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Wayne’s garden had a habit of attracting visitors.
Animals of all kinds crawled, scuttled, and galloped to his yard, hoping to snag a taste of his vegetables. Wayne let them. It wasn’t like those crops took long to grow back; he’d planted the Half Hour Perennials for a reason. Most of the creatures headed off after munching their fill, but several stayed, granting Wayne a bit of pleasant company every time he stepped out of the house. He’d acquired his latest few cats this way.
Then there were the people. The only house Wayne could lay claim to was well out of the way of any major cities, so there had been little reason for sapient visitors to take notice of his modest dwelling. Until one day, when Wayne was woken by the enthusiastic soundtrack of some guy’s old stereo blasting outside his window.
Wayne should have been annoyed at the unrequested wakeup call, and the fact that this random stranger was definitely stealing some of Wayne’s food to fuel him on his travels. But all Wayne did was hum along with the music while he got ready. It was a nice change from all the quiet out here.
Stereo Guy camped in his yard for the night. And for the next night. And the night after that. Wayne never did learn his name, but the two men always exchanged polite nods whenever they crossed paths.
Several weeks later, Stereo Guy was off doing...whatever he did when he wasn’t eating, sleeping, or dancing like his life depended on it (which for all Wayne knew, it did). The lull presented an ideal opportunity for a bout of weeding. Wayne pulled off his leather gloves and set them on the highest surface his sparse interior decoration had to offer. The latest feline family member enjoyed chewing on anything and everything that didn’t belong to her. On went the gardening gloves. The thick gray gloves were scuffed to the moon and back, and discolored from years of none-too-gentle brushes with grass, dirt, and sand. But they protected Wayne’s fingers from the venomous mouth-nodules that grew on unripened vegetable roots, and that was all he cared about. Suitably equipped - and with his beloved leather jacket reluctantly divested from his body - he stepped into the patch of greenery next to his house.
Roughly twenty giant, black, many-legged insects scurried out of the path of his feet. Wayne froze, blinking at the ground. He’d had bug guests before - what garden didn’t? - but this seemed...excessive. The curious insects completely coated the sand, turning the peaceful landscape into a shifting and agitated mass of glossy black chitin. The heavy sun reflected off their backs, the collective shine enough to hurt Wayne’s eyes.
Maybe he should have bought those sunglasses on sale in town last week.
Just as Wayne was contemplating the best and most peaceful way to shoo the infestation away from his house, the swarm of insects turned inwards. The creatures began climbing towards a single center point, scrambling on top of each other in concentric layers that formed a thin, vertical tower of legs and shells.
Insect Mountain was, admittedly, a horrifying sight. Wayne had still seen worse. His main worry was that the creatures were preparing an attack formation, plotting to claim his thriving little garden for themselves. Before he could start planning a defense against the insectoid invasion, the twitching mass pulsed a few times and went still, suddenly concealed by the heavy fabric of a gaudy poncho.
Where there once had been insects, there was now a human. A short female human, sitting casually in the middle of his garden and munching enthusiastically on a vegetable.
Growing up, Wayne had seen maybe three humans total, and all of them at a distance. Did...did they all do this?
The human stopped eating enough to toss out, “Oh. Hey.”
It took a moment for Wayne to get over himself and reply with equal opacity. “Hey.”
A moment of silence from Wayne. A moment of munching from the human.
“So this is your place, huh?” she finally asked.
“Yup.”
“Cool.” She finished the vegetable with one ferocious bite and a three cacophonously crunchy chews. “Tasty. You grow all this?”
Wayne fiddled with his garden gloves. “Thanks. I try.”
The human stood, brushing sand off the seat of her poncho. A stray insect fell out from its hem. She scooped the creature up in her hand, then squeezed her fingers into a fist. When she opened her hand again, her palm was empty.
Human bodies were weirdly proportioned, Wayne noted. This one’s hands were enormous compared to her thin arms and small body. But then, she was also a walking collective of insects, so clearly Wayne had a lot to learn about species outside his own.
“Sorry,” the human said, gesturing towards the stump of a vegetable plant she’d just felled for a meal. “I was passing by and needed a bite to eat. I can’t get anything to grow where I live.”
“It’s fine,” Wayne said. And it was. And because this was the closest thing to an actual, coherent, friendly conversation Wayne had experienced in a long time, he continued on. “I have burritos inside if you’re still hungry?”
The human cracked a smile that showed teeth as white as her insects had been black. “After you.”
The next hour had the two of them sitting on Wayne’s couch. Somsnosa - as Wayne had learned she was called - was currently being warily sniffed by two cats that had perched on the back of the couch.
“They need to determine if you’re friend or foe,” Wayne explained.
Somsnosa set her burrito down and turned to the cats. She gave them a smile, followed by a shrill insect hiss that made Wayne jump in his seat.
The cats stared for a moment, then relaxed, giving her an amicable purr and an apathetic meow, respectively. Wayne supposed that was one way to earn their acceptance.
Wayne wasn’t really sure how it happened. How they became friends. Which still felt weird to think, because Wayne had never really had friends. He’d had acquaintances, and plenty of them. But he’d never tried to get close to someone. It just wasn’t what he did.
But then Somsnosa came to his house, week after week. Sometimes she was an ever-expanding mass of insects, and sometimes she was a human. Wayne learned that her hands were actually gauntlets, and that she could kick his ass with them in a fair fight. They ate, and they talked, and then one day Somsnosa said, “Hey, you should drop by my place one day.”
And so it went, until one day Wayne showed up at Somsnosa’s door like usual. Except it wasn’t like usual, because this time he had two new people in tow behind him. Because Somsnosa had shown him it wasn’t hard to make new friends.
Poor Pongorma. It turned out the fearsome dread knight of legend wasn't too fond of insects. Wayne felt a little bad for laughing at him as he jumped on the couch. Just a little.