Eamon had landed his cruiser roughly a hundred yards from
the edge of the forest. He cautiously approached the tree line on foot, looking
for signs of life. If he had not seen the footage of the seed pods come out of
the ring and crash into the planet he would have found it nearly impossible to
believe this forest was less than a week old. There were uncountable trees that
stretched hundreds of feet into the sky. The canopy above blocked much of the
sunlight from reaching the ground and filtered the rest to tone down the
ambient light by a drastic amount. The shade provided by the canopy extended
about fifteen feet beyond the out most Trees and Eamon found himself stopping
at the lights edge. He scanned the forest as far back as his sight could define
anything other than darkness.
“Hello?” He nearly shouted his questioned greeting. And he
listened as his voice seemed to ping pong off the trees as it echoed deep into
the woods. He was met with silence and waited what he considered to be an
overly long time for some kind of response. Finally he let himself consider the
possibility of trying a different edge of the forest line and turned back to
his ship. Before he could spin around the tree’s opened up and root people
began to emerge from the trunks of the trees closest to the edge of the forest.
Some even dropped down on ropes of vines from the canopy up above. In what felt
like the blink of an eye Eamon was face to face with what he estimated to be a
few dozen aliens all standing silently at the edge of the tree line.
To put it mildly Eamon was stunned. “I, I um, come in peace?”
He stuttered and then tried to pick himself up. “That’s stupid. Um, this is my,
our, my people’s planet. So um, on behalf of, my people, I guess, we, or I, for
the most part, welcome you to, our planet.” He held out his arms as if he were
about to try and hug the assembled group of tree people. “They had not moved during
his awkward, bumbling speech and he also noticed that none of them were
responding verbally either. ”I have every hope that our two races might learn
to coexist with each other and thrive together.” He looked down the line of the
alien greeting party. They just stood silently, staring at him. He let his arms
drops back to his sides. “In the spirit of unity and cooperation, I would like
to enquire about a shuttle that landed in your forest, and the status of anyone
who may have been aboard.” He reached the end of the sentence feeling as lost
as the aliens looked. With nothing else coming to mind to break the tension he
felt he gave an exaggerated bow, hold his hands out again to make it as
excessive, He didn’t know why he had decided to bow and he wasn’t even sure how
long he should bow or even if the aliens had any idea what he was doing. He
glanced up from his exaggerated position and saw that the entire group of alien
tree people were copying his bow as closely as they could. Something was coming
out of the darkness behind them and he lowered his eyes back to his feet.
“Why are you bowing?” A familiar voice came from the tree
line.
Eamon righted himself with excitement to see his sister
making her way through the alien’s toward him. The aliens returned to their
upright positions as she passed them.
Mew had a few visible bruises on her neck but they did
nothing to distract from the huge smile on her face as she charged her brother
for a hug. “What were you babbling about? How the heck did you get elected when
you can’t even give a simple speech without tripping over your own tongue?” She
asked after they separated. “Seriously please tell you are paying Kepi a
reasonable amount to put up with you, because, just, damn.” She exaggerated her
disappointment as she shook her head.
“Actually she just took over my seat so she’s free of me and
I’m free of the senate.” He replied.
Mew nodded. “Probably best for all involved really.”
Eamon agreed vigorously. “So what’s with the root people?”
He asked.
