A Handful of Time by Rosel George Brown

stared openly and starkly, like a cat or a child. It was because they had no eyelids and in sleep the pupils contracted to shut out the light. The eyes were covered with a thick, translucent lens.
    She spoke‌—‌a stream of glottal noises that sounded a little like German. Behind the noise: of her speech was the muffled power of the sea sound.
    I spoke, simply because it would seem ungracious not to, and she nodded her smooth, silver head, a gesture which I took to mean she did not understand me.
    She handed me a white, stone bowl of liquid, which I drank. It was the same as I had had before. It tasted a little like barley. It was warm and good.
    She pointed at some material hung over the back of my couch, rose and left the room. I noticed then that I had been covered with a sheet of soft fiber. I stood and put on what was obviously a garment. It was of a simple design of the sort found over and over in temperate climates. It was two pieces of material clasped at the shoulders and tied up at the waist with a sash. It was a little long, for these people were taller than I, but I pulled it over the sash at the waist and found it quite comfortable.
    I wondered whether I should go out. It occurred to me that I was still barefooted and I looked about the couch and found a pair of sandals. They were large but the leather thongs held them on securely.
    It would be better to stay where I was, I decided. Obviously the natives were friendly and solicitous of me, but I had no way of knowing what taboos I might break merely by the way I tied my sash or the position in which I held my arms.
    I was, I noticed, not in a room but in a tent. The floor was sand. Green sand, rather coarse, and flashing like emerald where the sun caught it. For all I cared it could be emeralds. I could take nothing back with me in my window-less monad. Nothing but my knowledge, that is.
    The tent was white leather, well made and carefully stitched. My first deduction was that I had found a desert nomad culture. There was the tent and the sand. But I had a vague memory of trees, where I had landed. And when I looked closely at the furniture I saw it was such as no pack animal could carry. The table and couch were solid rock, though the couch was, of course, cushioned.
    I tried to lift the table, for I was amazed at how heavy it looked. I could not budge it. I dug down in the sand to find that it was carved from the living stone. So was the couch.
    This was no nomad culture. There was the soup, too. A nomad culture does not cultivate grain, though of course they could steal it from neighboring peoples.
    Still, despite the embedded furniture, there was a feeling of transience about the room. Perhaps I had been put into a vacant tent. Perhaps that was why there was nothing personalized about it. No unguent jars, no stray clothing hung up, no pictures, no statuary, no weapons.
    But there was something about the tent that kept recalling the girl. The odor. That was it. A light fragrance that had been strong when she was near and I had only now remembered it. An odor like the crushed leaves of some plant whose name I had forgotten. An odor, really, more like herbs than flowers.
    I hoped she would come back. There had been a grace and gentleness about her I had liked. The way she had offered the soup. The casualness with which she had spoken‌—‌simply to give me the reassurance of speech. And the modesty she had displayed in leaving the room when I dressed. Even these little things had told me a lot about the culture in which I found myself.
    I heard the deep, sighing sea sound again and three natives entered. Not the girl. I discovered then where the sound came from. It was the noise they made breathing.
    Then began the long, slow process of learning the language. If only I could have brought a linguaphone with me, it would have been merely a matter of hours. But an explorer can take nothing but his body and mind in a windowless monad. That is the challenge