by Joe Derkacht
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Nuor woke, sinuously stretching her limbs before coming fully to her senses—and to her knees. Fittingly, she saw Uruff-fa Wuanta and Awani were already awake. Around them, the others were slowly stirring to life. All of them stared as if dazed. Did the throne shine brighter? Shouldn’t this planet’s star have long ago fallen in the west? Or had she and her companions fallen asleep and slept through the night without realizing it? It didn’t seem possible!
Even the air seemed different in her nostrils, somehow thicker, more fragrant, and incredibly invigorating. As her mind sharpened, she thought she saw strange flashes of light from the throne. Around her and her companions light moved, passing back and forth before her eyes as purposefully as if motivated by intelligence.
She wanted to cry out, to say something, perhaps warn the others—if only the words would come! Speaking simply didn’t seem right. Words would surely sound profane. She needed something greater, more significant, than words.
She heard someone clear his throat. She swiveled about, looking for the offender, and cringed as Wuanta began to speak. Was he to ruin everything? How was it, then, that as the words fell from his lips, she began to relax? Surprisingly, the words did not grate like M’hah could, even if they were certainly pure M’hah. Though it was Wuanta who spoke, it was as if someone else were speaking the words for him, words made holier, more beautiful, more musical.
“Who sits upon this throne in majesty?
Who is it that rules here in authority?
Who is he who has seen The People from afar
And Called them to this very star?
Reveal to us your likeness
So we stumble not in blindness.
Five thousand years have we sailed
among skies unknown,
Come here to see you unveiled
and seated upon your throne.
So let us see your likeness
That we stumble not in blindness.
Let not the chair that sits proudly here
Be something less than it should appear.
Does the throne glow and pulsate with power,
Yet wait for someone else, for another hour?”
Together, the M’hah held their breath. Another voice spoke in answer. It, too, was pure M’hah, though more fluent and fluid than Nuor thought any creature of P’nar had likely ever spoken or pronounced it. The rise and fall of the words reminded her of a lovely mountain stream flowing over flower-bestrewn rocks. For a moment, she thought she saw purple flowers and sunlight sparkling on the surface of the waters. With the coming of the vision, her anxieties and fears, the trepidation she had felt these past weeks, melted away.
Something rubbed against her leg. She looked down and saw the orange creature they had spied earlier, first as it ran through their midst and then as they’d seen it sitting upon the throne. She recognized it immediately as an ek-ekkat-ekkati, its throat rumbling with pleasure, as if it knew her intimately. She reached down to stroke its back. When she looked up again, she saw a figure upon the throne, a figure of light. In his hand crackled a bolt of lightning. If he had not smiled, she would have fainted dead away. His face flashed with joy, as he again spoke in the purest, sweetest M’hah she had ever heard.
“Welcome, little brothers and sisters
You blessed of El Elyon
To Fair Ranar
and
To Fe
Holy Mountain of a Holy World.”
The words rolled on, a sparkling sunlit stream flowing down a mountainside and across a fecund landscape, until it became a great river that eventually fell into an even greater, sunlit sea. As beautiful and soothing as the words were to her soul, it would take weeks or perhaps even months for them to fully sink in. As fascinated as she was, as much as her soul burned with joy, it was all too much. She felt her knees buckle but did not care. For the second time, she fell to the pavement. Around her, the other M’hah fell, too. But before Nuor passed dead away, she saw something she had never expected to see. It was an unbelievably tall being of light. He leaned over her, his immense face looming near. His great wings overshadowed her and her companions. His eyes shone down on her like twin flames.
Almost, she thought he, too, spoke to her in perfect M’hah, though his lips were unmoving.
“Are you well, Little One?”
She recognized him immediately: P’nar’s Original Legends spoke of the Guardians, even if no more than a select few Uruff-fa claimed to have ever actually seen one. But here, on this planet? Was this where such beings came from? Then who was the crowned one who sat upon the throne, and the even greater One who had stood over them earlier, in what seemed like some ancient dream, whose voice was lightning itself, yet had seemed the embodiment of all that was good and kind? She had so much to learn, so much to understand—but she was slipping away again!