“So what’s your favorite animal?”

That makes Lou pause from doodling in her notebook. Her favorite animal?

“Just one?”

“If you had to give your all time favorite right here, right now, what would you say?” Roman asks.

The whole group, Lou, Roman, Jeremiah, Bell, Cross, Marta, and Amelie, are in Jeremiah’s living room. All lounging, not focusing on homework at all, even though Cross has been trying to encourage it.

“Mine’s a dog,” Jeremiah offers when she doesn’t answer. “Of course it is, Mister Golden Retriever,” Marta teases, punching him in the arm.

“I love arctic foxes,” Bell adds.

Lou half listens as she contemplates the question. It is supposed to be simple, but not with her.

Her power is talking to animals. Each animal has their own personality. Even two animals of the same breed are completely dofferent. How could she say her favorite one? That’s like ranking people! (And that would be easier than this).

“What about you Cross?” Amelie asks.

“I think monkeys are just funny little guys,” he answers.

Lou nods, that fits him.

“Roman?” Bell directs it to him.

“I’ll answer for him. He likes wolves like the lone wolf he is. And he might have had a Teen Wolf phase,” Jeremiah interrupts with a cheeky grin. Roman squawks at his secrets being spilled.

She would normally tease him about that, but the topic of the conversation still plagues her. Her favorite animal?

Marta makes a show of her answer. “I know what you’re all thinking, a cheetah, right? But no! My favorite is a hummingbird. They can flap their wings super duper fast! Like me!” She uses her speed to make her arms a blur.

“Amelie, do you have one?” Jeremiah looks curiously to one of the only ones who haven’t answered. “Quokka,” Amelie finally says.

“Ah-whatta?” Cross blurts out, surprised.

“Quokkas are small marsupials found mostly in Australia,” Lou finds herself replying before she even realizes. She is a whole host of animal facts. Those stick in her mind which is shocking considering she has a hard time remembering people’s birthdays.

Amelie’s eyes widen. “You know what they are? Wait…of course you do. Have you ever met one?” She leans forward. This is the most comfortable Lou has ever seen Amelie. Amelie almost never asks or says things unprompted.

“My parents and brother took me on a trip to Australia for my big birthday/Christmas gift last year. I did meet some. Ollie was the cutest little thing,” she gushes, remembering back to that magical vacation. It was the biggest gift they could have ever gotten for her.

“What’s your favorite animal? Was it any in Australia?”

Pausing to resume thinking, how can she pick? If she doesn’t say lizard, Greg would be so upset. But she has so many bunny friends! And what about her wild friends? She can’t weigh domestic animals higher than her forest friends!

“You can just say a general one,” Roman suggests, trying to help her out. “Yeah, you don’t even have to answer if you are so conflicted,” Bell adds.

Closing her eyes, she goes to the first animal that she can see, and the answer is suddenly so clear.

“All animals. But I have a great fondness for kitties.”

“That makes sense,” Roman comments, lifting up his green journal in which Lou has drawn cats on the cover. “Your notebook was so boring. It needed some cats to make it cuter,” she defends.

She looks down to see that she had been doodling kitties in her own notebook.

“Cats make everything better.”

Sleek and elegant with a soft, warm coat, sitting there, effortlessly pulchritudinous. Her ears sleek and perked, with velvety fur lining the inside. Two dainty paws stand sturdily next to each other. But the adorable view of the kitten isn’t the same from every angle, because sometimes what you first see overshadows what you don’t. Her tail still curls up when she’s being pet, but instead of furriness, it’s scaly and shimmery green. The end has beige coils and it rattles with each step. When she opens her mouth, you’ll see sharp little fangs that will inject poison if you get bit. And, if you look closely, her eyes will turn from the warm brown to the glittery golden with slit pupils. So, be careful if you encounter a snitten…

I shivered but couldn’t make my legs run away. The howling was beautiful. The soft gray fur and the poise. But the eight legs and eight eyes were horrendous. How could I love an animal that scared the beejezus out of me? And here I was now wondering. Will it attack me? Maybe it senses my terror. That’s when it spat something that looked like white foam from its mouth. Towards me. In seconds I was a cocoon of that silky but unpleasant substance. Now I was sure it was going to kill me.

