[The Nature of Terrans (The Nature of Predators)] - Chapter 2: The First Night
Hey, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the amuse-bouche of an inaugural chapter I handed you all, because here's a much more meaty follow-up. In this chapter, we have fridge raids, lots of assumptions, and human food! As always, thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for the universe I get to play in.
Chapter 2
Swiftpair Transcript Date: April 20***^(th)***, 2241
CharlieBuck: You cannot understand how excited I am to see you face-to-face, Kosif.
Kosie2219: I assure you; the feeling is mutual. I’ve only seen glimpses of other species before we paired up for the exchange. You always seem to be upset in the photos you’ve shared, though. Why are you baring your teeth all the time?
CharlieBuck: Uh oh, someone didn’t read her comprehensive pamphlet. That ‘snarl’ is how we humans show contentment and pleasure.
Kosie2219: Your species is weird.
CharlieBuck: Agreed.
CharlieBuck: Oh, I just remembered, I have a surprise ready for you when you land! I’ve been working hard on it, and I hope you like it.
Kosie2219: What did you do?
CharlieBuck: C’mon, don’t be like that! Besides, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
Kosie2219: Please don’t do anything stupid.
CharlieBuck: It’s not stupid. You’re gonna love it. I’ve gotta go sleep now. What time is it on your side?
Kosie2219: It’s about 3:30 PM SHT according to my holopad. Since you mentioned sleep, I’m guessing it’s late at night over on Earth?
CharlieBuck: It is exactly 10:47 PM here. Hence the need to sleep.
Kosie2219: Okay, don’t let me keep you up any longer. As I believe you humans say, good night.
CharlieBuck: Night, Kosie.
*<<*CharlieBuck has logged off>>
*<<*Kosie2219 has logged off>>
<<Chat session ended.>>
Memory Transcript Subject: Kosif, Arxur-Terran Exchange Participant
Date: (Standardized Human Time) April 23***^(rd)***, 2241
Why is he upset? Am I late? He can’t possibly blame me for that. It finally clicks and I mentally tailwhip myself. Kosie, you dolt! This is the surprise he’s been planning for the past [three days]!
Charlie’s eyes land on me.
“Kosie, is that you?” All the other Arxur look directly at me, and I would be bright red of it weren’t for my scales. He can’t keep the snarl, no—smile, off his face as he approaches, sticking the sign under his arm. He stops about [5 feet] away from me.
“Hello, [female adult of equal status honorific] Kosif. Welcome to Earth!” He lisps on some of the letters, but every single Wrissian jaw drops nonetheless at his grasp of our native language. At this point, even the other human partners are taking quite a lot of interest in Charlie.
He switches back to his own language. “Surprise!”
I’m flabbergasted. “What? How?”
“Easy. There’s a linguistic database with all known speeches and dialects in the galaxy. I had to get special permission to access your language, but I managed to learn enough over the course of a week to pull this off. Do you like it? I can’t really read your face.”
To be honest, I really did like it. It was exactly the kind of thing that Charlie might go and do. Something crazy that he needed special permission to even try, just to surprise me. A lot of the stories that he’s told me over Swiftpair are of him doing something dumb for at least one of three reasons: he thought it would look cool, he did it to make someone else happy, or he just wasn’t thinking at all.
“I did like it. You actually sounded like an Arxur, albeit a child.”
The snar-SMILE that split his face was one of the biggest I’d ever seen on him. The other Arxur that had formed a loose crowd during Charlie’s performance had dissipated during our conversation, going over to their own partners.
“Here, lemme take your stuff. You ready to head to the house?” He holds out his hands for my bag, and it takes me a moment to realize what he wants. I slip the bag from my shoulder and pass it to him, and he carries it around to the rear of the vehicle, where a hatch was sitting popped open. “Go on and get in. I’ll drive. I lowered the passenger seat all the way down, but I don’t know what we’re going to do about your tail.”
He places my bag into the storage hatch and pulls the curved door closed, shutting it with a thud. I pull on the door handle of the passenger seat, and it hinges outward to reveal the interior, a cushioned seat with a workable amount of legroom. Slouching downward a little further than normal, I duck into the automobile, trying to lever myself into place. The car sinks slightly as I step inside, and I lean back into the seat. The cushion is soft and quite comfortable, but I still need to do something about my tail. It’s not flexible enough to go behind my back, so I try putting it under my leg. Alright, that works. I may have what humans call ‘pins and needles’ when I get out, but at least I am inside the vehicle. Closing the door takes a few attempts, but I manage to get it shut.
The driver’s door opens, and Charlie slips inside easily.
