[story] the arms of the ocean
author: vee h hariri (shikanichui)
email: burnabridge [ at ] gmail dot com
artist: tongari (tongari)
A/N: A special thanks to Professor Davis for making it an option to write this story instead of a research paper. A special thanks to Koke for listening to me whine about having to narrate in first person. A special thanks to my mother for making me coffee and proofing my work. A special thanks to my sister for encouraging words. A special thanks to my father for staying up until 2AM to talk planetary science with me, even if Jacquelyn is probably still too hot to sustain an atmosphere. And a special thanks to Lady Raihu for standardizing my alien accent for me while I napped. It's a lucky person who gets so much love.
It's the first year since the initial landing that the peninsula hasn't flooded. They'd warned 'em, you know? Told 'em point blank that when the ice started melting in the spring that the river would flood and the ocean would swell. Told 'em over and over, but you know how some folks are, thinking if they've got something real impressive like a new, successful alien colony that it'll help them get re-elected. Story, man, it's true, and the only reason we didn't lose every last man and woman on that mission is because of the natives. Who, by the way, are still laughing themselves sick at us for living on land in the first place, even if they've got to grudgingly admit we're not quite as stupid as we look. Especially now that we've got the dams in place. Only took us, what, ten sulking years to get the beast done? Might've gone a bit faster if there'd been any money in it, but from what I hear the federalis paid in peanuts and slaps on the back. The working man can't get any damn respect, can he.
That's all water under the bridge now though, right? Or, uh, water not under a 300 meter concrete dam that's protecting the first and only Jacquelyn colony from getting washed away every spring like a castle made of sand.
And the big news is drawing quite a crowd, I tell you what. Businessmen and holy men and brats on spring break. Ah, I take that back. I shouldn't be too hard on them. The children are the future, right? We're just borrowing the place.
Who the hell am I, I hear you cry, and what the hell am I doing here? All right, all right, hold your horses, would you? I was getting to that. Can't a man have a smoke before he starts getting the third-degree? This is why I never married, you know. Not a man or a woman, just don't need this kind of harassment day in and day out: Jablonski, where have you been? Out drinking again, I wager. Feh, count me out, thanks anyway.
So, if you're real quick you might've caught that my name's Jablonski, Baqer-Ruhan Jablonski, if you really want to get in to it. It's a mouthful either way you slice it, so do what makes you feel good, kiddo. Turns out the natives of planet Jacquelyn got an easier time with the first part, a nice change of pace from most of the uneducated slobs I meet up with day to day. They like to gimme glazed-eyed looks and ask me: Is that with two kays and a double-ewe? Could you repeat that?
And my all time favorite: It's all Greek to me, Jablonski.
Yeah, yeah, hardee-har-har. Go figure that I'd have to go to an alien planet to get anyone to call me by my first name. Then again, natives--(and I will get to them, it's my story, brother, you're just gonna have to wait)--have a problem with the J consonant. No matter how earnestly they try, it always comes out of their pretty sapphire faces as a shya. Pretty rude of us to have earthianized their planet's name as 'Jacquelyn' if you ask me, but hey, I wasn't on that committee.
Shya-kellin.
A beautiful name for a beautiful place, even if the gravity makes me feel thirty pounds heavier. They remind you of that the whole flight over, encouraging you to take advantage of the onboard simulation and the gym. You'd be surprised how many folks fail to turn their listening ears on. The folks who run the spaceliners do what they can, investing in steady release chambers and informational pamphlets, but if it's your first time off the stations, there's just nothing you can do that'll prepare you for that first step planet side. You can always tell the newbies, mouths open and gawping like stunned fish as they take it all in: atmosphere and humidity, salt and sunshine, gravity pressing on your bones and the wind rustled up by the tide carrying the scents of a thousand plants you ain't never even heard of. All those sweet and stinging notes assaulting your mind for your recognition.
Shit, look at me waxing all poetic, but I've even seen a few poor sots faint straight out. Not everybody's made for paradise, I guess.
The Jacquelyn colony itself is a hop and a skip north-west of the landing strip. On the windward side of the nastiest strip of ice-capped mountains you have ever laid eyes on. I've been around quite a bit, but even I've never seen such a craggy death trap before. A seam in the earth where it's too damn obvious that two masses of land collided there a bazillion fuckin' years ago and have just kept grating on each other's nerves ever since. From what I hear, there's nothing but ice on the far side of that range, a dead tundra where nothin' but flood waters are born.
You won't see me taking a vacation up there, I'll tell you what. Me an' my "hinny" are stopping at Jacquelyn Central, and we're not going a trot further North.
And I say "hinny," but while the creatures they set you up with at the stables mostly look like donkeys, they're all zebra striped, black and gray, standing a little taller, with squatter muzzles and a generally thicker set to 'em. One of the boys in the stable tells me they've got water pouches like a camel. Apparently, it comes in handy during the summers here, long by an earthling's standards, but swift on a world where it takes three full years to swoop around the nearest sun. I like the critters, whatever they're called. It's a running theme with the locals to leave us out of the loop. They've picked up our language all right, but they're not interested in sharing both ways. We want to call 'em "hinnies," it's fine by them. Not like they've got a lot of use for a land-walker anyhow.
The beasts are friendly though, eager to do as they're told, less nervous and ornery than you'd think of a kicking donkey. I named my little friend Haspin on the two day journey over and was kind of sad to give him back to the stable when it was all through, but I wouldn't be needing him again, you know.
I was headed out to sea, you see. Yeah, I know, it woulda been a nice vacation, but I was there on official business. With a good 85% of this dot nothing but water, my employers had a great deal of interest in finding out what treasures were hiding in the deep, and when they could start mining them out. Samples and a full report on the natives, that's what they're waiting on herr Jablonski for. I'm the flatfoot who does all the groundwork for the risk assessors in the bank who don't like to soil their silk shirts with a little sweat.
Their loss, you ask me.
At this point in time, Jacquelyn Central is mostly tents. An impromptu settlement on a grassy hill above the beachfront and the ocean. During the day, the whole scene is surreal: lush jungle green by land, a deep blinding turquoise overhead, and turbid mint green by sea. The local atmosphere has everything skewed a little more towards the green end of things, but you get used to that. What always gets me is the water. Looks almost too dense to be water, makes me think twice about tryin' to swim in it, like it'll swallow me whole. Yeah, yeah, I've had it explained to me before, it only has that thick misty look to it cause of the algae and deposits of clay in the ocean bed. That's nice, brother, I still don't know how I feel about swimming in pastel green milk.
You've got to head out to the deep waters before that shit starts turning blue again, and I'm not that great a swimmer, so I think I'll stick to the boat.
My soapbox aside, though, as the first waves of pioneers start settling in, there's just not a lot happening on the landward side of things. The only folks who've set up shop are the construction workers, and they're not known for their taste in decorating, if you know what I mean. The most hopping spot in the whole place is the bazaar, but it's only just starting to cater to the tourist trade. Somebody's taken up as the florist, another somebody's thinking about trying their hand at baking. Experimenting with some of the weird shit growing around these parts.
