Page 6 of I Married A Syllen

Mirella

My eyes darted this way and that as I walked excitedly along the path of Etreya’s Botanical Garden. They appropriately named it after the Syllen Great Mother, goddess of land, home, family, fertility, and love. Even five days after my arrival, I still had to pinch myself to accept that I truly was finally here on Mazeria.

For years, I tried in vain to obtain a visa to come live on this planet. Due to the Prime Directive, they had enforced insanely strict rules as to who could set foot here. You would think that someone who possessed a PhD in xenobotany like me would have a much easier time of it. I learned the hard way that there was no such thing. Unless you were a student at Acadia, the elite college for those studying in intergalactic law and xenosciences, you were pretty much shit out of luck.

Granted, the extensive protections for this wondrous primitive world genuinely pleased me. It just sucked being on the receiving end of those restrictions.

When a position that exactly fit my profile opened at Pirenei Corporation, I thought my time had finally come, only to be utterly crushed when they turned me down. It had been all the more devastating that I passed through every single round of interviews, the last one having gone so well I briefly thought they would offer me the job right on the spot. To this day, I still didn’t understand what went wrong for them to ultimately decline my candidacy.

Just when I thought all was lost, a miracle occurred with the opening of a xenobotany adjunct professor position at Acadia. I nearly broke my neck running to apply for it. The only reason that opportunity even came about was specifically the reason I had been dying to come to this world.

The Syllens were awakening.

The Chair of the department, Professor Peter Ludwig, had been appointed as the head of the taskforce who would be in charge of establishing a relationship with this mythical species. Therefore, he pre-emptively cut down on his workload to free his schedule so that he could shoulder this incredible new responsibility. I would have given my left tit and right leg just for the privilege of being a fly on the wall during their discussions and meetings.

I didn’t know how close I would ever get to seeing or even interacting with the indigenous people of Mazeria, but one thing at a time. Getting here had been the biggest hurdle. Now, I just needed not to screw this up and prove to my boss what an invaluable expert I was on the Syllens.

When I first hinted at the possibility of joining the task force, I was gently—if not condescendingly—reminded that I was still too junior for such a role. It took every ounce of my willpower not to prove to the recruiting panel that I likely knew far more about Syllens than they did. Thankfully, I managed to hold my tongue. The challenge for me would be not to come across as an obnoxious know-it-all.

I didn’t believe myself to be such a person, but I devoted my entire life to learning everything possible about this dryad-merman hybrid species. I became obsessed with them the first time I learned of their existence in high school. Since then, I went on to study aquatic botany on Triton, the homeworld of the Thalan Sikarians. They were a merfolk species that shared many physical similarities with the Syllens, including the fanned ears and the skirt around their waist to hide their modesty. Afterwards, I pursued my studies on Zailia, the Edocit homeworld. This dryad species shared the other anatomical traits of the Syllens, with the vines in their ‘hair’ and limbs, as well as the swirling patterns carved onto their skins called yevins.

Although I had never set foot here before, I had devoured every bit of literature about the flora and fauna of this world. It blew me away to discover that many of the plants here appeared to be close or distant cousins of the vegetation from both those worlds. I didn’t doubt for a minute that explorers from those two species ventured here at some point in their ancient history.

And all this acquired knowledge largely fueled my growing annoyance with our guide.

The man was generally pleasant, with that somewhat forced enthusiasm of someone who had repeated the same spiel ad nauseam and was now only going through the motions. His lack of excitement didn’t bother me. In fact, a part of me empathized with him as I couldn’t see myself doing this day in and day out for years on end. It was the inaccuracy of some of the information he shared that I found grating.

It was nothing major, but my OCD started twitching every time he would miscategorize a plant, inaccurately describe its role in the Syllen culture, or tell anecdotes that were completely made-up.

However, one of the guests in our tour group was seriously getting on my last nerve. The stocky human male in his mid-forties was that typical obnoxious jokester who never got out of his frat boy phase. On top of being loud, he seized every opportunity to make inappropriate jokes or innuendos, then glanced around to see who he had managed to offend. That idiot was not only clearly an attention whore, but everything about him screamed bully. I didn’t doubt he was hoping someone would call him out on his bullshit just so that he could try to intimidate them into silence and throw his weight around.

Right on cue, as soon as we approached the bed of terangeas—which were beautiful pink flowers with a rather phallic shape—Mr. Frat Boy snorted.

“Well damn! These things must be super popular with the ladies!” he exclaimed, pointing at the section where two dozen of those flowers had been displayed in a sinewy pattern. “Look how firm and proudly erect they stand. I bet they sell out in the souvenir shop!”

He wiggled his thick eyebrows in a grossly suggestive fashion while trying to make eye contact with each of the four women in our group, myself included.

“Seriously, sir, cut it out,” I snapped, surprising myself. “Beyond the fact that none of us are interested in your dumb jokes, there’s a child here!”

I angrily gestured with my chin at an approximately four-year-old boy who was clinging to his mother’s hand. The woman appeared to be six months pregnant.

“Jees! Relax, sugar plum! It’s just a joke!” he said in the offended tone I just knew he would take. “The kid is too young to understand, and I don’t hear anyone else complaining. I’m just trying to relax the atmosphere.”

“Nobody asked you. If we wanted to listen to a wannabe comedian, we’d be at an open mic night, not at a botanical garden. So please cut it out so that we can listen to the actual guide,” I retorted sternly.

“I said relax!” he snarled, trying to bunch the muscles of his rather flabby arms while raising his voice.

“Seriously, dude, back off,” one of the men in the group said, also visibly fed up.

Realizing things might soon devolve into chaos, the guide swiftly intervened to defuse the tension.

“My friends, this is too lovely a place for arguments or conflicts!” the guide exclaimed with that same forced smile. “We’re now approaching what I consider to be some of the most beautiful legacies of the Syllens. This is the Path of the Wood Fairies!”

He waved dramatically at the connecting path taking us further to the west. As much as I welcomed his intervention that indeed prevented things from escalating, I also quietly ground my teeth at him calling them wood fairies. Based on the writings that had been recovered from the Syllens, their name would in fact be Kalrins. I just hated that too little information was available to fully understand their importance within their society.

Still, my curiosity soared at the thought of seeing a real one. As we followed the guide, the pregnant woman cast a grateful smile in my direction. I winked at her before shifting my gaze back to the garden.

“As you have probably noticed, the Syllens loved sculpting images of themselves everywhere they could,” the guide continued with a sliver of contempt that pissed me off. “You have likely seen the giant heads carved into mountainsides and on top of their buildings. We do not quite know why they did it, other than possible vanity. Some speculate that it was a display of status and of ownership. They were likely the portraits of the lords or nobles who ruled over parts of those lands.”