[Centuries later]
Nedatan Nilodi Midnight Stars tied off his boat at the harbor, needing nothing more than the dim light of his namesake stars overhead to accomplish the centuries-familiar task. He may have been born on a more
civilized world than this rain-wracked ocean-planet, but enough decades maintaining the old open-air museum here had turned him into an 'adopted' Belerid. All steady feet while out on the waves, and quick fingers when tying up at the dock.
Admittedly, it perhaps helped that a tiny burst of what weak telekinesis he could manage was still enough to hold the boat in place long enough for him to get the knot finished.
Maintaining the old buildings here wasn’t exactly the
worst duty for a brother of his Order, anyways. Fresh sea-breeze, beautiful ancient buildings to maintain and catalogue all around the monastery grounds… and a yearly crowd of recently-graduated Tenoin passing through on their way off-world.
He’d long since stopped grumbling about the never-ending rain, or the clouds that hid the sun seven days out of eight.
“Or at least, I stopped complaining where anybody’d
hear me!” he shouted to the unhearing night sky, grinning broadly.
It was why he’d first volunteered for the night-patrol walks all those decades ago, and then the rowing out to the island-fort only a few years more recently. Gave him time to think… and to
speak, knowing that nobody but the unjudging stars above was listening.
Just like the last few thousand times he’d voiced his no-longer-actually-serious complaints about his adopted home's ever-wet weather, no answer came from the heavens above. Only more rain falling quietly above and pattering down all around, forcing him to duck over and wring out the water from his dull-red hair in a long-practiced motion.
He’d made it halfway up the winding path from the floating-dock to the ancient town-turned-monastery itself by the time he got bored with the encroaching silence. Thankfully, his studies had afforded him an endless variety of ways to fill silence.
Lips that had spent centuries contorting themselves to pronounce ancient — and often outright alien — names and places that crossed his desk within the Archaeology Department now pressed together in song. Off-tempo and certainly off-key, he admitted, but such an alien habit was one of the peculiarities tolerated in philosophers of his…
advanced age.
“[All bloody clouds, all bloody rains!
No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains!
The council’s got no bloody brains!
Bloody, bloody Orkney!]”
He knew he’d probably gotten some of the literally alien words not quite right, but it wasn’t like he had an audience after all!
His songs, foreign or not, never failed to bring a smile to his face. No matter the weather, even in winter when he had to struggle uphill with his obnoxiously-heavy snowshoes on. Wasn’t like the town was going to get a proper transit system put in anytime soon, not with nowhere to fit it without ruining the historicity of the carefully-preserved site. Not even any drainage-plumbing, to keep the ‘roads’ from turning into near-streams when the spring meltwater poured down the cliffs.
Still, he’d found ways to put up with it all. And if they occasionally meant an unheard upbraiding of his Order superiors who oversaw things like the budget for their quarters here in ancient, leaking buildings?
Well, then too [bloody] bad!
His grin redoubled, forcing the nighttime cold out of his cheeks. One of the fascinating points about archaeology was how it really showed you which other peoples — distant in both time and space — thought just like you did. Throughout time and throughout space, he doubted there was a single species in the universe who hadn’t glared up at the dark clouds overhead and shaken a fist — or a claw, or a tentacle — in futile irritation at their homeworld’s weather!
One of these years, he’d pile up all he’d learned of such philosophizing into a book. Not a report, not anything destined for his superior’s desk high overhead in the orbital stations. But something… nice. Leather-bound or the like,
traditional. Not miros-leather if he could avoid it, though: there was no fun in that. Wonder whose duties he’d have to take on for a year to get permission to import actual 'pig' leather all the way from Earth? Might as well tweak old Nilodi Tall Raindrop’s nose, after all. <’Hey look, this book’s bound in the template-species for a miros!’>
He laughed aloud, just as he finally reached the top of the rise and stepped out into the sleepy nighttime monastery. He’d
love to see the look on his Order-brother’s face at such an observation! Might get the mizol called in on him again though, ‘spreading anti-Union misinformation’ and all that. Wasn’t his fault they still tried to deny the obvious, even all these decades later.
