At one point your mother, ever the optimist, said it would be total anarchy, that we needed to get out and hide somewhere, if for no other reason than the bombs. Then, luckily or unluckily, the watchers were formed.
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Sayrin stood, surveying the lonely mountain ahead of them, the first real mountain they’d come across. The massive hardwood gate ahead was a radiant gold on the closer side, and an elegant silver towards the mountain. It was largely a symbolic structure, but it was still an important landmark.
In the four days since they’d left Rosoon, His company of two dozen users had made it north to Welden, a city on the banks of the massive inland Ionic sea at the heart of the Terran kingdom. From there, they’d taken one of the numerous passenger barges and sailed northeast along the coast until finally they’d docked at the trade town of Ardell. The city itself wasn’t anything special. There weren’t any notable landmarks nearby, nor was it in a particularly mana rich area. The farms nearby didn’t make anything extraordinary, in almost all aspects, it was like any other thousand villages that Sayrin had passed through in his time. What made it so important, then, was its location. Two days sail from Welden, two days sail to Palacia, the old capital city in the far north, and most importantly for Sayrin, it was only two days from Rollo, the border city between them and the Cheole empire.
Finally, their trek was nearing its end. They weren’t at their final destination just yet, the Tortian Mountain in northern Cheole, but at long last they had reached the border.
Lieutenant Hanrin walked up and saluted, then after Sayrin returned the gesture, stood beside him gazing at the stone gate. The small village at the foot of the mountain was, according to a report Sayrin had read no less than nine times through, was essentially just an outpost for greeting foreigners. The Cheole people liked to live in higher altitudes where there was less air? Sayrin didn’t quite understand what they meant by less air but assumed he would find out soon.
“Sir, some of the men -not me now- but some of the men are beginning to grumble. We’ve been waiting here for almost two hours.. I know they’re supposed to come meet us, but at some point are we going to call it a day and go meet them..?”
Sayrin sighed, and for the first time, looked away from the distant village. “If we take one step past that gate there, then there’s going to be hell to pay. We need to be escorted by a representative of their country. Until then, we just have to wait.” He took another look at the suns. Blue was still high in the sky, but Amber was already beginning its descent towards the western horizon. As the seasons shifted, they would slowly trade places until Amber was entirely behind Blue, and then winter would settle in until Amber finally peaked back out. The moons weren’t like that, they all moved across the sky at different speeds, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, but they never traded places moving behind or in front of one another. Why was that? How did the heavens decide where and when to move? He had heard of new reports coming from the Cretes that some of their scholars had-
“Uh.. sir?”
“Hm, what?” Sayrin was pulled back to the moment and away from his idle contemplations. Hanrin was pointing towards the village, and following the gesture, Sayrin saw that, finally, there was a group of people flying out towards them. That was one thing Sayrin both envied and detested. The earth was solid, stable, he loved the earth and knew that the earth loved him. He hated getting on ships that took the ground from under his feet. But to fly so easily and quickly, the sheer utility was astounding.
The group moved like insects during the brief weeks of spring when the air was sweet. They moved this way and that, doing loops, sometimes turning around entirely before resuming their journey towards the border.
“Tell the men to form up, get the families ready to move.” He ordered Hanrin
“Yes sir. Will you meet them alone, or should I send forward-”
“Send for Phellus, other than that just make the necessary preparations.”
With a hasty salute, Hanrin ran off to carry out the task. He, at least, seemed to be getting over the... incident that had happened in Lyra.
Moving forward as quickly as he could without breaking into a run, Sayrin made his way to the wooden border gate.
He ran his fingers through his black Terran hair, feeling where his wife had cut it short in the back. He didn’t feel nervous, he’d stood before Orrin and Cain both at once, this was nothing. But he did feel a sense of trepidation. Something about the wooden gate, the border, the small village, the group flying towards them in leisure. It just seemed… off.
Just before the group of foreigners arrived, Phellus came jogging up and gave a salute. The man was one of only two Knowledge Users in the company, and the only one who could interpret the odd language of the Cheole. He knew Mata could also likely interpret for him, but while it was expected for families to travel with the military on longer movements, it was long held that they shouldn’t get involved in most official duties.
The small delegation touched down several meters in front of Sayrin, grins on their faces, and their hands twitching erratically as they made dozens of quick gestures over top of each other. “What an absolutely bizarre language” Sayrin thought. He knew of the cultural differences, he knew that, religiously, they had this idea that they had to conserve or protect their air, something like that. But still… how utterly bizarre.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was made only more strange by the fact that these were neither elven nor human people, but dyadic. Their skin was primarily a darker shade of tan or brown, except they had seemingly random splotches of pale white swirling around as well. They had long ears, longer than the elves, and small horns extending up from their temples and curving back along their head. The most unnerving for Sayrin, however, was the lack of sclera in the eyes. When they took a class, their entire eye would seem to shift into a gemstone placed within their skulls. Sayrin’s wife, Mata, was half dyad, half elf. While she mostly took after her elven side, she did have a few swirls of pale on her legs and back, as well as a larger iris than he ever would have seen on another elf. In her, Sayrin found it beautiful, like pale full moons in the morning sky. But here in this group, it felt off.
Clearing his throat and giving Phellus a side eye, the young man nervously stepped up and began to interpret.
“Uh, right, which one would you like me to translate? I can try to catch all of them, but that won’t uh… won’t really work well” he finished with a nervous laugh.
