Natalia "Olive" Amber
It was Aminee again.
There was no doubt in Olive's mind that Aminee was responsible for the creaking outside her tent. In the two weeks since they'd first met, fourteen days to be exact, Olive had spent twelve of those days with Aminee, to some degree. Though the dryad girl's understanding of human language was minimal at best, it was fast improving, and the dryad method of communication was universal.
Olive sat up in her sleeping bed. With all the research going on, no one had gotten around to making actual furniture yet. She couldn't blame them. She wasn't exactly eager to leave her note taking to put together a bed.
Aminee sent her a sensation of impatience. Olive rolled her eyes. The dryad girl was just as impatient as Olive's sisters sometimes, only she was more direct with it. Olive stood up and slipped out of the tent.
"Aminee?" She hissed in the cold, clear night air. "Aminee?" Aminee may not be her name in her native language, but it was the closest to it in English, and Aminee seemed to understand that it referred to her.
Aminee stepped out of the shadow of a tree. Her leaves appeared nearly blue in the moonlight. The color was so lovely on Aminee. The leaves seemed to be the dryad equivalent of human hair.
Aminee sent Olive a vibe that she thought she understood, but needed some clarification. "You want to show me something?" She asked.
Aminee reinforced a feeling of certainty through Olive. This was what Aminee wanted. Olive sighed, and Aminee sent a feeling of confusion. Olive only shook her head.
"Show me what you want to show me," she said.
Aminee sent in a feeling of delight that made Olive smile despite her misgivings. She followed Aminee through the forest.
She glanced up at the moons. One was full tonight, and the other was crescent. They looked to be the same size, but just like Earth's sun and moon, one was larger but farther away. Both of them were smaller than Earth's moon.
"We can't keep walking forever," Olive warned. She cast an uneasy look at the forest around her. "I don't want to get lost."
Aminee sent Olive a sensation of confusion, but trust, and of being rewarded for patient. She wanted Olive to wait and trust her, and they were almost to what Aminee wanted Olive to see.
Aminee came to a stop. The vibration gave Olive the desire to come closer and look at something. She didn't expect much, but when she saw what Aminee wanted her to see, her jaw dropped.
"It's beautiful," Olive breathed. It was a crystal, or rather, crystals. They had one unified stem from a stump, but grew into several points. The crystals were a shining shade of unnatural pink, but in this setting, it was entirely natural. Aminee sent a wave of confidence, acknowledging the compliment granted to her possession.
A rumble broke out through the ground. Aminee jolted, and looked at Aminee. Olive frowned. Something was wrong. She could tell.
Aminee's next vibrations commanded Olive to wait for a minute and leave. For some reason or other, Aminee had to go. Olive would bet money, if she were a betting kind of girl, that the dryad from before had called Aminee like a parent calling a child's name. Aminee hiked away.
Olive glanced again at the crystal. It was so pretty. There had to be mineral specialists that would love to study this back at the Parthenon. She might even be rewarded for bringing in such a find.
Aminee would understand. She might even have brought Olive here for this purpose. After all, she'd understood what Olive meant by beauty. Her kind might value stones as well. This could be meant as a gift in honor of their friendship.
Olive brushed her fingers over the crystal. There was a warm hub to it, like something she couldn't quite pinpoint.
She put her fingers at the bottom of the crystal. If she pulled hard enough, it seemed like she would be able to lift the crystal off the stump. She bent her knees to appriopiately lift, and her gaze caught on a detail she hadn't noticed before.
There were little things floating around inside the crystal. Seeds, some with dryad heads in the purpose of coming out like a bird hatching from the egg. These were what dryads started as. These were the dryads' young.
The breath left Olive and she stumbled backward. It wasn't just a stone or a crystal. It was the dryad equivalent of a nursery. That was what Aminee had thought was beautiful. That was what she'd wanted Olive to see.
The little seedlings inside the crystal were so small, so fragile. Olive had seen a thousand seeds, but none tugged at her heartstrings like these ones. Perhaps because the seeds were just seeds, while these were the young of an intelligent life. It was different.
Too different. She couldn't take this crystal now. It wouldn't be accepting a gift. It would be more akin to kidnapping.
She'd thought she'd understood this species relatively well. But it was becoming more and more clear that she had only scraped the surface of her knowledge of them, and of this planet as a whole.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anna Benedykta
She recorded each detail with precision. Location: eastwards 43.23.42, just beyond the camp. Depth: 3.5 centimetres from soil. Excavated by a brush of the left foot. She logged it into the database without thinking. A wonderful find. An important find. Thalita would be proud.
