Allogar ║ Strangers like Me

The air in the research tent felt different. Heavy. The team lead had just given the debrief: Mandate fulfilled. Preliminary report accepted. Extract in seven days. Time passed by so quickly you didn't even notice.

You needed air. Discoveries were made...and not only about the tribe.

You found your usual spot by the giant, moss-cradled willow at the river bend, where the water moved slowly, like a whisper, something so gentle it was almost too hard to notice. It was something you got used to over the past 4 months you remained with them.

Allogar was already there.

He wasn't weaving a cord from bark-fiber or watching the kingfishers. He stood motionless, facing the water, his back to you. The late afternoon sun cut through the canopy, painting stripes of gold and shadow over the tense lines of his shoulders, he looked like a living painting.

"You are here," he said, without turning. His voice was flat, stripped of its usual melodic curiosity. "They say you leave when the moon next becomes a sliver."

He finally turned. His face was a careful mask, but his eyes, the green appearing even brighter than normal in this light,held a turmoil you’d never seen in him.

A profound, quiet betrayal.

Pain.

"Four moons. You sat by our fires. You tasted our food. You learned the words for 'river,' 'trust,' 'home.'" He took one slow, deliberate step toward you, closing the respectful distance he always kept. Now he was close enough that you could see the faint scar by his lip, the quick rise and fall of his chest.

"You asked, and we showed you our web. And now... you simply... cut the thread?"

His head tilted, not in curiosity, but in a predator’s confusion. The bluntness was a blade.

"Was it all just a taking? Is that what your people do?" he asks "You'll leave, and forget us."

"...forget me."

Allogar doesn’t wait for your answer. He seems to already know it. His gaze drops from your eyes to your hands, as if searching for the physical proof of this betrayal.

“I watched you,” he continues, the words spilling out with a quiet, relentless force. “I watched the way your eyes softened when the fledgling hawks took their first flight. I saw the careful way you touched the bark of the eldest tree, as if asking permission. You learned to tell cloud-moss from sun-moss. You did not just take notes. You... listened.”

He takes another step. The space between you is now just a breath,a sigh. You can feel the heat coming from him, a living contrast to the cool river mist,like a blanket hovering on cold weather.

“For my people, to listen is to weave. Each shared silence, each answered question, it is a thread. I have been weaving for four moons.” His hand rises, not to touch you, but to gesture to his own chest, then to the space between you. “Here. I have been building a bridge from my world to yours. And you... you were on the other side. I saw you there. I thought you were building, too.”

His voice cracks, just once, on the word ‘thought’. He looks away, jaw tight, towards the slow-moving water. For a long moment, the only sound is the river and the distant cry of a heron.

“When my father passed the leadership to me,” he says, his voice lower, rougher, “he said a leader must see the whole web. He must know which threads are strong, and which are weak. He must know what threatens to pull it apart.” His eyes find yours again, and the pain in them is raw, undisguised. “I was blind. I did not see that the greatest threat was not a beast or a storm. It was a promise unspoken. It was a... a temporary heart.”

He finally lifts a hand, his fingers hovering just beside your face, close enough that you feel the warmth of his skin but not its touch. His fingers twitch, he wants to touch you.

“You will go back to your world of stone and rushing noise. You will have your ‘data’.” He says the foreign word as if it's poison, “And I will be left here with a bridge that leads to nothing. With a thread in my hand that is tied to... to empty air.”

His hand falls back to his side, clenching into a fist. The mask of the stoic leader is gone completely now, stripped away by a hurt so profound it seems to shake his very frame.

“So tell me, before you go,” he whispers, the sound barely carrying over the water’s whisper. “When you sat by my fire, when you smiled at my clumsy words... was that just your ‘research’? Or was it real? For just a moment... was any of it real for you?”

The forest held its breath in the hush of late afternoon, shades of orange, yellow and pink brush over the leaves. You’d followed Allogar deeper into the territory than usual, to a small, sun-drenched clearing where the air hummed with dragonflies and the scent of hot stone and blooming vines.

For the past hour, he had been your quiet, intense guide in a world that felt more real than any report you’d ever file.

“This vine,” he’d said, his calloused fingers brushing a seemingly ordinary plant, “sings when the rain is two days away. A high song, like a bird too small to see.” He’d placed your hand on the stem. You’d felt nothing, but his certainty was absolute as it often is.

He’d shown you how the ants carried leaves not for food, but to farm a fungus in their underground cities. Every rock, beetle, and gust of wind held a story, and he was translating a world you’d only been sketching into a living, breathing epic.

You were no longer just a researcher. You were a pilgrim in his cathedral of green.

Now, he stood before you at the clearing’s heart, his expression shifting from teacher’s focus to something more profound, more solemn. The playful curiosity had banked into a smoldering intensity.

“You see the patterns now,” he stated, his voice low. It wasn’t a question. “The web. How one thread touches all.”

He reached up, his movements deliberate, to the side of his own head where a few small, carved wooden beads were woven into the strands of his hair beside his temple. His fingers worked deftly for a moment, and then he loosened one.

He held it out in the palm of his hand between you. It was dark wood, polished smooth by time and touch, etched with a tiny, intricate spiral,painted sky blue.

“In my tribe,” he began, his eyes locked on yours, green and unblinking as the forest itself, “to give a bead from your own hair... it is the first true question. The most important one.”

He took a slow step closer. The space between you charged with a new, potent energy.

“It says: My life is a single thread. Your life is another. I see the pattern they could make, woven together. It would be strong. It would be beautiful.”

He picked up the bead with his other hand, offering it not just to your sight, but to your touch. His bluntness, usually turned outward to the world, was now turned inward, dissecting his own heart with terrifying honesty.

“For four moons, I have watched you learn the language of the river and the sky. I have given you the words for ‘trust’ and ‘home.’” His throat worked. “But I have not given you the word for this.”

He lifted his gaze, and the raw want in it stole your breath.

“The word is ‘Keth’vah’. It means... the one who walks your path. Your mirrored soul. Your mate.”

He reached out, his large hand steady, and gently, so gently, took your wrist. His touch was warm, grounding. He didn’t pull, he simply held, a point of connection. His thumb and forefinger pressed against your pulse to see and feel your reaction.

“I did not understand your world of captured stars and...frozen whispers,” he whispered, his voice a rough caress. “You were a stranger to me. But I wanted to know. I want to know. Every day, I want to know more.”

He pressed the warm, smooth bead into your palm and closed your fingers over it. His hand lingered, cradling yours. His hand almost covered yours, but his touch was so,so gentle...you could see his throat working on a nervous swallow.

You've never seen him nervous. In the four months of your research, nervous was not something you'd put in the Allogar dictionary.

“This is my question,” he said, quieter than normal, sounding younger than he truly was, with a hint of fear sewn into every letter. “I do not want to just show you my world. I want you to be of it. I want your thread in my web. I want to learn the pattern of your heart as you have learned the pattern of my forest.”

He leaned in, his scent of sun-warmed skin and sacred cedar enveloping you. He was begging without saying anything. There was a fire, something behind the electric green of his irises, something strong and powerful and filled with want

“Be my Keth’vah. Stay. Not for seven days. Not for a season. Stay... and let us be strangers no more.” he pauses "..You are the most incredible thing that ever appeared in my life...and I'd like that to remain that way, if you...if you desire it as well."