vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
juvenile 🧸

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.

Comments

[marycatelli]

From Master Fortunatus's expression, he did not think that the explanation, though he would volunteer nothing.
She felt very young.
She supposed that, even if you counted the years in the dream, she was very young.
And it was hardly odd that Master Diggory did not volunteer his secrets.

[starshipcat]

We're used to the young of an intelligent species looking pretty much like a smaller, cuter version of the adults. Chongu kittens have bigger eyes, smaller ears and fluffier fur, but you can look at them and know they're baby Kitties.

Even hatchling Tchiador resemble tiny versions of the adults, although the handling abilities of their maxilipeds don't really develop until their third or fourth molt. I've heard it has to do with the width of the Helium II channels that serve as both circulatory and nervous system, but I'll leave the details to the xenoanthropologists.

And then we learned about the Azhaghat. One of the first things we heard was how these creatures eat their own young -- and then we discover that their young look like fat worms for the first part of their lives, and the Azhaghat queens can lay special eggs that produce a brainless larva which never pupates, just gets bigger and bigger with adipose tissue, and can be used as a mobile larder for the soldier subcaste to carry with them on campaign.

[marycatelli]

always complications