Waiting . . .

They're working on my equipment now. The yela'kaja told me that he plans to have me going by the third coaxrota. I'm not quite sure what that means, but apparently it equates to a few more days. Not that it's not entertaining walking around my level and dodging Xala as they land on the ledge and run onward into the corridor like chickens. And I do mean chickens, as they're build a lot like birds, so they run that way. They fly a bit different, I think they have to get higher up to glide at all. They're constantly flapping their wings while they maintain altitude, and the minute they stop flapping they drop fast. I think that's why they build their flying buildings with the big central shaft. They're good divers, and their quickest way in or out of a place is down.

But for all their scurrying around and their furious flapping in flight, they're so slow, too. This whole place is slow. It's taken this long for them to start trying on my equipment. They gave me a little piece of metal that fits over my ear with a little purple crystal in it. They told me it would give me some telepathic communication, which I didn't really want people in my head. But they also told me it would help me operate their devices, which I thought was good because I still have to concentrate hard to get my window to open and shut, or turn on this stupid crystal in my Ethernet card that sends the signal across the dimensions back to Earth.

They're also planning to arm me, as well as the yela'kaja. I don't understand their language, but I've come to learn a little about them, and I'm pretty sure that when the guys making my stuff looked at my hands and feet and took a look at my teeth that their hissing sounds meant something was unacceptable. The yela'kaja explained to me that the Xala don't have a concept of "armed and dangerous". Between the claws on their wings, the big talons on their feet, and their strong beaks they could probably take a fully armored swat cop like a professional wrestler could take a ten-year-old boy.

And they know how to use it, too. Despite all their technology, Xala still hunt for their food. In packs, too. I watched a group of them a few minutes ago. They hunt in the same groups that they work with and live with, what the yela'kaja calls krâdo. And when they go out to hunt, they don't bring any equipment they weren't born with. The pack I saw was circling over the woods, looking for something to bring home. I watched them fly around, going down to see things more clearly, then rising to meet his friend as they circled around with big Coaxta and its faint rings in the background, that huge gas giant that takes up a third of the sky, waiting to spot something.

Directly one of them signaled the others, I was too far to hear him squawk but I know one of them had to, and they formed a nice little formation. There were eight of them hunting, and five of them dove into the trees first. I think they were surrounding their prey while the other three dropped like stones right on top of it. I never thought I'd see an intelligent being hunt game that way. When humans hunt, we're out in the woods alone, or maybe with one other person, and we fire at the animal from a distance, letting the bullet or arrow do it's work. Xala do their killing up close, clamping down with their beaks and holding on tight with their claws. A very primal way of killing, an animal way.

Maybe that's what makes them so infuriatingly slow and patient. Maybe they had to develop this patience, with the hunting ritual, and the damn slowness of their work, just to endure this place. The sky hasn't even changed since I got here, nor will it change for over a week until the sun rises. Has never moved an inch in the sky, not since I got here and not in the thousands of years the Xala have been here. On a really clear day sometimes you can see the cloud bands moving and big storms blowing up there, but it feels so unnatural for something to hang in the sky for days, apparently alive but never leaving its designated spot.

But, philosophical thoughts aside, I hope they can get my stuff together and get me out going somewhere. I understand they have design my gun from scratch, and probably some of the rest of it, as they did with the ear thingy. But I've got to get going.

That hunting group I was talking about just now came out of the trees. They took their time getting their prey down like they take their time at everything else. Looks like they're carrying two big lizards in. Probably be a feast tonight where they perch. Not that the word tonight means anything where it takes well more than a month to see two sunrises and the only thing like a moon is always in the same place no matter when. I suppose I should be feeling a bit like a prisoner, like they won't even give me the tour but just keep me here forever. But I trust the yela'kaja, despite the other Xala are so difficult to think of as being anything like a human. I'm just a little impatient.