Chapter Text
“It’s not uncommon for one among our kind to ruminate on the things we can’t see or immediately understand. There are angles of our reality the Jiko have never once had the the honor of perceiving; the deepest seas, the highest mountains, the unguessed expanse beyond Kursoa, and let us not forget the forgotten past and the unwritten future. There’s mystery all around us, and I’m quite confident I speak for everyone—myself and all the readers of this very manuscript, not less you—that we feel the most ecstatic thrill when approaching, and inevitably crossing, the nebulous line between the known and the unknown. But I have to wonder if what we may find on the other side of that line will send us fleeing to our familiar domiciles, forever after loath to guess at the depths of the sea or heights of the sky. We’ve guessed that death may very well wait to befall us in the beyond, and yet—I need not say— that causes us little consternation. So what, dare I ask, may be worse than death?”
—Appaxa Tiriki, The Black Aspects of Jikan Heritage, Volume One
“When a Jiko experiences any emotion, others can intercept that emotion via telepathy… If you’re happy, you’re friends are happy. If you’re sad, you’re friends are sad. That is what we call ‘empathy’, and it is one of the greatest gifts we Jiko posses.
—Chix “Professor Tototo” Mikili, Anatomy and Psychology for Beginning Students
Zatatha rapped the heavy stone gate for perhaps the fifth or sixth time, and as she stood waiting on the doorstep for her expectant host, she started seriously considering the possibility of barging in uninvited, or otherwise leaving. Though the later option was very tempting, as Zatatha had been anxiously waiting outside of the cabin for just under a luttaturn, the letter she received from Suth just a turn prior was uncharacteristically curt and shoddily written, nearly to the point of illegibility. And while the subject of the letter would be innocuous enough on it’s own (It was merely a request for Zatatha’s presence at Suth’s “humble haunt” without any explicit reason or hint of urgency), Zatatha’s ordinarily keen intuition told her this was significantly more important than Suth’s usual affairs. Considering the strictly implicit but still nonnegotiable importance of her visit, she decided leaving would be rude. After all, she was curious. Suth was the kind of ‘Ko to theorize wildly and without preamble to whichever pair of antennae happened to be nearby, and pretty much everybody in the local academic circles were pleasantly aware or at least tolerant of this, Zatatha among them. Evidently, Suth had something to say. Even if it weren’t for her scholarly duties, Zatatha would still listen to Suth’s elaborate lecture purely for the novelty of it.
Humming pensively, Zatatha put antenna against the door and listened for any tell-tale sound of answer or some kind o residence, but none came. She knocked a seventh—or eight—time, listened for just a few ticks, and sat down on the top tier of the steps rising to Suth’s porch. Sighing deeply, she relinquishing herself to inertia, kept in partial wakefulness only by the citric fragrance of autumn blossoms, growing in knitted and untamed bunches along either side of the descending steps. Though the countryside, Zatatha had to admit, provided a pleasant view. Suth lived mostly isolated from the rest of Csovix, the central Jikan settlement of this island, so regardless of which direction one chose to look there were no sky-stabbing pillars of monolithic amphitheaters nor green fairy lights of organized orchards. No, here there were only low thickets, sprawled like dense moss over shallow hills; wild tangles of vine cuffing troops of umbrella trees; the crystalline, mirror surfaces of ponds cuddled between rolling meadows, undulating in the crisp breeze; and the slow dance of bioluminescent avifauna tracing unique patterns in the carmine sky. Even Suth’s own house—a black quaxstone pyramid with well weathered edges and more than enough natural camouflage growing along it’s sloped sides—blended in astonishingly well, despite being perched atop an exceptionally tall hill. One wouldn’t instantly conclude that the rocky and verdure-laden bulge squatting placidly behind overgrown turf was actually a house, until she spots the candlelight flickering in the tiny round windows or the bored city-bred ‘Ko sitting on the mossy steps chiseled into the hillside.
On an impulse, Zatatha spun around, knocked one final time, then plopped back down to continue her vacant reflection. The sun was gradually sinking towards the mountainous skyline, bringing down the temperature with it. Foretold only by the distant whispering of trees, clustered somewhere in the settling darkness of night, a bitter breeze trudged across the wilderness, tickling Zatatha’s rosy cheeks and stinging her azure eyes. She shivered, tightening her wings around her shoulders and praying Suth would welcome her in before she freezes to death. Just as the last ray of light slunk quietly behind the rim of the world, taking with it any further chances of seeing the beautiful countryside below, she felt a pinprick of sharp cold fall upon her nose, and then another few upon her feathered antenna. It became immediately apparent that it was beginning to snow. The temperature will fall further still, hastened by nightside winds and the absence of sweet sunlight until poor Zatatha would in short time find herself frosted in skewering ice like a living festival chalice. It was too late to attempt a flight back to Csovix, so the only remaining option was to enter Suth’s home uninvited. The act was uncouth, but surely the host would understand given the circumstances.