It was circular. Precise. It was as though the golden sheen of the round device had been carefully lathed until it reached almost an optimal spherical shape. Lines grooved the outside. Symbols of some sort. It looked similar to the ancient writings back on earth—cuneiform or demotic hieroglyphics—but it was evidently simpler than any old language. There was a small band of a substance she did not know, a mix of yellow and blue into a colour that bent in the dim light. There was a smaller inscription on the band, more precise, more sharp and defined.
Due to its depth, it must have been buried only a few years ago. When she had taken it out of the dirt, it had properties of being incompatible with typical substances that might mar, discolour, or dirty the surface.
It was two inches in diameter.
It seemed to weigh several kilograms.
This fact intrigued Anna. A super-dense substance hidden within the core? Could it be a hint into the formation of substances, life, and planets not as developed as earth? Perhaps, even, it was a key to black holes, where a single teaspoon of it would weigh as much as the entire galaxy to the power of ten, and that was only for the medium black holes.
It disobeyed the laws of gravity that governed Anna's body. When she threw it into the air, it lingered, and then floated back down with leisure. Would more dense objects exhibit the same feature? What of less dense? A spectacular find in the midst of turmoil that Anna had attempted to isolate herself from. She had reclused and her partners grated on every nerve. The slightest brush of the shoulder was enough to agitate her. What was she becoming?
There was no become, though, because there was only what the earth would see when they wrote of her: quiet, brilliant, readily available to help the greater good. And was she now not doing that such thing? Even though she had went off alone but within the protected distance, she knew that Thalita would see her not for her interactions with the others, but for her contributions. And this object was it.
She believed the object to be some form of time-piece, or a locket, or an astronomical guide once opened, unlocked, or otherwise. There was no key hole, however, so she believed there had to be some sort of mechanics that supported it from within. What treasures did it hold within its confines, what information was held within the scratches? Was it all just a coincidence, a naturally occurring mineral and the marks that seemed to precise to only be the imprint of the soil where it may have formed?
It sat quietly in a clear box almost immediately after she got back to the base. The others crowded around it and admired it with jealousy and awe. Thalita indeed congratulated Anna. There was a small celebration, somber, of course, under the circumstances. Anna believed Thalita to be secretly pleased that her team had found an object of interest—and several others afterwards.
Anna, though, was tired.
In the mirror within the confines washroom, she saw tired circles droop under her eyes and she saw the solemn expression that pulled her lips down. Did she always have wrinkles there? Her eyes seemed dull and her skin was pale due to the oxygen she was consuming. She, like everything ele in the pod, seemed to be stagnating, brewing in their own oxygen that was recycled over and over again.
Boredom began to plague her. She itched to get back to the computers, to mapping the stars, but the priority was noting the geographical landscape of this foreign place she was supposed to call home. No matter the achievement Anna brought to Thalita, she would not relent. Anna began to question whether or not it was a wise decision to have followed her.
Perhaps the secure position back in Eden would have let her map the stars while scanners and detectors mapped the grounds for them—or, at least, their immediate vicinity. But wanderlust drove her away. Wanderlust had dragged her away from earth, too.
One never truly saw the beauty in the everyday until they left it all behind. No one missed what they already had until they left it behind. Her books were her only solace and comfort from home. Pictures of her home and her family and cat were folded and crumpled and stuck in pages hidden under her bunk in a small compartment. This was all she was: a few books, a love of space, and a wanderlust that drove her away from safety.
The object haunted her daydreams and plagued her at night. It drew her from her mindless scribbles and made her question what exactly the purpose of anything she used was. What made a pencil a pencil and what made this ball so strange and seemingly unuseful? Who was to decide the use of every object and its name?
Indeed, this nameless object was everything her knowledge of the world had not taught her. Her evaluation of herself—tired and defeated—and her peers and adventure—mindless and mundane after several days—were challenged with every wayward glance towards the wretched thing. After several hours, perhaps it was a day even, she regretted even bringing the object back. It filled her with a sense of dread and worry and yet the others seemed to be unaffected to the extent she was.
Some things were better left behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marielle Dupain
The case was half buried in the ground - I wouldn't have spotted it save for the fact that I tripped over it on my way to deliver yet another memo to Dr. Moriz. She'd asked me a thousand times to call her Thalita, but it felt awkward to call the leader of Parthenos such a friendly name.
The case - back to the case. The dark brown coloured blended in with the exposed dirt, and from far away it looked like a small hill - only up close did it reveal its true form, a small rectangular box like a jewellery box.
My memo forgotten, I dusted off the top layer of dirt, staring at the embossed surface. Perhaps it was dropped by a colonist - the pretty Natalia had some nice things. Still, it was so embedded in the earth it was hard to imagine it having been there for less than a millennia.
I tugged a corner from the ground, struggling even to do that. The motion tugged my necklace from under my shirt, the swinging ladybird reminding me of the giant species Id'fseen the other day, and it excited me, motivated me. Perhaps I'd find another strange alien miracle here.
