“-and you can pry that out of your ass with a chipped knife. Hrmph.”

The dirt was unhappily brushed off of my exoskeleton and my softer upper body. It had an ugly static cling to it that it did not back home. Neh’vahn was still firmly upright, and it seemed as if he’d be staying that way for the rest of the foreseeable future. I’d later investigate that under better circumstances. Fine. I wondered if he was merely a mutant of some sort or… if the rest of this realm was populated by such unstable people. “That would be strange,” I mused. Yet, it seemed the likelier of the two possibilities.

The two-legs winced. His face had taken on a scowling quality. I glanced at him, somewhat concerned as performed his strange foreign ability with the red tendrils pushing out of his skin. What were they? Did I want to know? I assumed it was probably a common thing, considering how casual he was about it. Others could do that too. Or, that was what I was assuming. It was just a spindly little patch out of his hands this time, rather than the large fronds that had caught me from my earlier plummeting.

In the red webbing was a… Wait. Was that really…?

I let out the cheeriest chitter I had uttered since dropping into this forsaken realm. It was!

A black beetle no bigger than the tip of my tarsals, its legs splayed out and rippling, as if it could hope to find a way out of Neh’vahn’s grip. The cute needle-point pincers snapped at the air in distress. Aw! Bitch thought it was menacing! As if. The thing was much smaller than any of the wildlife I knew in my world -- a juvenile? an oddity? -- but, at least it was still recognizable. Still familiar. Possibly, edible. Since Neh’vahn was not looking at it in a way that suggested he was hungry, I darted to grab it; waste not, want not. Especially in an alien realm. “I can take that, thank you,” I sang. The exoskeleton cracked between my teeth, letting the delicious insides out. Crunchy, then gooey. Tangy. Perfect. If, well, small.

"This place actually has halfway decent grub," I admitted begrudgingly. "I should ask where I can find the bigger ones later."