Forgive me, Allah, for I have sinned grievously in envying this foreigner! Her beauty and charm, her grace and ease were overwhelming to your humble servant, and to the other gentlemen in the party as well. She was tall for a woman of the Orient, built slender yet amply endowed. Her eyes were a deep and mysterious black, mirrored by her shining ebony hair, and her voice when she spoke breathed a sophisticated ease and lust. Her robes of silk, patterned with orchids and in gay colors of gold and red, shone like fire - and on her person, an equally lavish yet robust-looking fan. This woman was surely a divine creation, if any ever walked upon this sullied earth, but I held fast and did not give into baser temptations.
Her name, as we quickly asked, was Xu Mei-lin, and at the time we had no idea how quickly she would earn our respect as well as our desire. She did not quite believe what we had seen so far - understandable, as our tales of great bird monsters and cosmic djinni were quite mad. She told us she knew Sarah and Clayton, and was willing to give us board since we were hiding from the Order. Said board proved to be most satisfactory, better even than our prior hotel and much more discreet since there were only thin and high windows. Such decadence of silk, incense, and decor has rarely been glimpsed by my eyes, and I shall do well to ensure I do not come to envy it as I did Mei-lin.
It came to our decision, after much deliberation on what to seek out next, to observe the warehouse of Ho Fong. Something about his earlier behavior had frightened McCloud, and I was inclined to agree. It was all too suspicious, and a suspicious man is normally hiding some shameful secret. Others were less confident, namely Laurent and Muuzaji, that something was awry. It was decided that McCloud and myself would check the warehouse while the others rested, and we had thought it would only be the two of us. Imagine our surprise, then, when Mei-lin slunk catlike from around a corner and fell in line with us as we left the building.
"I wish to come with you," she replied. "I have had my suspicions about Ho Fong for years now, and I want answers. I am coming with you." There was no amount of persuasion that could have convinced her to stay behind, and so, follow us she did. At the least, having a native Chinese speaker would help us in that regard, we thought.
The warehouse was near empty, with but a lone guard walking its perimeter, so it was more than simple for me to slip the shoddily made lock on the side door and press inward. All was dark and quiet inside, save for the sound of a radio playing softly in the background and the muffled murmurs of a few guards, about four of them, playing some sort of tile game. Mei-lin has helpfully informed us that such a game is known as mahjongg, a strategy game of some sort. Regardless, they were distracted as we began our sneaking about the warehouse, looking for anything suspicious. It was not long before Mei-lin found something, a box filled with sickles... sickles very familiar to us, sickles once used to cause us injury and nearly kill us. They were the sickles of the Order of the Bloated Woman, wrapped pristine and mass-produced by the hundreds in neat, orderly rows within the box.
"Were these the sickles you saw?" she asked, holding one up as her eyes softly glanced over the characters emblazoned in the metal, and we confirmed. That was all it took to convince her something was very much awry... and that Ho Fong was indeed up to something potentially wicked. At the very best, he was smuggling these weapons for the Order. At the worst... we did not wish to contemplate.
As for myself, I found a peculiar, large box, the lid opened up as if pried apart from inside with great force. The lid itself was propped slightly ajar over the box, as if camouflaged, and within were several man-sized, brown-colored seed pods of some sort. They appeared incredibly ancient, and it was not until McCloud pointed out the shipping crate read as having them sent from Antarctica to some university in America that I took pause. How could seed pods have been discovered in a land that, I am told, is covered in ice? Unfortunately, we did not have time to debate subtleties, for we heard footsteps approaching us and we all scattered into hiding in between boxes. Unfortunately, I misjudged the distance in the dark, and tripped over the lid of the box before I managed to squeeze myself in between some crates, which only sent the footsteps running towards us more quickly. But alas, footsteps were not the only sound we heard...
I will try my utmost to relay the noises we heard next, for they disturb me to think about even knowing what I know now about the seed pods. Forgive me if I sound insane, but not long after we heard the guard approach, we then heard a curious whistling, like bird calls. Then there was a horrified shriek from the guard, followed by slick slithering and a shot being fired. Then, the sound of something large swooping from above, followed by a monstrous and sick-sounding crunch as something was thrown against the metal wall of the warehouse door. Yet more commotion was heard as another guard came to find the source of the problem, patrolling - but not towards us, thankfully. Then the whistling died down, and the slithering faded... leaving us all confused and absolutely terrified of what we had heard.
"What the hell was that?" McCloud whispered as he pushed from out of hiding.
"I do not know," Mei-lin replied, "But I do know I seem to have lost my fan in the commotion, and it is something rather large that must have startled that guard."
We soon found the unfortunate guard, or what was left of him at least, which only confirmed our thoughts. He had been thrown like a rag doll against the wall with such great force, his neck had snapped cleanly on impact, killing him instantly and incidentally leaving a dent in the metal. We could hear more guards, who seemed to see something, scream and run back into the guard room, locking themselves inside. All was silent for a few moments... and then the whistling came again, and we all felt fear freeze us to the spot as the massive shadow of something very, very large and inhuman fell over us like an eclipse of the desert sun.
I swallowed hard and steeled myself, prepared to shoot if I had to, only to realize at the last second it was holding the filaments up and to itself as it whistled. It was as if the odd being was trying to protect itself from us. It certainly wasn't attacking... whatever this strange animal was. At least, I thought it was an animal, as did the others as Mei-lin started whistling back at it like one might a pet bird. The thing reciprocated at first, but it soon tired of that and it lit atop a crate, pulled the lid open easily, and found a piece of long brownish packing paper.
