The first time one encounters a
living, breathing Coryllim can be unnerving. Terrans are just not used to mobile
sentient beings with what appears to be tree bark for skin. The four arms and
four legs don’t help much either in the reassuring category. But I think it’s
the one big green eye and the long, moving ears that really do it.
I have become fast friends with Ardine,
the highly intelligent Corporeal Assets Director for Lumina Corporation. This powerful
woman-in-command is a witty conversationalist, and can be completely charming.
She’s considered exceptionally beautiful because of her remarkably long ears
and dainty black hooves.
She usually greets newcomers to
Luna in abyt, the language of her people, then switches into any one of several
languages. Aware that the first face-to-face meeting can be unsettling, she
usually stands patiently for a few moments that can seem like an eternity,
raising and lowering the two long drooping auricles on the side of her
bark-covered, pecan-shaped head, tolerantly scanning the room in her single
oblong green eye, fixing faces with names in her mind. Then, pivoting her
stiff, pear-shaped body slightly from side to side, she will slowly lift one
stemmy chestnut brown leg, plant the first of four black hooves firmly down and
clip-clop elegantly to the podium. She usually reaches out with two half-webbed,
six-fingered hands to grasp the shiny black plastalloy podium sides, and opens
her two other arms wide in greeting. Her ears and snout turn rosy brown as she
gives the newcomers her most fetching smile, small pink lips pulled back from
beaming white incisors just below her reddish brown snout. When her concise
welcoming speech is concluded, she turns, folds all four arms against her
trunk, and walks slowly toward the door from which she had entered. There’s
usually a hushed gasp at this point from a few Terrans who are noted by
Ardine’s other elongated green eye, the one in the back of her bark-covered
head.
Intelligent, dexterous, clever
and personable, the Coryllim are the entrepreneurs of the Anthelion Galaxy. Small
and large business owners proliferate in Luna City and the two Terran space
stations. Le Club Aérobleu on Luna is noted for its fine cuisine. And in the legendary
Star Lounge in the high orbit station, which features delicacies from each of
the Seven Worlds, you will often find little Coryllim saplini, slightly over three feet tall, prancing about making
themselves useful and learning the business. You can tell from their reedy
greenish brown color and size they are not fully mature. As the saplini begin to show signs of adulthood,
creamy cashew colored streaks run vertically along their elongated bodies and their
ears and snout turn light brown.
It’s a little-known fact that Coryllim
are absolutely entranced by pumpkin pie. In fact, it’s addictive to them. I
always bring a fresh pie with me for my several Coryllim friends in the fall when
I visit Luna, even though the cost to transfer that kind of weight into orbit and
the care to keep it safe from the g-forces of the journey, make it a demanding task.
Of course, when Ardine comes to Terra for a visit, I make it a feature of our
evening meal.
I’m sure you too will find the Coryllim to be interesting friends and guests once you let them "get under your bark” as they say.
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