Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

White Noise

It was a cosmic storm, or that's what they had taken to calling it. They were very rare across the galaxy, and only happened in very specific locations at very specific times. They were so rare primarily because they required the mass collection of particles large enough to simulate a storm. In space, of course that didn't usually happen, if there was a cloud thick enough to cause such conditions it was usually prone to turning itself into a newborn star as the rocks and dust collected into itself, but occasionally, you would find yourself stuck inside a cloud of high velocity particles that were moving too fast to stick together or create any sort of gravitational drifting affect.

The result was.... Sort of like a cosmic sandstorm.

Sunny sat in the half darkness her bright yellow eyes looking out through the large open window in Adam's quarters. Light filtered through, only somewhat, but it was enough to allow her sensitive cones to pick up subtle variations in color as the sandy particles rolled across the window. It looked almost blue with the light that was seeping through and scattering from the stars behind it. The sound of the sand particles hitting the window was like the sound of rain, subtle and soothing aside from the particles likely going hundreds of miles an hour faster than rain.

She hummed softly in the half dark, listening to Waffles grumbled ad kick her paws as she slept.

It wasn't nighttime or anything, it was simply the nature of the storm. It had happened like that, a sort of strange feeling had come over the ship as the storm hit, and she had watched the humans grow rather quiet. The instinct that marines and others usually had to be loud and boisterous was put aside as they watched the sand come in and listened to the sounds. She had watched the humans subdue, in a way that was not sad but merely trance-like.

Dr Krill had been taking notes on the strange phenomena as the humans went quiet suddenly bound by the overwhelming instinct to nest themselves somewhere. Loud and noisy activities were silenced in favor of quiet contemplation. A few humans dragged bean bags over to the nearest window where they could listen to the sound of the storm.

Some read books, some lounged, and others fell asleep entirely to the lulling sound of the storm, like the sound of rain against glass.

It was an interesting fact about humans that they could be soothed by storms. It seemed like a primal and innate nesting instinct that had pulled here here with Adam as he returned to his own den, and promptly went quiet, listening to the sound of the particles against the window.

Sunny was no krill, she didn't need to write reports about the thing she noticed on humans, but there were a few things she had picked up on that he probably hadn't.

Then again it would be hard not to pick up on them when ou were this close to a human.

She looked down to where Adam lay curled up with his upper body resting in her lap his head against her stomach. Around his remaining leg and lower body he had gathered together a nest of pillows and quietly burrowed himself within them before going into a state of half trance half nap as he rested against her.

It was the middle of the day and it felt like the entire ship had been dropped into some sort of trance.

That didn't surprise her.

As she had thought before, there was something about storms that soothed a human, or at least most humans. She supposed it probably bored others.

Of course there were plenty of ways to sooth a human.

She had stumbled on many of them quite by accident. Or at least she had stumbled on the ones that worked on Adam.

Humans, as she had come to find with surprise and consternation, liked to be petted, kind of like a dog might. It was interesting that some humans seemed to share that common trait with animals. If she an her hand gently through the hair on his head that was generally enough to get him, make him relax. He even liked it when she gently ran a hand over his back or one of his arms or even his chest, so that was something humans and dogs had in common. They liked it when you pet them.