Chapter 11

We had dropped David's unconscious body on the large sofa in the living room. His first meeting with Twig could have gone a lot better. Then again, it could have gone a lot worse.

Twig was clearly shaken, and he seemed very nervous while we were moving David.

"Why Steven bring Human?" He whined.

"I'll explain everything when he wakes up Twig." I groaned. "We just have to make sure that everyone is calm and happily introduced first. David will need to get used to your presence. You aren't exactly Little Red Riding Hood, are you?" I stated rhetorically.

Twig apparently took offense and pouted. "Steven always say. Twig not think that Twig is scary."

"I understand that, Twig, but to someone who hasn't met you, you look like the Russian answer to Godzilla." I grumbled. "Look, just go make dinner and wait for Brenda to get home. It's just gone seven o'clock, so she'll be back soon. And Twig?"

He stopped pouting and looked at me. "Yes?"

"For the sake of all things good and holy, please, please stop singing."

Twig whined like a lonely dog but obeyed, heading back into the kitchen. I made sure that David's body was laid comfortably on the sofa, placing a cushion under his head and laying him on his side. I was hoping that a man of his age wouldn't suffer a heart attack in such a situation.

I visited Twig back in the kitchen to make sure dinner wasn't burnt or undercooked. A recipe was placed on the cooking surface, opened to a pleasant-looking pasta recipe. "How's dinner, Twig?" I asked him.

He still looked a little hurt, but he was willing to talk. "Dinner good. Twig follow recipe."

"But you can't read." I reminded him.

"Twig look at picture." He pointed a big claw to the picture and smiled. "Make pasta so it looks like book pasta."

I recognised the obvious flaws in his methods, but I decided to let them drop. "As long as you don't put any bark in, I'm sure it will be wonderful."

"Yes… No bark…" His face turned to a look of embarrassment.

I wasn't going to enjoy tonight's dinner.

Nevertheless, I humoured him. "I'm sure it will be delicious, Twig."

"Twig make good pasta." He nodded with a grin.

"A good pasta. Twig make a good pasta." I suggested. We still felt the need to improve his vocabulary, even if it seemed more and more like a lost cause every day.

"Twig make ayyyyyy good pasta." He agreed. "Ayyyyyy…"

A bang erupted from the corridor. Brenda had arrived home. She swooped into the kitchen and gave us both a polite twist of the lips, setting down her work things on the dinner table.

"Hey, Brenda," I greeted. "Before you ask why there is an old man lying on our sofa-"

She was looking over my shoulder as I was speaking, and then interrupted me. "Why is there an old man lying on our sofa?"

"It's Professor Yates." I informed her. "The guy who I gave… You-Know-Who's sample to." I avoided getting Twig's attention.

She bit her lower lip, and then switched to Twig, admiring his cooking. Taking a smell of the food, she tapped him on the arm and smiled up at him. "Hi, Twig. The food smells delicious." It was a pathetically disguised lie, but Twig was gullible enough to fall for it.

"Hello, Brenda. Twig make good pasta." I rolled my eyes.

"Say, Twig," Brenda continued. "Could you go hoover up our room? I'll take care of dinner for now."

Twig obediently left the kitchen, and Brenda turned back to me. "So what did he say?"

I leaned my body against the dinner table. "He thinks Twig is some kind of space alien. He went through all these complicated DNA analyses and found that it didn't match anything. Apparently, Twig isn't genetically related to anything on this planet."

The look on her face is one that I imagined I held when David had told me: a look of confusion and anxiety. "And how does that explain him lying unconscious on our sofa?"

"He wanted to see Twig. He saw Twig. Now he's unconscious." I bluntly stated.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "You just let him come to our house to see Twig?!"

"There wasn't much I could do." I said defensively. "He already has the DNA. I couldn't just deny that Twig existed." I hesitated in search of another excuse. "And anyway, David has studied that sample for two years. He says it will be some major scientific event. I can't deny him that fame."

"So what? You're just going to betray Twig?" She growled.