The door opened easily enough, gliding on basic hinges that gave a plaintive squeal in protest, but otherwise there were no signs of any locking mechanisms. Perhaps, after all, Suth had expected Zatatha to enter without ceremony. In any case, Zatatha slipped into the moderately warm home and closed the door before more snowflakes could twirl in and soak the already weathered doormat. The interior was just as chaste as Suth’s home tended to be, simply adorned with a few grass tapestries and a modest few pillar shelf’s replete with triptych scrolls and little obsidian figurines carved by the Suth’s own hand. The latter articles were by far the most abundant thing in the entire parlor; black and polished representations of old colleagues dotting every other mantle, fragile looking glass chimeras hanging from the ceiling by silk threads, and bas relief scenes of imaginary planets or landscapes melded to the rugged walls. Suth’s profession was geology, but as with most her passion was an entirely separate matter, which she seemed to occupy herself with often. In fact, even Zatatha—a ‘Ko who rarely indulged in the decadence of visual art—was so impressed with Suth’s work that she had commissioned a few sculptures in the past klorbit, namely a bust of Zatatha’s late mother and a scale model of Mount Kattathric. Zatatha would have loved to spend the rest of the night appreciating Suth’s artwork one by one, but there were other more important things to pursue.
At once she sensed Suth’s residual thought patterns lingering like scant perfume through the house, shortly afterwards hearing—with her ears rather than her antenna—the muffled but nonetheless recognizable voice of the allusive denizen, rambling from some obscure corner of the cozy dwelling. Possibly, Zatatha surmised, from the basement, where Suth was wont to record her thoughts phonograph. Zatatha was somewhat dismayed that Suth had barred most of her own thought patterns, thus forbidding a clear understanding of her exact state of mind, but judging by the most characteristically dignified manner in which she spoke Zatatha felt Suth was in passable health, to much relief. Still though, even considering Suth’s tendency to hyper-fixate on one particular subject for turns on end, it was was very uncommon of her to sequester herself to the gloomy basement, distracting herself so utterly that she’s deaf to even repeated knocking to the front door.
Having evidently closed off her empathic reception, there was no doubt Suth wouldn’t sense Zatatha’s telepathic hail, so the latter settled with a swift stomp to the stony floor separating basement from parlor, loudly chirping “Suth, my dear! I’m here at your request!” After a pause she added. “Are you alright? May I help you?”
And just like the flick of the switch, Suth’s one-sided conversation stopped mid-sentence and her empathetic connection opened wide and bright to Zatatha’s antenna, instant relaying to the visitor a feeling of surprise, a taint of shame, and a hint of delight. Zatatha couldn’t help but giggle when she heard her old friend loudly curse “Oh, snik!” and promptly scrambled up the stairs, her little feet pitter-pattering with near palpable panic. The brilliant halo of a handheld electric torch preceded Suth’s arrival, a halo that abruptly swelled to illuminate the parlor from wall to wall once the jittery host’s petite figure crested the stairs. After a brief sprint across the modestly sized room—interrupted just once when she tripped on her leg-wings, fell, swore, and popped back onto her clawed feet—Suth stood before the astonished Zatatha and regarded her with a coy and apologetic smile. With her little lamp steadily beaming just beneath her haggard face, painting deep shadows above her milk-white, tattooed cheeks and opalescent eyes, Suth looked absolutely ghoulish, like a pale being who had never once known the grace of sunlight, but the illusion fell apart once she set the lamp in it’s rightful place inside a desk-mounted sun-vase, the unique crystal properties of which multiplied and evenly distributed the lamp’s light across the room, bringing both Jiko to full clarity before each other’s eyes. Suth was quite short when compared to others of her kind, especially next to the tall and lanky Zatatha, but what she lacked in height she made up for with her vast and lovely wings, which, for the moment, were clumsily swathed around her body. Her leg-wings in particular were so lax they trailed behind her feet in twin streamers like the tails of a coxfauna. When properly wrapped, her leg-wings—and not to mention back-wings, shoulder-wings, arm-wings, and rump-wings—looked like a thick and cozy bundle of robes from which her her round and pearly head, topped with a mat of indigo hair and antenna, peeked out like an egg in a blanket. Suth’s eyes and wings were hued in the same sparkly shades as her hair, which when freshly groomed can sometimes make her look like a walking fruit, which contrast heavily with the towering Zatatha, who was predominately blue and grey in color, with smooth charcoal hair dressed with a wild assortment of artisan beads the old scientist had collected over the orbits.
“Thank you.” Suth bowed deeply, taking Zatatha’s hand and kissing it’s finely scalded skin. “Thank you, Zat. Thank you so much for coming. And please forgive me for…for not being so prompt. I swear, I heard you knocking earlier, but…time just kinda escaped me, and I got distracted by my log and…”
“Suth. Suth, it’s okay.” Zatatha chirped, giving the rambling ‘Ko a sisterly pay on the head. Zatatha was dismayed to feel more than a few scitefauna scurrying in Suth’s shaggy hair. Evidently she hadn’t washed in a while. “There’s no harm done. I’m just happy to visit.”
Suth looked over the visitor’s shoulder at the small window’s flanking the door. A look of surprise glinted in her narrow eyes once she fathomed the impenetrable wall of shadow outside. “My, it’s dark already? How long were you out there?”
“Not long.” Zatatha lied, though she was aware Suth could easily suss out the truth by skimming her recent memories. Zatatha returned Suth’s affection with a kiss to the forehead, right between the antenna, chirping “You worried me, you know. What on Kursoa could be so important that you’d hole yourself up like this?”
