Cannibals

Winter was looking at me like I had already been talking with the cannibals. His outstretched membrane flapped in the wind, and he folded together like a living umbrella, all the while looking at me. I did my best to ignore him, and I kept feeding off the daylight. After a moment suspended in the air, he spoke. "Tale's been gone for along time. Aren't you worried? I'm worried. It has started again. They will come hunting us. This time they have the power to destroy us. How could you let him go?"
I was tired of explaining myself to everyone. "Just finish eating. We can talk about this more when we land."
"I'm already full. Besides the Sun is too low. I prefer the taste of high noon to four," Winter said.
I wasn't about to argue that point. What fell to into the atmosphere was much better tasting in the early afternoon. At least it was to some of us. We live off the solar wind, what little of it comes to Earth. The particles that make it to the upper atmosphere are radiated just enough to give us the nourishment we need.
The cannibals rarely came to this part of the sky. Their pollution was sometimes a problem, but that was only after brief storms. It took a long time for me to accept that they burn their own kind to keep warm.
I like to consider myself an expert in the behavior of cannibals. I've watched them enough to know that they were still clueless about our existence. At least that was until Tale had gone missing. Tale and I had been observing their recent behavior. A school of them gathered inside one of their structures and began to feast upon one another. I had gotten used to seeing this kind of activity, but this time something had captured me and Tale's attention. After a great flash of light a loud booming noise I had never heard before, the cannibals were killed. Turned to ash.
There was a peculiar scent in the air. It was as if the cannibals had been basking in our feeding ground. I knew that's what drove Tale closer to them. For a long time after that it was one of our feeding grounds. I didn't like the flavor of this place, but many did.
After a while, some of the cannibals came back. They walked around with sticks waving in the air, making noises like they do everywhere we find them, but this time with loud ticks and clicks. These particular cannibals, humans, can't stop their endless noises. It has only been over the past fifty years that it has gotten out of hand.
They had been hiding in protective armor that made them difficult to see. At first, they were hard to distinguish between their surroundings. If they had been standing still, I would have been at a loss to know any cannibal was near. Like me, Tale had always been fascinated with the cannibals. So, I could not have been sure if it was the camouflage or curiosity that made him reveal himself.
Their noisy sticks started to tick and click wildly as Tale approached the cannibals. They could not see him at first. Tale was hiding his presence, but I kept thinking he would show himself. I was right. He got as close as he dare and then opened himself up. The noise spiked up, causing their sticks to wave about. This seemed to scare the cannibals away, at first, but at the last moment one of the female cannibals turned to see Tale coming at them. She grabbed a box that was also hard to see and started toward Tale.
Afraid of what might happen, I ran to help Tale. The sounds of their detectors increased. I thought they might have been able to see me, but it was too late for me to check. The world shifted and tumbled a bit. They tried to to put be in a box that was hard to see. It was distracting, but I managed to keep hidden enough that they lost me. Or so I believed.
As it turned out, I was captured. They had me in their box. I just didn't know it for a while. The world seemed as it was, but when I moved about, searching for familiar places, I found only the same landscape. It seemed I traveled a long way, but I went nowhere. I was being reflected and bounced around in their box, and I couldn't tell the difference.
I had heard of caves and places where some of us get lost for a long time. I had once found a land where the feeding was abundant, and I almost felt as if I was in the sky. After a while it made me dizzy, and I found it hard to leave. I later found out it was an entire land of salt.
Oh, to be sure, many in the past have revealed themselves to the cannibals. Only back then it was mostly harmless. We scared them too much. They called us demons for the longest time. Fairy was also another favorite term they used. I heard them call us vampires once. That I couldn't understand. We were not feeding on our own kind. Some of had been so upset that a few of our kind went to fix this error. We were afraid they might start to hunt us, though that was not possible back then. We didn't know the would mostly turn away from that fancy. They created wards to keep us away. Strangely enough, Some of those wards actually worked. The shinny globes called witchballs wrecked havoc on some of the younger ones.
Their strange way of pretending that magic existed had changed very little over the centuries. It was as if they had to have that illusion to get through life. When all they really needed was to each each other.
“Winter?” I asked. "Do you remember the time of the monsters?
“Why do you call me that? Did you learn that from the cannibals?”
“So, that I can address you by your uniqueness, and because you are cold and cruel,” I said most sincere. “Now, Winter. I will ask you again. Do you remember the time of the monsters?”
“I fell into this world when the giant cannibals were destroyed. These crazy words you use to describe the cannibals is disturbing. There is no such thing as monsters, only cannibals.”
My feeding was at an end. Everything had lost its taste. I folded myself together and addressed him, directly. “Not all cannibals are the same, Winter. In fact, some cannibals have what is called a species. Whereby they classify different kinds of cannibals.” I was very smug, and thought I sounded confident enough to get my point across. “Will you call me Bright? That is my given name.”
“You sound as if you care for these things. They are not of us. They are below us. They wallow in their sickening ways of feeding off one another. Why do you have to know so much about them?”
I supposed I had some feelings for them. I could not deny it. I was, in fact, passionate about them. “The humans strike me as different than the other cannibals. Not at all like us, except they can at least communicate more than just basic hunger.”
The other obvious differences was that our kind was light and elastic, while the cannibals were frail and easily torn. They were very destructive to their own kind, but Niche was especially different.
She was afraid, but not like the others. She spoke to me and told me she new I was sentient. She was the one that taught me that I could write the words I had learned. I could express myself in writing.
The first time I used a pencil, it felt odd to wield a cannibal to write upon another cannibal, but the Niche said it was only a dead tree holding the lead. The paper was made of more dead tree. She still had much to learn about other cannibals on this planet.
Niche introduced me to the computer. I was able to write the words faster. The words came out as light upon the screen. They too were hard to read at first, but after adjusting for the noise, I could make out the words very well.