Me'hlu da'a haad. . .? What are we doing? Déo remembered the question from his earliest days in this life, his days spent—shaking and with fever—in a tank of gelatinous antiseptics and rejection inhibitors. His back had been sliced open, but he didn't feel any pain. He'd just received the nameless worm, now an intimate part of him. He'd begun to learn Avaat-Dai on the day the worm touched his flesh, and now he spoke it with little difficulty. There were elements of the tongue that did not fit the Human mouth, but he could lisp/whisper/sing approximations, and that—Aoset'aa maintained—was enough. Me'hlu da'a haad. . .? What are we doing? Me'hlu da'nah shai. We are learning. He'd spent months practicing with himself and with Chelas. He didn't mark the night that he'd first dreamed in the language; it was long ago. He remembered that much. Long ago: there was so much that had happened then. He'd been Human. . .long ago, though to see him, you'd think otherwise. He'd known familiar friends. . .long ago. He'd lost someome. . .long ago, though the howling loss smacked and stung as if delivered yesterday. “Na'ao'li,” is the word we use for being,” Aoset'aa once explained in the quiet voice that was always firm but soft, in accordance to habit. “We make no distinctions between na'ao'li that is Human or Avaat. Na'ao'li is also the worm in your back, the fungus that grows under rocks. Na'ao'li is the stranger of another species you cannot imagine. It is your friend. It is a living thing, a dead thing, and in the case of others you will meet in time, the things in between. There was a pause, during which Aoset'aa clapped the facial hinges of his head-shell and fluttered the mass of chocolate-dark tendrils protected beneath the movable, bony plates. Déo sat in momentary contemplation of the creature's words. “You understand the concept?” Déo nodded. “Yes.” Aoset'aa clapped his facial plates again, bobbing his head in what Déo took as the Avaat-approximation of a Human nod. “This is good,” he said. “As you study the histories, you will see that they are all dependent on na'ao'li.” But Déo had no way of knowing the depths to which that single word influenced the future career that drew closer to him, day by day by day. He sensed unspoken subtleties in the word, unspoken elements that told him of conceptual relationships he might never come to understand. The word itself was simple enough, but it was an Avaat word, and no matter how familiar they became, they were still another species, spawned in evolutionary seas far removed from anything truly known by Homo Sapiens Terra. And now, standing on the bank of the river, he considered the subtle shifts he felt around him: something in the wind, he imagined. . .a strange whisper that lingered just beyond the threshold of hearing. Things had accelerated quickly, and all that he'd learned lay in an ordered mass behind the chaos of memories, past impressions, and random thoughts connected to nothing. Snippets of Avaat logic swam through the currents of his dreams, inspiring him with moment after moment of strange revelations. It was all a part of what Aoset'aa taught him, through lectures and long, straining hours of physical practice. “You must see with every sense you possess,” Aosat had said, once, applying a light-obscuring sealant over Déo's eyes. “Your worm will help you with this.” There was blackness. Déo could see nothing. There were sounds—of movement, of distant bird-variants, chattering to one another beyond the boundaries of the instruction room. There was the warmth of sunlight underfoot, and on his skin. There were scents., and some strange thing that seemed to move through each of his pores. He felt it, at first, as a whisper of breath, and then—with more intense strength—as something like the currents deep in the shadowy realm of some strange sea. He saw shapes that he knew were phosphene floaters in the colors of stinging neon. Like the sensations coursing over his skin, the false-light blobs arranged themselves into something of a coherent—though indecipherable—pattern. “It is the historian's talent to order what he senses,” Aosat'aa said. “Humans are creatures of incredible bias.” The words came blandly. Déo sensed no rankled displeasure in this opinion of Humanity. “Historians cannot afford the luxury of bias.” And so, he learned to see with his skin, to read with hands and feet. He learned to control the nerves that the worm had assiduously cast through the moist density of his flesh. Now, with the river lapping at his feet and sandy mud squished between his toes, he closed his eyes and extended his awareness as far into his surroundings as he could. Others stood near him, Chelas and a gaggle of trainees, no few of whom had come down from Station on the same shuttle that separated Déo from the past he'd known. It was a part of the test. Of the two dozen Guild Trainees present, only a few would be chosen to continue their studies with the Guild itself. Of those few, perhaps only three would earn the right to wear the triskalion tattoo, centered in green and violet on the forehead. Déo felt a subjective itch, as if he'd already been chosen—as if he'd already gone under the quietly buzzing needle. =Just stay relaxed, as Aoset'aa taught you. Be patient.= What am I feeling for? Déo asked, voicelessly. You will know when it comes to you.