They won't accept us... I know this as surely as I know the sun will rise tomorrow morning. We will frighten them. They die. It is a concept that took so long for us to understand. Years ago one of their kind had washed up on this very beach not far from where I now stand. He was almost dead then but we didn't know it. He didn't die then though, and so we learned from him. He taught us his language as it became apparent almost immediately that his throat and mouth would never be able to form our words. He was kind to us at first. So happy to be with us, until he saw Frietesl fall from the cliff face. It was quite a fall, she was being silly as usual, but no harm came of it. He was aghast. It was then he taught us of death. The end of being. Frietesl should have died he said as though it was a great affront to him. It was not right that she should simply get up and go back to playing with the others.
We didn't understand. He tried so hard to make it plain to us but it wasn't until years later when he died that we truly embraced the finality of it. He had left us by then, but we are curious by nature and so we had found him, on his side of the island in the shelter he had built. He was weak and delirious, but we had tried to make him comfortable as best as we could. Dying, it turned out, took a long time. We waited and waited until finally he ceased to move. We poked him and spoke to him but he did not answer and so we decided he must be dead. He had asked us to bury his body but that seemed like a lot of fuss, so we left him and returned home.
Now they were coming. He had told us they would someday. The sun is setting on the horizon and their ship is a silhouette agains the huge orange ball where it touches the sea.
They will fear us. We can't die... after he died a few of us tried but it never worked. We look like them, we can speak like them, but we are not them. I will go and tell the others and we can decide what to do.
-~o0O0o~-
I gathered everyone after dark, he taught us that as well. I told them about the ship and the people coming... like him. Cherizmf said we should go out and greet them, but I warned him that they would be afraid if we swam out to the ship and climbed aboard in the dark.
The others agreed with that, but really they didn't care. They wanted to play, to sing, to dance and make love. That is what we do you see. The island gives us everything we need. We don't want for anything... he called it Eden.
Cherizmf said, if they were afraid then we should show them we are good, but he didn't know how we could. We turned to Zhermextl, she is the oldest, she was from the time before, when our kind ruled this world and she knew more than any of us. We asked her what we should do, but she just shook her head, her platinum hair cascading down her naked body like a wave rolling up the beach. Zhermextl rarely spoke anymore, that is the way of the true ancients. She looked so beautiful, once we had made our decision I would make love to her if she wanted.
The meeting had lasted too long and many began to pair off in random couplings or groups. I tried to keep their attention but it was no use. Finally I did the only thing I could think of... I yelled at them. He had taught us that as well... anger. I really didn't feel angry, at least not as I understood it. I felt happy but we did need to decide what to do about the ship so I yelled. In our language even a yell sounded more like a musical note but it got everyone's attention.
What will we do? I asked them. We must decide.
To my amazement Zhermextl spoke... quietly but firmly. "Yes we must decide. So we will make them die. That is the only thing we can do."
Yes, I suppose it is. She is so wise.
The next day the ship came closer to our island and then another smaller ship left the big one and came to the beach. The people on the ship were, tanned and tall and looked so much like us it made my heart hurt as we hit them with rocks and branches. They fought us, of course, with swords and fists and guns. Finally they realized we would not die and, in horror, they turned and ran.
They are all dead now. This time we will bury them, hide them so no one will know. I swam out to their ship afterwards with Cherizmf and we killed the ones who had stayed behind. Then we put a hole in the bottom of the ship so it would be hidden as well beneath the blue waves of our ocean.
If anymore come we will kill them as well... because we must... and we will never die.
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