the capture

[instar]

Bella is, uncharacteristically, home alone; Andi is over at Robin's, and Renée is visiting a friend of hers in the hospital, though she could be home relatively soon depending on how much the two get caught up in conversation.

Bella is memorizing the map of Phoenix.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

"Well, I've seen Visser Three again now. But no, nothing, she hasn't said a word. I mean, nobody's looking to her to spy on me, you know? And - I don't know, she feels like a she to me."

[instar]

Bella rubs at her eyes. "Okay."

She swallows.

"You okay?"

[aeskhyne]

"...It hasn't been my favourite couple of days," he says. "But I'm - I'll be fine. Are you okay?"

[instar]

"I'll live." She swallows. "I don't know what to do with her - Renée could be home any minute."

[aeskhyne]

"...Me neither," says Trouble. "I'd rather not kill her, but hell, even if we do, where do we stash the body? And if we don't, what do we do with her instead?"

[instar]

"She's little, I don't think body-stashing is a huge issue, bury her in someone's backyard," shrugs Bella. "If she - we also - you can't go home, not without her."

[aeskhyne]

"...yeah," he says. "Unless - I don't know. Her only job was to do whatever Reggie tells her and not break cover the rest of the time. I'd be screwed when her feeding cycle came up - she's due tomorrow evening - but I could fake it, until then, it wouldn't be hard. And if I'm gonna disappear, I shouldn't disappear out of your house if we can avoid it, right?"

[instar]

"Right. If you're gonna disappear, you should ask a gossipy acquaintance for fifty bucks and be seen at the bus station."

[aeskhyne]

"And they'll figure Aspret picked starving over another day of Reggie. Which I wouldn't blame her for. Actually I'm pretty sure somebody was taking bets on that when they hauled us out of the pool."

[instar]

"Is there a way to talk to her when she's like this? And - let's go down to the basement at least -" She puts the hammer back where it belongs, checks the floor for blood, there isn't any. "Renée won't notice the mixing bowl gone, we're all going to Olive Garden tonight." She picks up Aspret's bowl.

[aeskhyne]

"Well... somebody could morph and thought-speak to her," he says. "But she couldn't talk back."

[instar]

"How do they even communicate, in-pool?" Down to the basement they go.

[aeskhyne]

"I dunno."

He follows her down.

[instar]

Bella puts the bowl in a box and the box on a shelf, accessible in a hurry but not obtrusive. "I suppose we could tell her to swim counterclockwise for no and clockwise for yes."

[aeskhyne]

"Or somebody could morph her," says Trouble.

[instar]

"That won't teach us her native language," Bella says. "I mean, we may as well acquire her - we'll call the others, we can meet after the Olive Garden trip when Renée's out at the movies - but I don't think it would let us understand whatever sounds or other communications she can emit right now."

[aeskhyne]

"Sure, but it'd give us a better handle on her body language," says Trouble. "Or it'd give me one, if I did it."

[instar]

"Be my guest," says Bella. "And you can see how comfy the water is, if it's liable to give her trouble if we leave her there for a while."

[aeskhyne]

He gets the box down and sticks his hand in the water. Aspret swims away from it as fast as she can, but he scoops her up with his other hand and she goes limp. After a few seconds, he lowers her carefully back into the bowl.

"No reason not to do it now, right?"

[instar]

"Eeeh - if Renée comes back you got lemon tart on your clothes and you're down here sorting through the Goodwill box looking for the least objectionable thing," Bella says. Since he does in fact have lemon tart on his clothes, this should be believable. "I'll go put stuff in the fridge, assuming Aspret didn't, like, poison any of it."

[aeskhyne]

"I won't swear it's all my best work, but none of it's poisoned," he says. "You can trust it as much as you'd trust, well, anything baked by a frantic sleep-deprived alien who keeps having trauma flashbacks. You're probably gonna have to scoop me up and put me in the bowl after I morph; do you wanna do that now, or come back and do it after you put stuff in the fridge, or what?"

[instar]

"I'll do it now. And you can narrate while I'm fussing around the kitchen."

[aeskhyne]

"Sure."

He starts to morph.

The first thing to go is his skin, turning from warm brown to greenish-grey and slimy. Then his limbs slurp into his body and he collapses onto the floor, a Trouble-sized squirming grey tube trapped in his own shirt and pants, with a perfectly human head. His hair melts away, then his face; his head is now a blunt grey blob settled on an absence of neck. Two long feathery-looking tendrils unroll out of the approximate prior location of his mouth, followed by assorted other bulges in the sluglike body still half-hidden by his shirt.

Last of all, he shrinks down to a proper Yeerkly size.

[instar]

Bella makes a face, but picks him up and puts him in the bowl with Aspret, then lingers a moment to make sure she doesn't eat him or anything.

[aeskhyne]

They appear to be snuggling.

<Being a Yeerk is really weird,> Trouble reports. <She's talking, and I can hear her, but I'm pretty sure she's figured out I have no idea what she's saying.>