Challenge #02768-G211: Disturbing Deathworlder Deeds

Ki'it thought ze was ready. Ze had survived Human Kev's "oops"es, learned to anticipate Human Lin's "I know what I did wrong!"s, and even managed to halve zer dosage of calming medication after a half dozen of Human Ren's "uh-oh..."s.

This, however, was zer introduction to the dreaded, "Wheeeee!!!! Again!" -- Anon Guest

[AN: You are of course free to use any gender-neutral pronouns you love in prompts... it's just that I cannot conjugate anything else than ze/hir. The rest of them just confound my poor old noggin. I am trying, but for writing, I'd rather stick to ze/hir. Apologies for the offence, dear readers]

Living with Humans is an exercise in unexpected stress caused by untranslatable noises. Not words, but nevertheless sounds that had significant meaning. Humans insisted that they didn't have a tonal language, but they could infer meaning out of "Hm" or "Um" or other nonverbal noises. Ki'it was learning to do that, since it was vividly important to know what each set of non-word grunts could possibly mean.

"Uh oh," was a trouble grunt. It meant, loosely speaking, "Something has gone wrong and might yet go catastrophically wrong." Which was a lot to cram into two syllables with a glottal stop.

"Uh oh," in Ki'it's experience, meant, "Make sure my livesuit is ready for urgent activation because the crazy Deathworlders have messed something up again." Again, a lot to cram into two syllables, but as warning signals went, it was very efficient.

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