Misplaced - Chapter 2
What? What was that? T’aka is alarmed. There were noises again, irregular, louder, not like the thumping. And they understood it. How did they understand it?
Language. This is human language. English, specifically.
Where does this information come from? T’aka is not connected to the Database; they know that with certainty. ‘... know that for sure…,’ a disembodied voice whispers.
T’aka doesn’t know how to deal with this. Their kind doesn’t think like that. Doesn’t communicate like that. They aren’t familiar with sound emission or the imagination of it. Except that they are, now.
Their kind also never uses emphasis, but ever since they “downloaded” the knowledge of human communication - wherever that came from - emphasis saturates all of T’aka’s computing.
‘Hysteria,’ the information source provides.
That’s something else T’aka has never experienced before. And they don’t like the way it makes them feel. The thing is, T’aka is not sure the feeling is all theirs. It seems to be fed by an outside source.
It is then that they realize the thumping has sped up. And the whooshing, which previously hadn’t been as noticeable as the thumping, is much louder than before. That’s all the warning T’aka gets before the pictures are back and something lurches them forward.
‘Vertigo.’ Yet another first for T’aka.
It distracts them for long enough that by the time they focus again, they’re looking at a face. They don’t even need to have it explained to them. While T’aka has never encountered a human before, they have occasionally come across other face-owning creatures. They have eyes and noses and mouths, too… although with varying shapes and arrangements.
There’s a soft, warm glow around the face, T’aka notices. It feels quite similar to the aura they emit themselves when they’re concentrating their energy. It’s comforting in its familiarity.
“Why am I glowing?” something screeches.
Suddenly the face is much closer, the eyes larger, the mouth open. And T’aka is assaulted by a barrage of even more information. They can only guess that that was triggered by the human’s shock because - as T’aka learns now - humans are not supposed to glow.
The new knowledge is somewhat unscientific. But it’s detailed enough that T’aka also learns some troubling things: The human they’re seeing is standing in front of a mirror. It is looking at itself. If it is not supposed to glow, then said glow must come from T’aka.
The human blinks, and for a split second, everything is dark again. The moment the light is back, the glow around the human pulses twice. T’aka feels that, which can only mean one thing…
T’aka is inside the human!
Judging from their point of view, they’re somewhere behind the human’s eyes. Inside the brain, according to the data dump. This is bad! Humans have solid, organic bodies, but the brain controls that body with electric energy - an energy so similar to the one that T’aka is made of that that must be the reason why they can’t leave.
The data dump also revealed that humans live on Earth, a planet in a solar system so far away from their own that their kind has never attempted to reach it.
And now T’aka is trapped here without the slightest clue why and - more importantly - how that had happened.
548 words
AN: This is for LuxKen27's 2017 Summer Mini Challenge ( table 2, prompt 2: mouth)
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