Pretty pedestrian for an alien planet. Probably why folks spend so much of their time here out on the stairs, gawking at the wildlife.
Now, let me preface this with the fact that this stairway to the ocean is gorgeous. Carved out of pure white limestone and studded with green gypsum, it's seated elegantly into the curve of the hill and leads down to a secluded platform, guarded faithfully by two golden statutes. They're fearsome looking things that to this day I haven't seen the likes of anywhere else. I still can't get a straight answer on whether they're gargoyle creations or something that walked the planet's surface once upon a time.
It's where the natives like to hang out, turning circles in the water, making strange and sinuous shadows beneath the surface, laughing like dolphins. The eerie sound bouncing off the cliffs. I've heard 'em compared to mermaids more times than I can count, but that only holds water until you really get a look at them.
They're alien through and through. Not much human about them at all except the fact they they've got two arms, two legs, and the components one would generally associate with a face. Their skulls are infinitely more delicate and sleek. They remind me more of rabbits than anything else. Big floppy ears, huge black eyes set to each side of a protruding wiggly little rabbit nose and a cleft upper lip. You could pretend they were human from the neck down, maybe, except for the translucent blue skin. Tough, like a suit of impenetrable rubber sapphire. I can't decide if being able to see their organs counts as sex appeal or not. Not that it matters, not a one of them has any genitals to speak of; egg-layers, amphibious water-dwellers through and through. Maybe I don't wanna think about what they'd do with those long, prehensile tails of theirs in the confines of a bedroom--(I'm a filthy liar, I am.)
It's nigh on impossible to tell them great aquatic bunnies apart. But you learn to take notice of the sound of their voices, the unique lace of their veins, the particular shade of cerulean of their skin; sometimes even the sign of old breaks in their bones.
Though the natives are real friendly, they keep private about their culture. They're protective of their language, but they don't mind us landwalkers poking around. They know we couldn't ever hack it out at sea the way they do.
They got five tribes of 'em, and that makes five cities, although there's something deceptive and insufficient about them calling them "cities." Never in my life and all my travels have I seen any city that looked like a great glittering flower from overhead. But that's just how they build them out there on the water. Great floating slabs of nickel and admiralty brass on which interlocking white stone structures are perched. Just like the hinnies, the locals won't tell us what they call their settlements by, so we pick something of our own: the lotus.
There are no roads running between each metal petal, just a veinwork of canals and that does just fine for the amphibian natives. A few tenuous wooden bridges have started cropping up for us miserable visitors. Makes it damn obvious where they don't want us mucking about.
When you pull up in a boat at one of their docks, however, there they are with helpful hands and smiling greetings,
"Wyelcome, eweman."
Bless their hearts, they do try.
I arrived on the nearest lotus unscathed, the warm waters were docile as a lamb, probably could have strapped together a raft and made it just fine. Not that I'm complaining about being accommodated, and accommodate they do. First place they take me is my grand suite.
I wouldn't call it the royal treatment, per se, but it's a fair cry nicer staying on Jacquelyn than some of the coffins I've been stuffed into for work. Everything here is open and communal. No such thing as a door, and when the locals aren't out doing their hunting and gathering thing, they're hanging out in sweet-smelling pools of warm water. Tiled in sparkling gems which dye the water in their hue.
Not all of these pools are for soaking though. You had best mind yourself and use your damn eyes. Nothing quite as rude as taking a dip in somebody's spawning pool, I tell you what. Certainly not when they're planning on serving up some of those eggs at their feast that night. Yeah, you heard me right. Every one of them can lay multiple broods in their life and they eat the excess as good ol' caviar. Population control at its finest, eh?
I got no comment 'sides bon appetite and I make a note to my boss that they taste just fine.
I ask them about the local cuisine, what it's called, where they gather it from. All they do is smile at me in silence. They hear me just fine, but they're not talking. It's not that unusual, really, in my line of work. You come in looking to exploit and people just don't want to be exploited, but I figure if I hang around long enough looking harmless and interested, they'll throw me a bone.
I met Feáda at one of their feasts. Second week I was out there on the lotus with them, I woke up on my bedroll to what sounded a hell of a lot like thunder and came wandering out barefoot. The nickel plating was surprisingly warm for the dead of night. They won't get around to telling me how they regulate those temperatures for a long time to come. As it turned out, they've got an awful lot of volcanoes to the south-west, a whole chain of 'em down a fault line near the equator. Nobody lives down there, what little land there is is too damn rocky and the rest gets flooded out by lava too regularly to survive on.
But, where there's lava there's minerals to be harvested. That gets a special little note on my report, although that can wait until the morning, man.
Those boiling peach-colored ribbons oozing into a violet-black midnight sea, such a sight, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. That was when she came up to me. One of the natives, her translucent skin sparkling in the dim light, innards barely purple with warmth and blood.
She said good evening to me in that precious little accent they all purr with, I put on my very best gentleman impression and she laughed, asked if I wanted to join her and the others. I said, hell, why not. She led me to the town square. Somewhere I wasn't really sure I was meant to be just then. It said to me quietly as we went, and I'll never forget 'cause it struck me the wrong way, no idea what she was really talking about until a long time later:
"Circles upon circles, eweman. Eet all returns again."
Real zen shit, I know.
"The name's Jablonski, actually. Baqer-Ruhan Jablonski, ma'am"
"I'yem called Feáda." She smiled at me, upper lip fanning out like the fins of a fish. Friendly enough. "I'yem not female, nor male."
"I couldn't tell," I answered chirpily. I'm too old to be embarrassed by a little gaff like that, leave that garbage to the lanky teens and their greasy hair. "How do you lovely creatures call it around here?"
"When we are first hatched, we are… tadpoles, as you say. When we mature we become e, possessively yit is eir."
E offered a long-fingered hand, the expression on eir face amused and expectant, as if inviting me to ask a few more stupid questions, but I figured I could jive with a few un-gendered pronouns for the rest of my report. I took eir hand, let eir close eir damp fingers around me, spent a moment trying to think up a good metaphor for the way her fingertip suckers felt against my skin, but couldn't do it, still can't. Maybe I'm just lazy.
E invited me to accompany eir over to the party where the others were dancing, or sitting in concentric circles together. Weaving together complicated nets of reeds, studded with polished stones. They haul them in from the water, big surprise there.
I memorized their colors, their shapes, ready to put them down in a note to the boss. You know, I may yammer on like an ignorant bastard, but I'm sharper than I look. Got a memory like an elephant and an eye for all that glitters and can be sold.
Anyways, I was telling you about Feáda. E introduced me to some of the local caviar, sat right the hell down next to me and said,
"Hyere's to the young, Baqer," before swallowing the whole egg sack down like a snake. I watched it travel down like a schoolboy watching the elephants get busy at the zoo.
"Uh," real intelligent, I know. "That one of yours?"
E had a unique laugh, deeper in tone than the others and their dolphin squeaking.
"Perhaps yit was."