“Alrighty, let’s go! Kosie, seatbelt.” He pauses as I don’t move. “The belt over your right shoulder. You put it across your torso and over your waist. Push the metal bit into the little plastic box near your left hip.”
Three failed attempts and some wriggling later, I finally hear the small click as the metal slides home.
“Going home, take two!” Charlie says as he pulls a lever beside him. The vehicle starts forward, and so begins my first trip in a human car. He steers the vehicle down various roads and passes through a gate before the first major highway comes into view. He pulls onto it, speeding up until he matches the velocity of the other automobiles. The vibrations are almost soothing, and what’s most interesting is the seemingly unspoken set of rules that the other drivers adhere to. A light activates on the rear of the car before us, and it changes lanes soon after, crossing the white dashes painted on the road. Later, I notice another driver who does the same thing, but without the flashing light. Charlie noticeably tenses up when they change lanes in front of him.
I have got to learn what their transportation is like. Why is that little flashing light so important?
“Why is that little flashing light so important?” I ask as Charlie flicks a small lever beside the steering wheel. A small arrow pointing right begins to flash and click regularly. “Did you activate yours just now?”
“Well, yes. The white flashing light is a blinker, and they’re standard on all vehicles. You use it to signal a desire to cross the white dashed line.”
“Why did you tense up before when someone didn’t signal?”
Charlie steers gently to the right, clicking the lever back into place.
“Because driving on Earth is about being predictable, and that driver was not being predictable. For humans, you don’t even get to sit in the driver’s seat until you’re nearly an adult and have taken at least one test. Then we can get our license, and we must abide by the rules of the road. If you want, I’ll tell you more when we reach the house.”
The scenery outside the car had changed from the urban landscape near the spaceport to a more rural and residential feel. If it wasn’t for the fact that there were humans everywhere, I might think I was in a part of Wriss I had never seen before. Our two planets really were very similar.
A few turns later, Charlie pulls a left and we enter a gathering of homes. The sign we pass says ‘Cooper’s Meadow’.
“Who is Cooper?” I ask Charlie.
“Who?” he says, sounding confused for some reason.
“Cooper. The human who owns this meadow?”
“Oh, that’s just a name. The people who made this neighborhood just wanted a good name. Maybe one of them is named Cooper, but it matters exactly this much.” Charlie holds up his right hand, fingers curled into an O.
“How much is that?”
“What? Uh, it means zero. That’s what the number zero looks like. It means it doesn’t matter. Oh look, here’s the house!” He points out the windshield at one of several nearly identical houses.
Charlie stops the car, and I extricate myself from the vehicle. It was almost the same size as one of the shared Wrissian houses, where two would inhabit the same place to conserve credits. Those kinds of houses were almost exclusively used by mated pairs, due to many an Arxur’s unsociability.
“You like the place?” Charlie says as he walks up beside me with my bag. “The exchange program moved me in here since I lived in a 1-man apartment before. C’mon, let’s get you set up.”
The interior was only similar to a Wrissian home due to the essential rooms. It had a kitchen, a main living area, a dining table, all the universal things like that. The main difference was the electricity. Case in point, Charlie starts flicking light switches as soon as we walk in. I wince.
Why is he turning on all the lights? I certainly don’t need them. I think, before realizing that night vision is not something that all predator species have.
“Do you humans even have night vision?” I ask as I wipe my eyes, blinking away the spots in my vision.
“We do, it’s just not amazing and takes a while to fully come in. I think it takes about half an hour, but I’m not sure. How fast does yours go?”
How fast do my eyes adjust? “That… is an excellent question. I don’t know.”
“Meh, doesn’t matter. Let’s get you settled in. Your room is the big one in the back.” Charlie hands me my bag, and I follow where he was pointing. I duck through the doorway, the floor changing from wood paneling to carpet as I cross the threshold. I flinch as my foot touches the softish covering. I’d never felt anything like it before, since the homes on Wriss are mostly stone, or wood if you’re more credit-flush. A large bed sat in the center of one wall, opposite an upright wood dresser. A lamp stood atop a small table near the headboard, and deep-blue sheets the color of Wriss’ oceans covered the mattress.
He remembered my favorite color, how sweet of him.
I dumped my bag on the bed, and would have gone putting my things away, but a strange and heavenly smell distracts me. My stomach rumbles.
What is that delicious scent? Is that meat, and…what are those other smells?
I poke my head out of the bedroom and see Charlie standing in the kitchen, manipulating something on what must be a cooktop. My claws clack on the wooden floor as I approach, and Charlie turns.
“Guess you smelled dinner. Hungry?” he says, a smile, not a snarl, on his face.
Oh no. How could he tell? Am I drooling? Did he think I was in a hunting crouch? I can’t let him think that! I have to prove we’re not the same Arxur from [100 years] ago. We’ve reformed; we’re not the raiding parties of Betterment. I can’t go back to Wriss like this.
