The being, glowing with cyan trails riddling his skin, walked slowly through a hall filled with shelves. They held many tomes, books. They all had very unintelligible language carved onto them. They looked like tallies or vertical lines and they glowed an azure, green color when he touched them. The hall was part of a large corridor adorned with a jade ceiling, cold stone flooring with a golden sinewed finish dressed with a silver tinge so as to look more burnished and vintage. Pillars stacked on every shelf, as well as stone. Very gray. 

He looked around a corner and saw a light emitting from a doorway, very tall, perhaps over 80 feet. He walked toward this light and peeked into the room. There was a lot in that place, from glass bobbles and brines with juices in them, to meat and flesh sopping wet on the floor near tubings preserving other bodies. It’s as if it had been rotting there for centuries and its bones never visible. Nothing could compare, however, to what was hooked up to what looked like a large machine buzzing, beeping and whirring; connected to a large, brass, statue with the head of an owl. It started glowing at the eyes very slowly and a low hum became audible. His “heart” beat faster as his eyes began to turn pale in shock. 

He burst alive, and awoke from his dream. Soon, his chest felt like it was rapidly beating like a turbine. a silhouette dawned as he flashed open his eyes, pupils completely faded as blue dots amidst a sea of white. He saw nothing but a fuzzy figure and the ground with someone speaking to him. Soon he was plopped down on a surface and charged with a steel-like wool. He jolted back to life from electrical surge, causing him to cough up more blue liquid as well as burden more tears. His expression was normal but eyes widened, staring into the dark clouds above. After slowly turning his head to see his surroundings, he saw a mammal with a fluffy yet rigged and dark wool. Whatever it was attached to also had horns pointing forward. 

The figure he saw before looked different now, not fuzzy. It was a bird-like humanoid. They didn’t have intelligible language that he understood so he got up and started walking, with slight limping, toward the fence gate. He looked down and gently opened the door. The person he met started after him and gently tried to stop him from moving, getting him to listen, but everything was futile. The man looked back at the being after smacking his arm away and saw their face turn bitter and depressed with a frown. He also turned his into one and slightly scowled back. 

The humanoids around him were staring in disbelief. The man didn’t know what to make of this. The being that supposedly “saved” him took his arm and gently motioned him to come with them. He was lured to a small cabin in the shape of a rectangular yurt cafe with open widened windows and a balcony in the back. Everything was well-made, especially the paneling on the floor. The being motioned him to sit down in a room and put his palms out, rushing out of the sliding door. The man roamed around and went through fabrics, played with the tuft of a pillow and looked outside in curiosity. He saw the other beings and how they walked, what they wore. He too wanted to “wear” something. He found some cloth that felt nice and put it on the way they did. It was white and flowing, translucent. Not what he saw others wear at the time, theirs was much more fancy. There were even some soft rugged knee-high pants, loose-fitted and comfortable. He tried walking out of the room but the person came back. They looked at his clothes and cocked their head, smiling a bit with acknowledgement. They leaned in to unfurl some of the ends and clipped some diamond-shaped clasps on both the rim of the sleeves and lower part to adorn his outfit. They shouted “Ah!” when finished, putting their hands into the air making a Y shape.

The man fanned his arms out and turned around. He was very complacent with the diamond-like bits. He looked at everyone else’s outfits outside and looked back at his. The others looked so… good. He looked rugged and boring. He pointed to his clasps looking at the person who dressed him, and they didn’t say or motion much context. The man's mind made a shock and he jumped a bit. He felt a sense or need to focus on the being’s hand. The scans highlighted their fingertips, the bottoms of them. The palm also lit up. He looked at his palm for a moment and saw the same. He took it and lifted it up to the feathery being. They didn’t know what he was doing but they responded by putting theirs against his as well. His head started buzzing and static invaded as he fell to the floor on his knees. His eyes lined with information, hardly visible to the regular eye and only set within his iris. Data swept across his brain and triggered a response. He read part of it through his lenses. “Se-..Se–ff…”. His eyes started to twitch, flicker and close rapidly for a second. He held his head steady, squinting. “Was this… his name?”, he thought. A matter of fact beside this, a new name emerged, nestled deep within his cranium's register. "Alexander", he mumbled. Some small flashes of memory swept across his gaze as he shook his head out of the trance. "Names", he thought. "Is that my name?", he blinked for a second and was still burdened with questions about himself.

Seff said to Alex, “Would you like to see my village?” Alex was shocked to hear a language he could actually understand, and yet, he still couldn’t create those exact words verbally. Still limited to what he could do… Seff smiled and took his arm, leading him into the cobbled walkways and toward a town of yurts and lean-tos. There stood a tall and burly bird-like humanoid, sharpening the last of his shiny metallic spears. His feathers adorned from his head to his back in a flurry of fluff, still snowy white like Seff's but with a hint of dark gray stripes. He looked like the leader of a tribe. “This is my father”, Seff looked at him and spoke. 

Alex found another smell he hadn’t before, savory and sweet with a hint of salt. A phantom ache was within his stomach and yet it didn’t make a noise. He wandered over to the cart that some slug-like creatures were being roasted on. Seff was conversing with his father about fixing something. “Father, I found an automata lying beneath a wyrm nest. They looked broken. Do you think…”, His father looked down at Seff and back at Alexander who was sniffing and licking one of the roasted morsels from the spit while getting smacked at by the courier selling them. “Shoo, we don’t have much to feed the village! Please for the love of our rations, stop eating the produce! darn synthetics…” While they quarrel in the background, Seff’s father tells his son what events are coming. “We must hunt tonight. There is little time. The best time of all is to hunt right after the storm… they will want fresh Cylanta. They may come with.” Seff stares back at his dad, confused. “I have a duty to feed my people, Seff. That is my priority right now, but if he is able to move, able to walk, able to persevere… then he must share our burdens for one night. Bring him with us”. Seff nods slowly. “Yes father… I understand…” He looks back at Alexander, face now stuffed with three whole wyrms while the salesman is appalled and in shock. Seff grabs Alex’s arm, leading him back to the Cafe farmhouse with him before the storm reaches back around to shower them again.