She floated, basking in the glow of the sun, partially unconscious. She concentrated on the inner workings of her own body, and reflected especially on the life she carried within her. She remained that way for days, weeks maybe, in a fugue of sorts. Until the big, loud, silver beast came upon her. It surprised her, woke her up, and terrified her. It threw energy at her ceaselessly, randomly, and it hurt! She overreacted, and began to fight back. She used all of her power, blindly striking out, concerned only with the life of her unborn. And the beast threw more energy at her, this time searingly painful, and everything went dark...
He smelled something... something that didn't... that didn't smell right. He tried his other senses... he couldn't see anything, and he couldn't hear... and he couldn't... TASTE! He had always had food at a moment's notice, whenever he needed it. Now he had nothing. Oh, he called for it, soundlessly, but he received nothing. He became frantic, and tried to feel his way around, looking for food. He suddenly realized, for the first time, that he was enclosed in a tiny, tiny place. And he began to struggle. He kicked and pushed, with everything he had, and he wasn't getting anywhere. And then he heard a low whine, coming from somewhere outside of where he was. It stopped after a few seconds, and he smelled something different... something larger... so he pushed again, and he felt something give way! He pushed again, and again, and then gave it all of his strength... and he saw stars! He saw stars, and he saw a huge, immensely huge, silver being, and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
And then it started moving away from him, slowly, but it was moving away! He knew it wanted him to follow it, so he did, and then it started moving faster... and he found himself racing to catch up. He got closer, and as he did he got a small taste of food, and that was enough to give him a burst of adrenaline. He jumped on the pretty, silver thing... and he was rewarded with so much food he could hardly handle it all. Within a single minute he learned to regulate his intake, and he began eating, and eating, and eating...
... Ages later, still feeding, something hit him in on the right side of his stomach. It slammed into him with such force he almost lost his grip on the silver thing. He held on as hard as he could, holding himself to the thing with every ounce of strength. It hurt, and he screamed... but he remained attached. After he calmed down enough to concentrate on what was going on around him, he heard someone calling back to him... friends were on the way...
... Some time later he noticed something was wrong with the food. It had a... a dirty taste to it... but it was still edible. Over an amazingly short period of time, though, it started getting REALLY disgusting. He went into convulsions, screaming as loud as he could, and eventually, though it pained him, he had to let go. He turned from the silver thing, then, thinking that it was not as beautiful as he had once believed. And as he turned he saw three beings, and they talked to him, and they consoled him, and they told him he was home.
He was HOME!
*****
"Congratulations, Mr. LaForge. You have weaned the baby."
(c) Copyright 1996 by Njingi