As a Foreigner

If Earth imported a new species to save the human race. Ramblings inspired by the writing style of Rings of Saturn.

I was walking barefoot through the water upstream, the smooth river rocks massaging the callused pads of my feet, and my mind wandered to a time when I still lived in Minnulieta where it was like this every day. We lived near the equator so it was hot and humid all year round, equivalent to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the sun’s rays blanketing the atmosphere with heavy steam, pulled from my arms and face, soaked up out of the water in which my feet were steeping. People here wear shoes, but we didn’t have such things back home. I think they might have been useful in protecting our soles from getting stung if we stepped on credles or meddins, which are similar to Earth’s scorpions and fire ants, only credles shoot microscopic pins into your flesh, and meddins have a flesh eating poison that cankers if you don’t get it treated fast enough. Minnuleita is the township on the planet where I grew up, but all the men died of a plague that only affected men, so Earth agreed to an exchange program. I don’t mind Earth, but I would have rather have gotten a man assigned to me than to be traded to Earth in exchange for one to go there. They found me an island home that reminds me of Minnuleita, even its origin said to be volcanic like mine, only this one killed all the human residents several times over. Fire does not burn my feet, it does not hurt my skin, cannot kill my people. I read through the pages of the history of our island that my mate kept on a coffee table in the main room, full of beautiful photographs of lava drenched roads, glowing like the coals I love to watch in cook pits for social gatherings. In 2020, before my people had petitioned Earth for assistance to save our race, the biggest volcanic eruption on Mt. Sur had not just decimated the entire population of the island but overflowed the banks to enlarge the land by double the size. There were other volcanic eruptions of similar magnitude all over the planet, and parched forests simultaneously caught fire and spread millions of miles across the globe, causing mass destruction and far more than casualties than World War II. They could not flee from the fast spreading flames both from above and beneath the ground. Earth was grateful for our plea to help regrow our population as it was an answer to their own shrinking race. But I wonder at their fragility, so susceptible to mother nature’s gift of fire and heat. With the mixing of our species, will my own people become weaker and susceptible to the elements too? My mate was horrified the day he watched me accidentally touch the flame from the stove on which I was preparing his meal, a temporary callus formed where he said it should have blistered and bled. This heat on skin only hardens our skin, does not melt it like it does on humans. The sun’s rays cooks human skin red till it bubbles and peels like roasted green chilies. This is peculiar to me as I am accustomed to the sun helping our shells become thicker like clay left in the sun to bake. What good is skin if it cannot shield the soul within? The soul is the spirit, and I wonder what kind of spirits these humans have who talk of a God who created their earth and their bodies? It seems so silly for an all powerful being to create such weak things to inhabit a sphere that would destroy them simply by breathing. They go to these meeting places and talk of unknowable things and unexplained phenomenon, full of fear and predictions of mystical futures, yet the planet speaks to them and they don’t hear it. The answers lie at their feet, a being of its own, created out of its own elements. No wonder it spits sparks at them.