Besides, the
last time he got hauled in front of a Mizol Romessat for a half-day of questioning, he’d walked out of that meeting with a new request for his ‘services’! Turns out that even those strange offworlders appreciated an inquisitive, honest mind… once she’d been satisfied that he really did just spend all his time doddering around a preserved historic town-turned-monastery. Harmless old philosophers were just that, ‘harmless.’
It was with relief that he finally reached the main hall, levering the ancient physical lock open and stepping inside. Basking in the welcome warmth… and
dryness. Sure, the buildings may have been preserved just as they’d been since well before Unification… but that didn’t mean they couldn't have
some minor comforts installed that made life that little bit more tolerable.
One could do a lot with a room-heater that had been designed to keep a squad of soroin alive and healthy in a half-atmosphere ice-world…
and keep their blasters charged
and power an emergency locator-beacon that one could receive halfway across a star system!
He waved one hand to raise the temperature a little bit, walking past the gently-humming heater and patting it on its top like an old friend. Then stepped around it, carefully treading quietly as he made his way past the dormitories. As much fun as it was to occasionally ‘accidentally’ trip and wake the much-younger brothers slumbering there, tonight he genuinely just wanted the rest of the evening to himself before the sun came up.
He let out a relaxed sigh as he finally closed the door to his own private office. He could still sense his Order fellows through the thick, stone walls, of course, but at least now he’d have to drop something
really irreplaceable — or just heavy — to wake them from their slumber.
The value of a good night’s sleep had once been a denied luxury to him, after all. But thankfully now all these decades after his homeworld’s recovery from the Shells, he’d finally managed to — usually — sleep peacefully enough throughout the night. Undisturbed by visions of the shattered, once-beautiful salt flats and silver forests of Seren.
He shuddered at the distant memory, drawing his coat tighter around his shoulders and forcibly wrenching his thoughts onto happier matters.
Hopping behind his desk and sinking down into the welcome embrace of his favorite chair, he took only a few beats to peer over the records and readouts sprawled over his desk. Hand-written notes covered some, tracing lines over to those he wasn’t going to mar where instead a copy of last transit’s meal-schedule had been conscripted into service as a bookmark. As long as a few of the even older Order-brothers struggled to work their way around the much-more-practical new-model datapads which conveyed the same information, he may as well take advantage of such a wasteful printing of physical sheets!
Now, where was he? Best to keep himself distracted with his studies, lest—
Oh, right! Human runes!
Charming system, really. One of the few times an alien species seemed to have actually approached the written word with a reasonable amount of
practicality. No hard-to-copy curves, no elaborate drawings that he’d had to get a magnifier-glass out to properly read, and certainly none of those truly obnoxious scratchings which the few surviving Hal-tik still clung to with all the determination in their empty little heads!
Hmph. He’d tried ‘calligraphy’ once, and it had taken half a
season for his wrist to stop aching.
Anyways, runes. Nice, neat lines. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be the fellow hammering steel into stone, yes, but surely that was what she’d signed up for! Or ‘he,’ he supposed, as odd as it was to imagine people much akin to his own brothers — despite the Union's official protestations to the contrary — swinging heavy tools around all day like some soroin work-crew. The Soia had certainly improved on that arrangement, that was for sure.
He swiped one hand above the desk, focusing the zoom function in on one of the old imported documents where he'd left it earlier this afternoon before heading off to inspect the preserved sea-fort. Peered closely, then sat back with a satisfied nod. Practical such linear runes may be, but it
could sometimes be a bit of a trick to tell them from a simple wear-mark or crack in a rough wall!
