Partner

When it comes to writing history of this world, I have a great deal of fun. I dunno why. I mirror some of it off of our world.

So a museum plus a forty thousand year old mystery.

I plotted for the after post and it made me want to giggle. So it's not bad... but yeah.

Who the hell checks out a person of the sex OPPOSITE of what he's sleeping with? Really?

*coughs*

Read, Review and Enjoy






The next few days were all about everyone else. Which, oddly, Mik was not happy about. He called his mother, she took the fact that he wouldn’t be showing up too well… Then she had gone on about a new gentleman she had met who was so fascinating.

His mother hadn’t dated since before Mik was born.

The Sidhe were wary. There were three spats in the first day, involving Tuhn’s young female and Souse’s tribe. Souse had listened to it all with a grunt and gone to the girl each time. She was the leader of the new tribe, protected by Hohi and Osht and Raoh. The group had banded together.

So while there were snarling matches between Souse and the girl, it never escalated to disciplining. Souse had no right to. Paw started growling at the girl every time she passed and she tried, once, to put Paw in his place.

Paw threw her down the hallway and walked away, without breaking a sweat.

What had been suggested was that the girl be taken to the museum with the higher partners. And so when they all loaded onto the bus, there was Tuhn and the violet eyed girl. She looked warily at Paw and had slouched beside Essuan’s brother.

It had taken a day and a half for Hohi and his partner, Selt, to be given the status of higher partner. He showed the same interest Paw did in their language and presented an very innocent look of their society. The first day Selt had fallen and hit her head.

Hohi had shown perfect medic skills and even figured out, thanks to a few hours of watching television, what a phone was and what it was for.

The female that may or may not have been pregnant was given higher partner status the morning of the museum trip. She was pregnant and they were waiting for the test results.

As she was bought from a place where she was the only Sidhe for miles around.

Paw explained to everyone where the group was going, then showed them all how to pull the curtain down, over the window if they so chose to do so. The violet haired girl tried. Hohi flicked the curtain back up and ignored her sputtering snarls.

It was not a proper tribe, it was not her in charge and everyone else below them. Everything was helter skelter and with Hohi it seemed that his position was fluid. He could be annoying and irritable to his own sister to the point where she complained to Souse. Souse would step in to do something and Hohi would throw Souse flat on his back.

But Souse never tried to defend himself at those times.

They were still waiting for the DNA results to come back from the first group, but if what Souse seemed to say was right then Essuan and Hohi were part of a distant relative to the others, one that grew up without people and was deemed innocent. It was possible, even, that to try to hurt one was disgraceful.

The drive was long and most of the Sidhe stared out the window. They chattered to one another constantly over what they saw. At one point Paw directed everyone’s attention out the opposite side of the bus and to an advertisement board. One they drove by every trip to the program’s building.

Down the block he pointed out the strange, artistic statue made of bronze that stood on one corner. That was where the landmarks ended but Mik didn’t doubt for a second that Paw was listing off the landmarks to the Sidhe, so they would know if they were going to the program building… or elsewhere.

The museum had underground parking and a special entrance for dignitary guests. The group used that entrance to get into the museum and were greeted by a lovely little blond who smiled at them. The smile didn’t meet her eyes.

Paw jabbed Mik in the ribs and Mik blinked at Paw, confused. The Sidhe huffed, stuck his nose up in the air and went and took the arm of the pregnant woman. He chattered with her for a bit then they both looked over at him and glared. And back to chattering he went.

The blonde went off to get something and Koln slipped in beside Mik, “You just checked out the blonde.”

“I did not,” Mik hissed back.

“You did. And if a woman doesn’t appreciate you looking at other women, do you really think a man would appreciate you looking at other women?” Koln murmured, “something wrong, Mik?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“You two haven’t… since group two arrived. Like the spark is gone. Has he gotten bored with you?”

“He. Has not.” Mik gaped at Koln, then sighed, “maybe he has. He passes on everything else, why not me?”

The blonde returned, “okay, so looks like we have no tour guide for you today.”

“We didn’t book one,” Koln told her, “Mik here is going to do it for us,” a hearty smack to Mik’s shoulder.

“I don’t know anything about the exhibits.”

“So. We’ll figure it out as we go along,” Koln hissed quietly to Mik, “the entire staff and we could only blackmail her and I highly doubt the Sidhe will appreciate her…. Flare.”

Mik gave the woman a half hearted smile and stepped away from the group, “alright, lets all gather together and step into the first room. Just beyond these doors is a world of excitement just waiting to happen,” he was trying, damn it. The people looked at him like he was crazy, the Sidhe all watched him, as if unsure what to make of a crazy man.

