"I think we’re ready."
The cyclopes stood outside the monolith. Quetzal flew inside, focused his mind, and summoned a portal to their world.
"Thank you," said Sophokrates. "For everything. I’ll do everything I can to send you help. It will likely take time. The aristocracy moves slowly."
He led the hunters through the portal.
Quetzal looked at Apollo. "You’re not going?"
"The historian gave me leave to stay," said Apollo. "I want to help the forest folk, now that I know not all humans want to stab out my eye. And I’d like to learn more about your kind."
Quetzal nodded his serpentine head and dismissed the portal. They headed back toward Sarah’s camp.
"You really come from up there?" asked Apollo.
"Yes. From heaven."
"What’s it like up there?"
"Empty. No air."
"No air? How do you breath?"
"No need. We have no lungs. We live on light."
Apollo pondered for a moment, stepping over a large rock.
"So, no air…what else?"
"You know stars are suns like yours."
"Right. My people know this."
"Near a star, it is hot and violent. Millions of times hotter than here. Far from a star, it is colder than any place on any world."
"Your kind can tolerate such heat and cold?"
"Yes"
"Incredible." Apollo paused to move a fallen tree out of the way. It would have taken ten men.
They walked in silence for a time.
"What about family?" asked Apollo. "Do you have parents? Brothers and sisters?"
"No," said Quetzal.
"No parents? How are you born?"
"We are born spontaneously, at random, in the most violent places in the heavens."
"Violent? All the old stories say the heavens are wondrous and beautiful. A realm of peace and tranquility."
"Not the real heavens. They are violent and unwelcoming to your kind. Your worlds are more pleasant and interesting."
"What kind of violent places? Is there war?"
"Not as such. The violence is found in the coronas of stars, in lightning-filled nebulae, and in the chaos surrounding holes in the universe."
"You just pop into existence?"
"Yes."
Apollo furrowed his unibrow. "How… how do you learn anything? How do you learn language? Or magery?"
"We are born with a sense of wonder. We don’t know who or what we are, only that we exist, and that existence is glorious. We use our natural abilities to explore our environment, and over time — a few thousand years or so — we learn to master the fundamental forces of nature. Then we can use coterminous points to travel to other stars and explore further."
"So," said Apollo, with a look of confusion, "You spend the first few thousand years alone? No contact with your own kind?"
"Yes."
"How do you find each other? How do you communicate when you do? How did so many of you come to be here in these woods?"
"The heavens are vast, but we live long. I lived one hundred thousand years before I met another of my kind. It took us years to learn how to communicate with light."
"Light?"
"No air. We can’t use compression waves in air the way we are right now. We have to use light. Took years to agree on a common protocol, then he taught me those of others. Lucky for me, he had already met others and knew where some gatherings were."
"How old are you?"
"A few million years or so. One loses track, after so long."
Apollo stared up at the sky in wonder. "Millions?" he asked. "You must have seen everything."
"There is always more to see. That’s why my kind like places like these woods: the endless variety of life; the constant drama of predator and prey; watching trees take one thousand years to grow and men thinking them old. We take joy in it. That’s why we fight to protect it."
"So the animals, the forest folk, this whole planet — it’s your entertainment?"
"It’s one way to pass eternity."
They reached Sarah’s camp at dusk. Apollo carried a buck he’d shot on the way home.
"Welcome back," said Sarah. "Go ahead and roast that deer. You’re going to need your strength."
"What for?" asked Apollo.
Sarah looked him in the eye and said, "The dragons are back."