The V'ril…one hardly needs to explain the V'ril. A parasitic race that fled from their homeworld in search of other hosts and found us, their perfect race. They took the worst of us, the broken, the hopeless, those with nothing left to live for, and they made them perfect. Because putting a ‘ril in your stomach was more than just putting another brain in your head. Your souls merged, becoming more than 'ril and more than human and something much worse than either. Your emotions became outrageous, sorrow becoming anguish and joy becoming soul-rending euphoria. Something about their brains…they feel our emotions different than we do, so much so that anger is enough to make them kill but the simple joy of hearing a favorite song is enough to bring them to tears.

We accepted them less than openly, but you’ll never find anyone acting out against them. They became a pet, then a master, then a trend, and now a mere accepted oddity. Now you can hardly walk the streets now without seeing at least two. How can you tell a V'ril from a human? Well, trust me, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference. No human has eyes so clear or skin tinted quite so or voices with such an odd effect. Trust me, humanity has grown odd in its old age, but no human can ever hope to emulate the V'ril.

You’ll find V'ril on high mountains, on abandoned beaches, or under rainy bridges. They are always alone or in groups of three, never anywhere between or beyond. They either are too strong-willed to get along or too weak to function by themselves. They like humans, but only as much as we like them. Each V'ril, or trio of V'ril, will usually find one human and latch onto them. They will share everything with that one, their bodies, their souls, their minds, and sometimes even secrets that make the Earth feel small and the stars seem menacing.

I am one such human. My trio is…they are so utterly alien that I feel like a child wandering after them, my grubby fingers reaching for their apron strings desperately.

One thing most don’t know about the V'ril…their dust.

When a V'ril feel such bliss that they forget their own name, they release the emotion to share it with the world and it swirls around them in a cloud of dust. My trio’s dust is gold and when they saw the ocean for the first time, the darkening sky was dusted with gold and for the first time, I saw stars.