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"Love."

"Love? What's that?"

"You've got to be joking." I said, as I side-eyed the walking lizard, eyebrow quirking ever-higher as this conversation progressed.

"Love is why we even bother to exist." I said. "It's why we fight, and win, even when we're faced with odds we couldn't even imagine beating. It's why we /live/."

The creature looked down at me skeptically, expression as bleak as the rank insignia she wore. "This makes no sense. If you don't exist in the first place, if your place is taken by a stronger species, say /us/, then none of those things matter. They're all just a waste of energy."

"Hah!" I let out a belly-laugh. "If that's true, then why did we win the war?"

She growled, teeth like knives bared as she hissed at me. "I could tear you in /half/, little human."

Covering up a small flutter of panic with a cough - those teeth /were/ wicked sharp - I winced at my stupid mouth. There were dumber ways to get yourself killed than pissing off one what was basically an actual dragon, but few more painful for sure.

"I'm sorry, that was a really dumb thing to say," I backpedaled. "I was just trying to explain..."

"/badly./", she growled.

"What I was trying to say..." I got out, forcing myself to calm down, "was that strength comes in different forms. Physical strength will get you pretty far, but mental strength, both in creativity and morale, matter more in the great scheme of things. That, and just living for the sake of it isn't really very inspiring?"

"I can see at least a little bit of that," she spat. "Your admiral looked like he'd pissed himself when he made the same stupid quip a few minutes ago. You're either a hell of a lot braver, or a hell of a lot more stupid."

Coughing again, to hide both my laughter and slight terror, I couldn't really respond for the moment.

Her orange-red eyes burned into my own. "Well, at least you seem to be a bit more intelligent. You might be right about who won the last round, but you at least had the good sense to shut up about it."

With a final throat clearing, I muttered, "Yeah, my mouth has a tendency to run away with me, that's for sure. Never know when to shut up..."

"Well, don't shut up now. I'm confused, and I don't /like/ being confused," she glared.

Holding my head in my hand for a moment, I replied. "I guess it's like this," I said, quickly adding, "and please don't take offense. I just don't know how else to say this, and would really prefer not to be a bloody spray on the bulkhead...???"

She... laughed? She actually laughed? Granted, it sounded a bit like gravel being crushed into tiny pebbles, but... that was actually kind of adorable?

"It's about vulnerability," I said. "Being vulnerable /doesn't make you weak./ Weakness isn't about that."

"If I ripped your throat out you'd probably disagree," she stated flatly, "whereas your cow teeth probably wouldn't leave a mark on my scales."

Wincing slightly at that image, I continued, "Okay, granted, but what I'm trying to say is that we used to have people just like you on our planet, and probably still do in some places."

"Like me? I thought you were all the same species?" she rolled her eyes.

/Wait, they can do that? I am so confused right now./ "No, not like that. We used to have a lot more people who thought vulnerability was a weakness... that any kind of hurt would leave you less than you were before."

The scarred visage looked at me with a quirked eye-ridge, obviously more than a little skeptical at that reply.

"And those same folks used to believe that any time not spent working on their definition of strength - lack of any possible vulnerability - was a weakness in and of itself. They dismissed books, and stories, and anything else that didn't fit their definition of what the world should be."

"And they lost, just like we did."

I hesitated before looking up, expecting rage, but receiving only... curiosity? Understanding? "Yeah, they did," I said after a moment. "They always do." I paused briefly. "We write our most painful tragedies about them."

"About /us/?" she said, sadly.

"Yeah," I replied. Nothing much else worth saying.

"Why do you tell yourselves these stories? They hurt, even to think about, and I don't like that at all." She grimaced.

"Because we have to learn from them," I said. "Because we have to do better, to make our existence worth living, and we can't do that from inside our armor." I paused again... "We can't do that without love."

"Existence... is not enough?", the towering creature queried suddenly looking more human than I'd ever seen her... looking even more confused than when we started this conversation.

"Let me show you." I smiled, and reached out for a hug. <3

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Love you all. <3

• Zeta