Suth rattled with dry laughter, but from what Zatatha could tell it almost completely lacked genuine mirth, and was heavy with fatigue. With a sweep of a membrane-robed arm, she purred “Scrutiny, Zatatha. Suttaturns…many, many suttaturns spent in deep scrutiny and pondering over…” Suth suddenly yawned, her small mouth opening surprisingly wide into a cavernous O. “…over this…this enigma! The enigma of an era, Zat. Mystery and wonder…” She yawned again. “Heaven, Zat, I can’t even explain it with any lucidity. I just can’t! It’s as if the…the spirits have taken their…their, uh, most baffling mystery and…”
Taken aback with her zeal, Zatatha had to probe Suth’s mind to glean some understanding of her cryptic preamble, but what the visitor found inside was no more comprehensive than what sputtered out of Suth’s deceptively small mouth; patchy memories of holes and crystals, highlighted with a general sense of confusion, awe, and dense melange of speculations so tightly interwoven with each other that the whole resembled a strange avant-garde film. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning, Suth.” Zatatha confessed at length.
A brief wave of stupefaction passed from Suth to Zatatha, evident not only in the peculiar twitching of the latter’s antenna, but also in the contemplative squinting of her eyes and the (admittedly adorable) sinking of her chin into the scarf formed by her neck-wings. Reading the shorter ‘Ko’s mind, Zatatha found that Suth was in something of a reflective trance, apparently realizing at last how hysterical she nearly became. “M-my apologies, Zat.” Suth squeaked, abashment reddening her cheeks and making her slim fingers do a nervous dance. “Of course you wouldn’t understand.” She paused, then continued seconds later, at once assuming a significantly more dignified air. “If it’s all the same with you, I suggest we repose for a bit. You and I can get caught up while I try to organize my, er, my presentation, if you will.”
“Take all the time you need, dear.” Zatatha chirped. “I’m eager to know more, however. If I may ask what exactly has you so…triggered?”
“Zatatha, trust me. The answer to that question cannot be contained in a single sentence. Suffice to say that what I have may very well be the most important discover in Jikan history. Now, you’ve read the theories of Katathar and the like, no?”
“Katathar Zuluzum?”
Suth nodded, delighted.
“I’m afraid I haven’t.” Zatatha shrugged. “Then again, I was under the impression that Katathar was an author of fiction, not theories.”
“Really, what’s the difference? One is speculation for the academics, one is speculation for the artists, but both are, at the end of the turn, speculation.”
“Wise words, dear.” Zatatha conceded, absently scratching her nose. Her curiosity was well piqued now.
“In any case, Katathar wrote stories pertaining to a kind of, er, mythology, I suppose. A mythology centered around these angel-like beings called the Dto, or something like that one. Allegedly these Dto built Kursoa around the unhatched egg of a cosmic kriffin, which is basically just an enormous Scathfauna…”
“Uh huh.”
“Anyhow, the Dto built Kursoa and then created the Jiko as a custodian race to keep the egg warm and safe while the Dto are away. This is absurd, of course, since the dominant theory amongst geologist is that Kursoa is just stone all the way to the core; no egg, and probably no Dto either. But could we be wrong?”
“I suppose so. We never dug any further than ten terratats.”
“Until now.” Suth purred.
Taken aback, Zatatha’s eyes widened and her head cocked slightly to one side. “Suth, what did you do?”
Suth patted a hand to her chest and chirped “I did nothing, Zat. Nothing at all. I was at the right place at the right time when Kursoa herself exposed her deepest secret to me.” Suth sighed, brushing the vanes of her antenna. “But I promised us respite, and I plan on delivering. Heavens, you must have traveled a long, long way to get here. You deserve some rest. Care for some nectar?”
A traditionally V-shaped Jikan smile, bright with all the merriment of old age, creased Zatatha’s blue face. A sweet drink with an old friend was just what she needed. “Please.”
… … …
Over the course of the next half suttaturn, Suth and Zatatha’s empathic connecting gradually strengthen, and the latter soon found herself fully cognizant of the sheer discomfort quietly shining from Suth’s being. Having become saturated in Suth’s heady emotions during her visit, Zatatha was having a hell of a time enduring the silence. Like the little ‘Ko sitting across from her, Zatatha desperately wanted to address the yagafauna in the room and learn all there was to learn. Suth herself knew very little, as she admitted, but Zatatha knew even less, and it was this ignorance that seemed to spur both of their anxieties. The feeling they shared was excitement, no less, but it was a very…unpleasant excitement, very much unlike what either of the two Jiko were used to. The drive to know was real, of course, but in this particular instance it felt somewhat like the effects of a rather nasty drug and not at all a wholesome novelty. Zatatha, despite being psychologically linked to Suth, couldn’t understand what troubled them or why, but she had every reason to suspect Suth did understand but for whatever reason refused to be upfront with her anxieties. Suth continued to smother her distress with the scientific zeal all Jiko posses, but the longer they waited the more her facade cracked. Soon, Suth simply succumbed to an uncomfortable hush, staring pensively into the smoldering hearth whenever she or Zatatha ran low on small talk.
