Koruk sat in Moktark’s hut cross legged on the floor. Drake was seated in front of him, his knees up. Koruk couldn’t really make out the expression on his face. He seemed… curious?

  The orc wasn’t really sure how to begin. Moktark had gone off with a war party to fight the encroaching Beast Tamers that morning. It might have been the biggest warband he had ever seen assembled, with warriors from several White Moon villages joining ranks together. And so, he was left alone with his charge.

  He reached into one of Moktark’s bags, and retrieved a piece of goat jerky.

  “This.” He said, pointing to the thin slice of dark red meat, “Is Food. Food. Fooood. ”

  He took a bite out of it, ripping it in half with his huge teeth. He passed the remainder to Drake.

  The smaller man took it, nodding. He bit it, and with some effort tore a small piece away with his flat teeth.

  “Food.” Koruk repeated with a mouth half full of meat, grabbing a yam out of the bag. He didn’t bite into it, but stuck it into the pot. He looked expectantly at Drake.

  “F-food?” Drake repeated. Alright, now we’re getting somewhere, Koruk thought.

  He continued this with several items, bringing out whatever was nearby at the moment. A pot. A rock. An old drum. An axe. Moktark had a variety of items thrown around his hut and Koruk had no idea where he’d come by half of them, but they were useful for demonstration. Drake seemed to pick them up pretty quickly.

  Koruk pointed at himself next.

  “Koruk. Me Koruk.” He said. He changed the direction of his finger to point at the alien, and waited.

  “Oben an ilkanis tirid.” He said.

  “That’s quite a mouthful. Is that your name then? Oben?”

  The creature nodded. He pointed at himself. “Oben.”

  “I preferred Drake, personally.” Koruk chuckled. He grabbed a stick, and started drawing in the sandy floor with it. Oben looked in interest as Koruk sketched out the outline of a house, complete with pointy roof and door.

  “This is here. Home.” He said, gesturing to the building surrounding them. He then proceeded to draw more houses, and a little wall around them.

  “Many homes. Village.” He said, opening the door and pointing out at the street. Oben seemed to get the message, and repeated “Village”.

  About a foot away from the village, he drew the dragon egg. He struggled a bit at this, trying to remember what it looked like, and then drew a little man next to it. He drew in a line for the coastline, and then a bunch of trees, and continued from there. By the time he was done, he had made a pretty passable map of the area. Koruk pointed at the little figure of the man.

  “This Oben. This village. Koruk village. Where is Oben village?” He asked, passing the stick to Oben.

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  Oben took it, and twirled it in his fingers for a moment idly. Did he understand? Koruk wondered. Eventually he stood up, and drew a big circle around the drawing Koruk had made. He walked several paces away, to the very edge of the hut, and there drew another village. He pointed at it.

  “Oben village.” He said.

  Koruk was bewildered. He understood that Oben clearly meant he had come from very far away, but he didn’t understand the meaning of the circle at all. He grimaced. This was going to take awhile.

  Two weeks passed, but they did not pass uneventfully. News trickled in from returning warriors (many of whom were injured) about clashes with the Beast Tamers all along the border. Koruk drank in every word he heard, and asked frequently about Moktark but heard nothing about him. Apparently though, the Beast Tamers had occupied the area surrounding the dragon’s egg, and had brought in tame rockheads as beasts of burden to try to drag it back to their territory.

  Koruk thought about the majestic creatures. They were enormous hairy things, easily twice his height at their shoulder, with four stout legs and a head nearly covered in bony growths and horns. Only the most experienced hunting parties attempted to tackle them, and he couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to tame one. Still, he had doubts even they could move the massive dragon’s egg.

  The White Moon warriors were harrying them though, and even made a few incursions into enemy territory to burn villages and pillage in an attempt to draw their foes away from the egg. For every group of warriors that came back bloodied, another returned bearing plunder. Koruk wasn’t sure which way the conflict would turn, but it seemed as though it was turning into a real war.

  At Wit’thod village however, life carried on, and Koruk had his own much stranger battle to fight.

  Koruk stared at the pictographs drawn in the sand as Oben put aside the drawing stick and leaned back, stretching his back. It was… fascinating. The world was depicted there, and the two moons, as circles, or as Oben has described them, globes. It seemed that Oben was somehow living above the world in the heavens on a boat of some kind, which travelled around the world by sailing on top of the blue sky as a normal boat would sail on the water. The concept made his head hurt. He was never much of a mariner, nor were his tribe.

  Oben had explained, through a combination of pictographs, props, and broken orcish, that this boat had come under attack. Something down on the ground had struck at it, and the dragon egg they found had fallen out of the boat and landed on the ground with him in it.

  Koruk looked up from his pondering at Oben, who was apparently of some race called “hu-mans”, and the latter gazed back at him hopefully.

  “So, this boat you came on from far away, it’s still up there in the sky?”

  Oben nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yes, maybe. I not know. I fall before...” Oben stopped, thought a moment, and then pointed to the fire and made a whoosh noise.

  “Before, fire? Before the boat caught fire?”

  Oben nodded.

  “And the boat, you came from very far away right?”

  “Yes, big far.”

  “Why? I mean, why did you sail here?”

  Oben was silent for a bit. Did he not understand, or was he just not expecting the question? Eventually he answered.

  “I come, I look at world. Um, big look. Look at rock, look at… uh… look at water. Look at orc. Look at moon. Not come for fight, but whoosh, arrow hit boat, now here now… now here.” Oben said, articulating his words with his hands as he spoke.

  “You came to look... at everything, to explore?”

  Oben nodded. Koruk pondered it a bit more. It seemed unbelievable, and he wondered if it was some strange error in translation. He had never learned another language before, although the orcs from down south spoke a strange dialect and he had heard it when their traders came to visit. The human’s tongue was extremely alien compared to that, but it did have a strange sort of familiarity, and they found themselves picking up each others words quicker than he thought would be possible.

  “Ilkanis” was apparently the name of Oben’s tribe, and tririd was his… rank? Or the date of his birth? Everything about the man’s culture seemed incomprehensible. Koruk wondered at what sort of world he must have come from.