A word to the wise, my friend, Jacquelynian caviar'll get you trashed. I can't tell you anything more about that night 'cause I blacked out cold. Hell, for all I know Feáda had eir nefarious way with me.
Unlikely, really, but a man can dream.
E was waiting when I woke up. Sitting in the window, the sun shining through eir skin, adding a warm, incredible glow. It's impossible to look them in the eyes when they talk, yanno, you get distracted watching the jaw work through their skin. Their vocal chords flexing in their throat. Hearts beating, lungs filling. They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Like perfect clockwork rendered in flesh and blood.
Eir tail was coiled on the stone floor beneath eir, shifting lazily like a fitful serpent and eir large ears heard me stirring before I even knew I was awake. E turned to me with a smile.
Feáda tittered. "Ah, Baqer."
I wasn't going to take a ribbing lying down, so I got myself up, cradled my aching head and hunted down my luggage for a clean shirt.
"Morning, Feáda, fancy meeting you here."
"You know, Baqer, clos'ing is optional 'ere."
Yeah, I gathered that, actually. You don't find a stitch around here except for a few locals who wore scraps of hinged armor. I really gotta get one of them to tell me where they pick all this metal. The volcanoes? A meteor under the deep somewhere? I'm sure the boss'll want to know.
"Nobody wants to see that."
E's hairless, so what looked like a quirked eyebrow was a bit less effective without said appendage, if you know what I mean.
"You do not s'ink you are interesting to us, Shyablonski?"
"Baqer is fine."
E laughed at me again, "You 'ave not answered me. Your color is lovely, better s’an the pink ones, yis?"
Feáda won't be the first to fall for my East Indian charm, I'm sure, but I turned with a wry smile, leaving the shirt unbuttoned while I rolled up my cuffs. A little compromise never killed anyone.
"I'm flattered, really I am."
I've been to a few planets where sarcasm is a completely unnoticed entity in the atmosphere. It makes life a whole lot less fun by my accounting. Luckily, the bunnies had a pretty good ear for tone.
"Come," e unfolded from the window then, graceful as a cat. You could tell they weren't really meant for walking, better at swimming, but they still managed a sort of hypnotic swaying gait when on their feet. "I'yem to show you the sights."
"That so," I asked eir with a snort. "Cause I been getting nothing but bullshit and smiles when I ask for a tour."
"I know." E paused in the archway, glancing back at me, black eyes catching the light briefly. "And now you are in luck. I'yem lotus elder, none know this place so well as I."
I ask eir, later, if e knows the story of the lotus-eater.
E tells me no, shakes eir head and invites me to show off my yarn-weaving skills. I tell eir a story about perfect bliss and forgotten memories.
Feáda stares off into the distance silently, considering the wavering shoreline with eir great black eyes. E smiles sadly, sighs, and tells me that there may be no better word.
Walking through town was a whole lot different on the arm of a dignitary. It really is true what they say, it's all about the company you keep. After a week of impenetrable stares and feigned disinterest, all of a sudden it was nothing but fascinated stares and bashful acknowledgment.
I can't help but smile. Hey, a man's got his pride, after all. I'm allowed to preen under the attention now and again.
The first place Feáda took me was what can only be called the greenhouse. You, my friend, would likely not recognize it as such. They've got a real thirst for geometry, these folks. You see it all over the place. From the complexities of the architecture, to the intricate patterns they gather together in, to the decorative artwork that's on everything, and even to the layout of their lotus colonies. On this world the power of nature's perfect measurement strikes again and again.
I was ushered into a limestone enclosure with a honeycombed roof. The dappled sunlight sparkling amid rows of sheltered plants, each nestled inside its own special hexagonal pod. I took special note of the smoothly crafted pottery, colorfully glazed and beautiful. The boss will love them.
After a moment I also noticed the glass beads strung amid the foliage adding to the dazzling palette of sun and colored shadow.
"Jesus." And all his apostles, this place glitters, priceless and well-lauded.
"I wonder," Feáda commented softly, as e sprinkled some miracle grow over a hungry plant, "If too manii eweman visitors will kyill them off. With all your poisyens."
As it turns out, being a lotus elder is a busy job. Day to day Feáda's little blue nose is into just about everything. E weaves nets with the gossiping workers, meets with hunters out on the water to inspect their haul, grows herbs and flowers in the gardens. Sometimes e gets called on to settle local disputes. E even visits the growing tadpoles and inspects the waiting eggs.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Feáda polished boots as well...if they wore them around here. Might get in the way of the swimming, methinks. But even with all that minutiae to attend to, Feáda still finds the time to play the proper dignitary.
It's been another week by Terran standards before I finally get to lay eyes on somebody from another lotus. The visitors are easy to spot. Y'see, while they sport the same cyan colored skin as the local folks, they've had themselves done up with lavender hued tattoos. Fancy scrolls and elaborate geometric designs are apparently the rage in their neck of the ocean.
And they had no time for the likes of me. Made that clear as snot right off the bat, I'll tell you what. They took no damn pleasure speaking English for me, and after all this time planet-side I still got no clue how these blue birds talk to each other behind my back.
"This s'ing is nut invited," one of them complained bitterly.
Now, as awkward as it's been hanging out with a bunch of ambiguously gendered sea bunnies, I don't think I ever went so far as to call anyone a "thing". Did I? That kind of comment stings, lady, or not-guy, or whatever you are. Bite me.
"Is name is Baqer-Ruheu, Orell, and you will use yit." Feáda replied mildly.
That's the thing I'll never forget about Feáda. All that calm and class in one being. Made me wonder if e'd ever made a mistake in eir like. I never got to ask.
"Ow long do you intend to hyu-more yit?" Orell pressed with a fretting hiss, upper lips fanning outward. Several others spat in agreement.
At that point I excused myself to let the elders have their little pow-wow in private. I'd gotten the hostile gist well enough.
I picked at my nails and waited for Feáda, watching the local fauna flap and squawk overhead. The small shapes darted to and fro, sometimes making for the rocky, moss covered formations out to sea. I wondered about those massive outcrops. Meteorite fragments, maybe? Some were small islands, really. Wonder if anyone's pulled a Monte Cristo out on one of those, hid their treasure out on a lonesome rock.
Feáda made no comment when they all appeared. No apology, no nothing. That's alright, though, I'm a big boy. The others looked calm enough by then. Though a couple still curled their lips as they passed my perch. Not happy with the "eweman", huh.
"Nice ta meetcha, yer eldership." I drawled after them and was dutifully ignored.
Feáda joined me then, sitting at my side, eir long legs with frog like feet dangling in to the warm ocean waters. E looked tired and pensive.
"All in a days work, eh?" I offered lightly.
E smiled limply in reply and asked if I'd be interested in a boat ride out to one of the watchtowers, their tall white spires just visible glimmering on the horizon. Sounded great to me.
We ended up staying the night out on the rugged rocks that made up the tower's base. Feáda proudly showed me the looking glass, a complex set of lenses and tubes. Ancient mariner stuff you had to handle with care and I'm not so great with the fragile, fancy equipment. E directed my gaze out across the open waters towards the distant swell that marked the nearest floating lotus. All looked quiet out on the frontier, little Annie Oakley.
