Adventures of Oahron (part 1)

Midyear in the morning’s playful sunrise, dew drips down drops from the tallest trees to embrace the bright green grass of our planet's lush surface. The climate shines at top-most splendor bringing a busy day into awaited cognition. A location very much welcomed in this sunny morning is little East Koru Town --- a warm place where the clouds echo a waving glow through the shaved windows of each small wooded home. The light is not fierce or overly steaming, but just enough to welcome daytime to the weary. Here within this tiny town, the day is just a bit more sluggish than other towns, with furry beast-like home dwellers waking up in mid-morning to prepare for the season's festival.

Sunrays beam through the bark of a tan, handsome, muscular fellow’s tree-home, a man with long and thick messy hair along with a small child of his early fourth year as they live in the given solitude awaiting for the child’s parents to make a return back home. At the time of their departure, the boy’s father and mother were called somberly into a great conquest in which they knew little about. They snarled about leaving their young boy in the hands of his beef-headed brute of an uncle, but because of required business, planetary business, they had little choice but to let go of his little hands as they then stepped foot across the long-wooded pathway staring ahead of their venture.

Even in the brightness, it is still quite early for these two --- the brute fellow and his young nephew. While Jahru, the Zenroe man, is already stumbling on his feet prying his fingernails across the wooden shelves of his pantry, his nephew, little Oahron, dreams of exploring the endless forests of the lands. In his dream, he fends off the slithering baddies with the help of a brave wolf and a shiny sword. Sleeping must be a nice thing, for it is nearly unseen for Jahru as his hand grazes across the underside of his heavy eyelids.

The thick-headed brute shell of a Zenroe sits staggering by himself many nights, rocking in his clawed-up wooden seat, drinking the hardest of smuggled alcohols snuck inside from other planets so far away from our own galaxy’s range of protection and provision. He has little regard for our planet's laws, and little for himself as he scratches across his face with his hard-pointed fingers. A pale uneven knocking breaches the silence of the dwelling, making the child turn uneasily beneath his thin, windy little blanket.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, the door rattles against its loose hinges.

With his ears perking up, the young child pushes his tiny blanket to the edge of his vine-covered chained bed. The binding of his bed, hanging next to a high-carved window exposed to night-time draft, creaks as he scurries his feet from left to right. From between Oahron’s arms pops up a little metal orb! The small sphere floats in the air and shines a spotlight onto the child’s scrunched-up face. These orbs are called Dahzenku orbs; they follow us Zenroe-folk around like little pets recording our histories within their metallic memory banks. The kid buries his chubby cheeks against his fuzzy blanket, pressing against his furry ears — again drifting off into the dreamland of the morning.

***

Stirred and shaken by the persistent rattling-tapping ruckus at the door, Jahru rushes away from the kitchen contraband, smacking the side of his head into the pantry with a loud echoing grunt! “Ouch! Grr...” he wails, dashing his way into the main open room while little Oahron remains halfway asleep inside the great adventures of his dream. “Don't wake the stupid kid,” he grumbles as he trips forward over his own feet into the entranceway of the hall, trailing down a line of spit across his arm.

The brave child mumbles a “thank you” to his wolf friend who is guiding him in his elaborate quest through the Shadowlands --- appeasing the sly tan-eyed creature for assisting him in the thrashing of the tampering baddies who descended downward from the swirling vortexes within the stirring ashen skies above.

Jahru does not even notice, in his scurry, the sound or smell of the shattering bottles plundering down from the tallest kitchen shelves. After making it to the front door at long wait, he welcomes in a scrawny visitor --- a short and well-groomed “man” with unusually neat attire for a Zenroe.

This odd fellow carries some sort of bag, almost resembling a mail deliverer except that his satchel appears heavy and full of old useless junk sticking out of it… but is finely engraved with human lettering spelling the word "Secols" --- presumably the man's name. Greeting him into his parched wooden doorframe, Jahru has a very taunting, played out, and sarcastic welcome waiting for the guy as if he knew he was coming all along. The scrawny man steps forward with a half-smirk, squinty eyes, and shrugged-up arms entering the splintery creaking doorway as it settles upon its hinges.

“So, what brings you here, Specs?” Jahru questions in his naturally dry voice.

