“Aset!” Sitra called out for her oldest daughter of ninety-nine years, while she hovered over a kettle that cooked the meal for that night. Qaa, her husband, was still out with the other men of the village gathering water. She prepared a stew of vegetables, beans, and rice, while looking after their youngest daughter, Menwi, of fifty-three years. Lemurians tended to live very long lives. It was said that Ti and Tia lived to be eight hundred or so before their souls went back to AJAH to be recycled. Presently, the life expectancy had dropped to the range of three or four hundred years. They also developed extremely slower than Atlanteans; as it was with Menwi, though over fifty years of age, she did not even have the look or maturity of a teenager by modern standards.
“Where are you, Aset?” Sitra hollered again. Aset had been gone all day, so naturally a mother’s instinct set in. “Mes, go find your sister.” Mes, Aset’s brother, her junior by three years, was a very eccentric character and enthusiastically pursued any mission his mother set for him—especially one that involved hunting. So he nodded and replied, “Sure thing, mother.” Then, with a quick turnabout and a hop he raced toward the jungle in search of his reclusive older sister, while making as little noise as possible. His bare feet scurried over the dry dirt and began to softly trample the thigh-high grass of the tropical forest. A small, child-sized ax was latched to his belt.
Ever since Aset reached the age of ninety-nine she became increasingly introspective, due to her approaching birthday and the rite of passage that would accompany it the following year. She grew more and more reclusive, thinking of only AJAH knows. But nonetheless, she realized something about the meaning of being and became aware of her emotions to such a degree that she was able to, with much concentration and meditation, make them materialize—or at least she believed. That moment, alone in the jungle, Aset meditated on a melancholic emotional state. The air around her began to shift as if it were magnetized. Her eyes were closed but if they were open she would see a whisk of brilliant blue powder encircle her, like a small sandstorm. She continued to focus all her Carezo, her word for the life-force, on that state of being. With her left hand open, a tetragonal blue crystal materialized that was the size of her palm. It glowed faintly beneath the shadows and looked like a small shred of the daytime sky. She thought her mind played tricks on her when she felt its weight, so she peeked with one eye and bore witness to it. Aset gasped and was astonished, though not outside of reason; but as she held it she grew less excited and more depressed. That was when her brother, Mes, appeared from the surrounding jungle. He was elated because he had been sneaking around, seemingly without her realizing.
“Ah ha! I found you!” he laughed.
“I knew you were coming,” she said monotonously, sitting on the ground with her legs crossed. Her eyes seemed to glow with a sense of contentment.
“Fine.” He began to feel depressed as well, his excitation deflated. “Mother wants you back home.” His eyes fell downcast and he thought he may cry; he believed that their mother had died and that it was his fault because he had left her. He swatted it away from his thoughts.
“Okay, I’m coming,” she slowly came back to immediate awareness.
“What’s that in your hand?” he approached a couple steps closer, peeping over her shoulder.
“Nothing;” she then covered it up with her shawl, gripped it tight and tried her best to be nonchalant. He would never believe, she thought, it was best to keep this secret.
“Well, it’s obviously something, so let me see it. Ah never mind, I don’t want to see it. How come I’m feeling like this?” His brows raised and squeezed together above his nose, he began to feel tears well up behind his eyes.
“What do you mean?” continuing to disguise the truth.
“I’m crying, but I don’t know why; maybe it’s cause we’re so far from mother and father. But we’re not that far away from them. What if they’re dead when we get back, what if everyone in the village is gone? I didn’t feel like this until I found you, why is that? I don’t understand.” He continued to weep.
