Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sabina poked at her "food".

She hated lunch most of all. It was hard enough to figure out what to eat for dinner, between her human palate and her strict dietary guidelines, but whenever this weird alien school served lunch, they gave her whatever it was that they thought she could eat. It was brown and wet and gross and she usually just stuck it to the bottom of the table. No one cared if she wasn't eating lunch besides her mom, and the droids cleaned the tables every day anyway.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes and stuffed it under her hat.

"Are you a human?" A boy approached the table and looked at her with curiosity. She'd never seen him before. He wore a school uniform, even though uniforms weren't even required, and it didn't quite fit.

"I guess."

"I like your hair." The boy sat down at the opposite corner of the table. "My parents won't let me have hair. They don't know how to take care of it. Anyway, I'm new here. I just transferred from a school on the other side of the Centrium."

"The one that exploded?"

"It wasn't a big deal. It just got vented into space, so now they have to replace it. My name's Elton. What's yours?"

"Sabina."

"Whatcha eating?"

Sabina made eye contact with him for the first time as she slid her plate across the table. "You tell me."

Elton took a close look at the brown thing. "I bet they call it meat," he said. "Just 'meat'. But I bet it doesn't have any meat in it either. It probably won't make you sick."

"It tastes terrible, though."

"I bet it does. I don't know why they keep trying to give us 'human food'. I'm always so jealous of the Embryophytes when they get those salads! Like, why can't I eat that?"

"They're plant people, right?" Sabina said. "So for them I guess that is meat."

"True." Elton took off his glasses and wiped them off with the bottom of his sweater. "Man, I didn't know there were any other humans on the Centrium! At least not in the past hundred years or so."

"I just got here," Sabina explained. "My mom and I."

"She's human too?"

Sabina raised an eyebrow. "Yeah."

"My mom's a droid," Elton explained. "My parents adopted me from a life capsule when I was a baby. No one knows where I came from."

"Earth?"

"No, Embryophytes are the ones that grow from earth. I think humans come from other humans."

"So you weren't raised by humans?" asked Sabina.

"I never knew any," said Elton. "Not 'til now."

"She's human?" asked Bop, Elton's snail friend. He tilted his stalks. "She doesn't look anything like you."

"What do you mean? The hair?" Elton sighed. "I keep telling my mom I can take care of it on my own. It just grows straight down."

"No, I mean she's a completely different color from you. And she's got a red thing growing on her head."

"That's a hat. How do you not know what hats are? I've worn one before."

"That's what that was? I thought it was a parasite."

"Yeah, well, so did my dad. That was the end of that." Elton looked over at the table where Sabina had been sitting. "I really hope I didn't scare her off. You think I looked too excited?"

Bop laughed. "You always look too excited."

"It's hard to tell from her," Elton said. "I don't know if she expresses her emotions the same way I do. Maybe I'm doing it wrong."

There were so many things Elton didn't know about his own species. Why was one toe on each of his feet so much wider than the others? Why did he only have a left heart and not a right one? Why did a bunch of blood come out of his nose last week? It didn't hurt but it freaked everyone out and he was concerned it might be a symptom of something.

"You okay?" asked Bop. "You haven't said anything in, like, twenty seconds. Or are you that obsessed with her already? Is she gonna be your girlfriend?"

"No - I mean - maybe eventually, I don't know." Elton groaned. "I'm not even thinking about that right now. I just want to know who she is, and where she's from. I want to know someone who I can relate to."

"L-10!"

Elton turned around.

"Your schedule indicates that your next class starts in ten minutes." Elton's mom, the droid L-9, hovered around him. "You really ought to get going."

Elton blushed. "Ugh. I can handle my own schedule, Mom."

L-9's faceplate opened to reveal her mutualoid, a tiny blue alien, who glared at him silently.

"You had to bring Dad, too? Why do you always have to embarrass me?"

Bop looked at Elton with curiosity. "Why are you embarrassed? Your parents are a robot and a guy inside a robot. That's awesome."

"Another human?" Sabina's mom seemed way too interested. "Do you think he's going to go to your school from now on?"

"I hope not. He thinks I'm a human."

"Aren't you?"

"Mom, please." Sabina laid face-up on her futon. "I can turn into a dragon. I can't eat anything but meat. I'm a monster, like Dad is."

"That doesn't mean you're not also human, at least in a neurological and cultural sense. Your body must be taking human form for a reason."

"But it's just fake." Sabina sat up and leaned against the wall of her bedroom. It was the only place in the environmental unit that felt like home. The units were supposed to adjust themselves to the inhabitants' ideal environment, but her mom's part of it just seemed so impersonal and bland. "I just... don't want this guy to see that I'm not human. But I don't want him to think I am, either. I don't wanna get his hopes up. If I was really a human, I wouldn't have to hide my horns, and I wouldn't be growing a tail in front of everyone."