Then Feáda adjusted the spinet towards the coastline and I could see flames and smoke rising above the horizon.
"That somebody signaling?" I asked.
Feáda shook her head, no. There was something in her gaze, though. Entreaty? I got the feeling these sights were not spontaneous. Was e leading me to something? Like there was a maze I hadn't realized I was in. All I could do was return eir intense stare.
"Yit is ritual, Baqer," Feáda intoned. "The streaks of flame symbolize a pa's of destruction which the meteors will wreak." E all but chanted.
"Pardon?" I was Valedictorian, I really was. "Did a bearded eir in the sky tell you that?" Feáda definitely didn't get my clever pop-culture reference, and e didn't react. Maybe after weeks of me e'd learned to tune out the chatter.
"We'yave studied this, Baqer," E replied evenly. "Our nights are long. The star charts are manii times vyetted."
"Well, shit." I replied with a sideways grin. What can I say, some folks laugh at funerals. "So, is this fiery destruction imminent?"
Feáda shook eir head. "Manii lifetimes to come." E tilted the telescope skyward, "The 'igh star directs this fury."
An enormous blue star filled the view. I recognized the great gaseous swamp we called "Saffron". It was deemed unfit for human habitation so we'd left it the hell alone. Maybe some day it'll be turned into a giant astral billboard. Who'd give a shit, right?
I told the boss, one month, then I'm outta here. By Jacquelyn time that was five sunrises. She's a big old girl. It takes her a while to warm her fanny and at the poles it's pitch dark all the time. The seasons here matches the distance from the sun. Spring and Fall are pretty much even and in between you got a shorter brutal Summer, and a long slow cool down because of an elongated orbit. Stays mostly warm year round, I've been told. Maybe I'll come back to see that mild Winter sometime. I'd like to see how the stars have changed, that'd be worth the trip.
Had to get off the damn rock before I could plan a return trip, though.
And I couldn't take off, Feáda told me, until after the festival of the tides which celebrated an end to 110 days of Summer.
Sure, I figured. Why not? What's a few extra days of research on the boss's dime, right?
"Not gonna get me drunk again, are you?" I joked. E looked away with a sly smile at that, pulling one long ear over eir shoulder to toy with.
"I dyid not know our fluids would have such an effect on you." Oh. That was dirty, sweetheart, and you know it. E glanced at me askance. "You will 'ave to restryain yourself."
Me, restrain myself? Hell no, the real answer was to keep drinking until I could tolerate it, right? Or am I too old to be picking up new poisons.
"I'll try not to embarrass anybody." But, actually, considering that... "Uh, no promises."
The tides here roll like clockwork, never too raucous but the moon has a stable turn 'round the planet and it keeps everything working smoothly.
Its name is Harulan, I managed to weasel that one out of Feáda on one of our little merit badge adventures. I asked eir about why the moon rose and set a couple times a day, even by my terran standards, so e explained it to me, told me the little thing moved at breakneck pace around the planet. She said each pass had little effect in and of itself, but it created the gentle sway of the warm ocean; that Harulan rocked little tadpoles to sleep.
The festival was planned for the hour when sunset and moon-rise would finally coincide, and the lotus had been draped with enormous orange flowers for the celebration, you saw them everywhere you looked. There were excited natives in the canals too, giggling and splashing.
A month after I arrived, and already I noticed there were a few more 'pet' ewemans wandering around wide-eyed beside their patient chaperones.
It made me wonder about my own tour guide, so I set out to find eir, asking anyone I recognized until I was pointed onwards to eir pavilion. I found eir decked out in jewels, and in gold. I already had some samples of the sea-water tucked away into my luggage, I knew the deposits were there, I just hadn't seen anything spangled just yet. I didn't know if it was something I wanted to tell the boss about.
There were a few things, really, that I wasn't sure he'd be able to keep his hands off of. Restraint wasn't the name of this game, and even with Feáda asking me if I was enjoying the festivities, I found myself questioning,
"What's your game plan here, Feáda? You know what my reports are for, are you trying to market this place out?" It just came out, no stopping it.
E stared at me, silent with big eyes, but slowly relaxed. E returned to threading golden earrings through eir tender ears. I watched them bleed with each new hole, deep red.
"You are inyevitable, Baqer. If not you, s'en others."
I thought about circles.
"I do nyot wish for the union to be yen ugly one," e continued gently, finishing with eir jewelry before folding her long, spindly fingers in eir lap, looking at me, absolutely solemn. "I 'ave shown you beauty, and 'ate ready to bloom. Yit is yours to report."
Looking at eir expression, so calm and sad, I realized I'd never asked eir how old e was. It wasn't the time for it then either, and for once there was nothing for me to say.
"Please," Feáda invited as eir acolytes appeared, bearing chains of flowers to drape over eir. "Celebrate with us."
I did.
I got a little tipsy off the hors d'oeuvres and I let one of the locals show me how to dance before Feáda came out on stage and put us all to shame.
Somewhere in the night they sent all little ewemans off to bed while they carried on with whatever hoodoo they needed doing.
I was woken up after a good night's sleep by a visitor. I didn't know eir name, but in the lamplight e was a little more violet than most and e had an intricate spiderweb of veins all eir own.
"Yeah, yeah, come in," I muttered groggily, sitting up on my bedroll, half-blinded by the black curls which made a habit of swarming around my head any time I didn't tie them back.
"I'ave brought a departing gift, from the lotus elder." E seemed a bit timid about talking to me and coming in, so I got off my lazy ass to see this supposed gift.
E presented me with a skull. Sleek and delicate, like a rabbit, it had been cleaned meticulously and it stared up at me with empty eyes. There was a groove around the top where it could be opened to expose the silver-laid clock set within.
I gave the bearer an incredulous look as I took it into my hands--(smooth, almost soft, cool to the touch.)
"...e gonna come say goodbye, or is e still busy kissing the tide's ass, or whatever?" The kid in front of my developed a strange expression, its own eyes lowering to the clock in my hands.
"Elder Feáda 'as departed to appease 'igh star of yits future torments."
It took a minute, but I cursed. I cursed long and loud and I'm sure e had no idea what I was saying, but it sure scared eir off quickly, turning tail like a scared little bunny. I didn't notice.
You know, it takes a lot to light up ole' Baqer's temper, but I'll... I'll tell you what, that did it. It took all the restraint buried in my bones not to throw that skull into the perfectly sanded limestone wall where I could just watch it shatter into nothing but uneven pieces.
I packed in a rage, caught a boat back the peninsula, and I wasn't really of a mind to notice what might have changed at Jacquelyn Central in the time I'd been away. Even as I arranged transport on a friendly hinny, even as I slept and ate and made the journey back to the spaceport, my mind was a million miles away and I kept staring up at the azure blue bloodstain in the night sky.
And that was my first trip down to the planet.
