GOATS

[blackgoat]

"Do you have children?"

The voice seemed to come before the lady, as if the question summoned her, rather than was actually spoken.

Small, demure in appearance, lovely in a way that quickly extended itself into the realm of disquieting. She seemed doll like, unliving and not quite made of flesh.

Little hands resting on a heavily pregnant belly, the woman draped in heavy Victorian dresses of stone grays, off whites and dull sky blues, with that porcelain skin and wild snow white hair, she'd almost look like she was trying to blend into the snow.

"If you do not, do you want them?"

Ah, so it was her speaking, the voice soft and sweet, if... off, in an odd way. A tone that crept up the spine and settled into the neck and base of the skull, like cold fingers pressed against the nape.

Comments

[outpostcook]

"It's kinda complicated. Yeah, we did fight when we could, but the Thing wasn't really one for direct confrontation. In my case, it grabbed me in the form of a cow. I didn't have much of a chance to fight back. It could talk and think like us, so...I guess I wonder why it didn't try a different approach. My team thought it was just evil."

Kinner eats fish, so he understands what she's getting at well enough. "Yeah, well, I'm still allowed to be a little bitter about the result, right? Critters I eat are allowed to still be mad at me."

[blackgoat]

"A mouse believe the cat to be evil as well."

This isn't her first time, chatting with prey animals. A few races have reached out to her for protection from natural enemies before, after all.

"Now that you are here, of course, you are free to be as upset as you like. Are you not grateful that you can be?

Most who are dead find little to be bitter about."

[outpostcook]

"Cats can't talk to mice, though. If you can talk to the folks you eat, doesn't that change things a little?"

Kinner wouldn't feel right eating an animal that could talk. It would feel...wrong, if not immoral.

But this stranger's not human, and it's likely her values aren't human.

"I'm definitely happy to be here in some form. It's good to be alive, well, after a fashion."

[blackgoat]

"The ability to speak does not denote intelligence, nor comprehension. The near inarticulate cries of a simple creature would not deter me, even if it were to ape speech." A cold answer, but one that made perfect sense to her.

"Then you are alive? And not undead? You feel warm, child, too warm for a corpse."

[outpostcook]

Kinner wonders a bit if this is how the Thing saw him and his team. It clearly recognized their intelligence, but saw them as food and nothing more. Do the lobsters in Kinner's tank see him that way? He was certainly no vegetarian.

"Yes, I'm alive. At least I think I am, though I don't know how I got here. I'm happy not to be undead, though."