I don't own D9. I would gladly have Mr. Copley's babies, however.

Not my first fanfic by any means, but my first D9 fanfic definitely... If I get anything wrong about the aliens and their culture, anatomy, Joburg/S. Africa, or even MNU policy junk, do let me know? This first chapter is just me testing the water. Not much alien fun going on here, but it will come, children, it will come. I'll write more even if you hate it because I fokkin addicted, but I do enjoy constructive criticism and comments :) Set four or five years before D9 the movie.

Iris clucked sadly at her wilting baby petunias. She'd always liked the flowers, they spread well, and in Missouri they had flourished with a little water on the hot days.

She'd stiffly ignored the advice of her neighbors when living in Johannesburg. They'd tried to give her ideas, seeds, a woman even older than her had tried to give her cuttings of some loathsome succulent plant… But honestly, were petunias too much to ask for?

When she'd married Henry, her third marriage, she'd been forty-four years old. He hadn't been a hale man, already sixty when they married, and he'd promptly died seven months later, just after he'd convinced her to move back to his home town with him. Fortunately his older brother, a diamond trader who had no other living relations, had the good grace to kick the bucket shortly after of the same heart problem, willing her enough money to live comfortably in South Africa for the rest of her life.

She did not plan to marry again. Henry died four years ago to the day, and the forty-eight year old woman was quite done with romance. She was done with most everything, in fact, and had moved away from the busier parts of Johannesburg to a 'neighborhood' made up of sprawling lots, though her house was small. The whole place had beautiful eucalyptus and pine trees completely obscuring her home from the prying eyes of passerby, which suited her just fine.

Not to say that Iris was an inactive person. She enjoyed puzzles and spent many a day casually studying linguistics. She'd never gone to college, in fact had barely finished high school, but in her mid twenties she'd begun to enjoy studying people more.

When the prawns came.

She'd been fascinated, had almost been whipped into the euphoria and excitement of the masses, but she'd quietly held back her hopes until they'd opened the ship. When the disappointment crushed most everyone else, she'd begun a new chapter in her life. She'd even made it her business to learn the language when it had been deciphered. She had pretended to be a college student and snuck into almost every class offered for several semesters, excepting the test days… though she'd gotten rusty in the last decade or so.

Iris slowly emptied her watering can (again!) over the unhappy flowers, talking to them quietly in hopes that they'd somehow learn to like Joburg.

Maybe if they learned how, she would too.

Iris shrugged and stumped away from the flowerbed, clucking to her old dog Digger. He staggered up on all fours and stumped along faithfully behind her. His once perpetually jubilant face, now mostly white with age, was pulled back in a slight grimace. He didn't have much time left, she speculated. Poor old fellow.

She let the old dog into her comfortable air-conditioned home and followed, adjusting the old bandana that kept her hair from sticking to her sweaty forehead. She looked at the calendar in bemusement: October. She had yet to adjust to 'Christmas in July' as it were.

She heard a scratching at the kitchen window, the one where her petunias were supposed to be growing. A yellow tomcat looked in at her, his green eyes wide and pleading.

Feed me! His meow begged.

She sighed good-naturedly and grabbed a couple of cans from the cupboard, wincing at the slight pain in her knee as she bent down. She'd tripped over Digger the week before, and it still ached.

The cheery lime green plate outside was picked clean from previous feedings. The yellow tom was joined by seven or eight other cats of many colors, all meowing and weaving between her legs as she tried to empty the cans onto their plate. They immediately attacked the moist food once it hit the plate with a plop, and she retreated to the safety of her home, behind the screen door.

She was concerned about one of the kittens. Its eye looked infected. She might need to take it to a vet.

She was considering the cost of getting them all fixed before their numbers grew again when there was a yowl and several shrieking hisses. She looked up, expecting to see a new cat or even a dog, when to her shock a spiny brown creature was crouched on the ground, holding the green plate to its face.

A prawn.

It slurped at the plate hungrily until she touched the handle of the screen door and pressed down. The creak of the door swinging open startled it and it dropped the heavy ceramic plate, which broke into to two large pieces.

It stared at her, its posture quite terrified. It was small for a prawn, actually, no bigger than a ten or twelve year old. It was mostly a dull greenish brown.

"Hello, there," she said slowly.

It stared at her until Digger shoved past Iris's legs roughly, letting lose a vicious bark. The small prawn gave a terrified click and bolted away into the cover of her trees.

