My Scrolian friend held his shrunken mother in the basket at the end of his trunk. I had seen him hold his infant daughter the same way. Somehow I’d convinced him I just wanted to know about his species. I didn’t want to profit from the knowledge.

 

“Your people put our pictures in magazines,” he had snorted through his seventh loin, the most disgusted noise he could make.

 

He had been summoned to attend his mother’s deathrite and asked me to be his pilot. He would have asked a fellow Scrolian; he hoped I understood. But our mining outpost only boasted one and he was it.

 

His suspicion of my species lasted most of our journey to his home planet. I asked a lot of questions and he answered more than I expected. He grew quieter the closer he came to home.

 

After we touched down and greeted his wife and daughter, we strolled to a large room. Windows looked out at the hills south of his city. Fleshy strings of what looked like orchid petals hung from the ceiling. The fragrance lifted my spirits and reminded me of moist, Georgian summers.

 

My friend towered ten feet above me. His wrapping pulsed various shades of red. He had explained it wasn’t like skin because he could take it off. It was physiologically connected to him, but it didn’t keep his organs in place or protect him from anything. I had learned to read his inner thoughts and emotions from it.

 

“Tell me what’s happening,” I begged.

 

“She’s leaving her body. Last time I saw her she was your size.”

 

Only my head would fit in his trunk-basket. “So shrinking is part of leaving?” Where does she go?”

 

He pulsed black. Bad question. Even with his habituation, he offended easily.

 

“I’m sorry,” I blushed. Would he understand it as pulsing? Was it the right colour? “Tell me the way you want.”

 

“Over the next days she will grow smaller. She is here,” he flicked one of his long eyelids at the fleshy strings, “to complete her life. At that point I will no longer be able to hold her. The least touch would destroy her.”

 

“My people call it ‘death’” I murmured reverently. No matter what you believed happened after “transition,” everyone agreed something familiar stopped and the unfamiliar began.

 

Another Scrolian entered and pulsed many colours at my friend. More and more of what I took to be family members filled the room. A low hum began. Harmony grew at the minor third like keening.

 

I took a place at the back on a window ledge. I didn’t want to be trampled, nor did I want to intrude or be noticed. I hoped my friend explained my presence and desire to be respectful.

 

 

He was the largest Scrolian there until the crowd parted and someone twice his height strolled toward him. This giant pulsed and touched his trunk-basket to my friend’s who tenderly transferred his mother to the larger basket.

 

I glimpsed that she had shrunk even more. The transfer seemed to signal much red pulsing and touching of a central group around my friend. The keening swelled. I stood it as long as I could and finally covered my ears. No one looked at me.

 

I had so many questions. When did she start to shrink? When did they know to call my friend home? Who were all the Scrolians? Who was the giant? Why did he take my friend’s mother? Where did his mother go if they understood death as a “leaving”?

 

The next I looked at my friend, I thought he had regrown his mother in his trunk-basket. A pink, wiggling form waved its many boot-footed legs in the air from the mesh at the end of his trunk.

 

His wife leaning tight against him touched trunks with the body in my friend’s basket. Ah! I remembered. His infant daughter. The three of them entwined their eyelids and their wrappings pulsed in concert.

 

The keening swelled, seeming to signal the crowd to lift their noses to the petal things draping the ceiling. Moisture seemed to mist down from them. The infant hung above the crowd in her daddy’s basket and I blinked to see an infant in every fifth or sixth basket.

 

The keening changed. More percussive noises, clicking, rattling, and punctuated buzzing mingled with the hum.

 

All sound ceased. All motion too. I gazed on a pictograph of Scrolians huddled together, wrapped in throbbing colours, trunks to the ceiling.

 

After a long while, when I had almost lost feeling in my toes from standing on them, a white, flat, sparkly petal fluttered up from the giant’s trunk-basket.

 

My mouth dropped open. Had my friend’s mother shrunk that much?

 

The petal fluttered like a butterfly among the others coating the ceiling. She touched them with her edges, like butterfly kisses.

 

The crowd emitted tiny clicking sounds. I recognised them from my friend’s peculiar sense of humour. Gentle noises of celebration and joy pulsed in their yellow and green wrappings.

 

My friend burst out purple all over. The next instant, the white petal touched another petal on a long strand. Space opened between two petals. She joined herself to the string, taking her place.

 

On the way back to the mining post, my friend answered more questions. He still refused to have his image captured.

 

Yes, the tallest Scrolian had to lift his mother to the strings. Yes, we had been surrounded by the “dead.” Generations of Scrolians hung on that ceiling and one day he would too. Would I still promise not to sell the story to a magazine?