Later on, when it was dark, the sight would be more spectacular still, but he could not be sure of finding his way back in the dark, so he was determined to enjoy the sight while he could. Ho-an, by far the smallest of the moons was leading Ben-irel and Sil-roa. If he stared hard for long enough he was sure he would be able to see that Ho-an was slowly being caught by its pursuers. He would see them acting out an eternal cycle, where each of the pursuers at times became the pursued, just like the ethereal beings of legend after which they had been named, as they protectively circled the goddess Vela-izan.

For a moment he vaguely wondered whether the moons had got their names from a pre-existing legend or whether the legend had been created specially to explain their cyclic nature. It was hard to believe it was happening, that he was here, in Tivor, the largest country. It was harder still to believe that only a week ago, before he had received the unexpected offer of the possibility to study there, he had had no thoughts of there ever being any likelihood coming to such an illustrious facility as the International Institute.

A shrill squeal startled him, shattering the magic of the moment. He turned abruptly. Nothing. Then movement caught his eye. High up in one of the tall, unfamiliar trees that bordered the clearing, he saw,impaled on a long spike, some winged creature hanging limply. Something was still moving, but it was not the creature; it was the tree. Tendrils that extended from the ends of the closest leaves whipped round the unfortunate victim, catching a leg or part of a wing, holding onto it as the seemingly-muscular, spear-tipped stem slowly coiled around its prey.

Naros licked his lips and looked around nervously at the trees that surrounded him. He was unfamiliar with the area, its flora and fauna, and had paid no particular attention to his surroundings as he had wandered through the woodland. All he had been concerned about was climbing the hill so he could get a good, unobstructed view of the sky, and had not given the various different trees a second glance as he wandered amongst them, picking his way by going from one natural clearing to another.

He had not noticed that some of the trees had peculiar, concertinaed stems that terminated in long, reddish, spear-like tips as long as his arm. He noticed them now, projecting from the mass of over-sized leaves. He noticed how the spears protectively encircled upright stems bearing clusters of orangey-red, oval fruits. Most of all, though, he noticed the one with the hapless creature impaled on it, and watched in morbid fascination as the stem continued to coil around its prey.

The dawning realization that they must be a type of the more mobile plants was not exactly reassuring. He had encountered some species of these plant-types before, but where he came from they scarcely grew to knee height, and did no more than twitch their leaves out of the way when they felt the vibrations of approaching footsteps. It was common for young children to keep them in ornamental containers for the amusement they caused when they reacted to the children's heavy-footed nature. However they did not grow to anything like the proportions of these, and certainly did not impale passing creatures on long spears. It chilled him to think that he had just blithely walked through a swathe of these trees in order to reach this particular clearing.

A smile twitched his lips, though, as he mused that there were a few acquaintances back home he would gladly give a small potted one of these to. That would be satisfactory retaliation for their teasing im over the years.

Page 2

"Moon-gazing?" came a soft, mocking female voice, from the edge of the clearing. "You must be one of those technicians. I saw you coming this way, so thought I'd say hello."

One of those technicians? Indignation welled up inside him. He wrenched his gaze away from the odd tree and its victim to see who was insulting him. Standing in the shadows of the bizarre-looking plants he could see it was Lan, one of the others who, like himself, had come there from one of the more distant countries, hoping to secure a place. Her words had stung him as he was only too aware that he had not even been amongst the top dozen students at the academy where he had studied, but that did not make him a technician. Anyway, he had been one of the younger of the students to take the course.

As she stared up at the moons in the fading glow of the setting sun her eyes glistened a deeper violet than before, and he was sure they made the deep crystal blue of his appear commonplace in comparison. Her long hair, down almost to her waist, shone with lustrous streaks of various shades of blues and purples, while his hair, although a similar length to hers, seemed to him unremarkable in comparison with its blues and greens, especially as he was not wearing the ribbons of fine crystals he usually had interwoven in his hair. Everyone in Ven-isle wore them, but he had removed them along with the rest of his traditional costume.

And whereas his skin had only just begun showing signs of the mottled patterning that was so marked in adults, he was sure on Lan it was a little more obvious than on him, leading him to believe she was a little older than he was, perhaps by a year or two.

Technician? Did he look like he was a technician? For a start the blue piping on the grey uniform he had been given on his arrival earlier that day clearly indicated he was more then that; it indicated he was a Specialist in Advanced Systems, and that did not mean he was a technician. The colour of the piping on a technician's clothes was bound to be different, not that he knew what colour they wore but he was sure it would not be blue like his. The clothes they had been given were so different from the colourful and flowing garments worn in normal life. No one he knew would choose to wear such simple leggings and tunic, in a dull grey with only a little colour to lighten the tone, not even a technician, and he was not a technician.

And she had not introduced herself; she had spoken first, and courtesy dictated she should have should have told him her name as they had not been formally introduced. He tried to guess where she came from, but found it rather difficult, as he had never made a study of the subtle differences between the various races, and the lack of traditional costume complicated matters greatly. Her athletic build suggested she might hale from one of the Plains regions, as they tended to be rather agile, although an athletic build did not rule her out as coming from any other region. Whatever her origin, it was no excuse for not showing simple courtesies.

Determined to show her he had some manners even if she did not, he said, "Good evening, I'm Naros." He intentionally toned down his manner of speech to make it sound more in keeping with current trends. Nowadays most people's speech lacked the rich inflections of classical times. Such lilting, almost musical methods of pronunciation had ceased to be used many hundreds of years ago the whole world over, except for in the Ven-isle regions, and he was very conscious of that fact. Everywhere else such forms of intonation only persisted in the names of mythical beings from the ancient legends, and even then there was a general tendency, deplorable in his mind, of giving even them a more modern, muted tone.

As was customary the world over, Naros had learnt Tivane as a child, Tivane being used as a standard method of communicating with others of different races. This, though, was one of the few occasions in which he had had to use it for real, as Ven-islers were proud of their customs and traditions, and those from different regions would infinitely prefer to muddle through, with each trying to understand the other’s different dialect, rather than resort to using the so-called Universal Language of Tivane. And just why the Tivanes thought theirs was a universal language was beyond him. He was not sure he believed there were intelligent people on other planets, but one thing he felt for certain was that if there were they were scarcely likely to speak Tivane.

He had waited patiently for Lan to introduce herself, but still she made no effort to do so despite his gentle hint; instead, for some peculiar reason she just glared at him. That amused him, though he tried not to let it show. Perhaps she was embarrassed at having been so ill-mannered. Trying to give her another gentle hint, he added, "I'm studying Advanced Systems Sciences," but still she made no attempt to introduce herself.

Little of the creature could be seen now, just a wing protruding from amongst the coils in one place and a leg jutting out at a peculiar angle in another. A drop of blood trickled slowly down the spear-like projection.