"We had reached a state of desperation," KexobakVerkok1 wrote in his seminal English-language memoir A New Home for My People: The Founding of DuaTemoa.
Despite myself, I was not immune to the growing xmopko2 among my people. How else could an Areian such as myself react to the dwindling number of voices in my heart each day? And so the situation worsened itself.
At the time, I disagreed with the grdaxotedo3 as to the Human role in our suffering. The Humans did not wrest us from our red nests. The Humans did not force us across the cold expanse. The Humans simply built insular lives in their ahabgek4 towers to the measures of their own comforts. How were they to know that their lives and customs and constructions would be hostile to our very beings?
I digress. I mean to speak of happier moments.
In the Human year 2149, I was part of a delegation invited to the island of Crete by the Greek government. The dxrvudek5 of the time declared the invitation an attempt at 'softening us up' (to use a rather silly idiom) in order to learn any secrets we may have brought with us. It was obvious to me that this was not the case. The Areian need for ayoek6 was common knowledge among Humans at that time. It was pure kindness that crafted our invite to the site of one of the oldest ruins in Europe. After all, love over time can bring life much as what we refer to as "creation adoration" does.
It is this point in my story that has been somewhat mythologized. I was not possessed by the padeapexegubva7 of my species, nor did I sense a soul crying out. The disappointing truth is that I was a victim of my own curiosity. While my yuoxeduk8 accepted the well-meaning regards of the Tylissian people, I excused myself to walk among the town's ruins. While crouched in a sedimentation basin looking into what I thought was a drain of some sort, I was struck by the xmopko and lost consciousness. Down I went.
I awoke to love. The kind of love that crackles against skin, love you cannot help but reciprocate; after all, what is more worthy of adoration that something that adores in kind? There was no light, of course, but there didn't need to be. When I came to upon the warm stone floor, I could follow the pulsing emotion across the walls and ceilings like Terran echolocation.
I am not so calloused as to be believe in ujgaovedoa9; and yet, according to my yuoxeduk, I fluoresced when I emerged from under ground. If anything could drive me to that state, it would be the hours I spent in those hallways, feeling the joy vibrate from unseen heights to unimaginable depths. There were buildings below us, I told them, with ayoek unfelt since home. They tore away from me in disbelief, but I persisted, pulling them into the corridor that had opened up at my behest. I had the pleasure of watching them feel what I felt. And so the news spread.
In later chapters, I will delve into the minutae of how this adoring ruin became DuaTemoa10. I promise to leave out no detail, however slight. But before we speak of land treaties and construction, please dwell with me for a moment on the first glimmer of hope we had since arriving here. Picture, if you will, the group of us running with joy through the halls of our new home, beating out a rhythm against the walls whose reciprocity we felt with every step.