it must have been several generations since your family has been around these creatures,” Sift pointed out, “why do you still use that sound rather than a more goat sound to express the concept?”
“Must be some kind of cultural fossil tradition,” Mary said with a shrug as she stood up and moved to reclaim her offspring from her sister. “Now hand him here. You brought the basket for the photos right?”
sift waved her tail eagerly.
“Yes! As well as some dried ripe grain that will be quite aesthetically pleasing!”
RSS Feed