Whatever.

He led the way into the museum and to the first exhibit, “this is,” a glance around, “The dinosaur room. These lovely creatures existed some sixty million years ago and most went extinct. Have any of you ever hunted … a turtle? Or a crocodile?”

Souse said something to the others before getting a few nods, “we have.”

“Then you’ve hunted dinosaur.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Souse explained this to the others and grins cracked their faces.

“Disaster struck the planet, about sixty million years ago, our scientists have thought that it was a meteor striking the earth,” Koln explained, moving to stand beside Mik, “that threw sand and debris into the air and blocked the sun for thousands of years.”

“Scientist,” Souse looked at Mik.

“Smart people who know too much,” Mik responded, “meteor is the … falling stars.”

“Wish on meteor, people do?” Paw asked.

“Wish it doesn’t hit us,” Koln muttered as he turned to move to the full skeleton of a dinosaur, “this over here, come along, come along,” everyone shuffled towards him as he motioned, “is a dinosaur. It is a … Parytoraus to be specific. They… were carnivores and lived in across the entire continent.”

“Big,” Souse’s head tilted backwards to look up.

Hohi said something and the Sidhe became engrossed in what appeared to be a hunting story. The male Sidhe stalked the violet eyed girl, explaining all the while. When she rushed off, he leapt upon her and made a nomnomnom sound as he kissed her cheeks.

The people watched silently.

“How’s that Sidhe language coming along, Mik?” Koln asked as Hohi caught the violet eyed girl.

“I know how to say shirt.”

“Lovely.”

“But I’m not going to say it, as if I mispronounce it, I say penis instead.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Mm.”

When the other Sidhe turned back to Koln, Souse seemed to finally grasp why the people hadn’t seemed as entertained by the story as the Sidhe were.

“He explained how there is a bird in his native tribe that is large like this creature and how the young hunters would stalk it to prove their worth. Hohi leapt upon the bird and clung for dear life as it ran wildly through the trees. He had to be saved by his mother.”

“Embarrassing.”

“She was crippled,” Souse murmured in a matter of fact tone.

“Is that just as bad as having your mother defend you at school, I wonder,” Koln murmured, “amazing hunting story. I would love to see one of those birds. Now, over here, we have the ice age.”

The group moved from the bones, to the set up scenes of ice aged people and animals. The Sidhe peered at the fake snow and the people that seemingly stared at them and asked Paw and Souse questions. Paw responded and Souse looked mildly confused.

The aggressive male hopped over the railing, that had a clear sign, do not touch exhibits, and walked up to the male of the group of wax figures. He said something to the wax figure, leaned on its shoulder and made a jab towards the female who was bent over the cooking fire.

The Sidhe howled with laughter. Souse frowned at the wax figure, apparently thinking it was real, and touched its face, poked it in the eyes and tried to open its mouth. Finally he turned to Koln, a Sidhe dressed in warm weather clothing standing in a pile of synthetic snow, surrounded by people with furs, and asked what this all was.

Koln explained about wax and fake exhibits and Souse nodded along and gave the Sidhe a quick explanation that was not as long as Koln’s by far. Then the Sidhe walked to the railing, leaned on it and surveyed the people who had come with him to the museum.

“Have you really come far since this moment in time?” Souse asked, “your furs are finer, your huts are less destructible, but have you really evolved?”

“Where were the Sidhe at that time?” Edno asked.

“We have knowledge of one ice age, it lasted some such of thirty years. It followed the death of the gods and the plague followed the ice age.”

“The death of the gods was the name of the plague,” Lillow’s partner muttered, “even I know that.”

“The death of the gods has been found to refer more to a time frame. The death of the gods plague was more like saying that the plague happened during the death of the gods,” Paw moved to Souse’s side and sat on the railing, “it is a new idea for people scholars, but is one they begin to grasp. Your gods and our gods were once the same. And then everyone went crazy and people started dying and the earth itself eventually died. Ice covered all. When ice melted, bodies of dead ones were piled in the streets, the decay lead to the plague. People. Not rats. Not fleas. Not bad water, but people, started the plague. Thousands died because people could not bury their dead.

“Thousands more died because people were too compassionate. Sidhe say, put out one who coughs, who be sick and people say no, no, not the way of it.”

“But to put out a sick member, that’s not tribe,” Mik responded.

