This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/sjanevardsson on 2025-06-29 16:51:51+00:00.

What defines a person as human? Perhaps better, what defines a human as a person? How are human persons different from those around her? Grag thought about those questions often, and when she did, she felt a longing for a life she never had.

By DNA, she was human through and through. By culture, upbringing, and language, though, she was an ortian. By family, she had none, really. No blood relatives, and even the “adoptive” family in which she was raised treated her more as an experiment than a family member. Except for the youngest.

“What are you thinking about, Grag?” Arien put two arms around her and settled back on his tail.

“Deep thoughts, Ari, deep thoughts.” She chuckled. “You know I used to feed you.”

“But you don’t have—” Arien began.

“A crop pouch, I know.” Grag brushed the fur on Arien’s face. “I used to chew up your food and spit it into your mouth.”

“Why didn’t matriarch…?”

“Your sire died just before you hatched. Not sure, but I think your matriarch had a difficult time adjusting.” She knew why the researcher was absent. It had everything to do with work and nothing to do with the loss of a mate she’d considered sub-par.

“Is that why matriarch spent so much time at the lab?” he asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Grag lied.

“Tell me again how matriarch made you,” Arien said.

“Aren’t you too old for stories?”

“Maybe, but I like it when you tell them.”

“And why that story?” Grag asked.

“Because it’s you, and you’re my favorite housemate.”

Grag recounted the story. “When ortians first got hold of the human genome, they studied it. With time, more samples were made available, and more of the genome was mapped, including the non-protein coding regions.

At some point, they decided that studying the genome would get them no further. Instead, they averaged out the available human genomes, and created a batch of new, identical humans from scratch-made, custom DNA. They considered the job trivial, and the resulting children a curiosity to study, until the lead researcher — that’s matriarch — named one and took her home, saving her from being destroyed with the other dozen infants as “possible contaminants” shortly after.

“I grew up with that researcher’s children, though I grew and matured faster than they did. My creation was never hidden from me, even while matriarch was on trial for stealing property of the government. As a child, I was even allowed to testify on matriarch’s behalf. The sight of me speaking the common language resulted in giggles and titters from the crowds in the galley.

“One thing that I’ve always had a talent for was language. Aside from the common language, I also learned Galactic Standard, terzian common, and yelicoan official.

“Matriarch gave me a pair of artificial arms that fit below my real arms with a neural implant to control them, but I no longer wear them. I’m a human, and humans only have two arms. I closed the gate on it years ago, while you were still small. As frustrating as it is to operate ortian machinery with only two hands and no heavy tail to balance, operating two extra arms built with no thought to my comfort or balance is worse.

“Finally, one day, I moved into my own dwelling, and little Arien, now taller than me, decided he’d move in and be a pain in my armpits. The end.”

Arien made a grunting noise from his crop, the ortian equivalent of a raspberry. “You just like to tease me. But—”

“But what?”

“Am I really a pain in the armpits?”

“No, you’re not.” Grag blew out a deep breath. “In truth, I’m glad you’re here. At least you might understand a little.”

“Understand what?”

“Ever since the humans discovered the probe, I’ve been having these thoughts,” she said. “Questions with no answers and no good reason for asking.”

Arien pushed himself a little forward with his tail. “What kind of questions?”

“What would my life have been like if I’d been born like a normal human? What is it like to have a human family? Would a human matriarch have raised me differently?” She patted his upper hand. “Things like that.”

He turned his head nearly 180 degrees to look directly in her eyes. “Do you wonder if the humans will accept you when you meet them?”

“I do,” she said, “even though it’ll never happen.”

“You can’t say that. You don’t know.”

“I do know.” She waved her hands in a complicated series of gestures that would be two simple, three-handed gestures for an ortian. A display lit on the wall. “I’ve calculated how long it will take them to reach us with their technology. It’s around a thousand of their lifetimes.”

Arien sat bolt upright, his four compound eyes locked on Grag’s. “You didn’t hear? Matriarch didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what? We haven’t spoken in more than four orbits.”

“This,” he said, making a couple gestures to change the display. It was a news clip showing the arrival of an odd-looking ship in orbit around their planet.

“What is that?”

“The humans took the probe apart, figured out the slipspace communications, and somehow built a ship that uses the same technology to travel.” Ariel grabbed her near hand between all four of his. “The humans are here.”

“I thought slipspace was unstable for anything other than massless particles like photons. That’s why we spend all the energy to create a wormhole.”

Ariel laughed. “The humans proved us wrong. Two orbits after they found the probe, rather than the hundred-twenty it took us to go from slipspace communications to wormhole technology.”

“Can I get access to the human information now … or is matriarch still blocking me?” she asked.

All four of Ariels shoulders dropped and he pointed is gaze at the floor. “I don’t understand her. She was ordered to give you full access so you can learn their common language, and you’re meant to report to the Security Division three suns from now for briefing.”

“I wonder what they’re like,” Grag said. “I wonder if they’ll accept me as one of them.”

“If they do?” Arien asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Would you go back to their planet with them?”

Grag thought about those questions again. There was no way she could get the childhood and early life she’d longed for, but maybe the rest of her life could be different.

She looked at Arien. “I don’t know. Maybe. I might. If I do, you’re the only housemate I’ll miss. Hell, you’re the only ortian I’ll miss.”

prompt: Center your story around a character who yearns for someone or something they’ve lost — or never had.

originally posted at Reedsy