The jaws opened wide, revealing rows of jagged bloodstained teeth. The skin was rougher than sandpaper, making you bleed if it touched you. It was the color of chocolate, and wings protruded from its back. It supported itself with six impossibly skinny legs, and it used its dead black eyes to see. It was the size of the poodle, allowing you to see every gruesome detail of its hideous body. It was one animal you never wanted to get close to.

The creature howls, and there’s a rattling sound. I find myself rooted to the spot as it approaches.

The liquinox.

It’s a lot bigger than it should be if ———‘s vague explanation of what it was was correct, standing almost twice as tall as me if I had to guess. What should be fur in the Earth counterpart is made entirely of shimmering blue and silver and green scales, a certain beauty in them. But this creature isn’t all good. Though it won’t hurt me, not if ——— was right about it, it would kill anyone it saw as a threat.

I know a lot about venoms, of course, but still… this has the strength of a much bigger creature on its side…

“Hey, hey,” I whisper as it stops a few feet away from me. “I mean no...”

A forked tongue flicks out of its mouth — bright blue.

Sickness pools in my stomach.

Isle of Galapondra, 1856

Dearest Emily,

It is upon our return to this, the smallest of the Durindral Islands, that I come to write what I fear may be my last correspondence. If Galapondra is a name familiar to you it is because I wrote about this uninhabited, desolate grassland in a letter to you some eighteen months prior. You may remember, my love, that I mentioned we were to leave our few remaining asses on the island to feed and drink—for there is a small, fresh-water spring—in the hopes of retrieving them on our return trip home. You know—as we have discussed on many a long evening near the fire, port or sherry in hand—of my distaste for those most stubborn and ill-tempered of beasts. But, alas, they are fine workers (when the choose to be) and, as a lover of all wildlife (if only in the theoretical), I cannot simply leave them to perish. So, back to the island we did travel!

To understand what happened next you must first understand that the island was not, in fact, uninhabited, but was instead replete with myriad species of stomatopodi—commonly Mantis Shrimp. They live just off the shoreline and are proficient hunters. As not to offend or distress, I will leave the means of just how they dispatch of their enemies or prey to this: they, at least the most dominant species near the island, posses a sort of clubbed appendage with which they punch their victims with a speed and velocity that, in spite of my proficiency with the written language, cannot be adequately described. It must be seen to be believed (but even without blinking it cannot truly be “seen”). The punch carries with it such shear power that these small crustaceans have been known to disembowel a meal, or, in my case, split open the thumb of a careless scientist. (I fear, dearest love, that I, if only temporarily, violated my vow to you that I would refrain from indulging in the crudest of words. I did, in fact, become more of a “sailor” that day than perhaps any other.)

Now, to the very heart of my correspondence, and to why I write this with the understanding that you may only receive it months or years after, what I fear, may be my demise. It is also a sort of confession, even if my crime was unintentional and—based on what I now understand to be a painfully inadequate education from what I was told were some of the world’s foremost learning institutions—very much an impossibility. You see—and here, again, I must ask for you to forget all you know of nature, of these new rumors of “Natural Selection” so prevalent among my peers, and trust that every word I write to you is true—that force we colloquially refer to as “Mother Nature” has, in fact, created such an abomination as to make one fear the very future of this planet.

I find myself having trouble forming the sentences, even now; Even after all I have seen; Even after so many of the crew have been so violently dispatched. But I must. The captain has busied himself forming a plan to get the few of us remaining back to the ship, but he had as well put upon me the responsibility of explaining the events that have transpired, to “tell the world our story,” if only as a warning. He has not—would not—say so, but, by telling this most tragic of tails, I understand that I am also telling of my sin, of my hubris, of my now obvious and total lack of understanding of the natural world.

Enough of this, though. I am afraid that the deafening sounds of highly developed thoracic appendages smashing violently against our makeshift barricade mean that I am not long for this world. So, I will tell you of that which I now fear most:

It would appear that, somehow, through what mechanism I cannot—do not want to—understand, the shrimps have found a way to breed with the asses.

