This story is for the 2012 Valentine’s Day contest, Twisted Freaks Need Love, Too. All stories and characters © Lia Habel 2012.

Stella’s original comment: “So to you I put forth the challenge.. Camel Spiders, in all their creepy gross and venomous glory…”

 

“Little Ancestors, she’s taking photos.”

“Flash?”

“Yes.”

“Aaaand we’re moving. Come on, Klir.”

The Little Ancestors hadn’t liked light, either – it’d been a major factor contributing to their legend, in fact. Thousands of years ago the Little Ancestors had been made out as vicious man-hungry killers, as eight-legged harbingers of death unafraid to scuttle furiously after gun-toting soldiers eighty times their size, like something out of an ancient video game.

But it hadn’t been blood they wanted. They’d wanted shade. And in the desert, those six-foot-tall, well-muscled soldiers had often been the only source of it.

Klir’s people now rivaled the Sons of Shade in height. The nuclear scouring of the earth had seen to that, radiation giving birth to new and advanced species even as it roasted millions of others. All sentient peoples were now forced to coexist in accordance with the Land Reorganization Treaty of 4011. Most of the time, it worked. Sometimes, it didn’t – in ways little and large.

Camera flashes were a little thing, but annoying. They signaled a lack of cultural sensitivity. Or sheer stupidity, in the case of Miranda Sandwind, who was pure Shade. Klir Duskright had attended the same multi-species school with her since mere months after hatching, and she was still pulling crap like this?

Following his best friend, Ovit Stoneshelter, Klir resettled in another darkened corner of the cafeteria. Ovit immediately returned to his mystery meat and holo-football chatter; Klir watched Miranda, who didn’t appear to be flagging in her mission. She was visiting each table systematically. Each time the flash went off, even if the camera wasn’t pointed in his direction, pain pulsed through Klir’s skull and his eight round black eyes reflexively squeezed shut. Eventually he chose to shield his eyes with two hands, resting his twin elbows on the table.

“So the R-Station Roaches are totally poised to take the cup this year, I think…”

“Ovit, she’s doing it to everyone. It must be for the Year Site. We’re not going to get out of this.”

Ovit’s mandibles clicked together angrily. “Dude, no. No photos, and I am not moving again! Seriously, what is the point of the Year Site? If I wanted to remember any of these idiots I’d suck them dry like juice boxes and mummify them in my own s—”

“Excuse me?”

Oh Little Ones, it was her. Not Miranda. Her. Klir made a conscious effort to tamp his own mandibles down – like Ovit, while his body was fairly humanoid save for the two sets of extra arms, golden brown and lightly furred, his face was a study in alien weirdness, with multiple inky eyes and clavicle-length mandibles. Once certain he was presentable, he turned around.

Behind him stood Everrose Scrapyard. She was also pure Shade, but unlike Miranda she was so friendly and sweet that she never struck Klir as ugly – never had. Just vulnerable due to her lack of an exoskeleton and her sole pair of eyes and her external ears and all that…flesh. All that exposed softness. But Everrose didn’t come across as weak, only vulnerable in some unspeakably attractive way. In a “she’s obviously very eatable, and I don’t want anyone eating her, so I should protect her” sort of way. It appealed even to the eternally shy Klir, who’d never protected a single thing in his life.

“Did she get you? I saw you two move.”

“Not yet,” Ovit said, lifting a bit of meat and peering at it. “Not that she’s not trying.”

“I’ll talk to her.” Everrose shook her head, blonde curls bouncing, and hefted her own camera. “I can get you guys normally? Lighten it in post-processing so we can actually see you?”

Ovit snorted and started to say something, but Klir interrupted with, “Sure.” For this monosyllable, Everrose rewarded him with a smile. She had no fangs. That was so cute.

There was really no smiling to be done, on his end. He tried to round his eyes, a trick he’d picked up in his inter-species body language courses – apparently it made his people look a little less fearsome. Everrose took a couple of quick shots, then frowned at Ovit and said, “Come on, at least look at me once.”

“So much no.”

“Why are you so grumpy?”

“I like to eat in peace. You know how tough this stuff is? I spend two thirds of my lunch period waiting for my saliva to dissolve it to the point where it’s edible.”

Everrose made a face. And Klir considered something insane. Insane because it was utterly unlike him.

Lifting one arm, he beckoned Everrose nearer. She leaned closer, trusting, accepting – she’d always been that way. “I think I know a way to get him to look at you. But I have to touch you to do it.” He felt the blood leaving his limbs, and added, “Not in a bad way. I wouldn’t do that.”

The girl laughed. “Okay, I’m game.”

“Get your camera ready. And don’t scream, okay? Seriously. I’m not going to hurt you.”

He waited until she was ready, her finger on the shutter button and the camera aimed in the general direction of the food-fiddling Ovit. She lowered her green eyes, and nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

Klir took a breath, then reached out with six arms, scooping Everrose effortlessly into his lap. He wrapped her up, nearly chained her against his chest, and spread his mandibles as if he meant to pierce her neck with his glistening black fangs. “Maybe we should start feasting on fresh meat, Ovit!”

The other humanoid camel spider looked up in absolute shock, dropping the bit of meat he was holding. Everrose got her shot, the camera clicking, and then burst into a fit of giggles. As Ovit continued to gape at him, Klir found himself tightening his hold slightly on his prize, savoring the warm weight of her on his knee. She wasn’t fighting him, asking immediately to be freed.

In a bold moment, he dared to draw his mandibles through her hair.

“Klir,” Everrose whispered, resting a smooth hand on his fuzzy forearm.

At first he thought she meant to chide him for what he’d done, and he was half willing to bow his head and take it – but then he saw what’d caused her to speak. The rest of the cafeteria was staring, too. As the weight of a hundred combined gazes started to register, Everrose collected herself. She coughed, and moved to stand; Klir let her go.

“Thank you,” she told him primly, before grinning spontaneously at Ovit. She then scampered away, her camera held high, pausing only to tell a shell-shocked Miranda, “That’s how you do it and not get growled at.”

“That was so gross,” Miranda breathed.

“No it wasn’t! It’s not like he’s slimy.” Everrose peeked back at Klir, then giggled again. “Did you see him lift me?”

Ovit continued to stare after the Year Site girls, before swinging four of his eyes to Klir. “I hate you so much right now.”

“Knock yourself out,” Klir said, helping himself to a morsel of meat.