Giving a sophisticated glare, the intellectual man introduces himself and answers with great news of the voyage that had trapped Jahru into watching the annoying little Zenroe boy in the first place. “It is your brother, kind sir,” Secols tells Jahru. “He shall arrive in the Futora chamber in a momentarily-like fashion, quite zipping soon, heh-heh. You get it?”

“I see, ahh” Jahru sighs, placing his hand onto his rough chin. “May I interest you in some water, or what about some nice Chai?” he insists with a strange glare towards the shrimpy man and his unusual bag.

“On Zein?” the fellow questions as they step around, slowly taking seat in the splintery wooden stools within the main room of the little brown tree. Their Dahzenku orbs float around, scanning the two up and down as they converse, each holding mildly interested glares locked into each other’s combatant eyes. “No thank you, sir,” the man delightfully declines. “I have traveled such a long distance to solely inform you of the good news,” perhaps seeking some sense of gratitude.

“Alright then…” Jahru groans with a wide-mouth yawn as he moves his eyes and chin forward. “Come on, spill it, Stiffy. Did they pass through planet Sahdala again? Is that planet even still around? Why did you come here? I don’t have all day for you to be sitting here making me wait for answers, you… you very little strange man.”

The messenger grumbles a bit as he looks to Jahru’s sharp feet, “uh, no...” He lightly coughs and touches his throat as if he hasn’t had anything to drink all day. Jahru’s tone is rough, and the traveler slides his boney butt from side to side without escaping the harsh gaze of his host. “It is a very long story, but I promise it will only take a moment of your so-valuable-time, Zenroe. I was paid well to describe the details of Mehix and Dahri’s voyage as directed by Futora Pod-Co itself.”

…

Instead of immediately carrying on, the man starts touching his throat again with regret for not taking the drink due to his nervousness and excitement and is unsure if he should still ask. The scrawny man waits but a moment to allow Jahru to motion his hand forward for him to progress his story. “Hmmm... well let me see,” he starts off.

“Just explain to me what I need to know,” Jahru snarls as he scoots his creaky wooden stool closer to the man. “That way you can leave before I ask you to without telling me a thing. Would you still get paid your gold, you scrawny shrimpy little sad man?”

“Ah… uhm… yeah…” the trembling guest continues without pause in a long seemingly useless tale of a world outside the boundaries of Zein. The world outside of our homeworld sounds explosive, marking: excitement, danger, and even dreadful terror with countless hoards of blood-driven wars and rumors of wars drifting from dwelling-place to another with no real place to find rest. The story goes on and on as Jahru’s face gazes nervously towards the hyphenated lips of the stimulated message-carrier.

He is such a brainy weirdo, Jahru thinks to himself, wondering if this man is even a Zenroe at all. His scent is too odd for the Zenroe to trace. There have been rumors that some major technology corporations have been hiring species outside of our planet to work for them, even cloning and modifying them. They could have easily handed this freak one of our Dahzenku orbs and made him smell like us. He looks like some sort of collector, I'm sure. Jahru begins to fiddle his sharp fingers into the flap of the man's junk pouch as he stares down at him, then up again as he continues telling his tale.

“Don't do that,” the man motions back to him — making Jahru release a growl beneath his breath. Regardless of what he is, this fellow appears more interested in all the little details than Jahru is. Jahru just desires to know when he can meet with his goof-of-a-brother and where the heck he is landing.

The man with slight stutter, as Jahru nips towards his scrawny arm, hands the Zenroe a brown cloak from his satchel, but Jahru catapults it into the dirt, engulfing them both in a cloud of dust as the man shields his eyes! Jahru spits forward as the little fellow falls off his shaky stool. Jahru pounces to his feet with eyebrows shifted, and the man pulls back onto his little sidewards-seat, back onto his boney shaky hands as his skin grows increasingly pale. He is now below the Zenroe's harsh glare as he takes in a gulp of his own spit to satisfy his thirst.

“Now please, Zenroe... just let me finish the story,” the man hyperventilates as he breathes through his mouth, but Jahru's face begins to glare with a reddened tinge of animosity as he locks down on him as a prey with his teeth showing, and his shadow covers the little man's chair as a monster, or a beast-man, ready to feed. You can hear the animal within the Zenroe now raging within, deep beneath his muffled voice as his patience is beginning to dwindle into a mere memory against his prey of a gritty guest…

***

Within the other room, the young sleeping Zenroe starts to turn against the sound of his uncle and visitor yapping. All the low talk keeps him from hearing all the details as it distorts into a mumble, but who is in there talking?