I was confused at first, perhaps thinking it was searching for nesting materials or something of the like. Then it did something that shook my core beliefs even more than the thing's existence. Using a dexterous filament and the dead guard's blood as impromptu ink, it began to feverishly scrawl something on the paper. A something that looked almost like hieroglyphs or some other form of communication. The thing was attempting to communicate with us.
It was sentient.
We stood in astonishment for a moment, unable to correlate this new thought, and puzzled at the being's writings. At least McCloud and myself did, trying to decipher the message it left - Mei-lin had apparently discovered the thing had taken her fan, and was extremely curious about its purpose, comparing it to one of its own fan-like wings. It did not take long for us to realize the message, despite the communication barrier.
"This is a door," McCloud puzzled. "The creature, right here, see... it's trying to take those two dead or maybe sleeping ones, and get them through the door. I think it's trying to find a way out of here but it doesn't know where it is."
"Do you suppose it can read maps or point out images for us from books?" I offered, and McCloud agreed, seeking a map or encyclopedias. It wasn't long before he returned with both encyclopedias and the globe we had seen earlier in Ho Fong's office. He then pointed out various spots on the globe including Shanghai, as well as turning the globe to signify a single day. He then pointed at the being. It quickly got the idea, and began to rapidly spin the globe backward incredibly fast. But no, that wasn't possible... did it mean to say it was from another time?
We puzzled this new piece of information out a moment, but then it beckoned with its filaments, and it moved towards another end of the warehouse. We followed... and discovered that it had apparently made something, some sort of large metal grate out of found pieces from the warehouse. The full story then became clear - somehow, this thing had woken from some kind of dormancy, and pried open the lid of the box it was in. The seed pods were more of its kind, still dormant or dead, and it had been working on some sort of tool or another to escape the warehouse. But to where, exactly?
I asked it, and offered it the books, which it took and set aside. We were so intrigued at the puzzle of its created tool that we hardly noticed as the being quickly began to flip through several of the books at once, scanning for images before stopping on one of a clock and pointing to it, then the device. No, not device... gate. A gateway through time, to whatever time this thing came from.
"Impossible," I murmured, shocked, and it took a good shake from Mei-lin to bring me back to reason.
"It is pointing at another image," she said, and I looked. It was indeed pointing to something - the image of a radio tube. "I believe it needs something from us."
McCloud and myself balked. The only radio tube we knew of... was the one in the guard room. The locked guard room, with four guards in it, and no other way in. It was suicide to risk it, but this being needed our help. It was then we noticed it wincing and favoring one of its five leg-like limbs, and we realized it was injured. It could not, for all its immense strength, take four armed guards alone, especially not with its obvious wound, weeping some form of bluish fluid which I must assume was its blood.
A twinge of pity wiped the shock and fear from my mind then. The creature was sentient, and it could bleed and be injured. Like any man on Earth, it was vulnerable and mortal, and it had come to us in its time of need. Would it have died if we had not been here? Would it have eventually been murdered by the guards? And so, I did what I would have done to any wounded warrior - I healed the injury, bandaging the alien limb as best as I could given the obvious anatomical difference. It shuddered and trilled in pain slightly as I wrapped the wound, but when all was done it looked to me with gratitude, and brushed a filament over my face. I am not sure how I know this, but I am certain that it was thanking me. I certainly felt that it was grateful to me, and perhaps... it was more inclined to help us now, too.
And help it did. It was McCloud's idea to smoke the guards out by dropping smoldering packing through the slot above the door, and it worked. The guards panicked and left the room, assuming the being had done it. They murmured in confused Chinese, and then proceeded to look around as we hid. It had been McCloud's idea to smoke the guards out, but it was the being's idea to create a distraction, slamming its limbs on crates and luring the guards away from the door to buy us more time. It was enough for McCloud to get into the room, pull the radio tube from the radio, and leave without being noticed. We did not waste any time in finding our way back to the area the being had been working in, and pressing the radio tube into the slot it indicated.
It was then that I saw the gate crackle with energy, and a sort of point expand from the center of it, like a widening iris. An image became visible, slowly, of another land... another realm. I gazed upon it with awe and trepidation as a world of ancient plants and enormous walking, feathered lizards filled my eyes. I saw a vast basalt city carved in pentaradial symmetry, and more of the being's kind waiting in the background. I could not look away from it, not for a moment, as if I might miss something were I to so much as simply blink. Was this the earth as Allah first created it, before the dawn of mankind? If so... it was beautiful, and a part of me wished to see more of it... but it was not for us to go there, not in this lifetime. We had other obligations.
As soon as it had dealt with the guards, the being noticed the sound of the gateway and flew to us, carrying its fellows, one to each limb. It looked to us with deep gratitude before it stepped through the shimmering image, and it was in that moment I had a revelation, the revelation I spoke of at the very start of this entry. It was then I realized that the being with which we had spoken, the being that came to us for aid, the being that we saved... was nothing less than Allah's First Creation, before the fall of man. Before He conceived of mankind... had He, in His Divine Will, created these beings, only to see them fail? Were there other such creations that we did not yet know of? Was it for a mortal man to know these things?
Perhaps not. But I am certain the First Creations know of our kind now, and ours of their kind. I merely pray, as I lie here in the silken sheets of my new impromptu home away from Cairo, that Allah may bless those beings which came before us... or perhaps, that He has already. Great is His will, indeed!
-- Mahmoud Sabri, Contemplating the Ways of the Divine (20 May, 1928)