I left with a priest's skull in my pocket, a heavy weight I couldn't shake, and a debt to pay.
the end
email: burnabridge [ at ] gmail dot com
artist: tongari (tongari)
A/N: A special thanks to Professor Davis for making it an option to write this story instead of a research paper. A special thanks to Koke for listening to me whine about having to narrate in first person. A special thanks to my mother for making me coffee and proofing my work. A special thanks to my sister for encouraging words. A special thanks to my father for staying up until 2AM to talk planetary science with me, even if Jacquelyn is probably still too hot to sustain an atmosphere. And a special thanks to Lady Raihu for standardizing my alien accent for me while I napped. It's a lucky person who gets so much love.
It's the first year since the initial landing that the peninsula hasn't flooded. They'd warned 'em, you know? Told 'em point blank that when the ice started melting in the spring that the river would flood and the ocean would swell. Told 'em over and over, but you know how some folks are, thinking if they've got something real impressive like a new, successful alien colony that it'll help them get re-elected. Story, man, it's true, and the only reason we didn't lose every last man and woman on that mission is because of the natives. Who, by the way, are still laughing themselves sick at us for living on land in the first place, even if they've got to grudgingly admit we're not quite as stupid as we look. Especially now that we've got the dams in place. Only took us, what, ten sulking years to get the beast done? Might've gone a bit faster if there'd been any money in it, but from what I hear the federalis paid in peanuts and slaps on the back. The working man can't get any damn respect, can he.
That's all water under the bridge now though, right? Or, uh, water not under a 300 meter concrete dam that's protecting the first and only Jacquelyn colony from getting washed away every spring like a castle made of sand.
And the big news is drawing quite a crowd, I tell you what. Businessmen and holy men and brats on spring break. Ah, I take that back. I shouldn't be too hard on them. The children are the future, right? We're just borrowing the place.
Who the hell am I, I hear you cry, and what the hell am I doing here? All right, all right, hold your horses, would you? I was getting to that. Can't a man have a smoke before he starts getting the third-degree? This is why I never married, you know. Not a man or a woman, just don't need this kind of harassment day in and day out: Jablonski, where have you been? Out drinking again, I wager. Feh, count me out, thanks anyway.
So, if you're real quick you might've caught that my name's Jablonski, Baqer-Ruhan Jablonski, if you really want to get in to it. It's a mouthful either way you slice it, so do what makes you feel good, kiddo. Turns out the natives of planet Jacquelyn got an easier time with the first part, a nice change of pace from most of the uneducated slobs I meet up with day to day. They like to gimme glazed-eyed looks and ask me: Is that with two kays and a double-ewe? Could you repeat that?
And my all time favorite: It's all Greek to me, Jablonski.
Yeah, yeah, hardee-har-har. Go figure that I'd have to go to an alien planet to get anyone to call me by my first name. Then again, natives--(and I will get to them, it's my story, brother, you're just gonna have to wait)--have a problem with the J consonant. No matter how earnestly they try, it always comes out of their pretty sapphire faces as a shya. Pretty rude of us to have earthianized their planet's name as 'Jacquelyn' if you ask me, but hey, I wasn't on that committee.
Shya-kellin.
A beautiful name for a beautiful place, even if the gravity makes me feel thirty pounds heavier. They remind you of that the whole flight over, encouraging you to take advantage of the onboard simulation and the gym. You'd be surprised how many folks fail to turn their listening ears on. The folks who run the spaceliners do what they can, investing in steady release chambers and informational pamphlets, but if it's your first time off the stations, there's just nothing you can do that'll prepare you for that first step planet side. You can always tell the newbies, mouths open and gawping like stunned fish as they take it all in: atmosphere and humidity, salt and sunshine, gravity pressing on your bones and the wind rustled up by the tide carrying the scents of a thousand plants you ain't never even heard of. All those sweet and stinging notes assaulting your mind for your recognition.
Shit, look at me waxing all poetic, but I've even seen a few poor sots faint straight out. Not everybody's made for paradise, I guess.
The Jacquelyn colony itself is a hop and a skip north-west of the landing strip. On the windward side of the nastiest strip of ice-capped mountains you have ever laid eyes on. I've been around quite a bit, but even I've never seen such a craggy death trap before. A seam in the earth where it's too damn obvious that two masses of land collided there a bazillion fuckin' years ago and have just kept grating on each other's nerves ever since. From what I hear, there's nothing but ice on the far side of that range, a dead tundra where nothin' but flood waters are born.
You won't see me taking a vacation up there, I'll tell you what. Me an' my "hinny" are stopping at Jacquelyn Central, and we're not going a trot further North.
And I say "hinny," but while the creatures they set you up with at the stables mostly look like donkeys, they're all zebra striped, black and gray, standing a little taller, with squatter muzzles and a generally thicker set to 'em. One of the boys in the stable tells me they've got water pouches like a camel. Apparently, it comes in handy during the summers here, long by an earthling's standards, but swift on a world where it takes three full years to swoop around the nearest sun. I like the critters, whatever they're called. It's a running theme with the locals to leave us out of the loop. They've picked up our language all right, but they're not interested in sharing both ways. We want to call 'em "hinnies," it's fine by them. Not like they've got a lot of use for a land-walker anyhow.
The beasts are friendly though, eager to do as they're told, less nervous and ornery than you'd think of a kicking donkey. I named my little friend Haspin on the two day journey over and was kind of sad to give him back to the stable when it was all through, but I wouldn't be needing him again, you know.
I was headed out to sea, you see. Yeah, I know, it woulda been a nice vacation, but I was there on official business. With a good 85% of this dot nothing but water, my employers had a great deal of interest in finding out what treasures were hiding in the deep, and when they could start mining them out. Samples and a full report on the natives, that's what they're waiting on herr Jablonski for. I'm the flatfoot who does all the groundwork for the risk assessors in the bank who don't like to soil their silk shirts with a little sweat.
Their loss, you ask me.
At this point in time, Jacquelyn Central is mostly tents. An impromptu settlement on a grassy hill above the beachfront and the ocean. During the day, the whole scene is surreal: lush jungle green by land, a deep blinding turquoise overhead, and turbid mint green by sea. The local atmosphere has everything skewed a little more towards the green end of things, but you get used to that. What always gets me is the water. Looks almost too dense to be water, makes me think twice about tryin' to swim in it, like it'll swallow me whole. Yeah, yeah, I've had it explained to me before, it only has that thick misty look to it cause of the algae and deposits of clay in the ocean bed. That's nice, brother, I still don't know how I feel about swimming in pastel green milk.
You've got to head out to the deep waters before that shit starts turning blue again, and I'm not that great a swimmer, so I think I'll stick to the boat.
My soapbox aside, though, as the first waves of pioneers start settling in, there's just not a lot happening on the landward side of things. The only folks who've set up shop are the construction workers, and they're not known for their taste in decorating, if you know what I mean. The most hopping spot in the whole place is the bazaar, but it's only just starting to cater to the tourist trade. Somebody's taken up as the florist, another somebody's thinking about trying their hand at baking. Experimenting with some of the weird shit growing around these parts.
