Humans are Weird - Pets
Rollslanguidly gently thrust up against the deliciously algae covered stones beneath him. The sandstone substrate left a pleasant earthy flavor at the tip of each appendages as he drifted upwards, towards the triply diffused light. Various small crustaceans brushed against him as they darted frantically around at his disturbance, flashing in and out of his awareness as they changed vectors at speeds beyond his ability to track. Larger fish swam languidly past, allowing him to follow their movements with his attention. Rollslanguidly let the force of his upward thrust, the pull of gravity, and the buoyancy of the water argue over his mass and surface area until gravity began to win, and when he could almost taste the earthy bedrock again he swept one firm swimming motion down his body. He rose against gravity once more and in the shallow water of the stream was able to extend two appendages past the water’s surface to soak in the ambiance of the scene.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the dense upper canopy of trees lighting the forest in cascades of orange and green. The canopy itself offered the illusions of the surface of another body of water far above him. Constant shifting and rippling with no one form distinguished, eerily muted because there was no pressure to bring him haptic feedback of what was happening so far above. The sounds that did reach him were high pitched whispers. He was happily absorbing this all when the water behind him exploded with the introduction of sudden mass.
“Got ‘em!” howled what was something like a human voice, just moments before actually, reasonably sized appendages seized him with a fantastic grip strength. Rollslanguidly was surprised at how normal the diameter of the appendages was. Rather than the thick, trunk-like form most humans showed, this ones had a diameter barely greater than his own and well within the average range for and Undulate.
“Don’t let it go!” another voice called out as Rollslanguidly was pulled entirely out of the water and pressed against the bare chest of the small human.
“I won’t! Stop fussin!” the human holding him insisted as they staggered towards the shore.
Rollslanguidly had let himself go limp, partially in astonishment. It was not an easy thing to go from such a calming meditative state to being captured by what was, after all a predator species.
“What is it?” a second human demanded.
The very small human, clearly a juvenile, was perched on one of the lower branches of a tree that bent over the streams. Both the one in the tree, and the one that held Rollslanguidly, wore what he understood to be the bare minimum of clothing, a sort of cloth wrapping around their largest limb joint. Their stripes glowed vibrantly in the dim light under the canopy in a way that Rollslanguidly had never seen the adults of the species glow.
“It’s a giant nudibranch, duh,” the human holding him said, tossing his head in a physical display of some emotion.
“You sure?” the second human demanded.
It scrambled down from the tree and followed along after them, thrusting its head with all its sensory organs close and examining Rollslanguidly. A process that seemed to require it to contort the skin of its face to comical levels. Rollslanguidly felt the human carrying him begin to sway and carefully shifted his mass to pull them back to center. The carrying human was only marginally more massive than he was Rollslanguidly suspected and it was perhaps not safe for the young one to be carrying so much mass.
“Do be careful,” Rollslanguidly sounded out the human words carefully, suddenly wishing he had spent more time learning the sound language and the thin air absorbed his efforts. “Beware of fall damage.”
The human carrying him only swayed more and burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” The other human demanded.
“It’s all vibratey in my chest!” the carrying human explained. “It tickles.”
Rollslanguidly decided that as his communication attempts were only distracting the clearly straining human it was best to remain quite until they reached some mature members of the species. To the best of his knowledge human young were no more likely to be far from their parents than Undulate young. The human, sweating profusely now, tasting of delight and physical strain, brought him to a cluster of buildings that he recognized as a standard human family unit dwelling. He was carried into a fairly open structure and both small humans climbed a rather unstable feeling ladder structure and worked together to lift him into a high sided water container. He could have clung to the edge but that might have unbalanced the humans and the container did not taste bad. So he fell with a thump in a few inches of water and onto some reasonably clean sand. Rollslanguidly felt around him with interest, absorbing the space thoughtfully. The bottom of the container, large enough to hold several humans, was covered in a few inches of sand and filled so that that was covered in a few inches of water. Various rocks and logs had been placed to provide places out of the water and various native fauna were perched on these. Small pockets of surface area were growing various shade loving plants.