Another tug revealed the top of it, a wooden clasp holding the rickety, rotting top in place. It was definitely old, and my shaking hands quickly undid the fastening. It barely needed it - the wood collapsed as soon as I touched it.
The box shook on its hinges as I opened it, my shivering hands forcing the box to move.
It was cold out, but that wasn't why I was shaking.
I'd faced so many amazing things since arriving on Danu - one more would overwhelm me, was already overwhelming me.
A gasp escaped my lips as I faced the contents - dark metal, nothing I'd ever seen before, formed into amazing creations, jewelry, crowns, such riches I never thought they would fit into such a box.
Here it had been, hidden beneath our very feet, amazing alien artifacts, the very history of which would be instrumental to understanding Danu.
I had to take it to Dr. Moriz.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Megumi Hirai
Megumi was ever quiet to leave their base point. Surprisingly the air in the forest was quite humid, and for the first time in such a long time sweat covered Megumi's neck and forehead. She didn't know if it was only due to the temperature or her anxiety, but she sure felt sticky under her thick shirt. She wiped her forehead as she tried to breathe in slowly, feet careful under sleeping figures, and hand light against the tent's zipper. She was going to leave, at least for the night.
Megumi knew the first time she left Eden that it would only be temporary. And now that an extraterrestrial had given her a genuine chance to wander, Megumi wouldn't have second thoughts in accepting it.
Her grayish hair flayed about in the wind as she ran, feet sticking in the soft ground as seconds flew by beside her. Precious seconds of the present that would contribute to both yesterday and tomorrow. She was using those to head to the alien's base instead, because as much as she's torn between the past and the future, so many things in Danu made her finalize a few thoughts. Made her decisions ready, made her directions set. So many things fill her everything like black holes do to light and gravity — pulling everything in until they'd gone to the other side, the side they wouldn't know until they venture.
The side Megumi wanted to know.
At least that was what Megumi thought at the moment. For now everything would be like that for her: at the moment. And at the moment the moon was sending exquisite rays down the weaving, indigo branches of twisting trees, through clumps of crimson leaves, and onto the ebony ground Megumi had learned to love. At the moment she was being carried to somewhere she finally wanted to be. A place where the stars don't shine but life continued to flow, a place where she could drown into their beautiful eyes . . . Somewhere. Megumi felt so excited, she couldn't even understand.
Megumi was near; she was sure, and her memory had never failed her before.
And then she saw the bushes ruffle beside her, and she knew she wasn't imagining things when she saw a sliver of purple, a pool of darkness. She saw it beckoning her, and so Megumi ran on, an excited grin etched on her face and each exhale a lilting tune to her ears. She took that ever so familiar sharp turn and waved branches away to the beauty that is the Yuri.
Yuri. That was a Japanese word for the flower, lily. And while Megumi wasn't particularly fascinated by the thing before, she was now, after learning the alien tribe's name. They hailed a purple-edged flower that emitted overwhelming fragrances, and it was their prime symbol. Yuri.
That was what the purple creature told her, and never, never had Megumi been so . . . pleased to hear someone — or something — talk. It was the least of her problems, but Megumi still wondered how their tongues grazed the human language. It was far too curious, far too odd.
But Megumi was so mesmerized she didn't give a damn so early.
"Hi-yu-man." That was what their mouths formed when pointing at Megumi. Their tiny fingers wanting to examine her skin, to weave through her hair every time she passed by. They did not hurt her, not in the sense Megumi would know, as a human being. Subconsciously though, before the minute she went outside her crammed tent, she'd been checking her body for signs, had been checking her heartbeats even if she would not admit it. They looked so fragile, Megumi would not dare think otherwise of the creatures.
It was wrong of her to conclude that much at an early stage, but whenever the cosmos laid their shadows on their large eyes, whenever the swirls of blue and white and purple grace the smooth, dark surface of their large irises, it was really hard to think of them as an enemy.
Megumi wondered if she was just too mesmerized to see something odd. A chink in the armour, she guessed.
But there was no armour over these creatures — they brought no harm for her.
A much taller alien continued his greeting, when Megumi had finally closed her open mouth and willed to clear her thoughts for the time being. "This is just gift for hi-yu-man. We never let any go in, but Haru has found you, so we welcome hi-yu-man to Yuri."
Haru must have been my guide. Megumi looked for it from behind excited tears, and there it was, tilting its colossal head once again, and then treading through the waves of purple bodies to reach out to her. And it linked its slimy fingers to hers, and pulled Megumi off to somewhere again.
They circled the large village of some sorts, and perhaps Haru wanted to show them off to Megumi, but there was no way she'd know that. Haru looked so eager, and its strides were bigger than from the other day. Megumi frowned at this, but then they swerved again, and Megumi was left to gape at something magnificent.
