Friday, October 29, 2010

Language Barrier

She was lovely for an alien species. I could not see most of her coloring due to the pink light but her features were delicate. Her hair was a bit of a mess, probably due to my having pulled her down from above so violently, but it was long and curly. Her hair hid most of her head but I could clearly see her face. She looked relatively human except for a few differences, there seemed to be crystals shimmering in the light along a few of her features. She didn't have eyebrows like a human, instead they looked like vertical slivers of crystal and then at the end of them were three additional crystals trailing towards her ears, each one smaller than the one previous. There were also four crystals along and around her nose, one on each side and two in the middle, forming an upside down 'Y'. Then under her eyes and running down to the corners of her mouth were what looked like intricate tattoos, though they could have been natural markings. The markings in general made a sort of curved triangular shape with the top two points near the corners of the eyes and a line following the natural curve under each eye and then the last corner near the side of her mouth, the shape bowed outward along her cheeks. In the design were various little curls and twists in the pattern, I'm sure I could have stared at them for hours except the pattern drew your attention always back to the eyes. They were wonderful to look at, large and beautiful. In the light they simply looked brownish but they sparkled and I could imagine they would be even more spectacular if they weren't full of fear right now.

As we took this time to look over each other the light from the crystal had been healing our scratches and cuts from our tumble onto the rocks. As it dawned on her that this was happening she looked at her hands, arms and legs in wonder, watching the wounds close up. When they had all healed and she had finished inspecting where they were she looked at me and with a questioning look said something completely unintelligible. I'm sure it was a question along the lines of wondering what just happened and so I answered, knowing full well that she would have no idea what I said. When I had made my reply I felt the dryness of my throat and remembered that I had not had a drink yet and so I did my best, speaking and gesturing to make it known that I needed to find some water. She smiled and chuckled a bit at some of my efforts to communicate but eventually understood my meaning. She detached a small sewn skin from her side and handed it to me, I could feel the liquid moving inside of it. I quickly pulled the top off of it and put the container to my lips and poured the liquid out. It was sweet and refreshing, it didn't take but a single gulp of the stuff to completely relieve me of my dehydration. I put the top back on and handed it back to her and she carefully placed it back at her side. Afterwards we sat there, both of us contemplating how to communicate with one another and each of us once in a while motioning to some random thing around us and trying to make the other understand our words. Eventually she picked up the crystal that was lighting up the cave and started trying to ask me questions about it, she knew I could not understand her but she wanted to know something about it desperately. I eventually motioned for her to follow and I took her back to where I had retrieved the crystal, when we got there she made a motion to signify that this wasn't what she was wanting to know and once again worked on trying to get her question across to me.

At what appeared to be the end of her frustration she placed the crystal in my hands and then moving to the wall began to point to different spots. Each spot she pointed had a different crystal vein in it, though it wasn't the same type of crystal that I was holding. Again and again she would point to the different ones and make words over and over. I simply shook my head that I didn't understand. She looked at me sternly at this point and pointed to each one again, this time saying the same word over and over. I repeated her word and then she pointed to the one I was holding and said the same thing. This made me realize that this was her word for crystals. I pointed to some different spots and said the word, she was delighted that I had understood. She then started pointing to the same spots as before and saying a different word before the word she had just taught me. As I listened and watched I began to see her pattern, the crystals were all different but some of them had the same color, she was teaching me the colors. This finally brought understanding to her initial question and so I signified that I understood. I then used a little bit of ice force and changed the crystal color to the pale blue. She grabbed the crystal from me and stared at it with wonder. As she held it I could see that her eyes were bright green and her hair was a deep violet. She skin also was darker than mine, like a deep tan. The cold began to fill the small chamber quickly and she started to shiver, I motioned for the crystal back and when I had it again in my hands I changed it back to pink using some healing force. Realizing what I had done she grabbed the crystal again and I felt her gather some energy herself, when she released it the crystals on her face briefly illuminated and the crystal turned white, I then felt a surge of energy fill my being, it was the same energy that had brought me back to my senses during the fight with the death creature. She had been the one who helped me survive that fight.

No comments:

Post a Comment