Liana resumed her way home, at a faster pace than before and accompanied by an invisible Nummerfil next to her... Talking to unseen creatures gives a rather strange impression on the people, and she wasn't particularly popular with the neighbourhood, so she kept quiet and waited to talk until they both got home. It also gave her more time to think about everything that had just happened. The birds had fled when Inaya had moved to go their separate ways, only one jackdaw kept hopping behind them as they headed home along a decrepit poplar avenue of detached houses that had seen their best days.
Finally they took a side street until the very last house before the fields began. Inaya, was taking everything in carefully with her lavender eyes, her almost luminous colourless hair waving in the wind, invisible for other humans. Liana couldn't help but think of some half-forgotten dreams she couldn't quite recall. Had she ever encountered other creatures like Inaya before? she couldn’t tell.
They arrived at a large house with an overgrown garden. Liana suspected no one was home, which meant that she could safely receive visitors from other worlds inside without any interference. She took her key from her sweater pocket and let Inaya in. When she arrived at the house she noticed that Inaya was visible again, and they spoke again. "So this is the home of a Hmanil-orr? I am the first of my kind ever invited to enter a home of your kind." Inaya said, still recording everything she encountered very carefully. "This house belongs to my parents, not to me. But they are not home today, yet again..." Inaya peeked around with interest. "In your culture nuclear families live together in these big stone buildings?" "They do, is that so special?" "My people live in small villages in the forests, but they have much more extended families and single people, and not much space per person. No, that isn’t true, the whole oak wood is our own space. And the nomadic snow people tribes of Nuanderra have a whole tribe that they see as a family, and they never have a single permanent home. So it varies between our cultures. I even think the people of Til in our world have a similar family system, yes, and they belong to your species too I think. But the families of our kind are mostly more expanded."
She studied the light switch and the halogen bulb in the lampshade, and then continued. "Although this house is very empty even with all the stuff. There is no life here. Only dust and stagnant energy. Where are the other family members?" Liana shrugged. "I hardly ever see my parents. Work you know, grown-up people have to work to earn a living, and then they go to the bar or meet with friends. Adult things. They actually live separate parallel lives it seems. I don't have any other family here. My brother went to live alone. He was tired of it I think. That's better for both of us, because he never was really nice to me. That’s an understatement really. He acted like an arrogant baboon. Good riddance."
Liana didn't seem to approve, "You're lonely, Liana of Oranderra. Don't you have other people in your tribe looking after you?" Yet again Liana didn't know what to answer, with more strange misunderstandings coming up. "Tribe? I have no tribe. My family is never home, my grandparents are dead and if I still have family somewhere, it is far away and I don't know them. My grandfather was from Brazil or something, but I never heard anything about that branch of the family. I am all alone, and even in school I am an outsider. I don't belong anywhere. I don't fit into this world. Or in any world probably!" "Your systems are strange to me." Inaya muttered.
"Shouldn't you eat something?" Liana asked, changing the subject. “And then tell me a little more about who you are and where you come from…” “We Numberfa are vegetarians,” said Inaya, “we are forest women, our species lives in the woods of Nuanderra, a world that is very similar to yours but it has evolved slightly differently. Actually we got out of yours here, long before history began. Nummerfa and other types of nawa fled from Oranderra when your species started destroying the world, and suddenly there was no room for us anymore. We finally found a new place in Nuanderra, and built up a new existence there. But in other versions of the myth, you have become the Gorchboldi, demons of the deepest hell, threatening to infect all worlds with the shadow of destruction. According to some, the presence of one of your kind will be enough to destroy everything in the entire universe of Nuanderra.” Liana was getting a little nervous about all these strange accusations against her kind.
"Then I can't come visit you on your planet?" Inaya shook her head sympathetically. “It's not another planet. It's a different Earth as you would call it, in a completely different universe. Parallel worlds or what’s the term in your language? And the stories we sometimes tell are not entirely correct, we have certainly had an occasional visitor from your world for example. Nothing terrible happened to the new world then, at least not because of him. But some prejudices are hard to erase I’m afraid.” Liana looked at her strangely. This really was strange information to digest, and it just got weirder and weirder. “Because your species in Nuan-thingy was harmed at a time that I have never heard of, before our history lessons began, your kind wants to keep us banned from the other worlds? Or even killed?” Inaya looked a little embarrassed, and she seemed to have a hard time explaining, as if she felt responsible for an insane family member. “For what you are, yes. Or what they think you are… And there's a grain of truth in the story I'm afraid, when I see what your world is like.”
During the conversation, Liana had started gathering ingredients for dinner. She seldomly cooked for herself when she was alone, but on the rare occasions when she had guests worth making the effort for, she was quite an able cook for her age, or so she thought at least. Now she cobbled together a fried rice dish, with leftover vegetables and raisins and some curry powder. It may not have been the most appropriate choice for a visitor from another world, but there wasn't much else in the house that she could use to fabricate a coherent vegetarian dish.
