“Why did they call me child, then?”
He was always making rope, or baskets, always weaving strands into something new. Even in the darkness, he twined plant fiber into rope against one thigh. “The elder races partake of nothing earthly but only of the pure elements. We are their children inasmuch as some portion of what we are made of is derived from those pure elements.”
“So any creature born on Earth is in some way their child.”
“That may be,” he said, laughing drily. “Yet there is more to you than your human form. That we speak each to the other right now is a mystery I cannot explain, because the languages of humankind are unknown to me, and you say that the language of my people is not known to you. But we met through the gateway of fire, and it may be that the binding of magic lies heavier over us than any language made only of words.”
“It seems to me that with you I speak the language known to my people as Dariyan.”
“And to me, it is as if we speak in my own tongue. But I cannot believe that these two are the same. The count of years that separates my people from your land must span many generations of humankind. Few among humankind spoke the language of my people when we dwelt on Earth. How then can it be that you have remembered my people’s language all this time?”
It was a good question, and deserved a thoughtful answer. “Long before I was born, an empire rose whose rulers claimed to be your descendants, born out of the mating of your kind and humankind. Perhaps they preserved your language as their speech, and that is why we can speak together now. But truly, I don’t know. The empresses and emperors of the old Dariyan Empire were half-breeds, so they claimed. There aren’t any Aoi on Earth any longer. They exist there only as ghosts, more like shades than living creatures. Some say there never were true Aoi on Earth, that they’re only tales from the dawn time of humankind.”
“Truly, tales have a way of changing shape to suit the teller. If you wish to know what the spirits meant when they addressed you as ‘child,’ then you must ask them yourself.”
The stars scintillated so vividly that they seemed to pulse. Strangely, she could find not one familiar constellation. She felt as if she had been flung into a different plane of existence, yet the dirt under her feet smelled like plain, good dirt, and many of the plants were ones she remembered from her childhood, when she and Da had traveled in the lands whose southern boundary was the great middle sea: silver pine and white oak, olive and carob, prickly juniper and rosemary and myrtle. She sighed, taking in the scent of rosemary, oddly comforting, like a favorite childhood story retold.