Pretty pedestrian for an alien planet. Probably why folks spend so much of their time here out on the stairs, gawking at the wildlife.
Now, let me preface this with the fact that this stairway to the ocean is gorgeous. Carved out of pure white limestone and studded with green gypsum, it's seated elegantly into the curve of the hill and leads down to a secluded platform, guarded faithfully by two golden statutes. They're fearsome looking things that to this day I haven't seen the likes of anywhere else. I still can't get a straight answer on whether they're gargoyle creations or something that walked the planet's surface once upon a time.
It's where the natives like to hang out, turning circles in the water, making strange and sinuous shadows beneath the surface, laughing like dolphins. The eerie sound bouncing off the cliffs. I've heard 'em compared to mermaids more times than I can count, but that only holds water until you really get a look at them.
They're alien through and through. Not much human about them at all except the fact they they've got two arms, two legs, and the components one would generally associate with a face. Their skulls are infinitely more delicate and sleek. They remind me more of rabbits than anything else. Big floppy ears, huge black eyes set to each side of a protruding wiggly little rabbit nose and a cleft upper lip. You could pretend they were human from the neck down, maybe, except for the translucent blue skin. Tough, like a suit of impenetrable rubber sapphire. I can't decide if being able to see their organs counts as sex appeal or not. Not that it matters, not a one of them has any genitals to speak of; egg-layers, amphibious water-dwellers through and through. Maybe I don't wanna think about what they'd do with those long, prehensile tails of theirs in the confines of a bedroom--(I'm a filthy liar, I am.)
It's nigh on impossible to tell them great aquatic bunnies apart. But you learn to take notice of the sound of their voices, the unique lace of their veins, the particular shade of cerulean of their skin; sometimes even the sign of old breaks in their bones.
Though the natives are real friendly, they keep private about their culture. They're protective of their language, but they don't mind us landwalkers poking around. They know we couldn't ever hack it out at sea the way they do.
They got five tribes of 'em, and that makes five cities, although there's something deceptive and insufficient about them calling them "cities." Never in my life and all my travels have I seen any city that looked like a great glittering flower from overhead. But that's just how they build them out there on the water. Great floating slabs of nickel and admiralty brass on which interlocking white stone structures are perched. Just like the hinnies, the locals won't tell us what they call their settlements by, so we pick something of our own: the lotus.
There are no roads running between each metal petal, just a veinwork of canals and that does just fine for the amphibian natives. A few tenuous wooden bridges have started cropping up for us miserable visitors. Makes it damn obvious where they don't want us mucking about.
When you pull up in a boat at one of their docks, however, there they are with helpful hands and smiling greetings,
"Wyelcome, eweman."
Bless their hearts, they do try.
I arrived on the nearest lotus unscathed, the warm waters were docile as a lamb, probably could have strapped together a raft and made it just fine. Not that I'm complaining about being accommodated, and accommodate they do. First place they take me is my grand suite.
I wouldn't call it the royal treatment, per se, but it's a fair cry nicer staying on Jacquelyn than some of the coffins I've been stuffed into for work. Everything here is open and communal. No such thing as a door, and when the locals aren't out doing their hunting and gathering thing, they're hanging out in sweet-smelling pools of warm water. Tiled in sparkling gems which dye the water in their hue.
Not all of these pools are for soaking though. You had best mind yourself and use your damn eyes. Nothing quite as rude as taking a dip in somebody's spawning pool, I tell you what. Certainly not when they're planning on serving up some of those eggs at their feast that night. Yeah, you heard me right. Every one of them can lay multiple broods in their life and they eat the excess as good ol' caviar. Population control at its finest, eh?
I got no comment 'sides bon appetite and I make a note to my boss that they taste just fine.
I ask them about the local cuisine, what it's called, where they gather it from. All they do is smile at me in silence. They hear me just fine, but they're not talking. It's not that unusual, really, in my line of work. You come in looking to exploit and people just don't want to be exploited, but I figure if I hang around long enough looking harmless and interested, they'll throw me a bone.
I met Feáda at one of their feasts. Second week I was out there on the lotus with them, I woke up on my bedroll to what sounded a hell of a lot like thunder and came wandering out barefoot. The nickel plating was surprisingly warm for the dead of night. They won't get around to telling me how they regulate those temperatures for a long time to come. As it turned out, they've got an awful lot of volcanoes to the south-west, a whole chain of 'em down a fault line near the equator. Nobody lives down there, what little land there is is too damn rocky and the rest gets flooded out by lava too regularly to survive on.
But, where there's lava there's minerals to be harvested. That gets a special little note on my report, although that can wait until the morning, man.
Those boiling peach-colored ribbons oozing into a violet-black midnight sea, such a sight, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. That was when she came up to me. One of the natives, her translucent skin sparkling in the dim light, innards barely purple with warmth and blood.
She said good evening to me in that precious little accent they all purr with, I put on my very best gentleman impression and she laughed, asked if I wanted to join her and the others. I said, hell, why not. She led me to the town square. Somewhere I wasn't really sure I was meant to be just then. It said to me quietly as we went, and I'll never forget 'cause it struck me the wrong way, no idea what she was really talking about until a long time later:
"Circles upon circles, eweman. Eet all returns again."
Real zen shit, I know.
"The name's Jablonski, actually. Baqer-Ruhan Jablonski, ma'am"
"I'yem called Feáda." She smiled at me, upper lip fanning out like the fins of a fish. Friendly enough. "I'yem not female, nor male."
"I couldn't tell," I answered chirpily. I'm too old to be embarrassed by a little gaff like that, leave that garbage to the lanky teens and their greasy hair. "How do you lovely creatures call it around here?"
"When we are first hatched, we are… tadpoles, as you say. When we mature we become e, possessively yit is eir."
E offered a long-fingered hand, the expression on eir face amused and expectant, as if inviting me to ask a few more stupid questions, but I figured I could jive with a few un-gendered pronouns for the rest of my report. I took eir hand, let eir close eir damp fingers around me, spent a moment trying to think up a good metaphor for the way her fingertip suckers felt against my skin, but couldn't do it, still can't. Maybe I'm just lazy.
E invited me to accompany eir over to the party where the others were dancing, or sitting in concentric circles together. Weaving together complicated nets of reeds, studded with polished stones. They haul them in from the water, big surprise there.
I memorized their colors, their shapes, ready to put them down in a note to the boss. You know, I may yammer on like an ignorant bastard, but I'm sharper than I look. Got a memory like an elephant and an eye for all that glitters and can be sold.
Anyways, I was telling you about Feáda. E introduced me to some of the local caviar, sat right the hell down next to me and said,
"Hyere's to the young, Baqer," before swallowing the whole egg sack down like a snake. I watched it travel down like a schoolboy watching the elephants get busy at the zoo.
"Uh," real intelligent, I know. "That one of yours?"
E had a unique laugh, deeper in tone than the others and their dolphin squeaking.
"Perhaps yit was."
