Chapter 5 #2
The large beings weren't the only ones that were startling.
There were see-through tubes along the sides of the buildings where the sidewalk touched the wall, and inside were tiny beings, the largest no bigger than rabbits, the smallest the size of mice, scurrying along their protected walkways.
They were miniature, safe from the feet of the lumbering giants, but being afforded the same space to move and travel around the world without the risk of being stepped on.
Then there were aliens that came up to my hip, some that were closer to Eun's seven feet of height, glancing down at me as they passed with four or six eyes, with fur or skin or scales.
The diversity was dizzying, so many forms, colors, movements.
My mind scrambled to sort them into anything familiar.
The giants, massive and deliberate, I labeled as mud elephants, though they had no trunks or ears, just rolls of flesh and a second set of eyes nestled at the backs of their skulls so they could see behind.
The smallest ones were scaled and sharp-eyed, with extra arms and lizardlike tails, reminding me of rats or insects, though they moved with startling grace.
One figure was nothing but a quivering dome of gelatinous goo, pulsing with each step, a silver object suspended inside its translucent body like a trapped artifact.
That one I called a gelatinous blob.
I knew that all these aliens had their own names for their species, but I grasped onto the words that made the most sense as I grappled with the sudden shock of being somewhere so dramatically different.
I held onto those small similarities, labeling them with words that made sense to me, like they were lifelines to my understanding.
I was in a world filled with strangeness, and I was going to get lost in it if I didn't categorize things into forms I understood.
They needed labels and places to be put on the shelves of my mind.
Then I saw something I understood.
Curving horns adorned the head of a creature not too much taller than me, wearing a flowing, form-fitting dress.
Because of the outfit, my mind labeled her as a her, but I couldn't be sure.
Just because I was identifying clothing as dresses, pants, or jackets didn't mean they looked exactly the same or had the same meanings or social assignments, but none of my labels mattered to other people; they were for me and my understanding, so she remained a she for now.
She had long, lithe limbs, four arms, two legs, and a soft, downy, tawny fur dappled with zigzag stripes of darker brown.
She was wearing a flowing dress-like outfit with slits at the hips that exposed her strong legs.
As she walked past us, I saw one or two other aliens turn their heads to watch her, as if she were beautiful.
Horror rose up in me, like bile in the back of my throat, as the sight of her horns forced me to confront what I already knew.
The bodies in the warehouse had been people, one human, one alien, both of them hung up and harvested by the hyenas as food.
I'd known that already, but part of me was hoping that I misunderstood, that it had been just an animal they were eating, not a woman. I had clung onto the idea that maybe I'd been mislabeled as non-sentient, and that was why they planned to eat me.
I shuddered and moved closer to Eun, then focused my attention on my surroundings, holding onto the things I could control: my grip on his tail, my closeness to his body, my awareness of my environment.
I couldn't report the murders to the police if I couldn't talk and no one knew my language.
I had to learn about everything as fast as I possibly could so that I could provide the details that caused those evil hyenas to be brought to justice.
There were the vehicles, hovering shapes that drifted past in silence.
Not quite cars, more like gliding pods, rounded and oval, designed in various sizes, some clearly built for the towering species, others no larger than a bathtub.
They were far more advanced than the air-polluting vehicles I was used to on Earth, or at least I assumed they were, given that they hovered and the air didn't stink of car exhaust, supporting the idea that I was on an alien planet if it wasn't obvious already by literally everything else I'd observed.
The city moved around me like a living organism, every part strange and yet organized to manage the movement of so many different sizes and shapes of bodies, and I followed alongside Eun, moving out of the way when he did, following beside him or in his slipstream depending on the moment, holding onto his glowing tail, which held onto me back.
This was a city filled with people, and Eun was my person.
When Eun pushed through a swinging door, I followed close behind, grateful for the escape from the bustle and noise into the new enclosed space.
The quiet inside was welcome, warmth wrapping around me.
The outside world was too much, too loud, too strange, too diverse in its extreme differences.
I could handle it in doses, but it would take time to build up to it, and for now, this new space was a relief.
The air was thick with the scent of broth and herbs, the same rich aroma from the soup he’d given me the night before, the familiarity a note I clung to.
Steam drifted from an open window that looked into the kitchen, where someone with gleaming scales stood stirring a wide pot.
Eun called out in his language, and a figure stepped through a beaded curtain in the back, a towering, bipedal lizard with emerald-colored skin and tongue that flicked out in the air.
His two eyes slid over me, slitted and golden, and I stared back at him and his two arms, a rarity on this planet, too, in shock by all of it to do anything but stare.
"Lizard people are real," I whispered.
Eun spoke again, longer this time, voice low and steady. The lizard listened, then responded with a deep rumble that I felt more in my bones than heard with my ears. Whatever he said, Eun turned away and led me toward a small table nestled near the archway. He bent down and patted one of the seats.
“Leija,” he said.
The seat was smaller, and I didn’t have to climb into it.
There were tables and seats of different sizes all around the room, which I labeled in my head as a restaurant, including a tiny table up on the windowsill near me.
I sat down at the proffered table, and Eun went through the beaded curtain, his glowing tail releasing me reluctantly.
The lizard appeared and set a pile of worn books in front of me, along with something shaped like a pen.
The relief I felt at seeing books, actual books made out of paper, flooded through me.
A soft chime rang out, delicate and melodic, and the lizard disappeared back through the curtain of beads, the strands clicking together in his wake.
Eun called after him from behind the beaded curtain, his voice light, cheerful.
The lizard paused, listened, and replied again, with a slightly more serious tone.
I couldn’t understand the words, but the rhythm of them felt familiar.
Like a call-and-response, something expected and practiced when the chime rang out.
Eun stepped up to the open window into the kitchen and pinned a slip of paper to a small board beside it.
Only then did I realize he was wearing a different jacket, a crisp white one, fastened neatly down the front.
It was a uniform. A logo was stitched over his chest: a steaming bowl with two chopstick spoons angled out of it.
The same symbol had been printed on the soup box he brought me the night before.
Eun came over to me and shuffled through the books in front of me, pushing most of them to the side and putting one in front of me.
He opened it up, and there were colorful cartoon pictures of different objects, with words written in the same script that was on his computer keyboard.
Someone had already written on the lines under the pictures with a shaky hand.
It was a schoolbook, and from the looks of it, it was meant to help children learn to read.
“Okay, then we're doing this old school,” I said, picking up what I hoped was a pen.
I pressed it to the paper.
It was a pen.
The relief of having something practical to focus on washed through me as I worked my way through the book.
Eun hovered near me, sounding out several of the words for me out loud, his finger tracing over them, before the lizard eventually called out for him, and Eun went to the back.
The chiming sound would happen, and either he or the lizard would answer it, saying the same thing every time they answered in the same cheerful tone of voice.
After some time, a few aliens, most around hip height to a bit taller than me, came in and picked up containers of food from Eun.
One of the feathered creatures that came in cooed softly as it passed, brushing a wing over the top of my head in a gesture so gentle it almost felt like a blessing. It did it a few more times, and I realized it was petting my hair.
Eun called out something to it, and it gave me a long look before it strolled over to him, taking the seat that he gestured to.