“A terrarium,” Rollslanguidly mused to himself.
“Nudibranches don’t get that big!” one of the small humans was saying loudly, “and they’re smiley! He’s not slimy!”
“I am an Undulate,” Rollslanguidly said, bracing himself to speak loudly, and hoping his enunciation was clear enough to be understandable.
The two humans stopped talking and tilted their heads to the side, looking down at him in fascination, but not a single light of understanding crossed their faces.
“Neat sound,” one observed and Rollslanguidly slumped a bit, once again regretting his past time prioritization.
A distant roar of human sound echoed in the space and the two mammals positively lit up with a delighted feeding response. The container vibrated strangely as they scrambled down to respond to what was presumably their parent’s summons to the odd combination of time and nutrient absorption that humans called a meal. Rollslanguidly explored the terrarium a bit, making mental notes of what the humans prioritized for both display and species comfort before climbing out with the intention of finding the stream and starting back for the university. The sides of the container were fairly smooth and required no little effort to scale. The pathways the humans favored posed no danger to him but they were annoyingly dry, he was just passing the main dwelling structure when a warm, moist cloud of taste drifted out that brought his attention back to the humans. He lifted up several appendages and watched in fascination as the small humans, blazing brightly with both food-contentment and anticipation picked up small bowls and scrambled up to the larger human who had apparently just opened the steaming container that had released the delicious cloud. Another, even smaller human had appeared and one by one, they walked up to the adult human, and carefully articulated.
“Please may I have some pudding?”
Rollslanguidly suddenly recalled that it was considered very, very rude to leave a human dwelling without partaking in the food rituals. He paid close attention to the sounds, teasing out the thread of commonality in the three very different voices as he quickly scrambled up, over the lip of the raised structure, over to where a stack of the compostable bowls sat at a very easy to reach height, seized one of the bowls and carried it over to where the larger human had finished serving the young and was presumably serving herself. Rollslanguidly held up the bowl braced himself to be as loud as possible, using for floor for added resonance.
“Please may I have some pudding?” He asked.
The large human suddenly gave a wordless scream and spun around, flinging warm droplets of the pudding from the ladle she was holding. The fell mostly across the floor, but several landed on Rollslanguidly. As he suspected it was delicious. He rather thought that had been a startled ‘surprise’ reaction as he belatedly considered the humans’ narrow range of vision. So he tried again.
“Please may I have some pudding?” He thrust the bowl up demonstratively.
The large human stared down at him for several long moments, her stripes registering draining surprise. She directed her eyes at his bowl, at the ladle still clutched in her hand, and then at the bowl again. Finally she laughed, scooped out a ladle of the pudding and poured it into his bowl.
“And you are?” she asked.
“He’s the nudibranch we found in the creek today,” one of the children announced. “We told you.”
“That is not-” the adult human heaved a deep breath and rubbed her eyes with the hand that was not holding the ladle, smearing pudding across some of her skin.
“Do you speak human style basic?” she asked, presumably of him.
“I rather though I did,” Rollslanguidly admitted, trying for a rueful tone.
“And that’s a no,” the human muttered. “Do you understand human style basic?”
Rollslanguidly lifted enough of his leading end out of the pudding to mimic a human ‘nod’ and the largest human smiled.
“Well, Ricardo will be home in a few minutes and he knows Undulate touch basic pretty well and you can tell me how you got here,” she said.
“We told you,” one of the smaller humans insisted, waving a scoop shaped eating utensil in demonstration.
The human looked like she was about to respond when the structure vibrated with the arrival of another mature human. The present human looked at Rollslanguidly a moment and then left the room laughing quietly.
“Do you know what your son’s did today?” her voice drifted faintly back to him.
“Oh, so they are my sons are they?” came the response, presumably from Ricardo.