The child’s orange eyes, sleepy and big, gaze fluently at the ceiling as he stretches his back and arms to endure the pleasant morning. He crawls himself down from the vine-covered chains of his bed like a little cat and creeps to the door to catch a glimpse of what is being said. A guest here is most unusual for the boy’s uncle, after all.

Yes, quite strange for the antisocial prick to have somebody here with him in the other room. He rubs his weary eyes as his metal orb bounces towards him in a dash, and trails close to his backside, pushing him closer towards the door, but he trips over his wobbly tail.

“Shhh,” he whispers, as if the floating piece of metal can understand him.

[In the eyes of a human, the child’s appearance may be at least a bit startling. Just like other natives living upon our planet, he contains many physical characteristics that you may notice of an animal, not ferrous beast-like, but abnormal, maybe even cute for those who have never seen the general populace of our world. He portrays ears of a cheetah mounted atop his head poking out of his messy black hair, a black and orange spotted tail, and small yet rather sharp little teeth. Some are flat but most are significantly more pointed. His tiny figure may resemble that of a baby tiger, but he is covered in skin and not fur. All in all, he is a cute little boy, a tad bit smelly, just like most human boys — a catfolk hybrid perhaps you could call him. For the most part, that is what a Zenroe is.]

A thin light beacons a tiny pathway from the keyhole, acting almost as a pointer as it glimmers a fiery sparkle against his shiny-bright eye. He can only see a small bit of the rare picture of his uncle with a guest, but the words remain muffled in the background. The child shifts his weight from one foot to another; his spotted tail wags back and forth as he tries to focus and listen. Oahron rubs his cheek against the door as he mounts his furry ear against the keyhole.

The odd visitor trembles as Jahru begins to gnaw his sharp teeth unpleasantly on the leg of the man’s chair, scratching the wood with his long-discolored fingernails, splashing drool across the strange man’s leggings as Jahru nears closer to the visitor’s body. Uncle is not playing nice… Oahron thinks as he tries not to laugh at the face of the little man as he looks as pale as the daytime clouds. Uncle even tries clawing and biting onto the man’s bag, slowly starting to gnaw on the man’s shin as he looks up into the fellow’s eyes --- making the odd guest yelp in pain at his even odder host.

“Please, Zenroe, sir… don’t do that…” the visitor grumbles in a mumbled whisper as sweat plops down his back and forehead into Jahru's thick and messy hair. He even pees himself a little as it drips down his seat. Jahru coughs and spits on the ground at the man's disgusting scent.

“Keep going, I said, Specs. Tell me what I need to know,” Jahru again persuades while the man insists that he is almost done speaking "of all the significant things!"

***

Whatever all this is, young Oahron considers, it has to be something really, really wonderful! With a push of determination, the child manages to hear mention of an extraordinary voyage through places that a Zenroe-lad can only dream of pawing through. He wonders if this could indicate the return of his parents after their long travels of leaving him oh so unloved and separated.

The words: “green,” “magic” and even “destruction” peer lonely amongst an odd array of mumbles from the strange creature that had entered Jahru's threshold. Even from a distance, Oahron notices that the man smells quite strange and familiar, like a Zenroe but not a Zenroe. The young Zenroe considers, however, that the man is not as strange as Uncle. Gosh, these guys are just talking too darn low for my furry whittle ears to hear today!

The door cracks open with his ear sticking through as he pushes inward his smooth cheek, squeezing through the opening just a tad, but not letting himself fall in as his body balances. The intellectual man then stands from his stool and begins to shuffle away with his lop-sided, now clawed-up, bag toward the doorway. He is quite short compared to the big torso of Uncle Jahru. The visitor has unhesitatingly taken off from the unkind dwelling that the two have occupied, which the little Zenroe for a while has tried to call a “home.”

“Gwra... Yo there, kid!” Jahru rumbles as he kicks aside the cloak that was left upon his floor. The echo of his voice causes Oahron to somersault into the room. “What were you listening at there, kid — little runt? Come on now, get ready. I’m sure you heard the good news by now, smelly little animal... spying on people like you are and everything.”

