Adopted By Humans III by Robert Butler

Author:Robert Butler [Butler, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2022-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

The life of a dlamisan is measured not in seconds, hours, days, or even years. Our lives span centuries, if we are not killed by circumstances. The oldest known of our kind, at least to me, lived six hundred and twenty-six years, by our reckoning, though what that is on the human calendar I have never bothered to calculate. His age was such that he could still remember the grandiose speeches of those whose fathers lived through the Age of Chaos, who were themselves old dlamisans by then.

But human lives are old at a mere eighty years, a bad decade or even century for a dlamisan can be overcome, but for a human, it is their whole lives. Hearing a girl no older than my Fauve speak with passive acceptance of her own possible death in the near future, and wanting only to have a blanket of flowers and a deep hole for herself so that she would not be eaten by wild beasts… I could think of no words of comfort for the little rabbit.

What could I, who even at my worst knew only a full belly and a warm home say?

She did raise her head, but not her ears. She was quiet for a few minutes and I very much doubted she believed we could do what Rebecca said, and after all, Rebecca was a biologist. Not a doctor, the best she could really do was provide basic care with knowledge of the body and seeing her, even that was suspect. How much did they have in common with normal humans anymore? The best chance for Rebecca to help lay in her ability to collect and analyze genetic samples to determine what we were dealing with.

What was this ‘sickness’? What was the state of the little tribes in this errant wasteland?

I just had no idea, and Bau lacked the experience to properly explain it, while Usagi lacked the words.

Some things though, words were not needed for. Boatswain handed over one of the dlamisan variations on the human ‘MRE’ which if you are not familiar, stands for ‘Meals Ready to Eat’ both of our species had similar nutritional requirements, and so far no allergies had been found that would prove lethal to either of us. Another mystery that would one day need answering.

For now, she tore into our people’s package, unlike the human one which still used a kind of plastic, albeit easily broken down, ours was packaged with an edible substance that chiefly ‘felt’ like plastic. It would not taste good; truth be told it did not taste like anything.

But every bit of our packaging was edible, albeit far, far blander. The human meal was rich with flavor and quite variable, chili with spices and salty crackers, a cookie made of oats and raisins, and a piece of bread made out of mealed corn.

Ours was more efficient than theirs, but if forced to choose, I would take the human one first.

Usagi however, didn’t seem to mind, her

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