It All Started With Magnets

.5.

I stared at the bug-like ambassador and he tilted his head on his thin neck, his big faceted eyes staring at me. "Glow. Your species appears to glow, much like the ilthi. Yours is dappled ever so slightly, it is soothing to look at." He shifted hid head and looked at the elf-like ambassador. "No offence to you, Mare-aidee, but your glow can tend to get overwhelming."

"Oh no worries, At'kat'vo. It is well known for us." She waved him off with a smile, still stroking her hair as if comforting it.

I blinked at him.

Glow.

I glowed.

Like a fucking glow stick.

"You are dead serious, aren't you?" I asked it as I looked at him I wasn't much for bug body language or reading into their facial expression, or the distinct lack there of but I had the impression he was serious.

"Of course, I would not tell you something that is not happening to your own person." His long spider leg fingers flared out, pointing at me in a wave and I repressed the urge to shudder as I watched them. "I can only assume your species shares a similar biological process with free radicals with the ilthi. At least that is why they glow so brightly. Yours is muted so perhaps a bit less than their own. Still. It is noticeable. It is stronger under the sun as well." He turned his head to look at me and his mandibles clicked together several times.

"At'kat'vo, sometimes I am envious that you can see colours I cannot." Loril-ee said it with a sigh as she adjusted her notebook. I turned to look at her and she gave me a sharply toothed smile. "No one else glows according to the k'gtar. Just the ilthi and now apparently humans." Her wings drooped slightly before perking up as she looked at me. "What is the latest technological advancement your species has accomplished outside of your engine?" She looked at me expectantly, her writing tool, that looked like a very odd pencil, waiting above her notebook.

"Holo-decks, head set free virtual reality, we developed a way to get dirt from Mars back to earth but that's not something people would use every day." I pursed my lips. "We also have developed a real time translator for the languages of earth. Which is handy. It's a bit bulkier than your own but it works." I shrugged and Loril-ee was finishing up a page in her notebook.

"How many languages does your species speak?" At the question from Hint I shrugged.

"A couple thousand, I'm not exactly sure of the exact amount but it's like two thousand and up." I knew it was up there but the specifics of the numbers escaped me.

"That is so many! How did your species reach space if you could not accurately speak to each other?" Liress said it with a touch of incredulity and I shrugged.

"Competition mainly. Some of us wanted to be first so we competed to get there before everyone else. You know, us versus them, that type of mentality. It was better than killing each other in my opinion." I shrugged again. Humans were highly competitive.

"The most languages spoken planet wide was six. That was the Ilthi but their species is separated into Royal Houses and each Royal House has their own language." Loril-ee said it as she wrote a bit more furiously as I adjusted myself in the chair.

"Over two thousand is both startling and fascinating." Mare-aidee breathed it out as her glowing eyes rested on me and I flushed slightly at that much intensity. "How many do you speak?"

I grimaced. "I speak English, it's a more commonly spoke language but there are others that are common as well. I can understand some French but not a lot. I am fluent in sign language though." I smiled at that and they all looked at me in confusion. "Sign language is speaking with your hands for people who are hard of hearing or who have disabilities that make speech difficult for them." I signed along with the words to show what I meant and the confusion was still present.