Thinking about humans and aliens. Too hard.
Imagine an alien species that evolved to be semi-aquatic watching humans (a species evolved to climb and run on land) jump eagerly into the water to swim with them. No safety equipment, no flotation devices, just a thin modesty suit and sheer glee.
And humans, by the alien’s standards, are terrible at swimming. Just…truly awful. They can’t hold their breath for long, their bones and muscles are dense, their lungs make them too buoyant, their hair creates drag, their gangly limbs are slow and clumsy, and they can’t open their eyes underwater because the water will hurt them.
And yet the human laughs and splashes with their alien friend and alien can’t help but marvel as the human seems to adapt in real time right in front of their eyes.
The human streamlines themself to glide through the water as best they can, trying their best to turn their grasping hands into paddles, their feet into flippers. The human watches and copies how the alien moves and mimics them, learns and copies them until they move almost gracefully.
Often, they break away from these learned skills and become a land mammal flailing in the water again, but something about the human willingly defying their nature, learning to be more than they are in a bid for connection with another species, makes the alien light up with something that feels an awful lot like fondness.
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
