For YsabetWordsmith‘s prompt.

Warning: potential squick – referenced mind/body control

The bugs had a problem.

Paula knew, now, that they weren’t bugs, but the word they used for themselves, Tillalillathianin, twisted strangely in the human part of her brain, so in the parts that were still hers, she still thought of them as “bugs.” Her symbiote didn’t seem to object.

Symbiote. She was still getting used to the feeling of it, to the double-senses inside her and the loss of control of what still seemed like her own body… mostly. She was still getting used to the additions the symbiote had brought, and the echo of its feelings against hers. They all were, symbiotes and hosts, the bonded and those who were still Just Bugs.

But that wasn’t the problem – not quite, at least. The problem was, it seemed, that the Tillalillathianin’s home planet – not their home planet, really, but the one they had conquered the longest ago within their memory; when you asked a bug or a symbiote “what happened to your real home planet?” you got an hour-long headache and no good answers – well, anyway. Either none of the planets the Tillalillathianin had conquered before had an otherworld, or they had never before merged with a race that could see them.

This was causing them some issues, more because the bugs-proper could still not sense the other-beings, the fae and the restless undead and the monsters-under-bed sort of creatures, but those that had been bonded could, and it was freaking out the symbiotes. They kept giving up control of their human hosts every time they saw a ghost, which was, if disorienting, rather entertaining for both ghosts and hosts, and upsetting for the bugs-proper.

The fairies had already figured it out; Paula had a host of the tiny pixies following her around now. The ghosts were beginning to get it, and somebody, she’d been told, had sent the monsters a message.

The spooks were going to spook out the bugs. In the growing part of her brain that was still hers, Paula found this very pleasing indeed.

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