Grumbling something, the brute looks towards the ground and spits again upon the dusty torn cloak that he had kicked aside. Oahron looks down but doesn't say a word, even though many were in his head as Jahru taps his long fingernails upon the wooden table. The young boy stealthfully withdraws into the other room from which he had emerged as his tail wraps around his leg as he catches a breath.

Jahru plops his body onto the ground and begins gnawing ferociously upon the stool that he was sitting on just minutes before. Drool pours from his jaw onto the wood, dripping over the dirty floor as his dusty face and stomach makes all kinds of growling gurgly noises. The boy using his tiny rabbit-like feet is in and out of his room as he searches up and down for his most important stuff. He pulls a thick plant-based pullover, like cotton, atop his head and races into the main living chamber of their little home, looking down at the crazy hair of his drooling uncle twitching on the floor.

“Uhh… Umm… Uncle… Um... Uncle Jahru… Where are we going?” the boy mumbles with wide eyes, mouth partly open, gazing at his uncle as the tall Zenroe jolts his legs upward, beaming toward the front door. The slobber-covered stool falls to the ground in pieces as he wipes his mouth.

“You didn’t get a good hearing now, did yuh?” he grunts. The child slowly shakes his head with a shrug. “You were right there at the danged door, yet you did not even listen with your fuzzy little misshapen ears — you spoiled… stupid little kid!” Presently before him, yet seemingly absent in mind, Oahron stares blankly at his uncle’s slanted eyebrows, inches from his face as he has neared him with his aggressive breath.

“Urgh… now… kid…” the man flaunts, arms behind his head as he pulls his body left and right, creaking like the broken stool. “Keeping this short… your stupid parents should be arriving soon from their stupid adventure journey stupid thing. Voyage squad one-four-eight-eight will land in two days in none other than the most ‘grand’ Futora City, okay now kid? You got it now?” The boy’s mouth dances across both cheeks as his uncle groans in a tilted gaze against the boy’s dopey expression. “Little Zenroe… dork-kid...” the brute whispers under his breath.

“Oh yes! Yeah, Uncle! WOH’AH, YES!” Oahron clumsily leaps from one side of the room to the other like a furry little ballerina. “My mum and daddy are coming back home! I can’t wait so much, Uncle. I can’t wait to see them back home with me all safe again, being tucked into bed all warm! Woaha!” he wails as Jahru snatches his arm, nearly tripping as his tail tangles across their clumsy feet. “Ouch there, Uncle!”

“Yeah, yeah…” the brute gazes with sharp eyes as he lifts him up with one hand. “Grab some extra clothing, and let’s move now! I thought you would have been prepared if this was so important to you. They are going to owe me for this too, kid, and especially you!” After being dropped from his grip, Oahron tiptoes away from his uncle like a sloth. “And ditch that stupid long-sleeved garb before we get out the door! I am already not too fond of people seeing me with you. They talk… and I don’t want them to think you’re mine or anything. Got it?” Shrugging his shoulders, Oahron scurries around in his soon-to-be-gone bedroom, trying to kick his tail away from his messy feet so he does not trip again.

The youngster yanks open his timber-built storage chest and begins placing several similar attires into a fairly small bag made of bulky straps of skin and the hide from dead Tornakuru beasts that were past their days. He also takes a few coins that his daddy had given him. Jahru grabs a large cylindrical duffel bag along with his very special canteen and lantern. Only one of his few canteens has been filled with actual water, the rest... I'm not too sure of. The kid too tries, lightening his burden, to stuff what he can into his uncle's duffel bag whilst the big Zenroe is spacing out in his loopy animal mind.

“Come on now, come on,” Jahru pleads. “We need to get out of this place before I die of boredom. I finally get to get rid of you, kid. That has about been my only life goal these last few months as you may have figured out by now, if you were smart enough.” As the boy begins to look down, the Zenroe brute pushes his back towards the exit-way.

“Come now!” he presses the boy. Disorderly the two stumble over each other, taking leave from their little home. Jahru first of course --- rudely plowing in front of his young nephew. Upon exiting the little tree-carved house, they take slow footsteps as Jahru tries to adjust his eyes to the appeasing light using the shadow of his scruffy wrist. Oahron, however, grins unbothered by the illuminating glare upon both cheeks. Bumping into each other, their Dahzenku orbs squeak and beep and bang aloud! Almost if they were insulting each other. Jahru’s orb has a personality much like his own, and Oahron's is a tad less patient than the young boy has grown to be.

