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The time system on alternia is weird, they sleep in the day, and do all sorts of ruckus when the moon rises, or here’s its moons, plural. This must be what it’s like to be a bat, only without the cool wings and super amazing hearing and it’s basically nothing like a bat except for being nocturnal. Joey wraps herself in a blanket, trying to block out the temperature of the outside and keep the cozy feeling all inside. Her grin is literally contagious, Xefros next to her has a similar, smaller smile just like her.
“Ah.. all comfortable… wrapped up like a little baby!”
She says, a happy tone in her voice. But Xefros looks at her, confused and curious.
“Baby? Is that an alien thing? An animal?”
“Uh? Huh? A baby! You know, like a little version of you, like a member of your species that was just born?…”
There’s a pause in the conversation, the gears in Xefros’s brain spinning as he thinks through the words she just said, but soon he gets the idea, and he perks up. You can basically see the lightbulb appear above his head.
“Oh! A wriggler, yeah I know Xactly what you're talking about!”
“Wriggler?… why would you call it a wriggler?”
“Cause… they wriggle?…”
“But babies don’t wriggle? Don’t they crawl, or roll?
“Huh? No, wrigglers like… skitter? Just-“
Xefros makes a sorta tippy tappy movement with his hands on the hard floor. Joey giggles a little at his antics, but then she thinks… skittering? What would an infant have to look like to be able to skitter around on the floor like a tiny cockroach?
“Xefros what does a newborn troll look like?”
“Uh, newly hatched wrigglers look like us but like, they have segmented bodies, with 6 little claw feet and a tiny little stump tail?… ah… sorry if that wasn’t a good description…”
“No no, it was okay, I think I have a vague picture, it sounds so different to a baby human…”
“What does a baby human look like Xactly?…”
“Baby human? Think like me… but smaller and chubbier… but other then that it’s basically it, we’re born really fragile, we can’t even lift our own heads!”
She laughs, but Xefros seems intrigued by the idea of a tiny little human. He sits up, adjusting his own blanket as he squirms to get cozy once more.
“It sounds cute, in a sort of weird way. So what does a human egg look like?
“W-Wha?…”
Joey goes quiet, before she quickly realizes what he’s talking about, and she just starts laughing. Xefros looks highly confused, to him this seems like a normal ass question.
“Humans don’t lay eggs, we’re mammals!”
“What’s a mammal?…”
“Mammal? Like fuzzy things, similar your Lusus but like… not like that… warm blood, and they don’t lay eggs, and they have a spine!”
Joey says, rattling off things about mammals that she can think up at this exact moment. This seems to answer some of his questions, unfortunately, it opens up 20 more.
“Okay… we’ll then… is this what you look like after you pupate? Have you pupated yet?…”
He asks, and Joey scrunches up her face, pulling her blanket closer. She rears her head back and mulls over the information, but shakes her head and says.
“No we don’t pupate like butterflies and such, we just… grow up, and get bigger with time until we’re an adult. We just are born and then… age.”
“Woah, that’s so weird, you don’t have grub-scars?”
“Grub-scars??”
With some blush on his face as Xefros lifts his shirt halfway, enough to see the dual red stripes that line his sides. Joey seems confused by them, and goes for a poke, but decides against it. Joey then lifts her own hoodie tentatively, showing her lack of these scars, and by proxy, her belly button.
This catches his attention, gazing at the little hole in her stomach with a look of confusion and curiosity.
“What’s with the little dip in your body, right there?”
“My belly button, yeah, I see you don’t have one… it’s like, where the umbilical cord was when my mom was pregnant with me. I guess it’s sorta like a scar? Everyone has one, and it never goes away.”
Xefros nods, but clearly doesn’t understand half of the stuff she just said, he leans close to get a good look, and unlike Joey not touching his scars, he gently places a hand on her belly. Her face flares in blush and she looks down nervously. His hands feel her soft skin, just a moment before he realizes how weird this is, and quickly retracts his hands after only feeling for less then a second.
“Oh my that was so weird I’m Xtremely sorry Joey!!!”
He says profusely, his cheeks burst into a red hue, and he looks away. Joey makes an awkward smile, not uncomfortable, just sorta embarrassed.
“Y-your fine Xefros, it wasn’t that bad, I promise!”
She reassured, grabbing his wrist and gently tugging. This seems convincing enough, and he looks back over, but the colour on his face hasn’t gone away.
“Okay joey… I do have a question. You said something I didn’t understand, umbilical cord?”
“Yeah, it connects to your mother, when in the womb”
“Womb?…”
Joey goes silent, only now it clicks in that she is in fact, talking to an alien, who has no clue what she’s talking about. She takes a deep breath and nods.
“It’s an organ inside a lady that carries a baby before it’s born, and she protects and cares for it and such for nine months until she can have the baby, or at least that’s what my babysitter taught me!”
“Inside her?”
“Yeah! So if I was having a baby it would basically look like me but like my belly is really big, like if i had a beach ball under my shirt sorta.”
She explains, using her hands to make the rough shape of a pregnant stomach, Xefros squints curiously.
“Like… a mother grub, every girl human is like a mother grub?”
“Yeah! We’ll wait, what’s a mother grub?…”
She asks, and Xefros twiddles his thumbs, thinking of a way to explain to her.
“A big… thing that sits in a cave with some jadebloods, and lays troll eggs all day, and uh… other things but that’s like the most I’ll say”
“In that case not really? Most women don’t spend all their life having children… just like… nine months to have one or two…”
Xrfros nods, and snuggles into his blanket once more, there is an awkward silence, when then out of the blue both say in sync.
“Wow aliens are weird haha…”
There’s another silence before they start giggling at the idea that they both said the same thing. It’s quiet, both of them thinking to themselves, not even looking at each other.
“I… I’m thinking of something”
Xefros says, gazing at her. She meets his eyes and cocks her head to the side.
“Yeah? What is it Xefros?”
“If an alien-… human, and a troll had a wriggler, what would it look like?”
Again, silence, but Joey speaks up, with a soft little smile.
“I think I know, very, very adorable.”