Chapter Two- Meet Me At The River

The man Yurelia saw sitting on the bank had no shoes on. Two black shiny loafers were hanging from the branch of a flowering Sigalanda tree. In a childlike way, his bare, pale feet were hanging into the cool green water, swishing around, playfully. Yet, he was no child. She smiled. The stranger looked so alien to her, with his pale hair, and skin. As she approached, she noticed that his arms, half covered by a thin shirt, bore no tribal emblems. She had never seen a man with unmarked arms before. In her own village, the men bore the sacred triangle of Dofnar, and most always, the symbols of other ancestors from distant tribes along with the triangle. Few of her tribesman were of one blood. Yurelia’s own grandmother hailed from Likiinarri, a village in the Jundy Mountains, hundreds of miles beyond the river that ran through Dofnar. The stories grandmother told of the old days, of her village’s history, always delighted Yurelia, because the culture there seemed so different. The songs grandmother sang, handed down from her Likii ancestors, were more melodious than the hymns of Dofnar. Maybe this man was from a village she had not yet heard of? She had to find out; even if he was so big he intimidated her a little. The span of his shoulders was half again that of her father.



As though he felt her eyes following the angles of his back, the stranger turned to look at Yurelia. His eyes widened for a moment, but then he smiled. For a moment, they were lost in a gaze between their sets of eyes, neither speaking. His eyes were a pale shade of blue, like the mist around the far Jundy Mountains perhaps, as it set against the purple sky of the world. Her own violet eyes finally turned to the ground, as she tried to hide the blush on her cheeks. Her long, loose burgundy curls fell in front of her face, shielding it from the man’s view.Her hands, clutching her canvas notebook tightly, shook. The notebook was her prized possession. Most in Dofnar could not afford paper, or pencils. Yurelia’s father had saved for many seasons, to buy her a box of pencils, and three pads of paper, in Ujunya, a few weeks before. She had come to draw the river, the Sigalandas, the birds. She was grateful to have the paper, so she would no longer be forced to draw on tablets of red clay with charcoal.


From his mouth came strange sounds that Yurelia recognized had to be words. She could not understand them. He was not speaking Gurresh. It was also not Melendish, or Pruntoy, which she knew a bit of, and would have recognized, from her travels to other villages to trade her handicrafts for food. Where could he be from? He spoke a language like none she had ever heard spoken, looked so different from the men of Dofnar.



Yurelia tilted her head to one side, the trade symbol for one to use when one does not understand. The strange, beautiful man kept talking. He did not comprehend the gesture.



Finally, she spoke aloud in Gurresh, hoping he knew the tongue and would recognize. He stopped, stared, and smiled. They could not speak with one another, yet she wanted to know him. His eyes held her, made Yurelia want to touch his face, hold his hand.



Slowly, the man approached her, his hand extended. He shook it, much in the manner of the Gurnim, when meeting a friend. But he was clearly not Gurnim… This man perplexed her so. As she took the offered hand, it seemed the contact was so fleeting. It felt wonderful, his skin. The way that he looked at her, she could tell that he liked her, too. But how would she come to know him if they could not speak? So she would teach him Gurresh. She must. She pointed at the river. "Ylamm" she said. "River?" He said in reply? Thus began a beautiful friendship.



In the weeks to come, she met him every day in the same place, where it appeared he had camped. They slowly began to learn the sounds to make the languages of one another. His name, Yurelia learned was Aaron. He had pronounced it, even written it for her. Finally, one day Aaron had learned enough that she thought to invite him to Dofnar. Perhaps he would make a home there, she thought. Perhaps, he would want a wife. He was much handsomer than Bugajt, the only man in Dofnar who had shown an interest in her, and he was big and strong.


She brought him with her back to the village on a sunny day during the Sigalanda festival, when the trees surrounding the village were in full bloom, green blossoms set stark against the yellow leaves, creating a bit of magic in the air. Everyone was joyful, dancing, playing… until they saw the stranger who came, taller than all around, holding hands with Yurelia.



"He has no tribe, no symbols", said an elder. "We cannot trust a man without a tribe!" Yurelia told him she had spoken with the stranger for several weeks, that he had told her he came from the north.



Aaron shook his head, understanding that the villagers were displeased with him. He pointed into the sky. "Jun lenumiye", he said, "I come from the stars, jun Earth." Every Dofnar present held his or her breath.


A second elder approached, scowling, his fists balled at his sides. "You would claim, dare to claim, yourself as a God?" Aaron did not understand. Yurelia tried to explain to him, using both languages, what the Dofnar elder had said.


Then, a third elder, a little woman named Hythia, approached. She was so old that she had to use a Sigalanda branch to help her stay upright when she walked. "He looks different, he is big, he is clean, he is beautiful, and he knows a little of our tongue," Hythia declared, "a God? Perhaps, he is. Yurelia the sketch artist has been courting a God. We need to build them a house."