“Suth, please tell. What’s the matter?” Zatatha hazarded.
“I promise, Zat. Nothing’s the matter. I’m just thinking, that’s all.” Suth smiled affably, but her bleary eyes were still distant and glinting red and orange with the popping and hissing embers pulsing dimly amid scorched clods of coal. Despite being seated in her comfiest sofa, Suth was visibly tense, with her back stiff and straight, and feet lightly clawing at one another.
“I know you’re lying.” Zatatha parried.
“You’ll understand soon enough, I promise. I’ll tell you everything, but for now, let’s just relax.” They both suspected there would be no relaxing this night, but Zatatha thought better of contradicting Suth. “By the way, how was the nectar?”
“It was delightful, dear. Thank you very much.” Zatatha beamed, acknowledging the almost empty chalice on the edge of the ornate table squatting between them. There remained only a single sip of the sugary teal liquor at the bottom, but it was enough to exude the ethereal fragrance Suth’s special nectar brew was known for.
Not surprisingly, Suth only gave a satisfied hum and resumed her tryst with the hearth. She needed to think, Zatatha reminded herself. She weakened her empathetic connection just a little, allowing Suth some mental space.
Zatatha thought back to the last time she—and the whole of her people, in fact—had felt the thrill of discovery. It was about thirty orbits ago, during the height of the ice season; practically yesterturn in comparison to the forty-thousand orbits Zatatha had been alive. That was the year engineers over in distant Csaltex had developed an unprecedented and then unnamed astrological instrument; a kind of focal lens that the public could use to observe the stars and various atmospheric phenomenon with unrivaled clarity. No less than two turns after the invention of this “astroscope”—as the device came to be known—someone had discovered something truly astonishing: Jikax, a once baffling pinpoint of blue light that always hung at the apex of the night sky, was in fact a planet! Not just any planet, but seemingly an approximate duplicate of their own planet, Kursoa herself. Prior to that day, Jikax had been thought to be a distant twin to the sun; nothing more amazing than a whirling mass of electrical energy. Jiko the world over were knocked nearly catatonic by this revelation. Even Zatatha, despite how old and world-savvy she was, was smitten with an uncontrollable rush of puerile wonder. The unknown had become known, and yet in the act had suddenly begged a number of tantalizing questions which none had the experience to answer. The heaviest of which was “Is there life on this new planet?” It was a riddle with no solution, but it did engender whole new schools of thought among scientists and artists alike. There was the tempting matter of reaching the new world, and if Jiko could survive such an incredible voyage; others asked how life could form on such a remote place, and they in turn began to brood upon the enigmatic origin of Kursoan life. All the ideas, all the conversations, the fancy and conjecture, the mystery and inquest — this newfound understanding of a lonely star that had always been there, shining upon the ancestors of the ancestors, had swiftly kicked started an intellectual renaissance all across the world. The era even marked the first time in over three hundred orbits that scientists and artists had collaborated on an exceptionally audacious project; employing the wild ideas of speculative authors, contemporary and classical, engineers have begun developing a special airship capable of ferrying nearly two hundred Jiko between worlds. If there was one outcome of this phenomenon that was just as evident in the present moment as it was on the first day, it’s their people’s absolutely ubiquitous enthusiasm. It was their shared ecstasy and ardor, their smiles and giggles, stars shining in their iridescent eyes as they charged headlong into the untapped universe, that made the “Jikax Renaissance” so cherished. Everybody, from the freshest youth to the most cultured elder, enjoyed the acts of search, wonder, and discovery, regardless of the possibilities before them.
So why did Suth and Zatatha not feel the same about this? Zatatha didn’t even know the question about to be asked and she still harbored a very uneasy gut feeling. Perhaps it was only the vicious cold enclosing them or the somber darkness of Suth’s house robbing them of some assurance, but no matter how much either of them denied it, they couldn’t shake the odd feeling that the matter at hand should be left alone.
“But we have to.” Suth chirped, at last putting their shared train of thought into words. “This could be important.”
“Are you ready to tell?” Zatatha asked.
“Are you ready to listen?” Suth returned.
“I am.”
“Then we shall get right down to business.” Suth mirthlessly chortled, punctuating with a sip of her nectar. She wiped away a stray drop running down her lips, and wiggled her rump and bunched legs around her seat in a halfhearted effort to make herself comfortable, which Zatatha took as a sign that the coming lecture would be a long one. “It all began,” purred Suth “almost a zkokorbit ago, a little before, or perhaps after, the blue season. The first sign that I received that someone was amiss was an almost imperceptible shaking, almost like the shockwaves of an explosion, but not nearly as jarring. The movement was enough to swing some of my light fixtures and disrupt my equilibrium only the slightest bit, but fortunately caused no damage to my home or to the surrounding environment. However, the quaking did persist for several suttaturns, lasting from late evening to early the next morning. Initially I was at a compete loss to explain the phenomenon; I could tell the quaking was subterranean in origin—for I could not feel it while flying—but was unable to surmise anything beyond that. I had considered many-a wild ideas, such as the prospect of an enormous underground organism, as I had already hinted, but at the time I was careful to avoid any conclusions until I had definitive proof, which I did not find until the next evening. That was when I set out to search the countryside for any kind of, er, disturbances. I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for, but it had to be something out of the ordinary, something that may have a connection to a force capable of stirring the very planet itself. Suttaturns later, I had found the cause of the quaking, or I so I thought. It was a sinkhole, located about thirty-six thousands wingspans east from here, within the foothills of the Vatatex Mountains.” Suth paused, giving the other a knowing look.
