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  Chapter 2 – Native Splendor

  It is a lengthy walk to reach the strangers' chambers located at the center of our sprawling museum. Ah'Wren will need help finding her way through the halls during many more shifts. The museum floods the mind with its items and prevents those new to its maze to quickly develop any sense of direction.

  “The halls are more wonderful the deeper I go,” Ah'Wren whispers as her blue robes flow down the hall. “We're still far from its heart, and already the museum holds more than I thought possible.”

  The museum's power to amaze is not lost on me. Like Ah'Wren, those who earn duties in the museum have dedicated their lives to understand the strangers. They submerge themselves in the study of the stranger's language. They sift through the histories the strangers relate of their home world for insight into our guests' culture. They spend hours studying over the charts and scans of the strangers' anatomy. Prints of the strangers' artworks likely cover the walls of Ah'Wren's den. Though native to Frelurn, those who work the museum often know more of the strangers than of the broods.

  It seems to me then another of the museum's subtle beauties that forces those about to visit the strangers' inner chambers to first pass through halls teeming with the artifacts and treasures of our native world. Ah'Wren's studies have not encouraged her to learn first of the cultural depth and complexity of the broods, and so those items surrounding her as our robes drift through the halls amaze her.

  We pass long shelves made heavy with the jars filled with the indigo waters preserving our sea's exotic life: eyeless, boneless creatures whose teeth sift for prey upon the deepest sea floor; scaled worms burrowed in the sands for much of the year, but who fill the waters with pastel colors as they emerge for breeding. We pass walls upon which hang the stone fossils of small, furry animals that may have scampered across Frelurn during the mysterious, unrecorded ages before the dawning of the broods. Ah'Wren gasps as we pass through a hall filled with the sands of the White Shore, the sands the first brood mothers stepped upon as they left the seas, which sparkle and twinkle in the shadows maintained in the dark corridor.

  Ah'Wren shudders as we pass through the chamber housing the sharp vendril blades and the curved sobotches, the weapons of the first age, used by the broods to wage war between the colors before the teachings of Terleck. We gaze at the masterworks of the great artist Ne'Dirk, whose painted, stone eggs helped spread the prophet's peace for the elegance captured in each egg’s spectrum of colors. We stride through the narrow hall lined with the robes sewn from thread spun by the prophet himself, the first robes crafted to denote the duties the disciples accepted to maintain the new tranquility following the wars of the first age. I pause to bow before the very robe worn by my ancestor Un'Yel, the silver garb that inspires me each time I pass the cloth.

  Ah'Wren notices my reverence and is quiet as we pass through more chambers. Finally, she voices the sentiment that has been swelling in her heart.

  “I never knew our world contained such wonder.”

  “New archivists seldom do, Ah'Wren.” I see a little color fade from her scales, and I touch her arm so that she does not allow shame to further fade her hues. “The museum has been designed very carefully. It is the museum's intention to force you to remember the splendors of our world before entering the strangers' inner chambers.”

  Ah'Wren's colors steady, and I know the museum has surpassed her expectations.

  “Do the strangers appreciate our wonders, Un'Yhe?”

  My scales pulsate in rich crimson. “All these pieces of our world gathered in this museum fill the strangers with so much wonder that they weep.”

  “Weep?” Another word confuses Ah'Wren.

  I pause. Many of the strangers' concepts must be experienced before they can be explained.

  “In time you will understand more,” I answer. “You will see the strangers as things much greater than aliens housed in the center of our great museum, and then many of their concepts will appear clear. They are fragile, creatures, Ah'Wren, and they are very lonely.”

  We pause before the tall, wide double doors leading into the strangers' inner chambers. I doubt Ah'Wren has ever seen doors as large as those that are closed in front of us. I hear her once more hum softly to steady her nerve. I think it good that she holds something of her world close before those doors open and she steps into a new world.

  I need only nod, and the massive, double doors silently and slowly open.

  I hold Ah'Wren's hand as we enter.

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