LiTTLE CHERiNE Book 02 - post257
“I was thinking we should declare the mind of Samantha a Place of Cherinian Interest.” If those sleeping in other rooms could sense us and wondered what was making us laugh and play, I’m not planning on explaining.
1347
The next attack was stupid! They sent a cat and two dogs with bombs in them, though the bombs were meant to spray us with acid and some kind of human created disease (which I suspect may have spread and killed hundreds of thousands if the bombs had exploded). The protector, mindful of what Robbie has said about our minds being damaged by the previous explosion in the puppy, carefully teleported the bombs out of the animals, which meant he did not have time to send them back and had to explode them far outside our atmosphere.
Nafsika, the daughter of Dr Maria, fretted, “Do you think she is in a panic because we sensed what she looks like, or do you think Robert is doing something that frightens her?” Most of us had been about to answer that it is the loss of her organisation, but as she asked about Robbie, we also began to wonder. We can’t see what he could do without any gifts or powers, but maybe he can do something with just his healer that will damage her, or else, maybe we need to ask ourselves (for the umpteenth time) what has prompted him to go on his walkabout - and why end up in Kenya? Could it have something to do with the farm? As far as I know, it doesn’t belong to his father anymore. What if he is being summoned to join some powerful psychic? No, that wouldn’t work, Cherine or Dommi would have sensed him. I felt like breaking my loves out of the mood they were working themselves, into.
“What if she realised it is not healthy for Robert to live among children all the time and she sent him off on a walking trip as exercise?” (lol) I enjoyed running around screaming as everyone tried to throw pillows at me, but in the end they gave up because they were laughing so hard, so I just stood and glared at them until a smile escaped me.
Meli had given in to the pleading look on the face of Candy, so we gathered around her to listen.
“I’ll return to our two protagonists in a short while, but I would like to draw a picture of what the people in general are like. First of all, they call themselves Men and their race Mankind, but if we use their own words, as we have done with the Anadir, then we’d call them Puerpep - it also means The people of the One World, which does suggest they have some memory of their past - whether mentally or in forms of written material. I tend to think it must have been passed down as stories, for the cataclysms during the breakup of their planet would not have been conducive to the survival of written records.
I suspect that on their original planet they could not readily access metals, certainly not iron, in large quantities, and when the survivors found themselves on an island, or mini planet, with metals now easily accessible on the alternate side, they had little use for it since they are not used to thinking in certain ways. They often curse the metal ore they find, for it reduces the amount of arable land available to them.
Because of the relative scarcity of iron, they do not have much of it in their blood, which partially explains their slow metabolism - I think. There is another possibility, they could be as they are because they are herbivores. The only times they would have to move quickly is when a hunter is stalking them. It might be that they developed intelligence so as to avoid having to speed up their reactions - after all, a sedentary life can feel very comfortable.
I have no idea what life was like for them on their planet, or the level of their technology, before it was smashed. For instance, not one piece of a tool or anything sophisticated enough to be named an engine, has ever been discovered on their island. On their island-planet, all their tools are made of wood and naturally grown fibres and if it was the same previously, I’m not surprised that nothing survived.
They are slow to anger, but can explode for the slightest of reasons if they are intoxicated. For social occasions they tend to drink certain fruit juices which have been lightly fermented. Being of low alcoholic content, it means they can get a pleasant buzz without becoming dangerous.
There are criminals, but they do not commit serious crimes like rape and murder. They enjoy nicking items of low value, the act itself providing them with the buzz, not the acquisition of an object. They have some very funny stories about a person, who I do not think really existed, who loved to steal from himself. His thefts would be complicated works of humorous art and he would always steal that which is most precious to him, or he would designate some article to be of such sentimental value, and then it would disappear. What makes the fables interesting to study is the reasoning and justifications given for each theft.
They enjoy what we call love stories, but they name them sister-brother sad stories. A good number of such stories have a happy ending, but they are still called ‘sad’ stories because the protagonists went through a sad patch. Their few stories of crime are also centred around such sister-brother sad stories. They do not have stories about couples who are already mated - apart from a few dealing with the death of one of the two and how the other learns to cope with never having a soul mate and companion again. There is nothing romantic about such stories, I think they are meant to help people in such situations, rather than be inspirational, as would be similar stories for Terrans.
We last left Akleet and Reveena waiting for the second arrival of the fast-island as they marked out the shape, size and exact position of the land they intend claiming. The land for their home and outbuildings on the fixed-island was claimed by markers seen from the slow-island. What would have puzzled any of their people had they seen, was the lack of plans for erecting barns and storerooms. Akleet had already searched, found, measured the cubic sizes and left food material in them so as to check at their time of return as to which kinds of fungus or insects will have attacked their food. Once he knew, he hoped he could then plan on using suitable insulation to bug-proof the underground caverns.
I’m going to share a conversation of theirs about me, even though I know I’ll be providing you with ways to tease me. As far as I know, their people have always known about me and, so they say, they speak of past generations who claimed their ancestors had met me. As with my other worlds, they think of me as having created their planets, but luckily they do not think of me as the creator of their species…or even of life in general. This species are not the only ones who have stories of life elsewhere, where they existed before I created their worlds for them. Don’t look at me that way Ordinx, I have no idea of how it can be possible, all I do know is that I am very glad to be sharing their lives and grateful for the love they continually offer me. I’m surprised it hasn’t given me a swollen ego in this life. I used normal speech when telling you what they spoke of, otherwise it would have made it difficult for you to understand - and that would have spoilt the story. However, they have a problem in uttering the sound ‘el’, so I’m going to use the way they speak my name. They call my Mhina or, in some districts, Mvina.