Grinning, he played his gaze over his private office. One of the few in the monastery, and every last finger-width of it known to him by heart after all these decades. Got more than a few ‘scratches’ of its own in its ancient stone walls, of course, and—
A thought pulled at the back of his mind. Then, when he tried to ignore it,
yanked his eyes aside. And up. Rising over the neat bookshelves stacked against the rough-hewn stone.
To a few old depressions in the rock. Scratch-marks from generations of furniture and the like being moved in and out, no doubt.
At least, that’s what he’d always assumed.
They were… rather close together, weren’t they?
He chewed on his lip for a few solon. Then, shrugging, jumped down and out of his chair. What was the point of volunteering for long night hours, if not to indulge such pointless whims? No, even better: such 'Quixotic' whims, a delightful foreign word he'd come across just earlier in the year. Evidently he wasn't the only one who struggled to pronounce it — the alien sources he'd read into about it couldn't even agree amongst
themselves on the pronunciation!
Plastic scraped dully against stone as he dragged the shelf-ladder over, grinning to himself. He set it carefully against the place he wanted, and pulled on it to test its mounting. More than good enough for his weight; the thing was probably built to carry soroin. In
battle armor.
Climbing his way up, he brushed at the wear-marks. Dusk skittered aside… but yet more of it simply dug its heels in deep within the slightly-shadowed notches.
He could go grab some of the proper cleaning equipment… but where was the fun in that?
Pursing his lips, he blew hard onto the ancient dust.
And immediately regretted his decision, only barely managing to keep his grip high atop the ladder as he coughed and retched.
Bloody shredded dust was trying to be the end of him! And wouldn't
that be something for Raindrop to laugh at over his corpse? ‘Here lies Midnight Stars. He tried a little nighttime cleaning of his office and killed himself trying to blow away a speck of—’
He finally got his coughing under control enough to glance back at the former site of the ‘speck of dust’… and all thoughts fled screaming from his mind.
His eyes widened.
No...
He told himself that he had
deliberately loosened his grip on the ladder-sides, and
intentionally slid his way down to the ground. The aching pain in the soles of his feet told another story, though.
He told them to shut up.
Academic texts and expensive imported foreign tomes scattered aside as he roughly dug down for the one he actually wanted.
On the Messages left Behind by the Gatherers? Shoved out of the way.
Collected Papers of Jackson Crawford? Put aside for later.
Beowulf? Always interesting, but not quite what he was looking for right now.
Finally, he excavated out one of the papers he’d buried days ago. A simple sheet he’d made for himself, just a printout of a few of the more prominent runic systems from the Human homeworld.
He nearly tore the bloody paper, yanking it out that quickly as he darted back to the ladder! And then slammed it flat into the wall next to the scratches, tracing his other finger along the ancient wear-marks.
No, the ancient
carvings.
They could be no other. What were the
shredded odds that they’d match old germanic — whatever a ‘germanic’ was, anyways — runes?
He stared closer at the literally
unimaginable finding, and began to transcribe.
His left hand fell flat against the paper.
Right, the
bloody pen was still back on his
bloody desk!
No matter how strong it might have been, the plastic ladder still creaked under his leaping footsteps as he pounded down and back up the delivery-ordered piece of assembled flat-pack furniture.
Hesitant, even shaking, he slowly copied each marking down onto the back of the paper. Then ran the runes through his computer’s scanner. Had to search around for a program smart enough to figure out what he wanted, but got it eventually just as the sun was beginning to peer curiously into his room’s eastern window.
And surely the sun itself had never seen anything as
impossible as the words now printed across his display! But he’d manually checked the translations afterwards. They were valid, even if he’d added the punctuation himself.
Midnight Stars sank back into his chair, its familiar comfort doing nothing to slow the spread of icy shock throughout his body. But no matter how he rubbed at his disbelieving eyes, the words remained.
Perhaps he would have to call the mizol himself. They…
needed to see this.
“Halfdan carved this very tall place away from elf eyes. Hello Dovindr! Tell your wife she is very pretty.” 
