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Greetings from Europa!

Kubus and Veron finally reached our village, and so many Europans offered up their homes that a lottery was held to determine which family would house the children for the night. Miraculously, our family won, though, thinking about it, I suspect Jampi may have somehow tampered with the lottery ballots to skew the odds in our favor, the little scamp!

My wife prepared a nice dinner of auduron maetek pulp with fu’ton drop soup, and all our neighbors dropped by to offer provisions for the road and listen to whatever details the children of Rezter were willing to share.

It turned out that Rezter wasn’t just a simple Europan from Dery’Ylok Prefecture, as I originally assumed. Kubus and Veron informed us that he was a practicing arcek, a spiritual theologian, who had a vision that a band of dissenters were secretly forming a new tribe of Sel’Tab, and shortly after he announced his vision to the village, he was found slain inside his home.

There was no follow up to the matter because the Europans have no police force, no crime investigators. If caught in the act, offenders are dealt with immediately by the entire local community. If there are no witnesses to a crime, the matter is left for fate to handle.

After the last of the neighbors had gone, and before our guests went to bed, Jampi told Kubus and Veron of our desire to join their pilgrimage, to help out in any way possible, and they perceived it as a kindness so great that it brought tears to their eyes, a kindness they had no choice but to decline because it was considered Bokloryn, an unrepayable debt. To accept our offer would have put the children of Rezter into a contract of servitude for the rest of their existence. We attempted to explain that they would owe us nothing, that as a foreigner, I wanted to study the ritual of passing a soul through the Gates of Juh’holl in order to gain a better understanding of Europan culture so that I could better fit in, and that I, if anyone, would be indebted to them for teaching me such a valuable lesson. Adding that last bit probably cemented their decision, because they had no desire to place me in their debt.

So, although it was Jampi’s idea, I took full responsibility and apologized if my ignorance in Europan culture came across as rudeness or disrespectful. They claimed they understood and that no offense was taken.

Kubus and Veron set off on the road in the early morning, with the entire village in attendance to wish them well and pray for their success. And that should have been the end of that, but something within me couldn’t let it go. Their father was murdered, and the murderer had gotten off scot-free and was walking among us. Somebody had to bring Rezter’s killer to justice, and I was just the persistent foreigner to do it. There would be no debt to repay because I wasn’t doing it for Kubus and Veron, I was doing it to protect my own family.

Until next broadcast, this is Captain Edwards, signing off.

To be continued…

Text and Audio ©2014 & 2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Glossary of Terms

• Abogzons – Gynecological engineers.
• Arcek – A spiritual theologian
• Bokloryn – An unrepayable debt; an act that places the receiver in a lifetime contract of servitude.
• Cu’nal – A biological storage unit.
• Denpa – An envoy equipped with an audiographic memory that can store and recall spoken messages at will in the same voice, tone and inflection of the original person who spoke it, who travels from village to village to deliver messages from other communities both near and far.
• Egami – A docile mineral-based creatures primarily used for family transportation due to the fact they are virtually inexhaustible.
• Gates of Juh’holl – Europan afterlife; where souls are released from the flesh to become stardust and rejoin the universe.
• Ipu llqr mwyll xfrr – Abogzon credo meaning “success or death”; satisfaction guaranteed.
• Isogoles – Europan monthly day of pay.
• Jbwqnadb – Europan spelling of lemonade.
• Meis’lo – The only surviving witness to the murder of  the prophet Nes’Tim.
• Micdow yl – The vessels of new life; children.
• Nes’Tim – The most revered spiritual prophet on Europa, slain by a heretic tribe who call themselves Sel’Tab.
• Pwyll – Europa’s highest mountain.
• Qik’climajh – Depending on its usage in a sentence, denotes either the act of telling a story, or the storyteller themselves.
• Sel’Tab – A heretic tribe responsible for the death of the prophet Nes’Tim.
• Shig’umfu – “Interesting world of another”; a documentary qik’climajh in which neighbors tell the story of a person’s life as learned from casual conversations.
• Spo – Food.
• Uz Cu’nal – A biological storage unit used primarily for food preservation.
• Uz – An unspeakable sexual act; a derogatory term; an insult.