“Do you drink alcohol in Nuan-thingy?” she asked her guest while sorting a bunch of old spring onions into 'yet edible' and 'no longer edible'. “My grandfather always brought wine with him, back in the days when he was alive and my parents still ate together regularly. I miss those times. I was much too small to drink then, but I'm seventeen now, and I can legally drink wine, even if I would never do that alone. That’d be stupid. And I don't really trust most people, but I still want to taste a glass on a rare occasion like this." Inaya looked at her a bit strangely, she clearly didn't follow the logic. “And then you drink wine with a visitor from another world, while drinking alcohol with strangers might pose a huge risk in your world if I sense you right. You trust me very quickly, Liana of Oranderra.”
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Liana shrugged. “You enter my mind in a way that is more dangerous than anything a glass of wine could do, and you have done nothing harmful to me. And you said that you came into friendship and that I could trust that.” She paused before continuing. “And by now you must realise that you are not the only one who can do the scanning, by the way. Though I'm not going to dig deep. My simple radar for good or bad works well enough to know you’re harmless and indeed are a friend. Otherwise I wouldn't trust you just like that. Not in a million years. I'm the most distrustful girl of my species you could've picked out."
The almost lavender eyes stared at her intently. “For a Hmanil you are indeed not bad at kah-yito, and in moving through dimensions even. If you lived with the Til people of the living trees you probably would have received an education as a yam-healer or priestess with your gifts. You should certainly not underestimate your abilities, girl of Oranderra, even if they don’t seem to have any place in your own culture. But don't forget that they also are a responsibility. Reading people without their permission is indeed an invasion of their privacy as you call it. You had that right.”
During this little speech, Liana took her fried rice off the fire, and then set the table for two as completely and neatly as possible, including the heirloom wine glasses. She even arranged the cutlery in an improvised restaurant style. A professional waiter would probably have shaken his head at the scene, but for a seventeen-year-old home alone with a visitor from another world, it worked perfectly. Then she scooped out the fried rice and they both started eating.
Inaya was mesmerised by every possible detail of the meal. This was a completely new experience for Liana, as she had never cooked for a stranger before, let alone for a tourist from another world. No one had ever analysed her cooking so thoroughly, looking for tiny hints of how her human culture in this world worked. Although Inaya wasn't used to a fork and knife, she was quikcly able to copy Liana's movements, and both the improvised nasi dish and the wine seemed to be approved by her.
“Interesting use of herbs and fruits. You have cultivated very different species in your world than we have. And it's a shame that I can taste the pollution of this world so strongly, but for one time that won’t be a problem." “Is your world so much less polluted then?” Liana asked. “ Pollution is almost non-existent in Nuanderra. It's one of the things that makes you Gorchboldi, and that's what we desperately want to keep it out of our world. We have no pollution and all our peoples live, in their own way, as a part of nature together with the other species of nawa, and with plants and animals. And with each other as persons too. Our world hasn't really had any internal wars since we got there either.”
"Oh!" Liana said nothing for a moment as she ate the rest of her rice, and poured another half glass of wine for her guest. “Those dried fruits among the baked grains are the same as the ones you use to make wine here and they're a type of grape berries, aren't they? Our grapes in Nuanderra are uncultivated wild berries that we rarely eat. In fact, no one in our world has ever had the idea to do anything with them. And here it is one of the highest achievements of your culture.” She held up her glass to look through the wine at the light. “But we make wine from other fruits in Nuanderra. Although I must say that this one is pretty good actually. Wasn't this drink the kind of wine that is so important in your literature, and for the rituals in some religions on your planet?” “Uh, yes I think.” Liana knew no other wine than grapewine, and wondered how Inaya knew so much of the background of her culture, and even spoke her language, but she had already asked so many questions that she was afraid to ask more.
Suddenly a strange noise came from her pocket. She took out her smartphone and quickly answered a text message, saying she wouldn't be online that evening and put the device away again. “Your technology is interesting, but I've noticed it sometimes has drawbacks. Your vehicles pollute the atmosphere and cause accidents, and your communication devices emit radiation that is not harmless if you are exposed to it too much. It must be hard to have that responsibility and to know that your lifestyle is destroying the world you need to live in.” Liana stared into her bottom of her wine glass. “It probably is, but we don't say it like that. You're not even supposed to think that. People don't want to hear it. But alas, you're absolutely right I'm afraid."
She paused and stared out of the window, where it was beginning to get dark. More clouds came up from behind the dark poplars, and there was no moon.
Suddenly the meal was over. The evening had passed very quickly, and both Inaya and Liana had learned a lot of unexpected things from each other and from each other's world, although there were still many questions. Inaya had stopped talking about why she'd turned up in the empty industrial estate around the corner, which was still a mystery to Liana, but gave a full explanation about fruit wine and the ecology of the Mirato-kwoburuë oak wood where she came from. Suddenly, she rather abruptly indicated that it was time for her to leave. "I thank you for your friendship, your hospitality and your lodging, Liana of Oranderra. I have to go back now to report my findings. We will not forget you as a friend of Nuanderra. And I may come back later, because the problems are still there, and the Onnobolda have not yet been found. And otherwise there will come another time when we see each other, as friends."
She gave Liana a short hug, in which she felt that her new friend from another world was indeed not a ghost as she had feared when they first met, but just a being with a body like all humans. Then Inaya made a quick movement with her hand in the shape of a huge rectangle, muttering strange words, and stepped into nothingness, and was gone.
For a long time, Liana stared at the empty corner where her new friend from another world had been.