It All Started With Magnets

.4.

"What?" It was Lyress that said it and I grimaced.

"You two look like werewolves." I pointed between her and Hint. "A fictional, supernatural creature that turns from human into things that very much look like you." I pinched my lips together and they blinked their yellow eyes at me, tilting their head in near synchronization, much like a dog would do and I hunched my shoulders forward slightly. "We have a lot of myths and legends about them. You look just like them." I scratched my neck nervously before I glanced at Loril-ee. "You look like a pixie. A creature in myth and fiction that is tiny, has wings and antenna and live in flower gardens." She blinked at me rapidly and I pinched my lips together.

"That is what you said when you first saw us!" Mare-aidee nearly gasped it out and I felt my cheeks heat up. "You called us something and I didn't understand what it was but you were calling us by things you had seen on your planet!" I grimaced and covered my face with my hands. I had really fucking done it now. "You are telling us you just created things that looked like us out of nothing because you have definitely never seen us before. How on the Great Star did humans do that?" That the question I jolted and looked at her quickly. She wasn't mad?

"Do what?" I asked it carefully and she gave me a rather excited grin.

"You have never seen us before but you say imagined us. What do I look like on your world?" She leaned towards me, her glowing eyes nearly burning with a heavy intensity.

"Well nothing on Earth looks like you in particular." I cleared my throat and smoothed my sweaty hands on my pants. "But there was a species written into fiction called elves, you look like an elf. Tall, graceful, long hair, pointy ears. Elf." She was positively beaming and I was fairly certain her skin was glowing a little bit too.

"Do me next!" Gal-rug looked just as excited and I was blown away at the reaction. Didn't really get it but I knew it was better to roll with the punches.

"Orc. Tall, green, like to fight. Some stories have you written as brutish and rather bloodthirsty creatures who like to kill and destroy everything but I like the ones where your culture is just heavily strength based and you fight to figure out hierarchy and to prove your prowess to others." I said it carefully and he looked dumbfounded and I glanced at At'kat'vo and he tilted his head, a rapid clicking coming from somewhere on him. "I'm really sorry, At'kat'vo, you look like an insect on our planet. Please don't be offended. Except for your fingers things. Those are straight nightmare fuel." At my words he looked down and spread them out and I barely repressed a shudder at the long segmented digits that looked like spider legs.

"What about me?" Dunnerton asked it low, his voice rumbling like a rock slide and I looked him over.

"A rock golem. A fictional, non-sentient creature that is made from rock, usually with magic." I watched as he looked down at him self before he gave a raspy sounding laugh.

"It is accurate at least." He nodded his head and I felt a little relieved that no one seemed to be taking it all that bad.

"How did humans do that?" Mare-aidee asked it again.

I shrugged, "We imagined it."

"What does that mean?" She stared at me, leaning further onto the table and staring so intently that I felt a little self-conscious. It felt like she was trying to see into my head.

"Your imagination... you know picturing something in your head." I wasn't sure how else to state it. Imagination was a nebulous concept, it wasn't exactly a tangible thing. Everyone had a different one.

"Yes but you do that with real things." She waved her fingers at me as she lowered her head and seemed to study me harder. "Your species are just making things up that do not exist. That is not how it works."