“You mean to tell me that you know all the rules of tribe?” Souse asked Mik, “or that it is possible to assume that we have not changed in twenty thousand years? Paw knows much of history,” a pat to Paw’s leg, “he tells what happened, you have no place questioning him on the whys. Why we tell people to put out deathly sick ones? Because we know when a sick on is deathly so and when that sick one will cause more death for others.”

“Should we… move on to the Sidhe room?” Koln murmured, motioning to the next room, “I think you may find it interesting.”

Paw slipped out and to the pregnant woman’s side, taking her arm once more as he glared at Mik and chattered to her about… whatever.

Into the Sidhe room, Koln stopped by the first exhibit, “pottery, fine, delicate, well preserved and brightly painted, the marks on the sides, the shades of purple and blue, were beyond what people were capable of. The first examples were found in a well marked grave of a tall, slender young man who was adorned in gold and turquoise and dressed in what was once a very fine linen. He lay inside a sarcophagus, made of cedar, finely carved, gilded and adorned with gems. The people now call him the boy king. Fine works of art, furniture, pottery and the such were found buried with him.”

Koln had obviously brushed up on his history. Mik recalled, dimly, the enigma of the boy king. The only mark of his civilization in a time when people were still draped in animal skins and struggling to survive in their day to day lives.

“Thanks to recent scientific discoveries, we have found a way to revive the DNA from his bones and trace his origins. We are still waiting for the results. However, upon the discovery of his tomb, it was thought that there must be something wrong, that this must have been the tomb of a slender boy born to the pyramid builders. Even though it was ten thousand miles away. Carbon dating proved… difficult.”

“Ah. Carbon. Dating?”

“It is a way for us to tell when in time things were made, as we can’t tell just by looking at them.”

Souse nodded and leaned in to peer at a vase behind glass.

“The sarcophagus was some forty thousand years ago, proving to be right after the ice age and certainly, when scanned it showed the same signs of growth as ice age trees right at the end of that age. But the furniture was from a thousand to ten thousand years previous. As if someone had stock piled their best works in this cave, waiting for the boy king to die… be born and then die. The pottery, the older pieces were nothing but shards, our best scientists have spent their entire careers trying to fit them back together, and these newer pieces survived with colour and gilding intact but they were dirty and grimy.”

Souse nodded, “People.”

“No. People were no where near the tomb, not for another ten thousand years. People migrated from the smaller continents to this one during the time when all the continents were one. When the continents wrenched apart, then there was the separation of people and so the differences in say, our continent to the Southern continent that has almond shaped eyes and darker skin,” a motion to Mik.

Mik was not pleased with the comparison. He looked nothing like his mother. Which had been an issue growing up. Couldn’t fit in with the normal kids because they knew he was, but wasn’t southern enough to fit in with the immigrant children.

“He is the only mark of his civilization that we have ever seen. Either he’s a god, or he’s Sidhe.”

“People have shared the world with many other races,” Souse grunted, “one is said to have wings.”

“No wings on this one, no muscles to support the wings. If he was from their race, he was born without them. The Andolans were a race of people that lived around the equator and had bat like wings. He was found near the northern tip of the continent. His tomb is now under water. The Vampyr, it was thought next, but they have certain … quirks that remain with them even after death.”

“Vampyr don’t decay,” Souse muttered, nodding as he moved from the vase to the sarcophagus, now closed, “but Sidhe have no written language,” he frowned at the sarcophagus and made a motion with his hand.

Paw approached from the other side and frowned as he looked over the markings on the wood. He began making hand motions as well. Hohi said something and both males jumped in their spots. It wasn’t a tone, it didn’t even seem to disturb the other Sidhe, but Paw and Souse left the sarcophagus and moved to Edno’s side as if the thing had bit them.

Motions.

Sidhe understood hand motions more than they understood most words. As if sign language was part of their true language. Mik walked up the sarcophagus and frowned as the others moved down the room. Lillow stepped up beside Mik and smiled sweetly at him before looking at the wood and sighing.

All of it was garbled nonsense. Mik picked a random one and tried to create the symbol in the air with his hand. Lillow giggled.

“What?” he asked her.

Lillow turned him to face her and made a sign with her hand, “Ooohahelunemohyashen.”

Mik blinked at her. She made the sign again and Mik imitated it, for the sake of doing something besides looking like an idiot.

“What’s it mean?” Mik muttered to himself.

“To love one so completely that one cannot go on without him.” Lillow smiled sweetly at Mik and then skipped off.

Mik looked back at the symbol he had tried to imitate and made it once more with his own hand. It fit nearly perfectly. A shiver ran up his back and he turned from the sarcophagus and caught up with the rest of the group in a hurry.

He didn’t want to think about the implications.


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