| |
Peering out from between two rocks, something watched the activity with interest. Something unfamiliar with Earthlings. Something taking in every detail with the intense curiosity of a scientist discovering new life.
Someone.
She observed the tall figures moving back the way they had come, and she did her level best to capture the important facts in writing. Her hands moved with all the speed of a deep current, but they weren’t fast enough to record everything she saw. They couldn’t be. She silently railed against the impossibility of writing with the eloquence of speech. Also against her limited time, and limited resources, and the fact that she would never get to share her findings in person.
She put it from her mind and focused on the details. The creatures were shaped like trees, wearing armor that she had taken for scales at first. They appeared to be unsuccessfully hunting the large bodiless tails — that term was particularly hard to write at this speed, nearly causing her to fumble and start fresh. When one of the creatures was injured, she realized several things: they were social animals who cared for each other’s welfare; they had helmets that could be removed; and the one with the shiniest armor was exceptionally strong.
She stared as the strange beings cared for their comrade, many questions swimming past her mind. What was their relation to each other? Were they all siblings of a hive mother, or did they all hatch from a communal clutch with many parents, or did they have insulated family units? Did they make that armor themselves? Were they as civilized as they seemed? Could they be communicated with? How might they react if she approached them?
Probably not well at the moment, given their concern over the injured one. They might reasonably think her a threat. As much as she wanted to try, interaction would surely end badly. And they certainly wouldn’t understand her speech. But what if they did?
As she agonized over the thought, fingers still dancing, the choice was taken from her. A roaring sound filled the air, and something shocking floated into view.
She didn’t know how to describe it. A flying rock, with windows. Large, angular, loud. The creatures hurried forward to meet it, pulling open its side when it landed. That was a door. They were climbing into a moving building. How did they make a building fly?
The creatures all settled inside. The last one shut the door, and the building lifted into the air, moving on wings of sound alone. It disappeared over the hill while she wrote furiously, futilely, forlornly. No one would ever read this. But she had to record it anyway. On the sliver of hope that her words would find their way home somehow. And as someone who had spent a lifetime studying every form of life within reach, she could do nothing else.
When she was done, she spread the journal entry against the rock in front of her, looking for errors. There were none. Her knotwork was tidy and precise, with no stray loops. The waterweed hadn’t torn. The braided spine-strand was sturdy, and the sentences that hung from it were a masterwork of intricately knotted words. Something to take pride in, given the speed of her writing, but it brought her little joy now.
How many of her predecessors had done the same? She hadn’t spotted any signs of intelligence once she left the river, but that didn’t mean much. How many other curious souls had made it to this shoreline? How long had these intelligent animals been here?
And what would they do next?