The Visitor

Nobody remembers him. He is known simply as, “The Visitor.” The elders talk about his arrival from the heavens, how there was a boom that shook the ground, a bright flash, as if the world had been engulfed in snow, before it faded to reveal the sky aflame, a flaming thing tearing through the sky, leaving a trail of white smoke across the scorched sky. The thing tore a furrow in the earth, many miles long, as deep as our camps are wide. Our chieftains sent their armies to surround it, and every few hours one of us would get brave and throw a rock at it, the sound a dull thud, loud enough to hear, but no echo. The thing was the shape of an almond nut, relatively flat, long, wider on one end, the other end forming a round point at the tip, with no edge to be seen. It was half submerged in mud, it’s hide shining in stark contrast to the rich black mud of the ground, it’s outside unmarked by the throw of the brave soldier. It stayed motionless for many moons, the soldiers getting more and more restless, thinking their time wasted, unsure if the thing would move again. Then, one day, something happened. There was a sound unlike anything I had ever heard. A sort of grinding, but smoother, controlled. A hole the shape of a square appeared in the things shiny hide, expanding, getting taller and taller until it was big enough for one of our young to go through. The soldiers were alert. Their sticks pointed, the polished stones glistening in the morning sun. A figure appeared in the hole. It looked like us, but… strange. He had a harness around his body, with what looked like a shiny box on the back. His body seemed wrapped in a material similar to that of outside of the rock which he came out of. He wore some sort of helmet,a glossy black surface covering what would be his face. The surface gazed at us, and we thought it was watching us, just as we were watching it. It had a tube connected to the surface, though we were not sure what it’s purpose was. It reached out to the side of the hole, and rested it’s hand on the edge. A similar grinding sound like that from before emanated from the shiny rock, but this was different. Another square, this time, physical, not a hole, appeared in front of the creature. It grew until it touched the ground, the creature walking it’s length the entire way. The creature came to a stop at the bottom of the square, it was less than a stone’s throw away! He looked at us. He both ways, looking at all those surrounding him. We hadn’t moved an inch. What he did next astounded us. He went back up to the hole, disappeared inside for a few minutes, came back, laid a cloth on the ground, and sat. He gazed at us, what we would assume to be his hands laying in his lap, his legs butterfly stretched, his back curved forward. One of the chieftains paved a way through our ranks, and greeted the creature. The creature seemed surprised we could talk, and started alternating spouting gibberish and fiddling with something on his arm, each time the gibberish sounding in a different tongue. Finally, he came to our tongue. What he said has been lost to the test of time, but we know what he did. He gave us magic. Boats that could cover in single second what a runner could do in an entire day, all without touching the ground. he taught us how to raise crops, so we didn’t have to move with the herds of animals we depended on. He showed us how to manipulate energy to make things move on their own, and how to use special rocks to make tools that could chop down a thousand times the number of trees our previous tools could. It taught us strange runes that when inscribed correctly, would help us understand the happenings of the world around us. Indeed, this creature taught us many things from it’s civilization, and we taught it from ours. But in time, the creature grew ill. The air was poison to it, it told us. It couldn’t survive on our planet. It didn’t want to leave us though, so it eventually passed on. It’s final wish was to be burnt and have his ashes thrown from the peak of the tallest mountain, which we honored. It’s ship, for that is what it called it’s strange sky rock, stayed untouched, out of respect for the creature who had taught us all we know. The Visitor made us what we are today, and we are forever in his debt.