“A sinkhole?” Zatatha was aghast. Sinkholes were not uncommon, but in favorable conditions Jikan wilderness guards could prevent, or at least predict, their occurrences by diligently mapping and reinforcing every cavern system across Kursoa. What was so shocking about Suth’s sinkhole, however, was that there were no known caverns beneath or immediately around the Vatatex range, with the nearest being no less than three-hundred kofspans to the south. “My stars, that’s awful.” Zatatha grieved, laying aside her misgivings. “I can only imagine how catastrophicly immense this sinkhole must be, in order to shake the foundation of the planet. Why, it must be at least four hundred wingspans.”
Suth shook her head, her own woe embracing and echoing Zatatha’s “No. It’s larger. Much, much larger. I made sure to measure it’s every dimension thrice over, and at the girth of it’s shortest radius is approximately nine-hundred eighty wingspans, and it’s depth is about fourteen-hundred terratats.”
“That’s…that has to be…”
“It is. The largest sinkhole in recorded history. And last I had seen it, it was still growing.”
Zatatha tightened her wings around her body, visions of collapsing earth and pulverized forests flitting like nightmare remnants across her dazed mind. She had never seen a sinkhole before, but have always heard stories of how devastating they can be, even if they rarely exceeded thirty wingspans. She always found the the concept itself frightening, living with the knowledge that the ground beneath their collective feet and seemingly sturdy houses was decaying at a gradual but nonetheless bothersome pace, fated to give in and swallow the surface dwellers with the deftness of a vasfauna’s serrated jaws. Although the Jiko themselves, with their wings and foresight, would never have to know such a lurid death, it was the peril posed to the terflora and terfauna—the lush wildlife Zatatha’s kind were raised to cherish—that made even the infrequent sinkholes a dire priority for scientists and engineers. “We’re there any survivors?” Zatatha asked, clasping her hands over her sealed lips and nose, an expression of hopeful anticipation.
“A few.” Suth ruefully smiled. “I managed to save a few saplings, a couple basketfuls of seeds, a few miotofauna, meccafauna, some fofauna.” Her smile vanished, eyes downcast. “But that was only less than 0.4 percent of all the organisms that perished.”
“There were no caverns there. We could have sworn upon our mother’s wings, Suth. How could we have foreseen this?” Zatatha whimpered, worrying her fingers.
“We couldn’t have, Zat.” Suth said, firmly looking Zatatha in the eye. “This wasn’t a normal sinkhole. Had it been, I never would have summoned you here. Zat, I had discovered something within that sinkhole, at the very bottom, that I firmly believe be worth the lives of every single fauna and flora that perished that day!”
“Suth!” Zatatha recoiled, horrified. “How could you say that? There isn’t a secret in this universe thats worth the life of even a single sprout.”
“Zatatha, I know! Trust me, this is tragic to me too, but this one particular secret could not have been uncovered in any other fashion. No matter what, a few lives would have had to been lost if we are to ever know what I know now. It’s unfortunate that they all died, and we shall most certainly mourn as we’re wont to do, but in light of this discovery we have to accept the fact and stay focused on what they’re deaths have rewarded us.”
“I see your point.” Zatatha conceded, although she feared she couldn’t look at her old friend way again, believing there lurked an iota of apathy in her. “And just what did you discover, and why is it so important?”
“I can’t answer either of those questions with any certainty. But I can show you the sample I’ve collected and let you judge for yourself.” Suth stood and skirted the table, meeting Zatatha on the other side. There, the host unfurled herself, exposing all at once the lustrous, neon pink and purple gloss and incandescent stripes that decorated the insides of her wings, as well as the sinuous contours of her lithe body, which was entirely void of undergarments save for a simple sash from which dangled a small porcelain vial, sealed with a cloth and ribbon. Suth carefully—reverently, Zatatha thought—plunked the palm-sized container, and just as gracefully passed it to Zatatha.
“That is but a drop compared to the presumably limitless fountain from which it came.” Suth purred, letting her wings enclose her slight frame. “So feel free to experiment however you see fit.”
