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.More, she thought, in surprise at her shout than with any understanding of her command, the alien paused and turned to her.Ella approached, held the painted rock out at arm’s length.The alien accepted it, turned it over and regarded the painting.“It’s you,” Ella said.“I did it myself.I thought it appropriate, a rock for the one I threw at you.I know you don’t understand, but.” And she shrugged, realising the futility of her words.The alien looked from Ella to the gift.It was on a long thong, but rather than hang it around its neck, it wound it around its thin wrist, grasping the rock in its hand.“Before you go,” Ella said, and shrugged.“I don’t know.Will you be here again tomorrow?”She took off her watch and stepped a little closer to the alien.She displayed her watch and tried to indicate the passage of thirty-six hours.“Here, same time, tomorrow?”But what hope, she told herself, had she of making the alien understand something as abstract as the passage of time divided into human hours?It regarded her without any sign of comprehension, then disappeared quickly into the jungle.The following day, when she pushed through the bushes with no real hope, but expectation bubbling within her, the alien was waiting for her on the flat rock.Now, Ella moved around the lagoon, tears of joy in her eyes.Her memories were so vivid, so alive.There was the camel’s hump of rock, and she could see it standing there, could see it diving into the water, emerging with the quick sleek grace of a seal.She stood on the flat of rock on which they had sun-bathed, and stared across the water.Nothing had changed.Everything had changed.They had met at the lagoon on every weekend for the next four months.At first they remained within the confines of the lagoon, diving and swimming in the calm blue water.There was little communication between them other than gestures, and they were often so bizarre on the part of the alien—and no doubt hers were to it, too—that she often failed completely to understand its meaning.It spoke occasionally in a soft whispery rush, but the only thing she understood was its name: L’Endo-kharriat, or so she wrote it in her diary, where she kept a detailed account of their meetings.There seemed to be a clicking pause between the consonant and the vowel of the first part of its name, and a shorter pause before the second word.L’Endo-kharriat.As for its sex.Ella could not be sure.They shared a friendship that was platonic, like that between girlfriends, but for some reason, as time wore on, Ella came increasingly to think of the Lho as a male, perhaps in compensation for the fact that at school no boy had yet shown an interest in her.At one point every time they met, L’Endo would swim to the camel’s hump and perform his strange ritualistic statue-impression, which could last up to thirty minutes.It seemed at these times that he was in a trance, oblivious of Ella and the lagoon around him.One day when he rejoined Ella on the flat rock and lay beside her, golden and spangled with water, she indicated the camel’s hump and asked, “Why, L’Endo?”He stared at her.“Why?” he breathed, and said no more.Ella shrugged to herself and reflected that she might never know.The following week, before commencing his ritual, L’Endo pointed across to the rock.“Why,” he said.Then, “Give thanks,” he said, but without any indication that he understood the words.“For life.”Ella nodded, intrigued by the fact that there was a member of his tribe who could speak English.The months passed, and they left the lagoon and explored the upper reaches of the plateau so far left undeveloped by the colonists.It was a magical realm of caves and grottoes, spectacular waterfalls and placid lagoons.L’Endo showed her tunnels which riddled the mountainside, secret passages leading from lagoon to lagoon, strange flowers she had never seen before and even stranger animals.In return for L’Endo’s showing her the wonder of the plateau, on one occasion Ella led him to a nearby dome whose owners were away on vacation.She broke in through a cooling vent and they crawled inside.She had become so accustomed to seeing L’Endo where he belonged, in his home environment where his alienness seemed natural, that seeing him in a human habitat once again made her aware of how very strange—how very alien, there was no other word for it—he was.He seemed uncomfortable in the hi-tech dome, like a stone-age man in a spaceship.Ella showed him all the technological wonders; the synthesiser and vid-screen, the ultra-son shower and the walls of the dome which polarised during the day.L’Endo was quiet and watchful, his eyes half-cupped by their lower lids in an expression Ella thought might denote wonder or suspicion.They left after one hour, returned to the lagoon and sported in the water.Then, two weeks later, L’Endo failed to turn up at the lagoon.Ella was there at the same time as ever, but there was no sign of the Lho.It was the first time he had failed to show for four months, and Ella was worried.Perhaps their meetings meant less to him than they did to her, and he had quite simply grown bored with the company of the strange human? She had no idea where she might find him, where his tribe was encamped.Ella waited for three hours, and was about to leave when she saw, through the trees that partially concealed a narrow fissure in the rockface, a familiar alien form.She leapt to her feet, her heart skipping, but the alien was not L’Endo.It approached Ella with long, nimble strides, an old, bowed Lho whose skin was mottled and faded.It regarded Ella through half-cupped eyes.“Ella Hunter?” It asked her, and she knew then who L’Endo had spoken to in order to explain his ritual.“Where’s L’Endo?”“L’Endo-kharriat wishes to see you.This way.”“Is he okay?” she asked desperately.“Please, what’s wrong?”The old Lho turned and.walked away without replying.Now Ella sat cross-legged on the flat rock beside the lagoon and stared at the sunset.Was it really ten years since she had last been here? She remembered the events of all those years ago as if they had happened yesterday.She recalled minutely what happened next, every last detail of the climb to the summit and what she found there; she relived the horror of it, and also the wonder.Ella had followed the old alien into the fissure in the rock.As they walked the defile widened, became a gorge with jungle plants clinging to its sides.They climbed a narrow path, the old alien pacing ahead with long, sure-footed strides.The rockface on each side tilted back, opened out to form an ever-widening valley.Well-worn paths striated the sides of the valley like contour lines.When Ella asked, “Please, is L’Endo okay? Why does he want to see me?” the Lho either failed to understand or chose to ignore her
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