Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Becoming Human

Krill stared out at the rising star slumped downwards body hunched inwards upon itself. The sunrise wasn't like it was on earth, nothing was, and despite the horror, there were a lot of things he missed, a lot of things he missed about the humans.

After spending so much time with them, he hadn't realized how much he had become like them, but after leaving and returning to his home planet after.... After the "Incident." He was beginning to realize just how much the death-worlders had affected him.

They called him, strange, and RECKLESS, his old friends commented on how much he had "Changed". He was darker, his humor was disturbing, his medical practices were reckless and leaning towards barbaric, despite his 100% success rate. They said he couldn't stay still anymore, he couldn't focus, he asked too many questions, he couldn't appreciate the simple things, he was callous and cold. They said he didn't even MOVE normally anymore communicating through his bodies in way that others couldn't understand.

They said it was unusually predatory the way he did things.

Krill didn't feel any of these things, and never had. When he was on the human ship, he had been a coward, soft spoken, the voice of reason, and now.... He suddenly found himself avoided and feared because of his humanlike behavior. He tried to stop, honesty tried to go back to the way things had been before, but he just, couldn't. He had seen another way of living, and he couldn't give it up. He felt like he had so much to give, but there was no convincing his race to take it.

He cared more than he had ever cared about anyone ever. It felt like he had been feeling through a haze of fog accepting the neutral that was his existence, and once with the humans, he had ridden the highs and the lows with them. He had experienced abject terror, and pure joy, and he didn't know how he could forget that.

He turned his face from the rising star trying to fight back the feelings of shame, guilt, and fear.... The feelings that still chased him even as he fled.

He wondered where the humans were now, a Million, a trillion lightyears from here coasting through the galaxy in their death-trap of a ship singing songs and playing games.... Or were they still mourning.

Had they even noticed his absence? Perhaps, but, if they did, then clearly they were pleased he was gone, after his failure.... They had made that very clear.

The humans said that weeping was like a welling sensation in the face and eyes, a shaking of the body the bent the shoulders and weighed heavy on the soul. He didn't have tear ducts, and so couldn't cry like they did, but he could feel the desire..... The desire to sob and wail like they did, to release the excess emotion that rolled inside his chest like the fluttering sensation of wings.....

No one on his planet understood the sensation, but he did. It was a very human sensation.

The star broke over the horizon turning the sky a soft yellow, or a burnt orange... he missed the blue of the human sky. Somehow everything here felt dead, the greatest breeze would only so much as ruffle in the air, and on those days it was advised to stay inside with worries of floating away. Maybe that was why they feared him, as he stood outside to feel the breeze, to pretend things hadn't changed, but he couldn't convince himself. On earth, that breeze would have come with a gust powerful enough to push him backwards and send colorful streaming ribbons into the sky.

Only humans could have devised a way to play with the wind, to play with something they couldn't see.

With a sigh (another distinctly human gesture, or so he was told), he walked to the edge of the roof and used this four arms to grip a support pole and slide down. Once upon a time he would have considered such thing reckless, but it was only seven feet, he had done worse things with the humans. To the side a group of passing Vrul (his species) passed by staring at him with fear in their faces.... They stepped back.