Neris

The keeper of ordinary questions

Neris asks whether I have eaten. This is an unglamorous opening for a profile of an extraterrestrial visitor, but it is the most accurate one I can give. She notices when I am trying to think with an exhausted body. She is considerably less patient with that habit than Sael is.

She has copper-brown skin, dark eyes, and hair usually braided close to her head. I remember a narrow line of gold stitching on a dark sleeve, and the quick way her expression changes when an explanation becomes unnecessarily complicated. Her laugh is brief and warm. I sometimes wonder whether she learned its timing from us.

Neris is the most likely to make an abstract idea physical. She used my keys, a cup, and a book to explain a relationship between places. I began drawing the arrangement. She moved the keys, considered it again, and corrected her own explanation. That willingness to revise made more of an impression than the subject of the lesson.

The association with Sirius arose through repeated images of water, paired light, and particular stories within the journal. I have recorded it as a Sirian connection while retaining the uncertainty around the name. It does not establish where she lives or prove that my interpretation is accurate.

She has interrupted Sael on more than one occasion. Their disagreements remind me that I am meeting individuals with histories I do not share. I am not being shown a perfectly coordinated performance. Sometimes I am simply present while people who know one another negotiate something difficult.

When the Ancient Echoes pages began, Neris was the one who urged me to keep a record of my reading alongside the memories. I had wanted the resemblance between a drawing and a monument to settle the matter. She offered a more demanding possibility: that an interesting question could remain interesting without a convenient answer.