"I can't betray David. He's put too much work and hope into this. We could still make this work out for everyone."

She shrieked and pulled at her hair in anger. "We can't, Steven! I can't believe you could do this to Twig! You honestly think he would be allowed to stay here?"

We stood in silence for a while, trying to decipher the situation as best we could. I was searching out any possibility, and the only reasonable solution was one of compromise.

First, however, we needed to get David and Twig introduced without any fainting.

It wasn't long before David regained consciousness. He moaned for about ten seconds before he realised what had happened, and he bolted upright on the sofa. I was standing over him.

"Where is it?!" He gasped, his head twisting to validate his location.

"Calm down, David." I shushed him. "He's upstairs, but we need to-"

He shot up from his seat, brushing me aside. "I must see it, Steven!"

I pulled on his arm to stop him rushing away, but he resisted. His eagerness from earlier had returned.

"Steven, did you see it?! It talked, Steven! The monster talked!" He practically screamed.

I was a younger man, and my fresher muscles prevailed over his. His resisting soon faded as I held him in place. "David, I will bring him down once you have calmed."

David was panting, but he rubbed at his forehead and nodded. "Okay. I'm calm, I'm calm."

Brenda helped me sit him down at the dinner table and offered him a drink, which he happily accepted. I assured him once again that there was no need to panic, and hurried upstairs to fetch Twig.

I explained the situation to him as well, but it wasn't as much of an effort to keep him calm. He waddled after me back to the kitchen, and the two once again came face to face.

Twig's confidence had returned for their second meeting, but David was again overwhelmed by Twig's fearsome appearance. Thankfully, he avoided losing consciousness this time, and shakily took a sip from his coffee. Brenda and I watched on curiously.

"Well, Twig," Brenda whispered. "Aren't you going to welcome our guest?"

He reached a long arm slowly over the table and offered David a handshake. David hesitated, but eventually lifted a vibrating hand to join Twig's

"Hello, David." Twig uttered nervously. "My name is Twig."

David was as white as a ghost. He seemed utterly amazed by Twig's ability to speak. Who wouldn't be?

"H-Hello, Twig…" He stammered. "Nice to… meet you…"

I signalled for Twig to take the seat opposite David, and I sat down between them. Brenda poured a couple more coffees for the two of us, and then she sat opposite to me.

There we were, four in a circle, in a very awkward silence. David was still gawking at Twig, who was looking sheepishly down at his claws that tapped on the table.

"This is one hell of a party." I broke the silence, only for Brenda to give me a hateful glare over the table. I sighed, and tried to begin the discussions. "David, Twig is the creature that you took the sample from."

Twig blinked and turned his eyes to me. "Sample?"

"Yes, Twig." I said. "I took one of your scales when you were younger and sent it to David. We wanted to know what you were."

He perked up at this revelation. "Know what Twig is now?!"

I mournfully shook my head. "I'm afraid not, Twig."

Twig slumped visibly in his seat. David was still watching him intently, some of the colour returning to his cheeks.

Brenda felt the need to catch up on what David had discovered. "What exactly did you find from the sample?"

David repeated, almost word-for-word, what he had said to me in his office, and just like me, Brenda was barely able to keep up, but managed to get the gist of it.

"So," He continued. "If I wanted to get this data published, I would need evidence that the specimen exists."

Brenda looked rightfully troubled. "You want to take Twig away?"

The professor looked up at Twig, who had long since lost track of the conversation. "I wouldn't need to take Twig. All I would need is some photographs and a few more samples. Maybe even a short video of him. After that, however, when the information is made available, others will want to investigate. Twig would likely be taken to a research facility to be studied." He looked around at our dissatisfied faces and dipped his head. "I see, though, that this would not be desirable for you."

"We are not going to let Twig be thrown in some dirty cell to be prodded and probed by university students." Brenda asserted.

"I understand that." David said. His eyes focused on Twig again, deep in consideration. "Twig?" He addressed, and the creature began paying attention once again. "I'm afraid I don't know much about you. Could you please tell me a little about yourself?"