“No. I mean yes. Gah, I mean no.” Smooth move, [laxative medicine].
The stripes of hair above Charlie’s eyes furrow, drawing closer together.
“Well, if you are hungry, I made you some food.” He places a plate down on the counter next to him. It holds two brown disks, and my nostrils tell me that those are the source of that divine aroma. “Don’t worry, it’s meat from Terran cattle. They’re medium well, and I just gave them the basic seasonings. Nothing you should be allergic to. I got some toppings and condiments if you’re feeling brave.”
He takes his plate, holding only one disk, to the table and sat down. His meal had not just the meat, but also a split golden-brown lump which he held the meat with, a yellow square, along with two sauces. I took my plate to the table as well, not adding anything to it. I didn’t have to contort my tail to sit this time, since I could slot it through a hole in the seatback. A small blessing in this extremely stressful day.
“Doh!” I hear Charlie say as I settle in. “I forget to get you silverware. Do you want any?”
What is silverware? Back home I only had a small two-pronged spear to eat with, otherwise I just used my claws.
“Uh, no, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” I say as I pick up one of the disks. It was still warm, and a small dribble of grease dripped from it. I bring it up to my mouth and take a small bite.
HOLY [deity of the hunter’s feast]! WHAT IS THIS?!
I had simply never had anything so divinely delicious in my entire life. Before I know it, my plate was empty and Charlie was making barking cough noises. I come to my senses right as I’m licking my last claw clean.
“Dang,” Charlie splutters between barks, “I know you guys eat your stuff raw, but I didn’t know our food tasted this good to you!”
Oh no. Oh, this is bad. Is he scared of me? He doesn’t sound afraid. What is that noise he’s making?
Charlie’s teeth were bared in a smile, and his mouth was wide open, his whole body quaking with the force of the noise he was making.
“You should have seen the look on your face!” he wheezes as the noises subside. “Man, I haven’t laughed that hard in a while.” He wipes his eyes.
That’s what that was? Laughing? Isn’t that how humans appreciate humor? Was he saying… I looked funny?
“What did you find so amusing?” I ask. Please don’t tell me you were waiting for me to slip. I can’t go back to Wriss as the one who ruined the diplomacy between us and Earth.
“Just watching you react. You looked so nervous taking that first bite,” he says, starting to devolve back into laughter, “then your eyes were the size of dinner plates, and before I could blink,” More laughter, and he had to stop and take a breath before continuing. “Your plate was empty, and you were sticking your fingers in your mouth. Should I ask whether you’re still hungry?” He’s still smiling as he asks me, nodding towards my empty plate.
I need to show more restraint, no matter how ambrosia-like the cuisine. This is going to be a long program. It was nice knowing you, brown meat disks.
“Oh, I’m fine. I ate a bit on the shuttle over, so I’ll be okay until [morning meal].”
This was a lie.
“You sure you’ll be good until breakfast? I’ve got another burger ready to cook if you want.”
My will nearly broke there.
I could have another one of those delicious… ‘burgers’ are what he called them? Kosif, no. Show restraint. The Arxur are no longer barbarians who go wild at the smell of meat.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.” I say even as my stomach melts inside me. A whole night was a long time to still be slightly hungry, especially when you just had the most scrumptious meal in your life.
“Okay, then. I’ll clean up tonight; you head to bed. I’m pretty sure space jetlag is a thing. See you in the morning.”
Charlie takes my plate as I rise from the table, and I watch as he places the dirty dishes in a metal tub embedded in the counter.
Is that the human version of a washing tub? Ours are normally outside, though we do place them on higher surfaces like they do.
Charlie places a wad of raw meat on another plate, presumably what would have been my third burger, into a large metal box with a door spanning the front of it. He turns and looks at me, and I act like I wasn’t watching him the entire time and was in fact going to bed, thank you very much.
Much later, after Charlie has switched off all the lights, I lay in bed thinking off nothing but the heavenly flavor of those burgers. I pick up my holopad and the bright light spears my eyes as I click it on. Frantically stabbing at the pad, I involuntarily hiss in pain from the sudden illumination. I eventually find the brightness controls, but not before any semblance of sleepiness is wiped from my brain.
Dear [deity of the sun], why do these cursed things have to be so bright?
2:03 AM SHT. A full [4 hours] before Charlie could be expected to wake up most days. He’d told me so himself in one of our chat sessions, and for some reason it had stuck in my brain. My stomach clenched, sending thoughts of burgers through my brain again.
Might as well go and make yourself some food.
Where on Wriss had that thought come from?
You know you want it, but you denied yourself because ‘what would Charlie think?’