Sighing, Sayrin pointed to the one in the middle who seemed to be not only the oldest, but wearing the finest clothing. “Just focus on that man for now, and we’ll see how that goes.”
Nodding, his bronze eyes seemed to get slightly brighter as he watched the man, then started saying “-the music on, or maybe of? The music of the mountain this night last came was skyward and thick of meaning. Your mind and soul need heard and known it’s rhythm, else you cannot see to seek or uh, maybe try to seek, it’s experience through… uh…
Sayrin was looking incredulously at the younger man, who trailed off in his translation before rubbing the back of his head and looking at his feet. “So, I just started learning the language a few months ago, and while I can get the gist of most conversations… I may miss some of the… uh… finer details. Basically, they’re just talking about a concert or performance that happened last night, and how good it was. So… nothing major, I guess.”
Sighing, Sayrin just shook his head. “This is going to be a pleasant trip.” Turning and walking the few remaining steps to the massive border gate, Sayrin stopped while standing just underneath it, and made a series of hand signs that he had been told meant something along the lines of formal greeting and respect. He started by touching two fingers to the center of his forehead, then bringing them slowly forwards until his palm was facing upwards. Then, twisting the two fingers around each other and bringing his other hand up to meet the first, he spread both hands out to either side, palms still facing upward.
The group of five all stopped their own hand movements, placing their hands on their chests, fingers interlocked. Then, to Sayrin’s surprise, a young girl stepped out and walked up to stand at an angle to him. He realized as she started to duplicate his greeting, this was so those behind could still see what she signed.
Sayrin noted that, rather than the center of her forehead, she touched her left hand to the base of her left horn. After they both completed the greeting, she made several more quick gestures, lots of finger movement and twisting wrists, like someone playing an unseen instrument.
“She says, uh, thank you for your greeting, foreigner or other or… outlander maybe? I am Celi, the child of the sky and of the sky watcher. It has been many time-days? - since we held one of you.”
“Please thank her for her greeting as well, and tell her that I am August Sayrin, commander of this unit and emissary of his majesty, the king of Terrin. Though I haven’t stayed in your lands before, I am excited at this opportunity to bring our nations closer together and hope we may please one another and gain a mutual understanding.”
Phellus, moving with much more care and deliberation than the Cheole, began to convey his message. Sayrin had a feeling this was going to be a bit of an issue, as he saw plain confusion on Celi’s face, and smiles on the faces of the other four.
Celi began moving her hands again, and Phellus said, with an increasingly red face “Uh, she asks… oh uhm… she wants to know why you mention your excitement to her, and uh, what do you mean by please, as she is… uhm… she has a spouse already and does not seek another.” She then gave a few more quick gestures, and Phellus added “No insult to you or our people, of course.”
Sayrin’s mouth worked for a moment, looking from Celi’s slightly red, but genuinely uncertain face, to Phellus who was looking anywhere at all except at Sayrin. “What in damnation did you say to her?” He hissed under his breath.
“Well, you see, I think the sign for excited that I learned might be of a more… physical nature than the emotional one that you meant. That, with the addition of 'pleasing', and well, uh, it might have come across like you were making an advance rather than just a greeting… sir”
Taking a step forward past the gate, the elder that Sayrin had noted earlier, a broad smile still on his face, placed a hand on Sayrin’s shoulder and said, “This is always good fun, and little Celi needed the practice in talking to foreigners, but how about we just speak your tongue from here on?”
His words sounded incredibly strange to Sayrin. They were pitched in the wrong ways and had emphasis on the wrong vowels. Like he had learned the language entirely from reading it, without ever hearing it spoken, which Sayrin supposed, was entirely possible. Still, after dreading what communication on this venture would be like for the past several days, hearing any kind of language from their people was an absolute blessing in his mind.
“I am Cloud. I have a more formal name, but I find far too often that the lowlanders who hear my name end up simply calling me Cloud for convenience, so it has become my custom to give that first. I am the nephew of the current monarch up in the mountains, as well as the city-lord for Straus, the settlement directly behind us. Come, bring your people along and let’s get you acclimated before you begin the rest of your journey to the peaks.”
Sending Phellus back with orders to get their people on the move, Sayrin took his first steps through the gate and noticed the immediate shift. It wasn’t oppressive or overwhelming, but almost at once the simple sounds of the world around him seemed to dampen, like he’d put a piece of thin cloth over his ears. He could still easily hear everything, the birds singing, the scuffing of boots on ground, the clamor of his people to his read. But it all felt farther off, distant and quiet.
Cloud’s gentle laughter caught Sayrin’s attention as he looked towards the graying man. “It is like that for all who enter our nation. Give it time, you will adjust. You may even learn to love it like we do. Our air is a stubborn thing, who hates to move more than needed. Come, we have much to discuss, and besides, there is an alignment tonight. Best not be out in the open for something like that, eh?”
“No… No, certainly not. Thank you for taking us in during such a time. My soldiers will work to defend the town, if you’ll permit them. It’s what they do.”
Once more, his soft laughter like wind in the trees sounded out, and Sayrin noticed the others giving him surreptitious glances. “You think you have a choice in this? My dear foreign friend, when alignments and waves come, there is no choice but to have both hands on the pommel, so to speak.”
Sayrin nodded, battles he understood. The culture might be different, the people, the language, the very race of those they defended. But fighting was what they had been trained to do. He felt himself relaxing as he followed the small group as they walked slowly, waiting for the crowd of people to follow along.