From dailyprompt: ‘I will return to Shangri-La,’ with a side order of “elation and heartbreak.”

Of the same world as these two strange tales:
Moving In
Dancing for Joy

“I will return to Shangri-La.”

It is said that the last settler to leave the ruined alien city declared that as he left, staring back in defiance at the desolation that had destroyed so many of them. It became a war cry of sorts, Talbot’s Promise. Tal’s Cry. “I will return.” We will survive; we will rebuild.

They found places on the blasted planet that were, at the very least, less inhospitable, places where the ground itself did not try to destroy them, cities that had been abandoned for longer, or with less gruesome reminders, at least, than those in the city they had named Shangri-La. Nowhere did they find a place free of the hand of the former residents, but there were places more bearable.

A generation built, planted, harvested, married and bore and buried, saying to each other, with every elation and every heartbreak, that they would return to Shangri-La. They would get theirs back on the city that had so very nearly destroyed them. This place would do, for now. But they would return. They spoke of Talbot’s Promise – and plotted.

Their children made the alien settlement their own, reshaping the buildings to fit their bodies, working the earth until it gave up fruit that was both edible and palatable. They married and celebrated, mourned and moved on, and their numbers grew.

They explored, just a little out at first, and then further, learning as they did that, not only were they not the first sentient species on this planet, it was unlikely they were even the tenth or twentieth. Those who had studied the science their parents could remember postulated that the planet was the interstellar version of an island on a trade route (concepts learned from their parents as well, as this place had neither). Those who were merely poets suggested that it was a bear trap (the planet did, however, have something that could pass muster as a bear). Astronomy flourished, and the engineering that would be needed to build a return ship, should they ever manage the infrastructure.

They spoke of Talbot’s Promise, the children born here. They would return to Shangri-La. They would defeat the city that had killed nine-tenths of their number. They would win, and then they would leave this place. They spoke of Talbot’s Cry – and they built their own city taller.

Their children, in turn, grew up thinking of the spaceways as a fairy tale, and Shangri-La a long-forgotten place. They expanded, and grew, married and danced and gave birth, and stretched the land out further, learning more and more about those who had been here before. Xeno-archeology flourished, and botany, and crisis architecture, for the planet still had its share of ways to fight them.

They looked to the north, sometimes, where they had been told their grandparents came from, and thought of Talbot’s Cry as a sort of metaphor. “I will return to Shangri-La,” their poets said, told the story of mankind’s fall from grace, and their determination to succeed. They spoke of Talbot’s Myth, and they lived.

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From dailyprompt

Her lips lingered on his, her hands on his hips, memorizing his taste (salty), his scent (just a bit sour, as it was after a long day of work), the way his eye crinkled at the corners, the way his hands felt on her back. “I’ll be back,” she murmured.

“I’ll be here,” he replied. For the moment they said it, it was the truth. For the moment of their farewell, it was complete, and real, and more than a little touching.

Science and trial and error had shown that humans needed the emotional stepping stones of farewells, of leave-takings. Experience on the long liner trips, though, had shown that things left behind, memories, roots to the earth, did nothing but hamper the pilots and explorers. They needed to be free to fly, and they needed their nest when they returned.

And so there were those like him, and like me, who minded the home fires. Who were there to be lovers and spouses and anchors when the explorers were on earth. Who were there to be forgotten when they left the planet. Loved but never missed. And never knowing what we missed, either, because we, as much as they, forget when our backs our turned.

We cannot waste our time in pining any more than they can. There are few of us, and many of them.

Prompt: what we miss because we forget

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From dailyprompt:

They are dancing again.

They dance for the full moon, for the changing seasons, for the first harvest and the last, for the first snow and the last. They dance for weddings and for childbirth, although they do not dance for death.

I cannot fault them; they have, despite that litany, so little to dance for. They came here so naked and unprepared, so bold and brave and completely not ready for what this place was; they came here and they died.

This planet is not a nice place, and they are not the first sentient race that have walked over its shifting skin and been eaten by its trap, frozen by its winters, swept up by its maelstroms. I’ve seen others come, and I’ve watched them all die. The death of these creatures did not surprise me.

What surprised me was their tenacity and their adaptability. They saw that the ground would shudder with no warning, and they built shelters like boats to move with the shifts. They saw that their plants from home were twisted by the soil into something inedible, and they learned how to eat the plants that were here, thay have grown to process the poisons of this place.

They died by the dozen, and they learned with every death. With every adaptation, the planet had to work harder to shake them off its back; and with every shake, their grip dug in tighter.

No other species had lasted through more than two seasons, but these, they were still alive when a year had passed. And now it has been two years, and, while there remains only a tenth of the original population, they die much less frequently now, and they give birth more often than they die.

And they dance. They dance for ever success, every triumph, every survival. At first I thought they were mocking the planet, taunting it for failing to kill them. Then I thought this was part of their grieving ritual, for all those that the planet had succeeded in eliminating. No other race had lived long enough to even bury all its dead, much less construct rituals to mourn them. And these creatures, all these little sentient creatures, are so different from me, from my people. Their rites, all of them, are so mobile.

It took me a while to learn that they called this particular set of gyrations dancing, longer to understand that it was a celebration, a prayer to the higher powers they believe rule them and protect them, a hymn of joy sung with their whole raggle-taggle wiggly bodies. And this thing they did, this dancing, was a thing of joy, not of revenge or of grief.

And I do not begrudge them their joy, because this planet is a hard place, as none know better than I. If they have found, like I have, to take their pleasure where they can, than the better for them.

But I do wish they would learn that the mountain they dance on is my head, and the valley my throat. They’re giving me a terrible headache.

Prompt was “dancing on my head”

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