A thing most odd about Jahru is that his body-structure is handicap almost down to that of a human. Even his ears are like the human species, which is why he has kept his hair long, his scent, however, is unmistakable once you get past the alcohol. The sun shines wholesomely through the trees surrounding the village, and nature surges in a graceful dance synchronized around them.

It looks like there is no end to the trees that wave them bye in the wind. Colorful flying insects occupy the gentle breeze, buzzing and hissing, while the other bugs, crawling on the leaves, eat gleefully crunching without being mortal pests to even the typical gardener, staying outside in the woods with all that it has to offer, rather than inside our Zenroe peaceful homes.

The boy and his uncle step their way down the old dirt trail through the center of almost identical wooden homes. Each structure resembles an extravagantly sized tree, cut with roots still lying at the bottom. Koru homes, like most homes of a village, share similar figures to each and every other home in their own region, but little likeness to any other city or village in any other region.

This tradition has nothing to do with honor but instead to display the magnificent uniqueness of each territory as its own, and perhaps holds the fact that one is able to identify where he or she is if that Zenroe becomes a stray. It could also be because the materials that their houses are made from are the best resources of that region from stone to wood to shiny metallic steel — each piece of our map is very different. Modern to primitive, with absolutely no wealth or social class, each location works in correlation as a family as we are taught to live as spoken by the grand council of elders of the main home cities.

Scurrying southeast into a long grass field, blanketed in a light mist, great-sized four-legged creatures roam happily in the lush plains as they swoop up the grass with their faces. A grin swings across the boy’s sun-soaked brow as the kind beasts reflect their image into the large pools of his eyes. They are big, but they are always friendly to him. His smile from seeing them, the shuffling of his feet, never subsists, no matter how often he visits them. It is amazing that even with the great size of these magnificent creatures that it was mankind that was created to rule over all of the beasts of the land, of the air, and even of the sea --- perhaps the very reason mankind was such a threat to our own set of beings.

Some of these creatures are rough-skinned with long snouts and others are oversized Torneakunz (also known as Tornakurus), covered completely in fur. Oahron tiptoes through the grass reaching his hand upward to the grazing site as the plants tickle across his legs. The back of his palm grazes close to one of the creature's long noses. He rubs his little fingers in circles slowly across its long furry trunk and then behind its ear as its jet-blue eyes open wide to reflect his wide smile.

“Now come on, kid,” Jahru urges the boy as he closes his claw against his bag with an intense grip. “We have no time to play with these brutes... You can come back to this miserable place on your own time, and on your parent's time, not on mine! Got it? Tell them to take you here, just not into my house again along the way! Do you understand this much?”

“Awww,” the child groans with puffy cheeks, but like a good boy he listens to his uncle with a downward head, “o…kay.” The creatures before him are unarguably ugly to a cold-hearted Zenroe brute like Jahru, but to a child they are magnificent things to play with. They are somewhat clean… and do not stink… too badly. They are somewhat friendly to people, even in the wild, which is the quite opposite of the wild swine hunted by the dreadful humans... in the dreadful human world that we read about in the Futora Library archives way down in the southbound cities. Oahron wishes he had a moment to gaze again into some of the brightly painted picture-books in that big city that his daddy had once taken him to.

The big animals look at Jahru with familiar eyes as they slope the front of their foreheads forward as a single pack toward him. The Zenroe does everything he can to keep clean of eye-contact from these giant creatures glaring at him in order to avoid wasting more time. He snatches his nephew by the arm and keeps on trucking, nearly plowing away the grass as he pulls him away with an annoyed strut. His boots plow up the weedy plants as he staggers the two out of his small town’s meadow.

The hunched creature looks at the innocent boy as he is being taken away and trumpets off a small thrust of sound from its long nose followed by the rest of the pack. In turn with sorrow, the child turns his body backward while being pulled tightly by his uncle's grip and tries to imitate their sound with his hand over his nose. In return though, he only manages to blow snot all throughout his tiny fingers. With his mouth open, he wipes it all over his uncle's choppy leggings as his uncle closes his eyes and takes a frustrated breath.

