The Smeet

The Lullaby

They might hate Zim, but they had to admit he did send interesting stuff.

Humans were inferior and primitive creatures, but certain aspects of their culture were... fascinating. They had invented lots of snacks and pastries, such as 'appll pai', 'chiscak' and 'trimisu'. Purple's favorite human pastry was one that consisted of a sort of pudding made of chocolate with lashings of cream, caramel and something called 'mashmalows'.

Mental note: tell Zim to steal more of those puddings and send them to him.

Red was more interested in human literature. He had read many interesting novels of many genres, his personal favorites being science fiction, which coincidentally depicted many species even though humans have never left their solar system. The War of the Worlds was, in his opinion, the greatest of them all, though sadly in the end the martians perished when they had the planet in their grasp. The reason?  Bacteria. They were microscopic and carried lots of illnesses to which aliens had no defenses; then he recalled that time Zim was acting like a maniac (well, more than usual) over something called germs, probably cousins to the bacteria.

Another mental note, stay as far away from Earth as possible. Thankfully, Zim would succumb to either the bacteria or the germs soon. Eventually. Right?

Then there were the movies. Most were a bit too cheesy, but just like in the books, some were surprisingly accurate for a species that is mostly ignorant about the universe's diverse lifestyles, like that Men in Black film's depiction of the Insecta race. They weren't actually that bad, though, they were one of the few races in league with the Irken Empire, who provided them with sugar in exchange for information from other planets. Don't ask how the Tallest were talked into 'sharing' snacks, you don't want to know. Really. Those who did were thrown out of the airlock.

Ilk loved the animated films from that earthen company with the talking mouse, most of those consisted of a sort of damsel in distress that needed to be saved by a 'prince charming' fella. (If that's how that backwater planet saw their females, they seriously were in the hole*) and at the end the two exchanged saliva. Puaj! There were others that were a bit more neutral and didn't depict humans at all, instead focusing solely on their planet's fauna (a whole kingdom of talking animals, who would have thought?).

Red hated those movies, though. He detested the fact that in those particular movies the characters randomly burst into song every five minutes for no apparent reason at all other than the sake of annoying the heck out of the audience. Of course, it seemed he was the only one, there were also the pea-brains who actually liked it. He was not mentioning any specific names... Purple. Ilk didn't count, she wasn't a pea-brain, she was just a smeet.

"Bid! Bid!" Ilk repeated as she stared at the screen of her father's tablet.

"What are you watching now, Ilk?" Red inquired curiously as he leaned in from behind.

"Baabiiii!" Ilk pointed at a strange, long-legged quadruped animal with spots on its back. It was staring at a tiny, blue avian that was fluttering around it, calling it 'bird'.

On the bright side, she was learning new words.

"Mind if I join you?" he said, sitting down next to her. It wasn't because he was curious about the movie, of course, he merely wanted to take a look at Earth's fauna and see if they could be useful.

Who knows? Zim's mission might be a fake, but that planet DID seem like a good option for conquest in a few years. Perhaps it could be a pastry factory or a zoo of some sorts, AFTER it went through at least three organic sweeps to get rid of all the bacteria.