vilakins | Ficlet: Xenophobia

For last week's b7friday topic of X, Y, or Z, 262 words.

Xenophobia

It wasn't that Vila was afraid of what aliens might do--he knew too much about the worst of humans for that--it was that they might be too strange for his understanding. You could get a peg on most humans. Well, humanoids; Cally would probably object to being included, but she didn't seem strange at all. He wasn't sure how to express this worry about utter unknowablility, so he resorted to his usual simplification. "A hoard of hairy aliens?"

Avon did not mind the idea of aliens; no more than that of humans. They were, after all, equally incomprehensible to him. Vila had a good point about humans being hairy though. Why were they, and in such a bizarre pattern?

Jenna had never been concerned about aliens. You could trade with most, except the Epinarl, who loathed the very sight of creatures with four limbs. It was difficult to strike a bargain when you looked like a nightmare. The Andromedans, though... shape changers wouldn't care about things like that. Perhaps one day--century--they could do business.

Cally found it strange that she had left Auron to fight against tyranny but was now defending it against the Outside. There was always an Outside which made those one knew, even this crew, the familiar and the accepted. She couldn't remember when she'd stopped thinking of them as brain-damaged Auronar.

Blake sat in the surgical unit thinking, not of aliens, but of what he'd been prepared to do here. Why fear aliens when the stranger in his own head was much more frightening?