Poem: "Stories"
Nov. 18th, 2015 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shiori_makibaPoem: “Stories”
by shiori_makiba / Ashley Weyer
Inspired by ysabetwordsmith's prompt about an alien reading a book. First attempt at writing straight up science fiction. Comments and constructive criticism are welcomed.
“Stories”
Enaz purchased the box on impulse.
It was from a little stall in the port marketplace.
The stall was run by an alien race that Enaz wasn't too familiar with.
It called itself a human and said the items it had were from its home planet.
Thon had always been curious about other races and the price for the box was reasonable.
Enaz purchased it and took it home.
Inspecting the box, thon noted that it contained several similar looking objects.
Box-like in overall shape but the inside part of them cut into very thin sheets.
There were squiggles and sometimes pictures all over the sheets.
'Writing,' Enaz noted.
Not that was too unexpected.
Many of the races that had reached the stars had writing.
Too bad thon didn't know any of their languages, written or otherwise.
Or at least, thon didn't know any of them yet.
The human at the marketplace had learned one of the trading languages.
Logically, Enaz could learn one of the human tongues.
That setback aside, the box-objects were still pretty interesting.
The next time, Enaz was near a market, thon decided to see if there were any humans about.
Sometimes there weren't and sometimes there were.
Thon discovered many things about humans in the process.
Some of them were quite rude and very unhelpful in thon's quest.
But many of them were kind and gave Enaz their knowledge freely.
Slowly but surely, Enaz solved the mystery of the box-objects.
They were called books.
Some of them spoke of true things.
Or were supposed to. Sometimes the information was wrong.
Enaz's human friend Sarah told thon that was because some of them were made a long time ago.
But the ones that really captured thon was the ones that told stories.
You can learn a lot about a people from their stories.
Humans told a lot of stories.
Stories about love and kindness.
Stories about hate and cruelty.
Stories about far-away places and the distant past.
Stories about made-up places and very peculiar beings.
Stories that were long and stories that were short.
All kinds of stories.
When Enaz ran out of stories in the first box, thon sought out more.
Because you could never have too many stories.
by shiori_makiba / Ashley Weyer
Inspired by ysabetwordsmith's prompt about an alien reading a book. First attempt at writing straight up science fiction. Comments and constructive criticism are welcomed.
“Stories”
Enaz purchased the box on impulse.
It was from a little stall in the port marketplace.
The stall was run by an alien race that Enaz wasn't too familiar with.
It called itself a human and said the items it had were from its home planet.
Thon had always been curious about other races and the price for the box was reasonable.
Enaz purchased it and took it home.
Inspecting the box, thon noted that it contained several similar looking objects.
Box-like in overall shape but the inside part of them cut into very thin sheets.
There were squiggles and sometimes pictures all over the sheets.
'Writing,' Enaz noted.
Not that was too unexpected.
Many of the races that had reached the stars had writing.
Too bad thon didn't know any of their languages, written or otherwise.
Or at least, thon didn't know any of them yet.
The human at the marketplace had learned one of the trading languages.
Logically, Enaz could learn one of the human tongues.
That setback aside, the box-objects were still pretty interesting.
The next time, Enaz was near a market, thon decided to see if there were any humans about.
Sometimes there weren't and sometimes there were.
Thon discovered many things about humans in the process.
Some of them were quite rude and very unhelpful in thon's quest.
But many of them were kind and gave Enaz their knowledge freely.
Slowly but surely, Enaz solved the mystery of the box-objects.
They were called books.
Some of them spoke of true things.
Or were supposed to. Sometimes the information was wrong.
Enaz's human friend Sarah told thon that was because some of them were made a long time ago.
But the ones that really captured thon was the ones that told stories.
You can learn a lot about a people from their stories.
Humans told a lot of stories.
Stories about love and kindness.
Stories about hate and cruelty.
Stories about far-away places and the distant past.
Stories about made-up places and very peculiar beings.
Stories that were long and stories that were short.
All kinds of stories.
When Enaz ran out of stories in the first box, thon sought out more.
Because you could never have too many stories.
