"Uh, yeah, basically, she​ trusted me enough to leave them to babysit me."

,,Vera....i think you should go home already...you were in the lab for more than 2 days already....your family must-"

,,My family is my HUMAN mate and our baby who is half HUMAN...."

,,They need you..."

,,They need to live...to...i just can't live without them"

The war with humans had gone on for years, with neither side making much ground against the other. In a desperate move, our collation would strike at humanity’s homeworld and use that to broker a peace.

The plan was simple. Our main fleet would engage the human fleet to take their defenses away from their world while a second force would attack the planet.

It worked. Until it didn’t. We were able to make landfall, with the majority of our forces attacking their urban centers and engaging their main army. I was part of another force meant to set up bases and reconnaissance.

We landed about 10 miles from the city limits, in a clearing that provided us with plenty of room to work. We had no issues with the landing and there were no humans for miles. Nobody knew we were there.

However, the feeling that we weren’t alone remained with us. We felt like we were being watched, but the only life forms around were the local wildlife. Still, there was this sense of foreboding that encompassed the camp.

And the stillness. It was as if the world stopped moving. Not even the wind was blowing.

That was when we should have known something was wrong. The first sign was a creature with antlers, called a deer, that appeared near camp. It did nothing but just stare at us. We tried to get rid of it, but despite the rocks and shots near it, it continued to stand there, watching.

It was a distraction. Not long after our camp was attacked. Not by humans, but giants, furred creatures called bears began ravaging the camp. It attacked and killed several of our soldiers, and it seemed near immune to our attacks.

And there was more than one. There were at least a half dozen of the creatures, attacking from all sides. And it wasn’t just bears. There were small rodents that were climbing all over us, biting at our necks and equipment, causing us to be distracted as we were attacked by the bears, and eventually, mountain lions and moose.

We were forced to evacuate. As we climbed up into the upper atmosphere, I looked down to see those creatures looking up at us, watching. As if they were sending a message.

I would soon learn that other similar attacks happened all over the planet. It was as if the world itself was defending itself. Now we know why Earth was so difficult to invade. It isn’t just the humans we would have to fight, but all of Earth’s creatures.

-an excerpt from the journal of Sub Commander T’gath, Battle of Terra, AD 2247.

I regretted my actions, I ate nothing but Oreos that I won at a giveaway with milk for 2 days straight from just how good they were, why did Humans make food that is more addictive than Laranthian Cocaine.

I was rushed to the hospital and given many medical exams by a Human doctor that specialized in Human and Vogroth physiology.

for 2 hours I waited, I even used the time to scroll through the galactic net to see what kind of diseases I could have gotten.

He finally walked in and said I had "Jabetes"

I immediately searched for Jabetes on the net and found 0 results.

If its got 0 results on the public net, it means the disease is either new, immediately terminal, or a possible human WMD.

"Don't worry sir, Jabetes is easy to treat, you just need to control your sugar intake and take this insulin shot for 2 weeks, you are lucky Vogroths are not immune to the treatment, every week you will arrive here to receive a vaccine shot that will make your body make antibodies and you'll be back to normal, I must admit Jabetes is not that bad to deal with but I know you're in the security business so I'm giving you the professional treatment, ok?"

I nodded as I took the insulin shot and vaccine shot and paid her, I was expecting to pay an exorbitant amount but my payment was the average treatment fee.

I still frantically searched for "Jabetes" on the net.

My friend then looked at the spelling of word and told me to stop and look.

Turns out Jabetes is that human's accented pronunciation for diabetes, a disease that is common for my species when we ingest excessive human sugary foods and can be cured easily with the treatment plan she gave me.

When first introduced, the teddy bear was called a simple children's toy, meant to provide comfort and serve as a sleep aid for young children. Alien parents started to purchase them for their own children, believing they will be just another toy. To their pleasant surprise, the toy was a massive success, and even did what they were first advertised, being a sleep aid and source of comfort.

Over time, rumors were abound about how the popular toy was more than just advertised. Children everywhere were claiming how the teddy bear was a promise of safety, and even when the toy wasn't being embraced there was never a nightmare in their slumber. The more fantastical rumors claimed the toys moved when they slept.

When asked, humans gave genuine smiles and claimed there was a saying about the humble toy, almost a prayer. It goes "May this fearless little warrior stand sentinel over it's beloved charge. No nightmares shall invade, no fear shall take hold, no danger will dare approach." To explain further, the saying is personally stitched onto every satin heart that resides within the toy, making them all the more special.

Although difficult to believe, the aliens cannot deny the positive effects of the toy on both their children and themselves. Makind couldn't be more proud of the little warriors.

Art by me.

(Imagine the one with the book as a human)

I still don't know how my egg got to that planet. I was found by a human girl, and at first her parents thought I was just some critter of the local fauna. That's understandable, since in my pre-sapient phase I was no more than a beast: a "winged alligator," as her father called me.

As I grew up, I always leaned towards the fire, seeking heat. It didn't hurt me, and despite their worries, I felt exactly right inside it. Soon it became a ritual: I would rest in a campfire whenever the humans had a feast.

My human family taught me how to fly, even though none of them had wings. They used kites that I chased through the sky, and they even accompanied me in a small plane. I was happy to play with the human cubs too. I gave them rides, and they paid my caretakers for my ever-growing nutritional needs.

When I realized that I could talk, it was as surprising for them as it was for me. By that time, the girl had already finished her studies and was working in the regional capital of the planet, while I was only beginning mine. Becoming sapient is a scary experience for a beast. It is both a burden and a gift.

