| 02/24/01 - Day 4 Dear Mom & Dad, I left the necco aviary bright and early today and took the car out several hours to Site 2. Delye had laid out breakfast for me, but didn't eat as he was at ballet practice. The ride was very nice and I had a good opportunity to experience a bit of the wilderness of Faidia by myself. The area around Tower is very flat and absolutely shimmering with heat during the summer. The sky is this whitish blue and the clouds seem close to the ground it's so misty, and yet the sun is always shining. I took some ravishing landscape shots on my way there. You wouldn't believe the foliage on this planet. I've taken samples to dry out and take back to earth with me. Site 2 is what is known on Faidia as "Mer Isle Vaena," [mer-is-luh-vay-ahna] the Purple Savannah. The grass that grows on this savannah is a species unique to the area and it looks like most any other savannah grass except its flowers are deep, vibrant shades of purple. It's like a sea of very tall, hay-scented lavendar, and when it stirrs in the wind it's absolutely thrilling, almost psychadelic, with its ripples of dark and light purple. It grows extremely high and thick in places and I felt like I was going through a tunnel driving down the road. I was worried about getting lost but I was able to find the little place. It was just another little house, rather run down, but it was alive with creatures. As I parked and walked up to the house there were great stirrings in the window and I saw catlike animals hopping off the sills when they spotted me. There was something like a pet hatch in the front door and soon these creatures were flooding out of the house and leaping up on the porch bannisters and watching me from their vantage points with curious black eyes. I looked around for my guide, but there wasn't another human-like visage in sight. After several minutes in which I was fully sniffed and examined by this crowd of creatures, one of them sat in front of me with obvious deliberation before speaking. These animals were simply wonderful, mom, I know you and dad would love them. They were a sort of hash between canines and felines; I'd already met one on the ship, as I've told you, but I haven't had a good enough look at them until now. The crowd occupying this house were in such a rainbow of colors. I thought they were dyed, but the fur was naturally those colors; greens, blues, vivid reds, deep purples like the savannah, every color of the rainbow. It was extremely odd for me to see all these colors on living creatures in such profusion, but I soon grew used to it. The one that approached me and spoke introduced herself as Garadian. She was dark purple and soft, celadon green. I was very surprised and rather sheepish to learn that she was older than I was; she'd be celebrating her fortieth birthday soon. It seems melceys can live as long as people do, or longer. She sounded a little sad and mysterious when she said "longer," but she didn't elaborate when I asked her about it. The name of these creatures is "melcey pups," or just melceys [pronounced mell-see]. They are one of the most ancient of Faidia's unique races of creature and one of its most influential; they are very common all over this planet and because they are a clever lot in general many of them have powerful leadership positions. But they are also a wonderful housepet, if you can believe me. Like the neccos they love living in domestication as long as their owners serve an adequately nurturing role and allow them their relative independance. Most of them are very strong willed. The younger ones tend to be saucy and active, but the older ones are more on the sedate side and very dry-humored. Gara, as she insisted I call her, showed me around their home. People come to visit on occasion, she told me, and some of the melceys living here could switch to human form if they wanted to, but most of the time they lazed around in melcey form. Apparently this is a sort of country home for melceys that live in Tower and needed a break from work or to have litters (there were lots of baby melceys running around underfoot). I'd heard mention of this before, but I hadn't received enough information about it to make a very fulfilling description of it. The native Faidians seem rather secretive about their religious beliefs (at least I think they're religious beliefs) and they avoid speaking about it with foreigners. But Garadian explained it quite openly to me in order to give me an understanding of melcey "themes." Apparently Faidia has a kind of diety or power system of different elementals representing such forces as fire, water, earth, life, death, etc. I think there is more for me to know, but she gave me a quick run down of the way it works. Each melcey is born under the influence of a specific elemental, and which variety they are is their theme and loosely determines what personality and colors they will have. Garadian was an earth melcey. There's more information and a list of melcey themes in the papers I'm attaching to this letter. I'm definitely taking home a melcey -- they're too cute for me to resist, really, and I could use the company on the ride home. I might travel back around after I'm done with the other sites and adopt a pup. In the meantime look at the papers, mom & dad, I hope you don't mind me picking up another house pet .. especially one from another world. Love from across space and time, Gary |
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