= But for what felt like an hour, nothing came. And then, imperceptibly at first, he felt himself drifting; it felt as if some part of him had been torn lose. He didn't believe in souls, not in the ancient and atavistic manner, but some element of his primary essence seemed cut from its moorings. He felt it drift out of him dissipating as it spread. He recalled the half-myths of the past: lurid stories of near death, when some trauma had torn the souls from one body or another. He imagined that in those hazy, half-lost days, Humans were projecting themselves through the complexities of cognitive trance; but, in those days, there was no real awareness of cognition as the Avaat and hybrid librarians recognized it. =Yes. This is it. Good, Déo. . .very good. The worm, his partner for so long was, most clearly his teacher now, guiding him—slowly and carefully—through the convoluted layers of trance. And in drifting, he saw the river—not as it loomed around him, clotted along its banks with barefoot students, their toes squishing in the mud. It was a different river, an old and primordial thing, choked with strange, hollow reeds; he saw the depths as well—rocky sandy soil, covered over slow millenia—that flashed before him in ordered succession. Vast and jagged bacterial mats torn from their upland moorings drifted out to sea. The water cleared and ghosts moved along the banks. . .fires burned with ephemeral, half transparent intensity, died, and were reborn, and in the moment of spotting that first bonfire, Déo realized that he was seeing the river as it moved forward in time: century by century. Day by day. He watched, rapt. And then, it ended. —As suddenly as that. Aoset'aa peeled hardened blinder's mucus from Deo's face and dropped the wad into the water to dissolve. His facial plates flexed once, twice, three times, in the Avaat equivalent of a smile. “Wait for me,” Aoset'aa said. “In the library.” * * * * He'd taken time to wash the grit of mud from his feet, from between his toes. He stepped into the vast, subterranean library, and smiled at Chelas' presence there; it had been their habit to study together, to practice what they'd learned at every opportunity. “I never really fit in anywhere,” Chelas admitted on a quiet night last month. “I'd spent my entire life, hopping from place to place, never fitting in, never feeling comfortable.” He shrugged. “I'm not really cut out for common Human life, I guess. “ “So you came here?” Déo asked. “In a nutshell, yeah. But I spent time learning what I could about the Avaat.” “Life was so bad for you, back there?” “Yeah. I didn't fit in. No one understood me. I felt like an alien among Humans. . .I was always a step behind everyone else, a step outside of the norm. I figured, after a while, that if I came out here, if I lived among aliens, then at least things would be logical.” And then he fell silent, a look of half-veiled unrest stenciled itself across his lean, pecan features. “I was a freak back there. . .but here. . .if I'm ever seen as a freak. . .if I ever feel like one, then at least the feeling is justified. “ There had been more, but Chelas never mentioned it. Déo had asked about friends, about family, but Chelas never answered. Such interrogations threw him into brooding, contemplative silence. Now, they were alone for long moments in the library, before others drifted in: two women Déo scarcely knew, and another young man. No one spoke. Avaat discipline had claimed each of them in the time it took to reach this point in training, and like the Avaat, they sat in utter, contemplative silence, focused outwardly on the room itself. “Focus is a Librarian's life,” Aoset'aa had said. “You are not separate from your environment. . .and so you must allow it to permeate you. If it is quiet, you must maintain equal silence. If it is a loud and distracting place, you must detach from your attachment to order, and simply receive what you can of the ambient air of the situation.” But now, the ambient air stank of fear-response hormones: proof that Chelas and the others were as nervous as he was. And after a while, Aoset'aa entered the chamber, flanked by a duo of Library Ministers in the crimson robes of office. Their toe-claws tapped quietly as they walked, their head-shells remained partially open, but their sensory tendrils did not wave and undulate like kelp in the strangest of invisible currents. “Your task at the river is complete. We have monitored your actions.” This came as no surprise. The Avaat monitored everything/i>. “The Guild accepts you.” No one spoke in response. “Tomorrow,” Aoset'aa said. “You will go to Station Kethrin for the final element of your training.” * * * * “Me'hlu da'a haad. . .?” Déo asked, hours after his time at the river. What are we doing? “We're waiting,” Chelas answered. If he was nervous, he didn't let on. He spoke calmly and in carefully-modulated tones. He drank tea, reading through notes, sliding across the face of a reader slate. “You will remain on-station for three days,” Aoset'aa had informed them. “Shake wind with Eolaat. “ Déo remembered the nocturnal talks with Eolaat, that long time ago. He remembered the questions, and Eolaat's strange silences. Now, he stood on the cusp of seeing the creature again, and he felt giddy anticipation, leavened with a needling streak of fear. What will I tell him? he wondered. What word will I tell him. . .what name? --Because, that long time ago, Eolaat had spoken of it: the name embedded in the pattern of his spots. . .the meaning of it. Chelas shrugged. “We're going to see the moons,” he said. “They haven't said as much, but the Kethrin Basin figures prominently in Historian Guild interest.” The Kethrin and her moons. . . . Déo knew the spacer's legends surrounding them—the stories of strange luck and uncanny synchronicities. He'd heard those stories on board the Marlowe and in various bars in on section of the station or another. He'd passed trinket shops, selling quasi sacred icons: the three circles of Kethrin, Belliset and Lara. Had Déo ever possessed religion, he might have seen the planet and its two moons as something touched by divine influence, but religion was a thing lacking in numbers and lacking in ways to bring Séandra back into his life. Religion was an expense he could ill-afford. Now, with bag packed and a mug of tea in easy reach, he felt himself slipping—as he'd done at the river—into strange, disembodied awareness. =Are you sure you want to do this now?= “Do what?” =Look ahead.= The feeling faded and the rocky confines of the room snapped back into sharpened focus around him. “It's dangerous for me to do so?” His question came without voice. =No,= the worm said. =But you are at a juncture at which you need certain things explained, before you proceed to utilize your new skills.= “Certain things.” =You will learn them. Tomorrow.= The worm said little else after that and Déo forced himself to think in a direction opposite the nervous tension suddenly blossomed in the deep recesses of his gut. * * * * . . .to be continued. . . * * * * As always, thank you for reading and commenting and I hope you've enjoyed this somewhat delayed continuation.