Twig hesitated and looked to Brenda for approval. With her nod, he gulped and searched around for things to say. "Twig two years old. Always live here with Steven and Brenda. Steven and Brenda take care of Twig."

David smiled at him kindly. "Do you have any hobbies? Is there anything you want to do when you are older?"

"Twig want to play football. Play for 49ers." He dipped his head, plainly embarrassed. "And Twig like to sing. Like to sing Santana. Steven say that Twig not sing good, though. Say Twig sing like elephant being pushed through doggy door."

David narrowed his eyes at me. "It's true." I defensively retorted.

"Twig," Brenda interrupted. "I think dinner is ready now. Why don't you go and serve it up for us?"

He nodded and got up to leave the table.

David was still in awe of the creature, and when Twig was out of hearing range, he made sure that we knew of his fascination. "It's amazing…" He murmured. "I expected to come here and find some small, uninteresting blob."

"We were just as shocked as you." I assured him.

"And not only that," He continued. "But it talks! It… He has ambitions. Steven, Brenda, I don't think I've ever been so confused in all my life."

I leaned forward in my seat, determined to get the conversation back on track before Twig returned. "David, are you going to publish your results?"

He shook himself back into reality, took notice of my question and fiddled with his glasses, making clear his inner conflict. "While I wish to let the world know of such a creature…" He mumbled. "I don't believe now that I could bring myself to do it. I don't trust the scientific community to treat him with the same decency and care as you clearly have, and I would hate to see a sentient being thrown into a zoo as some test dummy."

I caught Brenda smiling, but I still felt a deep stab of guilt. "But what of all the work you did on this? What about your breakthrough?"

He shook his head. "I take lots of samples to analyse. That's my job, so I didn't have to expend too much energy on this single sample. But yes, I would have to sacrifice the scientific impact of such a creature's discovery."

I groaned in regret. "I'm sorry about this, David."

"Please, Steven, don't be." He smiled. "I have had the great honour of meeting an actual space alien." He winked, and his appreciation seemed genuine.

The meeting had gone better than expected, and as Twig began to prepare the table, I invited David to stay for dinner. He was more than happy to accept.

Dinner, as I expected was… unusual. Twig had some natural ability to prepare a meal where no two single ingredients matched. He was lucky, as his dinner consisted of a few small slabs of pine bark that he wholeheartedly enjoyed. We didn't have to feel left out though, because he had craftily blended a hint of bark to our pasta. I spent half the meal pulling it out of my teeth.

David didn't care, though. He had gotten over his initial fear, and was engaging in conversation with Twig for the entire length that it took for me and Brenda to get fed up with our pasta. David seemed utterly fascinated by Twig, and who could blame him? Twig was a geneticist's dream come true.

An hour or so later, David finally remembered that he had a wife of his own, and decided that it was best to leave. He shook my hand and gave Brenda a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek.

He swivelled to Twig and shook his leathery, scaly hand as best as he could. "It was lovely to meet you, Twig." He beamed. "Perhaps I should return again for a coffee."

"I wouldn't recommend it," I intruded. "Not after the last time Twig drank coffee."

"I see." David said, looking a little disturbed. "Well anyway, I hope to see you soon."

"Nice to meet David, too." Twig responded.

I led the professor to the door and opened it with a smile. "I hope we're making the right choice." I whispered as we stepped onto the drive.

David nodded. "I'm sure we are, Steven. I haven't been so sure of anything for a while."

Since David hadn't brought his car, it was my job to be his chauffeur, and I drove him home. His previous excitement had once again returned by the time we were in our seats, but now it seemed a little sour. He knew he would not receive the fame that he thought his results would bring him, and during the ride, he phoned his colleagues and asked them to discard the results he had sent as inaccurate. He admitted his disappointment about this to me, but at the same time, he seemed genuinely relieved to have met Twig, and he asked if he could visit again sometime in the near future.

I returned him to his home and began the long journey back, fully expecting to walk through the front door to Brenda, arms crossed, and a hateful, evil glare in her eyes.

I wasn't wrong.