All About Me!

My name is Zik’tix (but my human teacher calls me "Ziki" because it’s easier). I am 9 Earth-years old, which is different from Klaraxian years. On my home planet, I would only be 4 cycles old! I live with my parental unit in Sector C of the Pine Ridge Relocation Facility, but most humans just call it "the camp."

I have six legs and four arms, which makes me really good at sports and art class! My exoskeleton is blue-green and gets brighter when I’m happy. Humans only have bones on the inside, which is so weird! I molt twice a year, and I get to miss school on molting days. Some human kids say it’s gross, but I think their soft skin is much weirder.

In my living pod are my primary caretaker (who humans would call "mom"), two sub-adults who share my genetic material (like "brothers"), and my egg-cluster guardian (a bit like a "grandmother"). My father-unit stayed behind to fight in the Resource Wars. We haven’t received communications for 2.3 Earth years. My mom says he’s probably just having trouble with signal transmissions.

We share our pod with another family from the southern continent of Klarax. Humans think we all look the same, but we’re actually very different! Their antennae curve backward and they click when they talk. So silly!

Every morning, we do the Sun Greeting by vibrating our wing casings together. The humans in the camp administration asked us to do it quietly because it "sounds like a thousand angry cicadas," whatever those are.

On the last day of each Earth month, we celebrate Ancestry Remembrance. We build tiny models of our home hive from whatever materials we can find. The camp officials let us go outside the fence to collect sticks and rocks. My mom says on Klarax we used special crystal formations, but my brothers and I have never seen them except in holograms.

I’m not allowed to participate in Adulthood Molt ceremonies until I’m 16 Earth-years old. My older brother just went through his first stage, and now his mandibles are getting bigger. He says it hurts but he pretends it doesn’t.

I love Earth fruit! Especially strawberries and watermelon. We didn’t have anything like them on Klarax. Human children think it’s weird how I dissolve them with my enzymes before consuming, but that’s just how we eat!

My favorite subject is mathematics. Humans count in base 10, but we naturally think in base 12. My teacher says I’m "gifted" because I can convert between them so fast, but it’s just normal for us.

I collect bottle caps. They remind me of the communication discs we used to have at home. I have 237 different ones! The camp supervisor, Mr. Martinez, saves them for me from the administration building.

My best friend is T’zla’kik from pod E-17. She’s from the coastal region of Klarax. Her family came two Earth-years before mine. She knows more human words than I do and helps me with English homework.

I also play with Reggie, a human boy who lives just outside the camp. His mom works at the medical facility. Sometimes he sneaks in treats for us. He says our clicking sounds are "cool" and tries to imitate them, but he can’t vibrate his throat sac properly because humans don’t have one.

There’s a Melnarian girl in my class named Vorla. Melnarians look kind of like tall furry humans with four eyes. My mom says we shouldn’t trust Melnarians because they got better treatment when they arrived on Earth, but Vorla shares her lunch with me sometimes. She doesn’t seem bad.

I miss the crystal forests and the three moons. Earth only has one moon and it’s really small and boring.

I miss the Communal Singing Caves where all the larvae would go to learn our history songs. The camp recreation room isn’t the same, even though they try to make it nice with posters.

I miss the taste of throckal nectar. Nothing on Earth is sweet in the same way.

When I grow up, I want to be a translator. I already speak Klaraxian (both Highland and Lowland dialects), English, and I’m learning Melnarian even though my mom clicks disapprovingly.

I hope someday we can leave the camp and have our own hive-home. My teacher says there are some Klaraxian families who live in regular human neighborhoods now. They even have jobs at hospitals and tech companies because we’re really good at precision work with our smaller manipulator appendages.

I hope the other kids at school read this and understand more about me. I know I look different, but I like a lot of the same things they do! Except for ice cream. It makes my digestive sac freeze up. But I love hot chocolate! Especially with those tiny marshmallows that stick to my mandibles!

Mrs. Peterson, I drew some pictures of my home planet on the back. I hope that’s okay! I used all six of my drawing appendages, so it looks more accurate this way.