“Try kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment,” she replied, only to be interrupted by a positive roar of laughter from the other human.
Rollslanguidly pressed his best absorption appendages into the pudding and lifted others at the curious look the small humans were giving him.
“So you are not a nudibranch?” the small human asked.
Rollslanguidly shook enough of himself to indicate a no and the small human made a grunting noise before returning to the pudding.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the dense upper canopy of trees lighting the forest in cascades of orange and green. The canopy itself offered the illusions of the surface of another body of water far above him. Constant shifting and rippling with no one form distinguished, eerily muted because there was no pressure to bring him haptic feedback of what was happening so far above. The sounds that did reach him were high pitched whispers. He was happily absorbing this all when the water behind him exploded with the introduction of sudden mass.
“Got ‘em!” howled what was something like a human voice, just moments before actually, reasonably sized appendages seized him with a fantastic grip strength. Rollslanguidly was surprised at how normal the diameter of the appendages was. Rather than the thick, trunk-like form most humans showed, this ones had a diameter barely greater than his own and well within the average range for and Undulate.
“Don’t let it go!” another voice called out as Rollslanguidly was pulled entirely out of the water and pressed against the bare chest of the small human.
“I won’t! Stop fussin!” the human holding him insisted as they staggered towards the shore.
Rollslanguidly had let himself go limp, partially in astonishment. It was not an easy thing to go from such a calming meditative state to being captured by what was, after all a predator species.
“What is it?” a second human demanded.
The very small human, clearly a juvenile, was perched on one of the lower branches of a tree that bent over the streams. Both the one in the tree, and the one that held Rollslanguidly, wore what he understood to be the bare minimum of clothing, a sort of cloth wrapping around their largest limb joint. Their stripes glowed vibrantly in the dim light under the canopy in a way that Rollslanguidly had never seen the adults of the species glow.
“It’s a giant nudibranch, duh,” the human holding him said, tossing his head in a physical display of some emotion.
“You sure?” the second human demanded.
It scrambled down from the tree and followed along after them, thrusting its head with all its sensory organs close and examining Rollslanguidly. A process that seemed to require it to contort the skin of its face to comical levels. Rollslanguidly felt the human carrying him begin to sway and carefully shifted his mass to pull them back to center. The carrying human was only marginally more massive than he was Rollslanguidly suspected and it was perhaps not safe for the young one to be carrying so much mass.
“Do be careful,” Rollslanguidly sounded out the human words carefully, suddenly wishing he had spent more time learning the sound language and the thin air absorbed his efforts. “Beware of fall damage.”
The human carrying him only swayed more and burst out laughing.
“What’s funny?” The other human demanded.
“It’s all vibratey in my chest!” the carrying human explained. “It tickles.”
Rollslanguidly decided that as his communication attempts were only distracting the clearly straining human it was best to remain quite until they reached some mature members of the species. To the best of his knowledge human young were no more likely to be far from their parents than Undulate young. The human, sweating profusely now, tasting of delight and physical strain, brought him to a cluster of buildings that he recognized as a standard human family unit dwelling. He was carried into a fairly open structure and both small humans climbed a rather unstable feeling ladder structure and worked together to lift him into a high sided water container. He could have clung to the edge but that might have unbalanced the humans and the container did not taste bad. So he fell with a thump in a few inches of water and onto some reasonably clean sand. Rollslanguidly felt around him with interest, absorbing the space thoughtfully. The bottom of the container, large enough to hold several humans, was covered in a few inches of sand and filled so that that was covered in a few inches of water. Various rocks and logs had been placed to provide places out of the water and various native fauna were perched on these. Small pockets of surface area were growing various shade loving plants.
“A terrarium,” Rollslanguidly mused to himself.
“Nudibranches don’t get that big!” one of the small humans was saying loudly, “and they’re smiley! He’s not slimy!”
