Shin

Thally Pi sat up in her bed.  She blinked her eyes against the diffuse light dribbling in over the open balcony.  The view beyond was of a hazy sky illuminated by the only moon and the dimmer glow of a brown dwarf in distant orbit. 

The air was still with a crisp edge.  Thally pulled her blanket around her shoulders and performed a couru over the cold floor until she reached a nearby rug.  She slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and wandered to the balustrade at the far side of the balcony.  A bird wheeled near the horizon.  It called once, a sharp sound that left a residual ringing in her ears.  She shook her head briskly to clear it.  The sleek, grey hide of a sea mammal broke the surface of the water momentarily and sank back beneath the waves. 

She turned to check the clock on the wall above her bed. Something large scurried across the floor.  It then abruptly stopped.

“What are you doing, Shin?”

Shin’s face was quite featureless; it was nothing more than a dark carapace.  Whatever organs of sense and perception he may possess were concealed underneath, but for the mandibles which comprised of four serrated appendages above the merest suggestion of a chin.

He grasped an insect from the air with one sharp claw and raised the struggling creature to his mouth.  The mandibles pulled it inexorably inwards. 

“You are disgusting” said Thally Pi.  She returned to her bed and slumped onto it.   

Shin turned towards her, although without eyes it was hard to tell exactly where his attention was directed.  The interlocking plates of his exoskeleton were not a complete shell.  In places his skin was exposed.  It had an unblemished, translucent quality beneath which the pulmonary system was an intricate map of dark arteries, veins and capillaries extending out from the obsidian heart. 

His clothes were draped sparsely over his frame.  They were of a sheer material of such lightness that it was not immediately clear where the fabric gave way to exposed skin.
         
Shin leapt onto the cushion by Thally’s head and opened his mouth to display the half-chewed insect.  One wing twitched minutely from where it was impaled upon several acicular teeth. 

Thally laughed despite herself. 

Shin gulped the creature down.  “We all have to eat.” He then settled onto the cushion, curling his legs around his thorax and scratching his head with his bony tail.