M.T. Decker

134-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars

May 13th, 2552 Do you know the way to Baljatuun?
Test Pilot/ Part-time mechanic/Diplomat, Kat James “The Young One” Reporting

Aziz seems to be learning English a lot faster than I’m learning The Fate’s way of communicating. Words are easier for me to process, the Fates think in references, and scents, and sensations, and sharing the thoughts is too much to get past the sense of hello. For Aziz, our communication is slow and frustrating, of course, their idea of slow, means he was speaking our language by noon and had started on learning Latin to better understand us.

Writing is weird to them, because—well, it’s linear. You start at one point and you tell the story. For the Fates, our writing is archaic. It’s like comparing a series of stick figures to the Sistine Chapel. One conveys simple things the other- moves you on different levels.

I pulled Andi in, figuring that while music is also played in order, it brings other senses into it. I was right – They spoke music.

Aziz spent the afternoon telling us, as much as he could tell us about the Fates – they live in many different places at once, on many different planes. What I saw outside Dancer’s Retreat – that was the plane where they travel. Most of the Fates avoid that area because of Our Enemy. Our Enemy, the Escher/Geirger things want to control the planes and crush any who would travel them (us).

The Fates are not fighters, but some of them are explorers. Most of the Fates prefer to stay near Curious and Random at least when they’re on this plane- it is where the oldest of them begins. And then they mentioned a familiar name – Baljatuun, the one The Enemy didn’t want me to meet.

But of course, as soon as I mentioned that, Aziz had other things to do, and he faded back into his own plane, leaving me with a lot more questions — and a lizard wanting to be scritched.