Without further ado, Zatatha eagerly ripped away the vial’s seal and peered down it’s narrow mouth while Suth leaned over her shoulder, just as interested despite being more acquainted with the vessel’s contents than Zatatha. Zatatha first mistook the substance inside for some kind of new blend of liquor, perhaps nectar mixed with bioluminescent weeflora residue, but a closer inspection, as well as quick sniff, revealed the substance to be any thing but a beverage, let alone organic in nature. In fact, Zatatha had never seen or smelled or all around sensed anything like this before. The substance seemed to posses properties of both a liquid and a solid, without baring any resemblance to paste, clay, or powder; it was almost like glass, but it shifted within the vial in a rather anomalous, gravity-defying way that, much to their frustration, neither Zatatha nor Suth could describe nor grasp. Upon dipping her finger into vial at Suth’s behest, Zatatha found that the substance seemed to gravitate around her skin in a mildly vortex like manner, as if the stuff in the bottle was consciously trying to grab her hand. It felt cold to the touch, somewhat like arctic ice but without the risk of frostbite. Moreover, Zatatha could have sworn there was a slight quivering within, similar to the jiggling of gelatin, but somewhat more patterned. Again entertaining the possibility of the substance being alive, she imagined it was trying to probe and pat her intruding digit with a scientist’s curiosity, or perhaps an attempt to communicate with the larger entity. The specimen’s color was by far it’s most bewildering aspect, for it’s true shade was invisible to the Jiko’s ocular eyes—thus appearing to be an inky black—and while their wider sixth sense could perceive a much wider light spectrum that too failed to determine any recognizable shade; what they saw was indeed a color, neither black not white, yet it wasn’t quite like any of forty-six thousand shades Zatatha had carefully catalogued and named. The best she could judge was that the color was something like orange or purple, but to call it either of those would be just as inaccurate as labeling it red or green. As for the smell, it reminded Zatatha of certain herbs she used to nibble on during her youth; that is to say, it was oddly nostalgic.
“Marvelous.” Zatatha sighed, slowly extracting her finger and watching the substance undulate hypnotically in it’s wake. “Have you thought of a name for this substance? Any theories, may-haps?”
“I haven’t had the time to consider any names.” Suth admitted. She had seated herself of the arm of Zatatha’s chair and leaned tenderly upon her friend’s hunched shoulder. Suth’s neck- and shoulder-wings were unfurled, the rightmost of which limply wrapped around the back of Zatatha’s inclined skull in a way that could only be considered affection. “But I’ve likened this stuff to blood. Blood of the planet, if you will.”
“Ooh.” Zatatha cooed with genuine interest, as she still stared through the vial’s opening.
“Yeah. I beg your forgiveness for being so, er, blasé in regard to the damaged ecosystem, but that sinkhole uncovered a whole strata this substance; a veritable ocean of it, in fact.”
“I can see why you’re so obsessed with it.”
“Indeed. Enigmatic as it may be, I’m convinced that this ‘blood’ has the potential to answer many of our most itching questions: where we came from, what is gravity, how old is the universe, a key to longevity, to renewable energy…”
“On what grounds?”
“Eh?”
For the first time since laying hands on the confounding vial, Zatatha raised her head and firmly met Suth’s wild gaze. “On what grounds do you base these speculations? Yes, this stuff is alien to say the least, but from what I gather there’s nothing here…” she tapped the vial with her little finger “…to suggest an answer to any of our great questions. The origins of Kursoa, perhaps, but absolutely nothing more.”
Suth giggle, and playfully rubbed Zatatha’s beaded hair “Don’t be prosaic, Zat. Remember earlier when we were discussing Katathar’s theory?”
“You mean her myths? Yes, I do.”
“Imagine digging deep enough into Kursoa’s surface and happening upon the furry hide of the Kriffin and plucking one of it’s immense hairs. What would you have made of that?”
“To guess, I would have been just as speechless as I am now. Perhaps I would have assumed it to be a very strange fossil, or a still-living species of subterranean flora.”
“But you never would have guessed a giant hair off a sleeping titan’s back.” Suth chirped, winking. “And that’s exactly my point. When faced with something as, er, jarring as a giant hair or planet blood you have to, shall we say, lose your mind and consider every possibility until you find the proof to back those ideas. And to find proof, we must dig deeper. Returning to the Kriffin analogy, if you shovel beyond the furry skin, you’ll find blood and sinew, and eventually you’ll be swimming through the warm innards of a beast too huge to comprehend. And what ‘sane’ ‘Ko would have guessed that?”
“You’re not suggesting Kursoa is a monster disguised as a planet are you?”
“Implicitly, maybe. But my literal meaning is this: We have to go back to that sinkhole and excavate. As I’ve said, there’s an ocean-sized substrata of this substance there, and who knows what else may be beneath that. No, perhaps this ‘blood’ has no obvious merit, but because of it’s very existence we *could* discover something that does.”
She had a point, Zatatha thought. The prospect was tempting, but there was the clear inherent risk of diving into a fresh sinkhole, especially one so abysmal. But of course, Jikan explorers of olde have done riskier things in the name of discovery, and while these quests had cost many their lives, others returned to their hives with the invaluable knowledge that still facilitate modern life to this day. It was the life of a ‘Ko during the height of the Renaissance to risk everything for everyone. Nonetheless, Zatatha felt dirty for gleaning such aspiration from the quietus of innumerable lives, and while Suth outwardly withheld a veneer of enthusiasm, Zatatha did catch a few fleeting hints from their empathetic connection that suggested Suth was feeling just as guilty. After all, Suth was the first to behold the dreadfully calm aftermath this calamity, and she did look upon the churned remains of ten thousand kakflora and fauna, so one must only conclude her horror and anguish is beyond parallel. Zatatha, having spent a majority of her life in the halls of Csovix, never had the honor of witnessing nature’s wrath in action, so her only chances of understanding was through psychic empathy, but even then she could never experience despair’s full magnitude until she stood over the grave itself.