A word to the wise, my friend, Jacquelynian caviar'll get you trashed. I can't tell you anything more about that night 'cause I blacked out cold. Hell, for all I know Feáda had eir nefarious way with me.
Unlikely, really, but a man can dream.
E was waiting when I woke up. Sitting in the window, the sun shining through eir skin, adding a warm, incredible glow. It's impossible to look them in the eyes when they talk, yanno, you get distracted watching the jaw work through their skin. Their vocal chords flexing in their throat. Hearts beating, lungs filling. They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Like perfect clockwork rendered in flesh and blood.
Eir tail was coiled on the stone floor beneath eir, shifting lazily like a fitful serpent and eir large ears heard me stirring before I even knew I was awake. E turned to me with a smile.
Feáda tittered. "Ah, Baqer."
I wasn't going to take a ribbing lying down, so I got myself up, cradled my aching head and hunted down my luggage for a clean shirt.
"Morning, Feáda, fancy meeting you here."
"You know, Baqer, clos'ing is optional 'ere."
Yeah, I gathered that, actually. You don't find a stitch around here except for a few locals who wore scraps of hinged armor. I really gotta get one of them to tell me where they pick all this metal. The volcanoes? A meteor under the deep somewhere? I'm sure the boss'll want to know.
"Nobody wants to see that."
E's hairless, so what looked like a quirked eyebrow was a bit less effective without said appendage, if you know what I mean.
"You do not s'ink you are interesting to us, Shyablonski?"
"Baqer is fine."
E laughed at me again, "You 'ave not answered me. Your color is lovely, better s’an the pink ones, yis?"
Feáda won't be the first to fall for my East Indian charm, I'm sure, but I turned with a wry smile, leaving the shirt unbuttoned while I rolled up my cuffs. A little compromise never killed anyone.
"I'm flattered, really I am."
I've been to a few planets where sarcasm is a completely unnoticed entity in the atmosphere. It makes life a whole lot less fun by my accounting. Luckily, the bunnies had a pretty good ear for tone.
"Come," e unfolded from the window then, graceful as a cat. You could tell they weren't really meant for walking, better at swimming, but they still managed a sort of hypnotic swaying gait when on their feet. "I'yem to show you the sights."
"That so," I asked eir with a snort. "Cause I been getting nothing but bullshit and smiles when I ask for a tour."
"I know." E paused in the archway, glancing back at me, black eyes catching the light briefly. "And now you are in luck. I'yem lotus elder, none know this place so well as I."
I ask eir, later, if e knows the story of the lotus-eater.
E tells me no, shakes eir head and invites me to show off my yarn-weaving skills. I tell eir a story about perfect bliss and forgotten memories.
Feáda stares off into the distance silently, considering the wavering shoreline with eir great black eyes. E smiles sadly, sighs, and tells me that there may be no better word.
Walking through town was a whole lot different on the arm of a dignitary. It really is true what they say, it's all about the company you keep. After a week of impenetrable stares and feigned disinterest, all of a sudden it was nothing but fascinated stares and bashful acknowledgment.
I can't help but smile. Hey, a man's got his pride, after all. I'm allowed to preen under the attention now and again.
The first place Feáda took me was what can only be called the greenhouse. You, my friend, would likely not recognize it as such. They've got a real thirst for geometry, these folks. You see it all over the place. From the complexities of the architecture, to the intricate patterns they gather together in, to the decorative artwork that's on everything, and even to the layout of their lotus colonies. On this world the power of nature's perfect measurement strikes again and again.
I was ushered into a limestone enclosure with a honeycombed roof. The dappled sunlight sparkling amid rows of sheltered plants, each nestled inside its own special hexagonal pod. I took special note of the smoothly crafted pottery, colorfully glazed and beautiful. The boss will love them.
After a moment I also noticed the glass beads strung amid the foliage adding to the dazzling palette of sun and colored shadow.
"Jesus." And all his apostles, this place glitters, priceless and well-lauded.
"I wonder," Feáda commented softly, as e sprinkled some miracle grow over a hungry plant, "If too manii eweman visitors will kyill them off. With all your poisyens."
As it turns out, being a lotus elder is a busy job. Day to day Feáda's little blue nose is into just about everything. E weaves nets with the gossiping workers, meets with hunters out on the water to inspect their haul, grows herbs and flowers in the gardens. Sometimes e gets called on to settle local disputes. E even visits the growing tadpoles and inspects the waiting eggs.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Feáda polished boots as well...if they wore them around here. Might get in the way of the swimming, methinks. But even with all that minutiae to attend to, Feáda still finds the time to play the proper dignitary.
It's been another week by Terran standards before I finally get to lay eyes on somebody from another lotus. The visitors are easy to spot. Y'see, while they sport the same cyan colored skin as the local folks, they've had themselves done up with lavender hued tattoos. Fancy scrolls and elaborate geometric designs are apparently the rage in their neck of the ocean.
And they had no time for the likes of me. Made that clear as snot right off the bat, I'll tell you what. They took no damn pleasure speaking English for me, and after all this time planet-side I still got no clue how these blue birds talk to each other behind my back.
"This s'ing is nut invited," one of them complained bitterly.
Now, as awkward as it's been hanging out with a bunch of ambiguously gendered sea bunnies, I don't think I ever went so far as to call anyone a "thing". Did I? That kind of comment stings, lady, or not-guy, or whatever you are. Bite me.
"Is name is Baqer-Ruheu, Orell, and you will use yit." Feáda replied mildly.
That's the thing I'll never forget about Feáda. All that calm and class in one being. Made me wonder if e'd ever made a mistake in eir like. I never got to ask.
"Ow long do you intend to hyu-more yit?" Orell pressed with a fretting hiss, upper lips fanning outward. Several others spat in agreement.
At that point I excused myself to let the elders have their little pow-wow in private. I'd gotten the hostile gist well enough.
I picked at my nails and waited for Feáda, watching the local fauna flap and squawk overhead. The small shapes darted to and fro, sometimes making for the rocky, moss covered formations out to sea. I wondered about those massive outcrops. Meteorite fragments, maybe? Some were small islands, really. Wonder if anyone's pulled a Monte Cristo out on one of those, hid their treasure out on a lonesome rock.
Feáda made no comment when they all appeared. No apology, no nothing. That's alright, though, I'm a big boy. The others looked calm enough by then. Though a couple still curled their lips as they passed my perch. Not happy with the "eweman", huh.
"Nice ta meetcha, yer eldership." I drawled after them and was dutifully ignored.
Feáda joined me then, sitting at my side, eir long legs with frog like feet dangling in to the warm ocean waters. E looked tired and pensive.
"All in a days work, eh?" I offered lightly.
E smiled limply in reply and asked if I'd be interested in a boat ride out to one of the watchtowers, their tall white spires just visible glimmering on the horizon. Sounded great to me.
We ended up staying the night out on the rugged rocks that made up the tower's base. Feáda proudly showed me the looking glass, a complex set of lenses and tubes. Ancient mariner stuff you had to handle with care and I'm not so great with the fragile, fancy equipment. E directed my gaze out across the open waters towards the distant swell that marked the nearest floating lotus. All looked quiet out on the frontier, little Annie Oakley.