Anyway, to get on with it - Reveena just adores having the soles of her feet and hands tickled and Akleet was enjoying see her so happy. When she’d had enough, she turned, leant over and kissed him between the eyes. She sat back with eyes closed, lost in her thoughts, without needing to feel anxious of Akleet misunderstanding her need to do so.
‘Akleet, do you think Mhina will visit us here, once we have a home in which to welcome her?’
‘I hope so. If she does not wish to come here…maybe she will feel this is not part of her worlds? As I was saying, if she does not, then we must arrange to be told when she comes to visit on our home world, so that we can take our young ones to meet her. I would hate for our young ones not to know her.’
1348
Reveena asked, ‘Do you think she will be able to appear here, or will she have to learn how to glide to visit us at our home?’
‘As a child I was taught that she is very powerful and can do whatever she wants. Did you know that she calls her appearing as jumping to us?’
‘How can she jump so far - her legs are so weak and easy to break, like the emarif grass we use for building the roofs of our homes. I’m glad this island has emarif grass, I like its scent when it dries.’
They both lost themselves in their thoughts again, until Reveena suddenly spoke. ‘Why is she so ugly, Akleet? Why could we not have a creator who is glorious, far more beautiful than us? The first of our ancestors who met her, they must have suffered a lot until they grew accustomed to her pale-root-under-the soil looking skin.’
Akleet, said, ‘Her skin does not bother me, what I cannot adjust to is the way both her eyes are placed to look forward only. I have asked myself many times why she would want to do something so…strange and without sense.’
‘My home family tell of a time she spoke of her skin being easy to tear and then the fluids of her body leak out and stain everything. One of the young ones, of that time, asked her if she used her fluid for writing with, so another, trying to imagine something even stranger, asked if she uses her fluid for creating life. She told them her body uses her fluid to keep itself healthy, and she only uses her mind for creating the worlds. They asked how many worlds and she would not say.’ When Reveena talks about family - home family is the family she was born into, whereas family or our family is the family she was adopted into - Akleet’s birth family.
Akleet looked amazed as he told her, ‘Yes, she told our family that she cannot see arithmetic as well as we can, so maybe that is why she does not know. She told us we see the world differently from her, because we can see the arithmetic of everything all the time, without even trying. Her mind must be a very sad place, without beauty, if she spoke the truth.’
Reveena was a bit scandalised. ‘Don’t say that, Mhina always speaks the truth.’
He grinned. ‘Not always; not when she wants to tease us. She says that it is not really lying and is not bad, because she is not trying to make us believe something which is not true. Our mother asked her if lying is bad because it is done for bad reasons, but she answered that sometimes lying is used for good reasons, but that her Robert says it is wrong to lie even for good reasons - but he does not mind lying for teasing. I think it will take us another thousand generations to understand her when she speaks this way.’
Reveena did not like what he said and silently thought her thoughts until she felt she may have an answer.
‘I hope she comes before we have our first young.’
‘Before? Why?’
‘I want to ask her to come and stay with us for the first years. That is when the young ones find it easiest to learn, so maybe one generation can manage what you say will need a thousand.’”
“Have I puzzled you even further?” Meli grinned as she asked us.
Themi answered her, “Yes, very much. I was trying to accommodate the thought that you are speaking of a Melina of thousands of years ago, then they mention Roberto, which means this all happens within this time? How can you know all the people of so many generations…to get to know so many would take many years out of your life, even if you stayed at each world for only a short time. You mentioned time jumping…are you saying that you can time jump there, spend a thousand years and time jump back? I cannot believe we would not sense a change in you.”
Alki sounded worried, almost afraid, as he asked Themi, “What do you mean when you speak of a Melina of a thousand years ago?”
Themi spread his arms out in the Greek way, which means he does not know. “I don’t know Alki, I had no clear idea of what I thought as I was trying not to think of it, or else I feared she might drive me crazy with so many impossibilities.”
“Might?” Keith said. “No might about it, I think she has driven me crazy! I’m probably going to go totally around the bend trying to formulate workable theories for what is impossible.”
Meli turned to me, “Sam, can you help?”
“I don’t think so, but I know for certain you have not spent even a year there, since we have shared minds.” As soon as I said it, everyone seemed to calm down, even sweet Meli. “Themi, Keith, you forgot that Meli has many worlds in her mind, with many of them, if not all, having some kind of sentient life. If each species has existed for a quarter of a million years, for example, and they have known of our Meli for most of that time, she would have to be billions of years old for her to know so many species. Perhaps a way to think of it would be to imagine that the moment Meli became aware of having inhabited worlds in her mind, she instantly was provided with the knowledge of all the generations and their stories. For them, she visited them throughout their history, with even memories of specific visits and conversations, but for her, she probably has only been to a handful of worlds. Am I right Meli?”
“I’m not certain, but it feels as if you are the closest to how I feel it is, Sam. Thank you.” This time Alki grabbed me and squeezed, as he whispered his thanks in my ear. I did not say anything to disillusion them, but it worries me when they take what I say so seriously. I don’t really know anything, I’m usually just guessing. After all, another answer could be that she has learnt all she knows about her worlds from her future self - one who still lives billions of years in the future? I find my first answer easier to believe.
Sam, her mind dancing to the unending possibilities of life
I hope you enjoy reading this long, long story of fantasy, adventure and love.
Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου
(Alexander Zenon Eustace)5th June, 2019
* posted on Steemit: 5th June, 2019
@nikosnitza - @wakeupkitty
Poia einai i Mhina??? Tha ksanaemfanistei?
Parakseni Kai megali I dinami tis Meli.....
Οι άνθρωποι των σπασμένων πλανητών δεν μπορούν να κάνουν τον ήχο "Ελ " και έτσι ακούγεται το όνομά της όταν προσπαθούν να πουν το 'Μέλί'
:))
:)