Judging by a cursory feel—for that was all Zatatha could afford due to Suth’s partially closed mind—Suth lingered somewhere between grief and total acceptance, with trace amounts of shock still besmirching her otherwise sound psyche. But still there remained that…other emotion Zatatha had detected before, that odd sense of hesitancy, minute compared to her ambition but blacker than any state of mind known to the Jiko. Zatatha felt only glimpses of it, but it was enough to know that it was a unnatural, miserable, and generally wrong feeling. Woe be unto Suth indeed, wrestling with an emotion so negative that none but herself could understand. And too think, Zatatha nearly berated her for a momentary lapse of sympathy, possibly exacerbating her already ill mind.
“Suth, listen. I’m very sorry if I came off as a bit rude earlier.” Zatatha ventured. “I understand you’ve been through much lately…”
“I promise you, I’m fine.” Though she smiled lightly, Suth seemed to have lost much of her humor, and perhaps some of her patience as well. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“Then…you are feeling well?”
“Well enough.”
“There is no such thing as ‘well enough’.” Zatatha cooed earnestly, gingerly placing a hand Suth’s “If there this any doubt concerning your wellbeing, it must be addressed now. The discovery of the ultorbit can wait just a suttaturn longer if it means you can sleep well. I care about you, Suth. Now talk to me.”
What followed was a long, long moment of pregnant reticence, during which the two Jiko waited and meditated on each other’s intent. Suth stared off into the void, her face void of emotion, antennae arched back of if reluctant to share any further thoughts. At length, Zatatha felt her friend’s scaled fingers twitch pensively, slowly but meaningfully closing around Zatatha’s hand. At the same moment, Suth’s empathic relay opened up once more, and in a single dizzying tick Zatatha was besieged by pent up feelings; not just the very uncharacteristic black emotion—which struck Zatatha like the rank of a decaying fauna—but also an unpleasant but oddly reassuring mix of confusion, regret, contemplation, and alarm. Evidently, Suth was gradually coming to terms with her malady.
“Oh…” Suth chirped, crestfallen. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Zat. I haven’t been feeling like my myself lately, but I honestly thought it wasn’t that bad.”
“You’ve been…like this since visiting the sinkhole, haven’t you?”
“Heh heh.” Suth smiled queasily. “You’re as shrewd as ever, Zat. Yeah. Ever since the sinkhole. But I thought, maybe, I was just so excited about, you know, all this…” She held out her arms and dropped them just as promptly. “…that I had made myself sick or something.”
“Compared to what could have happened, I certainly hope that’s the case.”
“Look, Zat, I haven’t been entirely upfront with you. I saw something…something else at the sinkhole. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I’m starting to wonder if, perhaps, if it has something to do with my, er, condition.”
“What did you see?” Zatatha leaned forward slightly, deeply interested.
“I don’t know yet, but I greatly suspect it may be a new species of fauna. Specifically kofauna, as absurd as that sounds.”
Zatatha was taken aback, her antenna and lashes perking up in unison. The Jiko were the only known species of Kofauna that inhabited Kursoa, so if Suth’s assumption was true…“Then our kind could have a sister race.”
“That’s only a theory, mind you.” Suth stressed.
“Of course, of course. But that doesn’t make the prospect any less incredible.” Zatatha giggled. “Why, if you’re right this may very well be the greatest discovery since Jikax. That would mean there are others like us out there, a people who could be capable of speech and reason…”
“And art and music…” Suth continued with a wistful tone.
“They may be builders and writers.”
“And scientists, just as aching for the stars as us.”
“And they could be empathetic. Affectionate even.” At the thought, Zatatha’s smile melted, a dour expression subverting the shine in her eyes. “But if this is true—rather, if you did find some kind of Kofauna—then that would mean a sapient being may have inflicted you somehow.”
“Maybe.” Suth said indifferently.
“Tell me from the beginning. What happened?”