“What is the commotion now, kid? Come on! Come on! I told you!!” The boy waves at the beast, ignoring his uncle. Even downtrodden, he continues to smile at their magnificence. Truly the almighty Creator of the worlds is a clever designer when it comes to planets and the vast creatures that are upon them. What an awesome array of worlds exist inside our system and many systems built around us.

I only wish me and Uncle could have seen the season’s festival.

A few moments pass. “What is so great of those over-sized brutes anyway?” the party-pooping uncle interrupts, breaking the moment with an innocent question. The kid looks up towards the man's emotionless stagger as Jahru gazes straight through him, eyes focused only forward.

“Jeez, Uncle… They are a lot of fun. They are real real nice, and you can even feed them too --- grass and dzurberries are what they like. You can run around and play with them, and if you are really really nice, they will let you ride on their big furry backs and even let you get warm and take a nap. Did you ever ride ‘em, Uncle? Uncle Jahru, have you?” Barely paying attention at this point, he lets go of his grip and gazes toward his nephew’s hair upon taking a long drink as the wind passes between them.

“Not my thing,” he grumbles as his drink slobbers down his chin onto his nephew's head. “Let us keep walking. I do apologize though. Sincerely, kid. I think I gave you the impression that I really cared or wanted an answer.”

As the boy’s smile drops to a tightened frown, they continue their way southward with the child now low-faced and unsure of a way to perk up his grouchy uncle. The land remains flat and thickly-wooded throughout. There are no trails past the main road of their own town. That is right, not a single side-trail of any nearby civilization in these lonely breezy woods where poor Uncle had long ago located himself alone.

The old grass-covered trail shows itself to be quite linear, and due to their timing, it is apparent that the two are going to miss today’s festival to honor the deity that gave both the humans and the Zenroe guidance and instruction. Some call it old superstition, others call it a festival of faith. We call it Shavee which means our very own harvest week --- a festival to honor the harvest that we eat and honor the god who made the harvest.

[Once stood long single-routed roads linking all of the cities of Zein just over a few hundred years ago. Such roads were plowed out and formed by the humans during the times of peace between our species. The lack of travel caused these dirt pathways to become imperceptible with plants, logs, and erosion, making them impractical to use and hard to find with the naked eye. With the Zenroe’s love of creating their own routes through the woods, the human-carved roads were deemed unnecessary and disappeared altogether along with their strange faces which once lived across our lands among us. Only the four-legged beasts of the humans remained to reign upon our lands. The wolves of the hollows… the great cats of the mountains… and the big beasts that dwell in our oceans… we don’t even know why they brought those things here to be among us.]

Contemplating to start a conversation, Oahron looks at all the sites around him, squinting his eyes as they move closer and closer towards the big leaves of the shading woods. “Umm, Uncle Jahru…,” the young trekker starts off. The grumpy uncle takes a deep breath before finally consulting a response “Yes… what now, kid?”

“That guy you were talking to, back at the house...”

“Uh huh?” the brute interrupts quickly to speed things up.

“I heard you two talk about a place far far away from here, and I…”

“You mean ease-dropped you little ba…but yeah” the grungy uncle continues as his two joined fingers move up and down his sharp face. “Well kid, keep talking. Just tell me what you want to know about our mess before we take it any further...”

“What is it like? Is it really that beautiful? You know, like the man said?”

“Look kid, in truth, it is only trouble. All places outside our planet’s skies are shrouded by hate and darkness unless you want a good drink, so get those stupid ideas out of your head. Okay?”

The boy does not answer, and again his face grows downcast.

“Maybe someday, you stupid kid,” Jahru again breaks the silence. “I will bring you there… if I think you can hold my drink… once you are a lot bigger and stupider than you are now.” The child looks up then turns his head away without an answer. Sometimes it seems like hate exists on our planet as well, and this place is not as perfect as they tell us from our childhood onward. I wish I didn’t see it, but I know it is deep inside my Uncle’s heart. It is not the planet, I think, but rather the creatures on it… Oahron’s face appears as if he wishes he could sit down and cry as his nose sniffles all up. He can’t though, his parents are waiting for him. He loves his uncle, but in his heart he knows he has to get back home!