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Greetings from Europa!

Communicating isn’t as easy as you think it ought to be. The same word can have several different meanings between speaker and listener, writer and reader, and sentences often offer sub textual detours that were not part of the original narrative. And that’s when all parties involved in the conversation are native speakers of the same language.

Now, imagine taking your complex native language and translating it in your head so that an uncomplicated mind could comprehend it in their native language, a language that you are not yet fluent in. That was the conversation I had with my wife that lasted the entire solar day.

And before you misunderstand me, I am not calling my wife simple, she is highly intelligent, as are all Europans, they merely communicate in a language stripped of unnecessary complexities, where events, thoughts and requests are expressed as stories, and if the story is about them, they refer to themselves in the third person. Whenever I refer to something being suspicious or mysterious, that is solely from my point of view. These people know nothing of suspicion, mystery, or guile, so when I told my wife I wanted to travel to Dery’Ylok Prefecture to investigate Rezter’s murder, I had just taken the first step in an uphill struggle to make my point known.

She understood the concept of murder from the story of Nes’Tim, but had no firsthand knowledge of one being taking another being’s life in anger, jealousy or revenge, no concept of investigative police work, gathering evidence, and bringing guilty parties to justice, because none of these things had ever occurred during her lifetime. Any event that happened beyond her ability to comprehend, was written off as agvann and left for fate to handle.

Just as I was about to concede to the futility of my labor, Meis’lo interceded on my behalf and told a wonderful, though not quite accurate, story of my wanting to go on a spiritual journey to the place where Kubus and Veron began their pilgrimage, as a sign of respect.

Confusion immediately disappeared from my wife’s face as she said, “Xal argok khuts Gix’oh?” which loosely translates as “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

And that’s the thing about language, you never know how your words are being interpreted, so be careful and kind with the words you say, and understanding of the words you hear, because you never know their true intent or how they are being perceived.

Bless your ancient soul, Meis’lo, because your misunderstanding has set me on a purpose. I finally think I know why I’m meant to be on Europa.

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

Text and Audio ©2014 & 2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Glossary of Terms

• Abogzons – Gynecological engineers.
• Agvann – Translation: The will of Nes’Tim; an accident.
• Alum’Vedca – The day marking the new solar cycle of Peace and Maturity; a tribute to the era when Europans evolved from their primitive prey state.
• Arcek – A spiritual theologian
• Biem – A time to show respect for the aged.
• Biss’ore – Travelers, nomads
• 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.
• Grahas – A gerbil-sized creature, resembling a stone armadillo, that emits heat when stroked.
• Homnils – A warm, yet sad, reminiscence about something in the past.
• Ipu llqr mwyll xfrr – Abogzon credo meaning “success or death”; satisfaction guaranteed.
• Isogoles – Europan monthly day of pay.
• Jampi – Captain Edward’s son.
• Jbwqnadb – The Europan spelling of lemonade.
• Jhisal – Meis’lo’s home village.
• Klanea – Translation: unknown to us; stranger.
• Mecot’ra – Unterraformed areas of Europa.
• 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.