“It happened when I went to extract the sample from the bottom of the sinkhole.” Suth nodded at the vial now set upon the table. “I told you about the sea of, uh, ‘blood’—yes, let’s just call the substance ‘blood’ for now. Anyhow, the sea of blood was vast, of course, covering an area of about a hundred-eighty square wingspans, perhaps two-hundred. However, the sea was in fact solid, as consistently smooth and as sturdy as a pane of glass laid horizontally across the nethermost depths of the sinkhole. The blood only behaved like liquid—and I use that term loosely—at the touch of a finger. It rippled in a strangely mechanical way when I removed this sample, and… Well, you know how when a pond of nectar ripples the reflection therein changes in weird ways? How the reflection of, say, a ‘Ko breaks apart and into many smaller reflections of that same ‘Ko? The rippling effect in the blood looked something like that, only much, much more elaborate, and little less, er, organized. If we visit the sinkhole again you’ll see for yourself.” Suth paused for a beat, allowing herself to catch her breath. Her fingers were drumming nervously. “See, in addition to the expected reflections—in this case the inner sides of the sinkhole, the clouds, and my own reflection—there were these other shapes. At first I thought these shapes were just refractions or distortions of the more identifiable reflections, but my theory was disproven when I noticed the shapes moved independently, not just from the other reflections but from each other. It looked to me like a bounty of quafauna swimming just beneath the surface, and so that’s the next conclusion I came to. That was, until I looked at my own reflection. Keep in mind, the substance is nearly opaque, but not quite. I mean, you’ve seen for yourself. Anyways, it’s nearly opaque, so between that and the ongoing rippling—which, for whatever reason, had yet to subside—the blood was difficult to really see through, but not impossible. What I mean to say is that the, er, anomaly I mistook for my reflection was not actually that. What it really was I could not tell, due in part to the aforementioned state of the blood, but it surely wasn’t me. It was as if some hitherto unseen creature of myth was standing upside down beneath my feet, impersonating me—or, my reflection, rather. It had many of the same general elements of a Jiko: two legs, two arms with fingers, and a head, complete with two eyes and a mouth. But at the same time it lacked all the hallmarks of Jikan physiology. There were no antenna, no wings at all; it’s eyes so beady and colorless, it’s puffy mouth literally teeming with teeth, it’s physique was more robust, there was some kind of flaccid proboscis handing in between it’s…” Suth suddenly hiccuped mid-sentence, breaking just as her face broke into a flustered simper. She inhaled deeply, evidently in thought.
“Careful not to talk too fast, dear.” Zatatha grinned. She permitted Suth a minute to regain her composure before commenting “This certainly seems like a strange creature, but what made you so convinced it was sapient, let alone real?”
Suth wiped a bit of spittle from her mouth, chirping “I heard it, Zat.”
“You made an empathic connection with it?”
“Possibly.” The uncertainty of this whole affair was beginning to disturb Zatatha, just as surely as it was disturbing Suth. “I will never know if it was textbook empathy or something more, er, outré, but I assure you I received a kind of thought or communication from the thing.”
“What did it say?”
Suth shrugged, once again uncertain. “I couldn’t tell. It may have just as easily been a warning, or plea, or a simple ‘hello’, but in my opinion it was taking some kind of, er, fancy with me. It was interested in me—it looked dead at me—but it emanated an emotional or scientific interest. I had the feeling that it…that it wanted me to do something.” Here, Suth’s steady facade began to wither. She began to fidget and shake, her antenna twitched minutely while her eyes narrowed to slits.
“A request?”
“No. Expectancy.”
“It expected you do something?”
“Yes. Or, so I believed.”
“Any theories?” Zatatha began stroking Suth’s tense knuckles with her thumb, hoping it would be enough to calm her, but the jittery ‘Ko did not reciprocate.
“Nothing substantial. Only that I think the entity wanted, er, wanted me to cry, or something like that. It wanted to see tears, I guess.”
“Heavens, why on Kursoa would anyone want that?”
“That’s a good question, Zat.” Suth sighed. “Should we perhaps ask the entity itself?”
“Go back to the sinkhole, you mean?”
Suth nodded, looking away.
“Suth, I can’t condone that. Whatever that creature was, it could have seriously harmed you.”
“I know that, but maybe it just needs help. I mean, it *was* at the bottom of a sinkhole. Poor thing must be trapped and scared, driven mad by isolation or, stars forbid, starvation. Imagine if we were in similar straits.”
“That’s a good point, Suth. If you insist on investigating further, however, I recommend the utmost caution. Namely that you abstain from any empathetic connections with this entity.” Zatatha warned, wagging her finger with a firmly, if cordial, parental air. “And needless to say I’m not letting you go back alone.”
“You’ll accompany me?” The smile that stretched between Suth’s fair cheeks could have calmed a raging scathfauna just as easily as it melted Zatatha’s heart; the youthful shine in her eyes swelled like cheering stars and outshone the soft glow of the dying hearth and staved the cold darkness.
“I will, Suth Savurra. I will.” Zatatha purred, her feathery antenna standing erect over her garnished hair.
Though Suth, despite herself, forwent words, her appreciation—her sweet delight—was conveyed amply enough when she spread her shimmering wings and threw her free and nimble arms around Zatatha’s stooped shoulders. The vast membranes of Suth’s flying members arched over both of their heads, as bright and open as the violet sky at sunrise, bringing a few extra degrees of succulent warmth to their embrace. Zatatha returned the hug with equal pleasure, her chin resting upon the smaller ‘Ko’s shoulders, Suth’s immensely softened face half buried in Zatatha’s still-swathed chest. Both of their antenna arched towards one another, intertwining and at last sharing the full volume of each other’s emotion. They both felt at ease. Both were happy, content, and feeling safe, if only for the moment. But above all else, there was indomitable sense of love that was omnipotent among Kursoa—and between Zatatha and Suth—and never forgotten or taken for granted. They were both old, and had known each other’s company for thousands of orbits; they had seen highs and lows, suffered ennui and loss, flew across the seas, visited all the worlds verdant islands together, and witnessed every searing shade of the sun, standing side by side. As inseparable sisters they had once celebrated the dawn of one renaissance and now they will herald in another.
The black emotion was still there, but to Zatatha’s relief, it had receded considerably. Maybe everything will be alright. If fate decreed it wasn’t to be, Zatatha would be at Suth side to assure it would be.