Journey of the Alacritous Regress Volume 1: The Dead Canary

Installment 2: It's full of S__t

Quick pulls us back to reality, "You two are siblings!?"

"Probably, there isn't much other reason for us to have just called each other brother and sister." My sister's name is Comet Tail, although everyone just calls her Tail, for both her name, her long appendage, and her long and unbelievable stories.

"But you two were just fighting and yelling, and now you, you're, well. What was I going to say?"

Tail ignores Quick's floundering, "So Shooting, haven't heard much from you the last few years. How you've been? Have that special someone in your life yet?"

"But you look so different!" We both turn to look at Quick, who still sports a look of total bewilderment. I'm a lynx Engea, my sister's a serval Engea. Uncommon, yes, impossible, not by a long shot.

"All races of felid Engeas are closely enough related that they can all interbreed."

"But instead of having the traits cross to create something new."

"The genetics will instead default to one or the other's genetic traits."

"And that's what happened to us."

"I got our dad's looks."

"I got our mom's"

"Yet we still have that weird twin interconnectedness thing."

"You two are twins!!"

"Yes, try to keep up."

"And not pass out."

"So anyway, were were we?"

"We just finished explaining to Quick how the Birds and the Bees worked and were going to go back to your previous question about my life."

"Aw, yes. How have your last few years been, have that special someone yet?" Me and Tail had been really close as kids, but after graduating from college back on our home world, Nike, we both went our separate ways. Tail went straight to working for NASA as a navigator, I went on to advance studies with a NASA scholarship.

"No, I haven't. Back at the academy on Horus, being in the Captain program was like being on the football team. That drew in a lot of girls, but my personality would always secure that it would never get very serious. Not that it matters anyway, you would just steal her if I did have that special someone."

"That wouldn't happen."

"It always does."

"Oh, it wouldn't happen." Tail holds up her arm, revealing a silver engagement ring.

"You're getting married!!"

Behind us Quick thumps to the floor unconscious, incapable of taking any more pieces of exciting news. "Should we..."

"Na," my sister says, "She'll be fine."

"You've known her long?"

"Three days, I just got reassigned after my ship got in. It would have gotten here sooner, but I was the navigator."

"Anyway, back to you. Who's the lucky guy."

"Gal."

"Grandma's going to throw a fit, probably one to rival the one she threw when you brought home your first girlfriend."

"Now that was entertaining."

"So when do I get to meet you fiancée?"

"As soon as you turn around." I spin around on the pads of my feet and find myself face to chest with a massive Blait. She's tall, that much is obvious and true of all Blait. Her tannish yellow fur contrasts horribly with her red flight suit, and she has two massive triangular ears that nearly stretch from one side of the hall to the other. She has a very masculine build to her, causing me to recall from basic alien biology class, that the Blait's home world was one of very few where the gender roles are almost completely switched from what they were on Terra.