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Greetings from Europa!

By our second day on the road (keep in mind that one Europan day is equivalent to three and a half Earth days) we were able to reach Meis’lo’s village, Jhisal, and I was surprised at the great deal of reverence he was shown by the entire community. Young ones wanted to count the wrinkles on his face, and the adults asked permission to swipe their fingers across his brow in order to taste his sweat.

While we might find these actions bizarre on Earth, here they’re meant as a sign of admiration. Europans secrete a fluid from their sweat glands that typically take on one of four characteristics, and it is believed that you can tell a lot about a being’s personality and character traits by their sweat appearance and taste.

Clear sweat has almost no taste and these types are neat, tidy, and plan things meticulously, almost to a fault. Amber-colored sweat has an odd maple taste and these types are spontaneous, prone to do their own thing without planning or worrying about the opinion of others (this was Meis’lo). Brownish sweat types taste salty and tend to live in a private world inside their minds. And milky sweat has an astringent taste. These types tend to be great thinkers, and usually become village leaders or arceks.

Meis’lo finally made sense of everything by informing Jampi and I that it was Biem, a time to show respect for the aged, especially those who have lost their families, because in a Europan village, no one is alone and no one is forgotten, a fact that I can personally confirm.

So, after dispatching a Denpa to my wife to let her know Jampi was well, we sat around in a circle and listened to elders tell stories of what amounted to “the good old days” and ate the pickled meat of a tart root with shredded algae, and washed it down with a spicy mineral water. A good time was had by all. When the festivities ended, and everyone entered their rest cycles, Meis’lo generously offered us lodging in his home. After Jampi was tucked in tight, Meis’lo pulled me aside, his expression more serious than I had ever seen before, because he claimed that if I planned on continuing my journey to Dery’Ylok Prefecture, I needed to know the full story of the death of the spiritual prophet Nes’Tim.

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.