Digger seemed to consider chasing it for a moment, going so far as the bottom step of the little porch, but thought better of it and turned back to make sure his mistress was all right.

Iris absently stroked the old dog's forehead, playing with his floppy ears.

How did a prawn make it all the way out there?

She knew he came back, because now and again she found his strange tracks in the dusty side yard. It was another place she couldn't get anything to grow, not even the 'magic grass' she bought off of the infomercial. For somebody who loved plants, Iris sure killed a lot of greenery.

One day, while watering her still utterly miserably petunias, she felt something watching her. She didn't drop her watering can or scream, just slowly turned her head to the right.

There under the dusty green cover of a pine tree sat the prawn. It very nearly matched the dry looking tree, probably why it had chosen it for cover. It drew back into the shadows, rustling the branches.

"No, No!" she said softly. "Wait!"

She didn't hear anything for a long time, until slowly, slowly the light dried-algae colored face reappeared from the branches. It was across the yard, a safe distance away, but she could see its eyes dart from her face the watering can.

"Are you thirsty?" She asked maternally. She'd never had children, but she had watched her brother's two kids for nearly three months and saw them often back when she lived in Missouri, so she sort of understood the look in its strange insectoid face.

She barely caught the clicks from the prawn, it spoke so softly. "Yes."

"Alright, little fellow, let me get you some better water. The stuff in this can has things that are good for the plants, but bad for us."

She set the can on the edge of the planter and meandered inside, trying not to alert the heavily sleeping Digger where he rested on the porch. She filled up a pink plastic pitcher with water from the faucet, then again casually went back out again. She strolled to the middle of her sparsely grown yard and held out the pitcher.

"Come here, fellow. I'm not coming under there."

"Just leave it on the ground."

She was pleased with how much she remembered of the language, but she snorted quietly just the same. Digger. She lowered the can to the ground. Her knee ached only slightly, thankfully, and she retreated back to the porch.

She'd only just turned around when the greenish fellow had snatched up the pitcher, holding it to its tentacled mouth and downing the water so rapidly she was afraid it would get sick. No matter though, she'd just get it more water.

In a shockingly short time the pitcher was emptied. The prawn shook it over its head for the last drops, then looked at her sheepishly. It crouched low and set the pitcher on the ground.

"Thank you," it clicked quietly.

"No, thank you. Are you hungry?"

The creature had began to straighten and turn back the way it come, but first its antennae and then the rest of it swiveled back to her, giving it all of its attention. She could see the hope and suspicion and hunger warring in the poor creature's eyes.

"Yes," it finally said. She wished it would speak a little more loudly, she was no spring chicken after all, and those years working the factory in her thirties hadn't done her hearing any favors…

"Alright. Wait here. If the dog wakes up, feel free to jump on the truck," she said, gesturing to the little white pickup that had once belonged to Henry. The prawn nodded understanding, so she went inside to figure out what she could feed the thing.

She'd give it some cat food of course, but surely something different would be good for it too. She considered making it a sandwich, but without knowing if the creature would even eat the bread she decided to simply bring out the pack of lunchmeat and a few hot dogs she hastily warmed in the microwave. She brought it all out on a plate, and when the prawn's eyes lit on it she could've sworn some sort of dark saliva dripped from its mouthparts.

She approached the prawn, who crouched in the lawn, until he started to look on the verge of bolting. She awkwardly lowered herself to the ground and set the plate in front of her, smiling at the creature as it looked fearfully from her to the plate and back.

"Go on, fellow. I'm an old woman and a gardener. I won't hurt you, poor thing."

With achingly deliberate movements the prawn inched closer, closer, until he could just hook the edge of the plate with his long fingers and drag it close to him. They sat only a few feet apart.

She smiled as she mused on why she'd suddenly decided to call it a 'him.' They were hermaphrodites, after all.

When he was finished, which took an astonishingly short time, she smiled at his nervous glance up at her.

"Thank you," he said, as quietly as ever. "I need to go now."

"Alright, fellow. Before you leave, what's your name?"

He started to say something, then stopped in frustration and instead found a patch of bare dirt in the grass to scribble in, then jumped to his feet and ran away like a gazelle just as Digger roused himself from sleep with a coughing snarl.

Iris leaned over until she could read the name in the dust: LUKE.