She noted how the other buildings looked like hardened mounds of Danu clay, with large, flat stones as doors and holes as windows. Each house sported the same purple-edged flower, and that just raised Megumi's curiosity to peaks. But this one, oh no, Megumi had finally lost it.
Her hand dropped to her sides as Haru let go, and she left her wide eyes to gawk over the strange-looking building. If it could be considered a building at all . . . It was a humongous flower! Even equipped with the overwhelming scent!
Its petals curved it at the ends, the tips a light shade of lavender. There were streaks of indigo going in to the center, ending just about as the charcoal pistils and stigma rose from their ground. Haru jumped, and it was an amazingly high jump, one even higher than the tip of Megumi's head, and saw it slap away the ebony pollen. When they scattered, it looked like smoke had just been created from fire, like dots had started clouding your senses.
When they grazed Megumi's cheek, she gasped at the unbelievable softness, and they were no different than Haru's eyes. The colour brought her back to fantasies, even after Haru had already dropped down the flower-ridden ground and pulled Megumi once again.
"Where," Megumi whispered, still too overwhelmed, too mesmerized by everything. Her eyes were starting to drop, as well, and her voice sounded dreamy even to her own ears. "Where are we going?"
"Inside Yuri."
So they tread at the black hole that was Yuri's epicenter, the flower. And Megumi tried and tried to open her eyes, tried to stop her feet from buckling, but to no avail.
But Haru went to shake her fallen body, and she was forced to open her eyes, some of the flower's pollen stuck to her eyelashes and strands of hair. Her gaze gave way to a glowing flower, a miniature size of Yuri, the same one as the flowers from each house. But each colour was emphasized, and there were dusts sparkling in Megumi's eyes . . . Dancing, dancing, Megumi didn't know where to look.
"I never know hi-yu-man gets this much affected by the baz." Megumi looked around and saw them sprawled on the ground filled with glowing flowers. They allbdanced in her eyes, drawing her in, taking her breath away . . . And they were everywhere; the yuri was their prime symbol after all.
Megumi had been through so much, she wanted to sleep.
Haru shook her again gently, and then explained in that throaty, almost robotic voice, "This would bring you to cosmos. At least, make you feel like a part of great galaxy." Megumi listened even if her brain couldn't make out the words. "Only for a hundred fili, or ten seconds for hi-yu-man, you could see everything time wouldn't touch."
Megumi smiled through and through, even as her body felt so heavy, even as her head felt so light. "Like the world you go to when you die? You can go there — the black hole of lost things?" Megumi looked on expectantly.
"Yes," Haru answered, then he handed Megumi the flower. It felt just as soft and light against her calloused fingers. "If you could still think, you could discover secrets."
"Have you ever gone to that world, Haru?"
"No. None of us had — we would have to sleep, and Yuri tribe does not sleep."
Nor do you blink. "How do you know about this; the secrets of your flower?" Megumi's voice was falling, falling . . . Too much of the pollen inhaled, too much of everything taken in.
"We had a hi-yu-man with us before, too." Megumi closed her eyes, her body stilling. Haru wrapped her fingers around its gift. "Now go to sleep and wander, Megumi."
The past.
The present.
The future.
What else does Danu have? What else does it hide?
"This." Megumi fought to open her eyes, and she fought for her voice to break whatever barrier her throat held. "This, Haru . . . is mine."
"It is yours."
Now go to sleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Genevieve Chidubem
A week after we had fully established our new settlement, the blob (who I'd named Kalei, the oshiwambo word for "go away.") woke me up in the middle of the night. "Evie, Evie, come with me. Show you place. Very important, for Egg."
I groaned and rolled over to my other side-- not an easy feat considering how pregnant I was-- pulling the thin sheet over my head. "Leave me alone, Kalei."
Kalei transformed into a recognizably humanoid shape, which was something they had been doing frequently since they took to following me around. They looked like a child, actually a very cute child with large innocent eyes and tendrils that looked like long hair. Though age and gender were completely indiscernible.
In human form they reached out a hand shook my shoulder. "Bad Evie, think of Egg!"
"I am thinking of Egg. Egg needs sleep. So does Evie. Please leave me alone." With my eyes still closed I swatted in Kalei's direction, instantly regretting it when my hand collided with their gelatinous body. I shivered and quickly wiped my hand off on the sheet.
"I will cover you in the goo if you don't get out of bed right now bad Evie," Kalei threatened.
I rolled my eyes and grudgingly sat up. "Fine fine fine."
Kalei did an excited flip, which looked extremely unsetting while they were in human form. "Let's go!"
Grumbling the whole time, I slipped my shoes on and followed Kalei into the forrest. It was easy to sneak out of the settlement, there were hardly any guards and no fences.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rasul Rashid
DID NOT HAND IN