All He Left Behind

As the village elder, Nia knew that these days wouldn't last. This snowstorm was but a harbinger of the disaster to come.
The false rebellion had already demanded their men of them. The storms had ruined their fields. In all her years, things had never been this bad.
Now, there was little hope she'd be able to keep her promise.
Not since He walked the Soon had she felt such anxiety.
"Village Elder!" a young voice shouted into the candle-lit room. "There's a person! A human!"
Nia turned to the youth, slow yet respectful, and spoke gentle words: "I shall prepare them a grave."
For any individual to have journeyed to this land during such terrible times, luck must not have been with them.
No one had foreseen this. No one had caused this.
It was simply bad luck.
Yet the youth wore not a remorseful expression.

"No, Village Elder. They're alive."
"What!?"

Nia, in her age, knew a much. What she knew was the past, and what she didn't know, well... that was the future.

"We think they have His weapon."

◇ ◇ ◇

"Via mi?"
"Chimi vi soona malo!"
"Milo milobi"

An unfamiliar sound pulls me from a deep sleep.
With drool dripping down my cheek, my eyes drift over to the bedside table.
"So noisy..." I yawn. "......huh?"
I bolt upright. This isn't my bed!
"Na-!?" A pair of women scream in surprise.
Huh? What? Why are there people watching me sleep?
I look around the room in confusion.
Oh right, I was in a snowstorm. I started wandering around, but then I realised it'd be hard to report the cube to lost & found if I didn't know where it was, so I turned back to pick it up.
It was too hot to carry, so I took off my jacket and used it like a pair of oven mitts.
Then I-...... What did I do next?
I don't remember...

"Larila vi chi do oku ma!"
"Mularigai vi shihaida ma."

As I think to myself, the two strangers seem to be having a disagreement.
They look a bit odd to me. Their hair, strikingly light; their eyes, an unfamiliar blue.
I don't understand anything they're saying.
Did I hit my head that badly? Or, like I theorised before, have I ended up in some other country?
My girlfriend always worried whenever I hit my head. She said it'd make me dumber, but I was always kinda dumb. It runs in the family.
I told her that once, and she hit me over the head.
"Our child won't be a dummy!" she chided.
I think that hit made me a bit smarter. I learned to keep my mouth shut, sometimes.
So here I am, keeping my mouth shut, watching two ladies bicker in a language I don't understand.
Before long, one of them leaves the room, leaving me in an awkward position. The remaining onlooker wears a nervous glare.
"Umm..." To the stranger, I plead. "Can you, uh... stop staring at me."
With a blush, the girl hurriedly turns away.
...how did that make things even more awkward!?
Thankfully, the door behind her opens and the other girl walks back in. Shortly after, an old lady follows, then, without missing a beat, the one who was stuck with me begins chatting away to them, occasionally glancing back at me.
Ugh, this reminds me of being in school. The popular girls would always glance over at me and start gossiping. If you ever asked what they were talking about, they'd just giggle and plead innocence.
Girls this age are the same in every country, huh?
I'm grateful for the elder woman, who raises her hand and asks the girl to stop. I don't understand her words, but it's obvious what she means. "Be quiet, the grown-ups need to talk."
Well, maybe the nuance is different to what I'm imagining...
She sits down on a wooden chair beside me and peers into my eyes as if to discern my nature through sight alone. Clearly, that doesn't work, so instead, she begins to ask questions.
"State your name. What village do you hail from?" she demands.
Oh, thank god; someone I can understand! "Ven Hildna. I, um, I don't come from a village."
The lady pauses for a moment, then continues.

"What country do you call home?"
"Right now? Germany. Not always, but-"
"So the clothes you wear..."
"I- what? My clothes?"

She cut me off with a pretty strange comment. What's wrong with my clothes?
I'll have you know I spent a lot of time picking out my wardrobe! I mean, I was forced to, but still...
Although now that I think about it, the other people in the room look like they're a few hundred years behind current fashion trends.
Also, hang on, the girl from before understood what I said too, didn't she? I asked her to look away and she did.
"...Tell me, what planet do you stand upon?" the old woman asks.
"Uh..." Hearing such an oddball question gives me pause. "I'm on Earth, right? I should be..."
The girl from before raises her voice. "You're the traveller's kin! Why? Why have you come here!?"
Her friend takes her hand. "Arya, let the village elder speak."
She (Arya, it seems) begrudgingly listens to her friend's advice.
So uh... I'm talking with a village elder. Cool.
"I will ask you to explain yourself. In return, we shall explain ourselves." Or so the lady says.
"Thank the Soon for our generosity." She raises a hand towards me. "Even in this cold, our hearts are not yet dead."
And with a degree of force on her part, we shake hands on the deal.
...I still don't know what's going on.

◇ ◇ ◇

I explained what little I knew. I was heading to work, picked up a thing, suddenly found myself in a snowstorm, and then probably passed out.
I started out by giving a detailed recountment of events, but after my explanation of an alarm clock was cut short by a cold, "we know", I reduced it to a bullet point list of events.
The lady didn't seem to believe me, but she said there was no harm in telling me about the world I ended up in.
Yes, a world. One different to Earth, yet one very aware of Earth.
She explained such things not in a matter-of-fact scientific way, but by telling me a story. I figure it's her duty as the village elder to stick to traditional folklore in these cases.
To dumb her flowery mythos down into words I can remember, it went a bit like this...

A long time ago, a star named Soon arrived. It burrowed into the sky and became the sun.
It brought along something named 'Larila'. I think that means 'people' or 'life' or something.
Anyway, whenever Soon shone, Larila grew. When Soon set, Larila slept.
One day, Soon rose up into the sky and shone down on the land, as usual, but... Larila didn't wake.
Soon cried, it began to rain, and where Larila slept, Larila was born.

That last part is almost identical to how the village elder told it. The rest of it, I might've simplified. It's a creation myth, we all know these kinds of stories. Every civilisation has one.
But this isn't a creation myth that exists on Earth, because this planet I'm on now... it's named Larila.
The star in the sky above isn't named Sol or Helios, but Soon.
So then, I had to ask...

"You can all understand me, right? Even though you have your own language..."

It was the obvious question. This lady speaks it. Those younger girls nod along to it. But even on Earth, there isn't a single language that everyone understands.
"We all do, whether we want to or not." The old woman turned and stood up out of her chair. "It's in all He left behind."
Those words, I didn't understand.
We may be speaking the same language, but this is still another world.
I won't understand everything immediately, will I? That'd be asking too much.
But... who is 'He'?