Then Feáda adjusted the spinet towards the coastline and I could see flames and smoke rising above the horizon.
"That somebody signaling?" I asked.
Feáda shook her head, no. There was something in her gaze, though. Entreaty? I got the feeling these sights were not spontaneous. Was e leading me to something? Like there was a maze I hadn't realized I was in. All I could do was return eir intense stare.
"Yit is ritual, Baqer," Feáda intoned. "The streaks of flame symbolize a pa's of destruction which the meteors will wreak." E all but chanted.
"Pardon?" I was Valedictorian, I really was. "Did a bearded eir in the sky tell you that?" Feáda definitely didn't get my clever pop-culture reference, and e didn't react. Maybe after weeks of me e'd learned to tune out the chatter.
"We'yave studied this, Baqer," E replied evenly. "Our nights are long. The star charts are manii times vyetted."
"Well, shit." I replied with a sideways grin. What can I say, some folks laugh at funerals. "So, is this fiery destruction imminent?"
Feáda shook eir head. "Manii lifetimes to come." E tilted the telescope skyward, "The 'igh star directs this fury."
An enormous blue star filled the view. I recognized the great gaseous swamp we called "Saffron". It was deemed unfit for human habitation so we'd left it the hell alone. Maybe some day it'll be turned into a giant astral billboard. Who'd give a shit, right?
I told the boss, one month, then I'm outta here. By Jacquelyn time that was five sunrises. She's a big old girl. It takes her a while to warm her fanny and at the poles it's pitch dark all the time. The seasons here matches the distance from the sun. Spring and Fall are pretty much even and in between you got a shorter brutal Summer, and a long slow cool down because of an elongated orbit. Stays mostly warm year round, I've been told. Maybe I'll come back to see that mild Winter sometime. I'd like to see how the stars have changed, that'd be worth the trip.
Had to get off the damn rock before I could plan a return trip, though.
And I couldn't take off, Feáda told me, until after the festival of the tides which celebrated an end to 110 days of Summer.
Sure, I figured. Why not? What's a few extra days of research on the boss's dime, right?
"Not gonna get me drunk again, are you?" I joked. E looked away with a sly smile at that, pulling one long ear over eir shoulder to toy with.
"I dyid not know our fluids would have such an effect on you." Oh. That was dirty, sweetheart, and you know it. E glanced at me askance. "You will 'ave to restryain yourself."
Me, restrain myself? Hell no, the real answer was to keep drinking until I could tolerate it, right? Or am I too old to be picking up new poisons.
"I'll try not to embarrass anybody." But, actually, considering that... "Uh, no promises."
The tides here roll like clockwork, never too raucous but the moon has a stable turn 'round the planet and it keeps everything working smoothly.
Its name is Harulan, I managed to weasel that one out of Feáda on one of our little merit badge adventures. I asked eir about why the moon rose and set a couple times a day, even by my terran standards, so e explained it to me, told me the little thing moved at breakneck pace around the planet. She said each pass had little effect in and of itself, but it created the gentle sway of the warm ocean; that Harulan rocked little tadpoles to sleep.
The festival was planned for the hour when sunset and moon-rise would finally coincide, and the lotus had been draped with enormous orange flowers for the celebration, you saw them everywhere you looked. There were excited natives in the canals too, giggling and splashing.
A month after I arrived, and already I noticed there were a few more 'pet' ewemans wandering around wide-eyed beside their patient chaperones.
It made me wonder about my own tour guide, so I set out to find eir, asking anyone I recognized until I was pointed onwards to eir pavilion. I found eir decked out in jewels, and in gold. I already had some samples of the sea-water tucked away into my luggage, I knew the deposits were there, I just hadn't seen anything spangled just yet. I didn't know if it was something I wanted to tell the boss about.
There were a few things, really, that I wasn't sure he'd be able to keep his hands off of. Restraint wasn't the name of this game, and even with Feáda asking me if I was enjoying the festivities, I found myself questioning,
"What's your game plan here, Feáda? You know what my reports are for, are you trying to market this place out?" It just came out, no stopping it.
E stared at me, silent with big eyes, but slowly relaxed. E returned to threading golden earrings through eir tender ears. I watched them bleed with each new hole, deep red.
"You are inyevitable, Baqer. If not you, s'en others."
I thought about circles.
"I do nyot wish for the union to be yen ugly one," e continued gently, finishing with eir jewelry before folding her long, spindly fingers in eir lap, looking at me, absolutely solemn. "I 'ave shown you beauty, and 'ate ready to bloom. Yit is yours to report."
Looking at eir expression, so calm and sad, I realized I'd never asked eir how old e was. It wasn't the time for it then either, and for once there was nothing for me to say.
"Please," Feáda invited as eir acolytes appeared, bearing chains of flowers to drape over eir. "Celebrate with us."
I did.
I got a little tipsy off the hors d'oeuvres and I let one of the locals show me how to dance before Feáda came out on stage and put us all to shame.
Somewhere in the night they sent all little ewemans off to bed while they carried on with whatever hoodoo they needed doing.
I was woken up after a good night's sleep by a visitor. I didn't know eir name, but in the lamplight e was a little more violet than most and e had an intricate spiderweb of veins all eir own.
"Yeah, yeah, come in," I muttered groggily, sitting up on my bedroll, half-blinded by the black curls which made a habit of swarming around my head any time I didn't tie them back.
"I'ave brought a departing gift, from the lotus elder." E seemed a bit timid about talking to me and coming in, so I got off my lazy ass to see this supposed gift.
E presented me with a skull. Sleek and delicate, like a rabbit, it had been cleaned meticulously and it stared up at me with empty eyes. There was a groove around the top where it could be opened to expose the silver-laid clock set within.
I gave the bearer an incredulous look as I took it into my hands--(smooth, almost soft, cool to the touch.)
"...e gonna come say goodbye, or is e still busy kissing the tide's ass, or whatever?" The kid in front of my developed a strange expression, its own eyes lowering to the clock in my hands.
"Elder Feáda 'as departed to appease 'igh star of yits future torments."
It took a minute, but I cursed. I cursed long and loud and I'm sure e had no idea what I was saying, but it sure scared eir off quickly, turning tail like a scared little bunny. I didn't notice.
You know, it takes a lot to light up ole' Baqer's temper, but I'll... I'll tell you what, that did it. It took all the restraint buried in my bones not to throw that skull into the perfectly sanded limestone wall where I could just watch it shatter into nothing but uneven pieces.
I packed in a rage, caught a boat back the peninsula, and I wasn't really of a mind to notice what might have changed at Jacquelyn Central in the time I'd been away. Even as I arranged transport on a friendly hinny, even as I slept and ate and made the journey back to the spaceport, my mind was a million miles away and I kept staring up at the azure blue bloodstain in the night sky.
And that was my first trip down to the planet.
I left with a priest's skull in my pocket, a heavy weight I couldn't shake, and a debt to pay.
the end