To describe them is the stuff of nightmares, so, please, my darling, if this is too much, stop reading now and hand this letter to Dr. Wilkinson.

I will do my best to give at least enough details as to make them easily identifiable:

The beasts have retained nearly half the physical size of the ass—the size of a Mastiff or Great Dane. They have also retained the equine head of their mothers. What is truly terrifying, though, is that they are nearly translucent: a clear, inch-thick exoskeleton covering their pale organs. Only my close encounter with the mighty Great White shark of which I wrote you some years ago has drawn from me such fear as I experience upon seeing the pale green beating heart of these most terrible beasts, to say nothing of the disconcerting nature of seeing the still-developing fetus within the light pink uterine walls of the pregnant females. Even now—as is evidenced by my very script—my hand shakes at the memory.

Of course, the most horrible trait of all is the cricket bat-sized bludgeon that has evolved out of their two new appendages. Like a club-wielding Centaur of Ancient Greek mythology, these six-legged (armed?) monsters smash and crush anything they see as a threat. And, my love, they view us as that threat! I will not describe to you the horrors visited upon the first, most curious, of the crew to stumble upon these demon asses but to say that what is left of their earthly vessels will remain on the island; there is, unfortunately, not enough of them to bury—should we make it out of this predicament with our own bodies intact, that is!

Ah, another punch, maybe two, is all I fear we can withstand before we must choose to run or fight. But fight with what, how? They strike with such fury the only hope is distance.

It is time, dearest love, that I end this letter. Please, tell the world—convince them—that these monstrosities must never be allowed off the island. They must not be removed to be studied, to be the shining new piece to a traveling exhibit. They must be left to perish on their own, or, as the captain has now decided, burned with fire, destroyed. If we prove to be unsuccessful, I fear that our place atop the natural hierarchy may be in jeopardy, should these devil donkeys ever escape their natural water-prison.

Know that as I close this letter I wish only to see your face, but that, if I must, I will give my life here and now in this, our final effort to kill or escape the Braying Mantises.

Yours truly, sweet, sweet Emily, your husband,

H. Daniel Locke

The night before his death You took a long walk with him Unusually long, so I asked him Where you guys have been

He smiled and began his tale You happily wagged your tail After all, you and he were best mates Strolling cheerfully, going to places

When I saw you lying next to him In the shed on that late autumn night I recklessly asked both of you again What on earth has happened

Your brooding eyes, trying for another tale Sitting on the white sheet covering him And the cold cement ground beneath You no more wag your cheery tail

He lay there like a wooden toy soldier His mouth half open, as if to finish his last sentence I frantically shook his body and realised this time He is gone forever with his half finished tale

Eight articulated legs with belly low to the ground.
Short stubby limbs goof for burrowing, with a long back and red hour glass marking.
My bites are silent and deadly, but I can give gentle kisses on your belly.
I miss you when you are gone, wait patently for your return. With beefy black eyes, with a death wish in disguise. Tessa🦋

✅📝good!

I prayed my air tank would last such a long encounter. I’d made it deeper than most had dared to at this time of day. Desperation guided my trembling limbs.

There it was. Bobbing the length of two cars in front of me. No doubt pondering my intrusion. Its figure drifted toward me and I was filled with repulsed awe. The way it undulated. Its translucent glow. My “Guide to Mystical Whatchamacallits” did not do this thing justice.

To the untrained eye, it looked like a sodden piñata, topped with a golden horn. Those fresh to these waters might attempt to capture such a beast. To sell its 165ft tentacles for an early retirement. But I knew better than to answer the siren call. The beast had paralyzed thousands of victims last year alone. My best bet was to remain perfectly still, in wait for its judgement. Would it deem me worthy of blessing?

Like a butterfly drawn to a flower, the paranormal pulp rippled toward me. Sanguine terror streaked my senses. I shut my eyes, sure of impending agony. The collective mass of the mystical creature wrapped a tentacle around my diving helmet. It lowered its glittering horn.