Sabina's mom frowned. "That was just me and Misam. And he already knows about the tail thing."

"Oh my god, Mom, you tell him everything!" Sabina flopped backwards on her bed and groaned. The only person her mom ever talked to was that feline biologist, and not only was he married, but he didn't even live here. She wished her mom could have an actual partner, or literally anyone, really. Maybe then she wouldn't get up in Sabina's business all the time.

Misam peeked in from behind a metal door in the nearby hallway, carrying a large box. "She has a point, Ashley," he said, his tail dangling off to the side. "Sometimes it's really too much information."

"What are you doing here?"

"Throwing - stuff - away!" Misam tossed the box across the hall into the environmental unit's storage pod. "You got anything to toss?"

"No, I mean, why are you here, on the Centrium?" Sabina turned to her mom. "And why does Misam smell like something died all over him?"

"He's collecting and compiling information on alien biology," her mom explained. "Also, one of our meat freezers gave out. Bunch of rotting space turkeys in there. As long as we're paying the seventy credit fee for the dump, I figure we should make the most of it. But be quick - we don't want all that rotting flesh in the storage pod for too long."

"Eww."

When Elton arrived at mathematics class the next morning, the entire class was bunched up around the door, trying to peek in. Instead of shoving his way through the crowd (and getting alien goop all over his clothes), he made his way over to Bop. "What's going on?" he asked.

Bop stretched his eye stalks over the crowd. "I guess there's a dragon in there. Haven't seen it, though. Maybe it's behind something."

"Are there usually dragons at this school?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

The door opened ever so slightly - just enough to let out the school's diminutive principal. He looked up at Elton. "Hey, you're human, right? We could use your help."

Elton entered the room, alone. He didn't know what he had expected, but it seemed like it was still in pretty good shape, with the exception of the suspiciously large lost-and-found pile in the corner. He grabbed a wooden meter stick and used it to poke at the pile.

"Ow." The dragon poked its head out from the pile. White eyes, brown skin, cool hair--

Oh. It was just Sabina.

Neat, Elton thought. He didn't know humans could do that. Maybe it was a girl thing. "Hi," he said to her. "It's me from earlier. The other human."

Sabina looked embarrassed. She glanced away and backed up into the pile. Maybe she didn't like being seen like this.

"I mean- hello dragon, who I don't recognize and certainly doesn't look like any human I've ever met." Elton cleared his throat. "I would like to ask your name, because I certainly have no way of knowing, having just met you now."

"You don't have to lie to me." Sabina looked down at her bare front feet. "You know I'm not a human."

"Really?" Elton glanced in the direction of the classroom door; the principal had apparently pulled the shades down on the door's window, blocking his classmates' view. "You've seen the other kids in this school, right? You look pretty human to me."

"I have four legs, and a tail, and horns," Sabina said. "And a snout."

"I mean, that's it, though. That's like four things."

"I also can't eat vegetables."

"Oh, that is bad."

Sabina looked up at him. "Really?"

"I can't imagine not having broccoli. It's, like, my favorite thing."

Sabina sighed. "My dad's not human. He's a shapeshifter who lives on another planet. I might look like a human, usually, but I'm not. Not really."

"Well, that's not why I wanted to be friends with you," Elton said, "if that's what you're thinking."

"But you only came up to me 'cause you thought I was a human."

"Sure, but it's not about being human. I figured you at least knew stuff about humans. I've lived my whole life not ever having anyone to talk to about human stuff. Just hundred-year-old database files and books." Elton put his hands in his pockets. "Also, you're closer to my age than your mom is."

"She is human," Sabina said.

"Yeah, but she's an adult. They're so embarrassing."

"Mine's all right, I guess." Sabina curled up under the pile of coats and scarves. "I guess she's the only person I really know here. Maybe the only one who understands me."

"I don't think anyone understands me," said Elton. "Least of all myself. I'm hoping maybe you will."

"I think my mom's trying to get away from Earth." Sabina looked down over the handrail from the top floor of the mall. "She used to have a home there, and it's just... not there anymore."

"It got destroyed?" Elton asked.

"No, it actually got better. But it's not the same." Sabina sighed. "And I think she's trying to keep me far enough away from my dad that he doesn't feel obligated to help raise me. He feels so guilty about it, but... I mean, he's a pretty terrible dad for a human kid. He doesn't understand me at all."

"Some part of you must be human, then."

"Human enough to keep me from having a healthy relationship with my father, and monster enough to keep me from eating potatoes."

Elton looked at her with surprise. "I can eat those?"

"Sure." Sabina shrugged. "You might want to cook them first."