“I am an Undulate,” Rollslanguidly said, bracing himself to speak loudly, and hoping his enunciation was clear enough to be understandable.
The two humans stopped talking and tilted their heads to the side, looking down at him in fascination, but not a single light of understanding crossed their faces.
“Neat sound,” one observed and Rollslanguidly slumped a bit, once again regretting his past time prioritization.
A distant roar of human sound echoed in the space and the two mammals positively lit up with a delighted feeding response. The container vibrated strangely as they scrambled down to respond to what was presumably their parent’s summons to the odd combination of time and nutrient absorption that humans called a meal. Rollslanguidly explored the terrarium a bit, making mental notes of what the humans prioritized for both display and species comfort before climbing out with the intention of finding the stream and starting back for the university. The sides of the container were fairly smooth and required no little effort to scale. The pathways the humans favored posed no danger to him but they were annoyingly dry, he was just passing the main dwelling structure when a warm, moist cloud of taste drifted out that brought his attention back to the humans. He lifted up several appendages and watched in fascination as the small humans, blazing brightly with both food-contentment and anticipation picked up small bowls and scrambled up to the larger human who had apparently just opened the steaming container that had released the delicious cloud. Another, even smaller human had appeared and one by one, they walked up to the adult human, and carefully articulated.
“Please may I have some pudding?”
Rollslanguidly suddenly recalled that it was considered very, very rude to leave a human dwelling without partaking in the food rituals. He paid close attention to the sounds, teasing out the thread of commonality in the three very different voices as he quickly scrambled up, over the lip of the raised structure, over to where a stack of the compostable bowls sat at a very easy to reach height, seized one of the bowls and carried it over to where the larger human had finished serving the young and was presumably serving herself. Rollslanguidly held up the bowl braced himself to be as loud as possible, using for floor for added resonance.
“Please may I have some pudding?” He asked.
The large human suddenly gave a wordless scream and spun around, flinging warm droplets of the pudding from the ladle she was holding. The fell mostly across the floor, but several landed on Rollslanguidly. As he suspected it was delicious. He rather thought that had been a startled ‘surprise’ reaction as he belatedly considered the humans’ narrow range of vision. So he tried again.
“Please may I have some pudding?” He thrust the bowl up demonstratively.
The large human stared down at him for several long moments, her stripes registering draining surprise. She directed her eyes at his bowl, at the ladle still clutched in her hand, and then at the bowl again. Finally she laughed, scooped out a ladle of the pudding and poured it into his bowl.
“And you are?” she asked.
“He’s the nudibranch we found in the creek today,” one of the children announced. “We told you.”
“That is not-” the adult human heaved a deep breath and rubbed her eyes with the hand that was not holding the ladle, smearing pudding across some of her skin.
“Do you speak human style basic?” she asked, presumably of him.
“I rather though I did,” Rollslanguidly admitted, trying for a rueful tone.
“And that’s a no,” the human muttered. “Do you understand human style basic?”
Rollslanguidly lifted enough of his leading end out of the pudding to mimic a human ‘nod’ and the largest human smiled.
“Well, Ricardo will be home in a few minutes and he knows Undulate touch basic pretty well and you can tell me how you got here,” she said.
“We told you,” one of the smaller humans insisted, waving a scoop shaped eating utensil in demonstration.
The human looked like she was about to respond when the structure vibrated with the arrival of another mature human. The present human looked at Rollslanguidly a moment and then left the room laughing quietly.
“Do you know what your son’s did today?” her voice drifted faintly back to him.
“Oh, so they are my sons are they?” came the response, presumably from Ricardo.
“Try kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment,” she replied, only to be interrupted by a positive roar of laughter from the other human.
Rollslanguidly pressed his best absorption appendages into the pudding and lifted others at the curious look the small humans were giving him.
“So you are not a nudibranch?” the small human asked.
Rollslanguidly shook enough of himself to indicate a no and the small human made a grunting noise before returning to the pudding.
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