One Day Short Story

SOMETHING TO SAY
“You won’t want to head there,” the storekeeper in Yucca, had told me in her dialect.
“The trail is challenging and I doubt your metal contraption you call a car can survive it. Plus, there is only one person I heard of that lives there, and he won’t be of much help since he doesn’t talk much. Tree, they call him. And a pretty smart name too, considering he’s one of the people of the pine trees. The Hualapai. And trees don’t talk much, eh, do they?” She chuckled at her own joke, and I smiled politely.
I felt sympathetic for her lack of knowledge of the current world, seeing that she didn’t even know that my hovercar was probably more than capable of surviving the rockiest of roads. I doubt she even knew what a hovercar was.
I caught sight of a young man sitting on his porch steps. He must be the Tree guy the storekeeper was talking about! Several of my research projects of the Hualapai language and culture immediately led me to recognise him as someone from a Hualapai village, although it was strange for him to resettle here, far away from civilisation and even further from his hometown. His head snapped up when he saw me staring at him and tentatively raised a hand as a greeting. I snapped out of my reverie and smiled warmly at him, walking up to him. He must have recognised me as a Westerner and said hi in a hesitant tone, before putting his head down again. I was slightly surprised he spoke English, but was still relieved since I felt more comfortable speaking in English. I introduced myself, saying that I was here to visit the Boriana mine and hinting it would be great if he could lead me around. He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were dark brown like a tree bark’s colour, and his skin was the shade of muddy soil. There was no hostility in his look, just a searching. And if I looked closer, a little bit of awe and
It includes your culture and who you are. You should embrace it. All that reverence you feel for popular languages and your desire to speak a more common language has blinded you. Don’t seek to fit in, be proud of who you are, even if it starts with something as simple as the words you speak. It’s ironic, you know, how the world has evolved to pressurise people like you. Decades ago, linguists like me used to work so desperately to try to save languages like yours. Language loss was an actual problem mankind was concerned about. Now, the world’s troubles come from treasures dug up from mines like the one here.” Except this time, I spoke to him not in English, but in Havasupai – the Hualapai’s native