Dreams, Memories, and Reality

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Once again he hunted, soon finding sustenance, and then returned to view the abodes of the bipedal natives of this place. This time he moved further down the area to where there were many of them clustered together. It had only been dark for a short while when he arrived there.

He watched, fascinated, as the bipeds moved between the abodes. Some, it seemed, were not for sleeping as they would enter one or another of them only to leave soon after, usually carrying some sort of contrivance that appeared full—of what he didn’t know.

He was alarmed at first when he saw large wheeled things moving about, stopping at times to disgorge one or more of the bipeds. Again he had vague flashes of something that said he should know what they were and, again, the images vanished before he could grasp their significance.

He moved closer, still keeping to the deep night shadows outside of the lights that were atop long poles, or in front of the abodes. He wanted to hear their language. Language. The word came to him out of the blue, from where he didn’t know. But he knew it was important to listen to them.

As he did, some of it made a strange sense to him. Two of the females mentioned supper and he was certain he knew what that meant. Food, feeding, but not the way he did.

His features creased in a frown as a thought came to him. He was here for a reason in this strange place, beyond some indefinite punishment, but ill prepared to be here. Why he knew this, again, he was unsure, but know it he did.

More words came to him from the natives as he snuck even closer, daring to be within hearing distance even if it put him in the light. Most made no sense to him, a few did. ‘Sun’ was the orb in the sky and yet he now knew it also meant a young male when an older male put his hand on a smaller one’s head and called him that. ‘Home’ was an abode where they slept, he decided, when a female pointed to one and used the word. She called one of the abodes the bipeds came and went from so quickly a shop.

As he listened he felt something tug on the bottom of the top piece of the clothing he wore and looked down to see a sun standing there, looking up at him. The sun said something he could not understand but that sounded like a question. Then the sun pointed to his pedes. He looked as well, wondering what the sun wanted. Then he realized the sun wore something covering his own pedes and, when he checked the others wandering about, that they did also.

He frowned, and nodded as if he understood, before moving quickly away back into the deep shadows behind the abodes—no, the homes. He watched as the sun ran to one of the large males and then pointed back to where he had been standing. Fearing they would come searching for him, he quickly left, returning to the tall plants and, soon afterwards, to his crevasse.