Foreign Beauty
The Argonian raised a hand – scaly, with sharp claws for nails – and gestured her to follow, and she did.
They were deep in the midst of the bog, and green water licked at her boots at every step. The air smelled humid, and seemed to cling to her skin. A large dragonfly buzzed past her right ear, its silvery wings vibrating so fast they became almost invisible.
“I don’t understand.” A thick root protruded from the ground and forced her to step deeper into the brackish water to avoid dripping. Silt clang to the soles of her feet, almost as if not wanting to let her go. “Where are we headed?”
“It is hard to say in words. This is why I show you.” The Argonian woman did not turn around.
Leselya sighed. She should’ve expected that she would get nothing more out of her guide. One wrong word, misguided and ignorant, and here she was, amidst the deep wilds of Blackmarsh, with no idea where they were going.
She already regretted having ever uttered a word.
The Argonians had shown her nothing but kindness since she had arrived. True, some of them had been distrustful at first, but she couldn’t blame them for it. And they had mostly kept it to themselves.
But it seemed the teachings from her childhood run deep, and were rooted within her, despite of what she saw. Despite knowing that, despite appearances, the Saxhleel were a real people. It was so hard to forget when words from her youth still rung in her ears …
So she asked no more and instead followed.
It took a while before she noticed the change.
The air still was humid and clang to her skin, but now it smelled … different. And then she saw the roots, thicker than her waste, and ahead of her, the tallest tree she’d ever seen. It stretched its branches and twigs against the skies as if wanting to embrace them, and if she concentrated enough, she could almost …
“Is this a hum?”
The Argonian woman had slowed down her steps, and now she turned around and placed a hand on the trunk so gently as if touching a newborn. A breeze whistled through the leaves, like a sigh, and needle sharp teeth flashed in the woman’s face.
“You say we are savage people, living in the roots. But look up. What do you see?”
And it struck her. “It isn’t merely a tree.”
The Argonian woman blinked, and with her free hand, she waved her closer. “The Hist calls to me, in a voice you cannot hear, not understand, but it wants me to share my visions. Take my hand.”
Leselya hesitated for a moment, but then she grabbed the Argonian’s hand.
She still stood in the sump, between the roots of the Hist tree, but behind it rose a giant structure to the sky. It was shaped like a pyramid, with steps leading up its side. People walked in its shadow, or along the steps – Saxhleel, all of them. They wore colorful robes and talked in a tongue she didn’t understand, and none of them seemed to notice her.
Then, they were all gone. As was the pyramid. The voices.
Leselya blinked. “I hear of these structures, the xanmeer. But I thought …”
“You think the Saxhleel do not build them, because we live in huts of mud. Imagine someone invades your home, takes your children away, lays them in chains and forces them to work. What does it to you, your people?” The Argonian woman shook her head, and sighed. “Culture is easily forfeit. So fickle. We lose it, but in the Hist, it lives. Can you say the same of your culture?”
Leselya looked up at the tree, sought its crown but it seemed to vanish in the skies above, as if the fine twigs weaved themselves with the clouds above. The pyramid, the xanmeer, was gone, but now the rocks and the hills behind the tree finally were given shape and in her mind, the giant structures rose again, majestic and beautiful.
“No.”
The Argonians were not primitive creatures living in the mud. They had no need to recreate the days old not because they lacked the mind, but because it was still there.
She’d been told from her earliest memory that these weren’t real people. Barely more than lizards who had learned to talk, but without any true understanding what the words entailed.
It was not hard to understand why they would think it. A simple glimpse showed scaly skin and a maw filled with needle sharp teeth. These showed whenever they spoke, and at first, it was hard not to stare, or even shudder at the sight.
But when she looked at the Argonian woman before her, there was nothing savage or primitive in her eyes, and they harbored an understanding that, perhaps, was unmatched by any other.