He would think that I can’t control myself, and neither can any other Wrissian.
It’s worth it for that burger, isn’t it?
Maybe… wait, no! I can’t just be sneaking around his house while he’s asleep!
You’re just making yourself a little snack, aren’t you? How would he be mad?
Hmmm… Okay, but just this once.
Attagirl.
I push myself out of bed, automatically dropping into a stealth crouch as I creep into the kitchen.
Memory Transcription Subject: Charles “Charlie” Carlyle, Arxur-Terran Exchange Participant
Date: (Standardized Human Time) April 24***^(th)***, 2241
I wake to a soft clacking and scraping noise in the middle of the night. My mind instantly assumes the worst: someone’s in my house. Or, by the sound of it, something. I slide out of bed, my bare feet barely audible on the floor, at least to my ears. I almost creep out of my bedroom before realizing I’m clad solely in my underpants.
One does not simply confront a home invader in one’s boxers.
Now armed with a pair of red basketball shorts, I slowly open my bedroom door, pausing as I listen for more disturbances. A metal clank, followed by an intake of breath.
What is going on?
My house is nearly pitch-black, my night vision unable to fully penetrate the shadows. I peer around the corner just as a light comes on, not one of the overheads, but instead a white light like a flashlight. I duck back around the wall. Rummaging noises, and something shuts just as soon as the light extinguishes.
Alone, but what are they doing in my kitchen? Are they… raiding my fridge?
I very slowly stand, then reach my hand around the corner, feeling for the light switch. My finger curls gently around the lever, and I lower myself and get ready to rush the intruder. I can’t see many details, but one thing stands out to me.
Man, this guy is tall as all get-out.
I take a deep breath and flick the switch upwards.
Memory Transcription Subject: Kosif, Arxur-Terran Exchange Participant
Date: (Standardized Human Time) April 24***^(th)***, 2214
I flinch as the lights flick on, banging my snout on the cabinet and leaning over as I clutch at my face. That motion slams my elbow on the raised stone surface, and I hiss in pain and step backwards, only to trip over my own tail and fall flat on the wooden floor. I writhe in pain for a moment, simultaneously trying to hold my elbow, my nose, and my eyes. I’m snapped out of my pain by Charlie’s voice. He’s standing over me, his top half completely bare, his short brown head-fuzz sticking up strangely, and wearing a set of red legwear.
“Kosif, what are you doing in the kitchen in the middle of the night?”
No. No no no no NO! Brain! Why did you lie to me? You said he wouldn’t notice!
I said he wouldn’t care. There’s a difference.
Aaaggghhhh!!!
“Um, I, uh… I was hungry.” I say in a small voice.
“Well, I guess that’s my fault.” His fault for bringing me in? For trusting me? “My mama had two rules about the kitchen that she taught me, and I guess I’m teaching you.” Here it comes. I broke both his rules and now the hammer’s dropping. Farewell, Earth… “First, eat if you’re hungry. Second, stop if you’re full.”
“Wait, what?” I say, confused.
“That’s all. I don’t care about you eating as much as you need. Your reaction to my food is about one of the biggest compliments you can give to a chef. You can go and enjoy meat in public too, as long as you’re not snarfing a live squirrel in public or anything.”
That’s all? Just don’t eat live animals? Eat when you need to and stop when you don’t? What in the name of [deity of instinct] was I so worried about?
I blink. “That’s… all?”
He nods, then his mouth gapes open and he breathes deeply. “Alright, if that’s all, you carry on. But do be careful, since I don’t want you to burn the house down while I’m asleep. How does the raw meat compare to the cooked version?” He points at the now half-eaten lump of meat that I had snuck from the fridge.
“Oh, this? It doesn’t even come close. You have to show me how to make it like you do.”
“Tomorrow I will. While we’re up, why were you being so jumpy all day? Is it something I did?”
Oh boy. He’s not gonna like this part.
“Well, it’s because I was, uh, scared you were going to hate me for eating meat.”
A look of confusion dominates his face. “What are you talking about? Do I look like a Feddie?”
No.
“No.”
“Then why in the world do you think I hate you?”
“I, uh, I was told not to seem predatory by my superiors or I would get taken back to Wriss and not get to contact you again.”
“Well, stop worrying. You’re not getting sent back to Wriss, not because of anything I say. Now that’s over, I’m going back to bed. Any more basic affirmations before I leave?”
“I-I don’t think so.”
“’Kay. Night, Kosie.”
“Goodnight.”
I finish the meat, though without the relish I would have should it be cooked, then head back to my own room.
I’m not getting sent back. Oh, thank [deity of miracles].
Posted May 28, 2026, 10:40 AM UTC