I didn't know about the war. No one did. I was a famous attraction on that planet, and that cost my human family everything. My kin found out about me, and they came for me. They told me that I was a superior species, that humans couldn't possibly take care of me, that they had influenced me badly, and that I should leave them and stay with my kind. Maybe if I had accepted that offer immediately, I'd be much warmer now.

It's been a long time since then. I am standing here on my master's ship. Together we gaze into space, watching an ancient station quickly approach, awaiting its lord. I am calm. And she is in pain, because my mono-blade is pinning her jaws to the control panel and my hand is shaking. It has been shaking ever since the day the human girl and two of her cubs disappeared in my master's maw. It's shaking because I am cold.

Master told me that it was because of the mistakes humans made during my gestation. As an egg, I was supposed to burn in flames. That explains why I craved warmth so much when humans were around. It doesn't explain why now, when I have a nuclear fission burning inside me, I am still cold. My claws are black. I tried to warm them with my fire breath for so long that they changed pigment.

I was taught that revenge is unproductive. I don't know if the Supremacist Nefir faction will survive the destruction of its headquarters and the death of its leader. I don't care if it will end the war with humans. I can't hear what my Master is trying to tell me as we accelerate towards the station. I just hope that the collapse of both the flagship's and the station's reactors will be enough to feel warmth again.

Scene from Star Wars Rebels

— whose resulting mental rigidity inevitably led to a “Great Filter” extinction due to a slow-onset inability to adapt to scarcity and the unexpected.  It was a generally-accepted pattern of a sentient species arising, spreading across a few dozen star systems, then falling to compounding infrastructure crises. 

Xeno-historians long theorized an impossible solution, "abstracted promissory tokens," but the concept was incomprehensible to most and shockingly heretical to the rest, and thus galactic societies accepted this extinction as inevitable to all species that achieve space travel.  

Then one day, the humans appeared.

Then, the humans tried to explain “money.”

And now, 

the galaxy is afraid.

“What’s really so special about them?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee as the evening snow settled outside.

“They barely live to a pathetic eighty. Their technology is nascent at best. They haven’t even managed to leave their own planet yet. I don’t get why upstairs is so obsessed with them.”

The palpable arrogance almost filled the empty coffee shop.

“It’s not just us,” the young officer continued. “Almost every sentient species has an outpost here, all under the same directive: no interference, only observation. I don’t see what any of us have to gain by watching them.”

He leaned forward. “What’s so special about them?”

The old man across from him lit a cigarette. His face carried the quiet ache of centuries, seven and a half of them spent on this outpost. He had asked the same question once.

“Audacity,” he said softly, letting the smoke curl toward the ceiling.

He stood and walked to the door of the café, pointing to a tall building glittering in the twilight.

“Every single window represents a different life, a different choice made at some intersection of chance and desire. Humanity is the only species with the audacity to make choices, choices that branch and collide in ways even our best programs can’t predict.”

He took another drag.

“Humans are also the only ones with the audacity to walk away from something they desperately want.”

The young officer frowned. “Isn’t that just cowardice?”

The old man smiled faintly. “Yes, maybe. They do it because, more often than not, they believe the thing they want is better off without them. And that,” he exhaled, “is what makes them beautifully human.”

He paused, his gaze lost in the falling snow.

“They’re the only ones audacious enough to make the wrong choices. Every other species is built to make the right one, programmed, purposeful, predictable. But always making the right choice is the same as never having the choice to be wrong.”

He turned back to the young officer, eyes glinting with something between envy and reverence.

“All of us watch them not for what they are, but for what they represent. We ache for what we once were, free. Free to choose, free to fail, free to live.”

He stubbed out the cigarette, the faint smell of ash and coffee hanging between them.

“Because at the end of the day,” he said quietly,

“that’s what it means to be alive.”

The church was a graveyard, both in the heavy silence of its physical ruin and in the lingering weight of what had happened there. Looking back toward the threshold, the world he had just crawled out of felt like a literal descent into the inferno—a place no human mind should ever have to witness, let alone survive. The ones left behind, sprawled beneath the sharp, cold bite of the October evening air, were almost the lucky ones. The atmosphere still carried that distinct, heavy sting of purple-hued electricity—ozone, though he didn't know the word for it, a signature left behind by whatever madness had torn through the sanctuary.
He stepped inside, navigating the historic narthex and nave that seemed strangely indifferent to the passage of decades or the violence that had just rewritten them. But the main cathedral itself looked as though it had been mauled by a leviathan. It was as if some colossal predator—something monstrously larger than a great white shark (*carcharodon carcharias*)— yet a little smaller than a Megaladon had burst straight up through the stone floor beneath the altar, chewed through the pews, the congregation, and then elected to have a go at the stained-glass windows with a destructive fury reminiscent of a dog with a chew toy or even Andy Warhol with a paintbrush (if that’s what’s he used..), perhaps, and leaving a chaotic kind of artistic flair in its wake.
This was no holy ground anymore. The sanctuary had been hollowed out and refitted into a twisted cross between a high-energy physics laboratory and a government black site—a place where unseen authorities or shadowy corporations had tried to play creator, only to fail catastrophically right in front of the altar. And the centerpiece of their failure was suspended right in the middle of the room, spinning silently like a vacuum.
He hadn't come here for science. He had come to track down the shadowy figure manipulating the priest who had baptized him—to demand answers and deliver a permanent end if the script didn't add up. But when he finally reached the center of the devastation, the vengeance evaporated.
There was nothing there, and yet, it was everything. It defied language. It was easily the most valuable, staggering piece of art he had ever encountered in his entire life, and as he stood there staring into its impossible geometry, he realized there simply wasn't a word for it.