A to Z 2026 - Y - Contessina’s Collection of Human Treasures

Michelangelo sat up in Contessina’s lap, staring at her. This was before Shelby moved in next door. 

“Michelangelo, my friend,” Contessina said. “One of the true pleasures of another culture is learning, if you choose, a new language. On Earth there was a bounty. One of the ones I found chaotically delightful was English. 

“Let me tell you a little about something called yarn. Cats love yarn. They love the balls yarn is sold in, to bat them around, the balls slowly unraveling. Yarn can be used to knit things. There are periods where knitting is an incredibly popular pastime among humans, and periods where only old women knit.

“But the thing about the word yarn is that it can mean something else entirely, it can mean a story. So let me tell you a story.

“During the Calamity, the Danab had their stories, too. Humans tend to fixate, of course, on their heroes, their champions, the figures that helped prevent, just among their own kind, the end of their civilization, never mind the intervention of the Welborn, the Omoxians, the Bith’Mari, and they’re still finding them today, still telling new stories. They don’t give too much attention to the Danab.

“In Danab culture, their leaders operate under the title of drott. Where humans have generals, they have captains, the ones they assign their leading figures, the Danab, in the war, had Drott Gilead, Drott Tomar, Drott Argo.

“Drott Argo was the best of them, the worst of them.

“Her maneuvering on the battlefield was among the best, the most feared among human troops. Among her own people, however, she was notorious for another thing entirely. She refused to toe the line. She was among the first to realize that the Danab really had originated from this planet. 

“This was something that all Danab had known, but it had lost any real meaning. They came to Earth to correct an insult. They didn’t expect a family reunion. They wanted to annihilate their ancestors. 

“Drott Argo was among the very few to discover they couldn’t continue believing this, when they arrived. Sometimes a revolution is begun by the converted. Sometimes it’s initiated by conversion. 

“Drott Argo was assigned Cervone’s execution, Cervone, who had refused to fight, who became such an iconoclast, both among his own people and even humanity, celebrated in the famous play, all the t-shirts, everything. The stories Danab tell themselves, Cervone and Argo were lovers, and that was why she refused to execute him. 

“I don’t believe that. I think the horror of it was finally made clear to her, when she saw one man oppose the war. Cervone’s execution happened despite Argo’s stand. That is a matter of record, what turned him into tragedy, into martyr. Argo’s role was ignored by humanity because in the end it didn’t matter. She was merely the Butcher of the Steppes. She was what they needed to see. 

“Among her own people, she fell from grace. Her story became something else entirely. 

“She was stripped of her rank and sent into exile, even before the war ended. Her value in the war effort, tossed aside. 

“I was watching. I knew all about it. I’d already known more about her than any human, before the war ever happened. Everyone, before humanity experienced the Calamity, of course, already knew the Danab. I had heard about the death of Argo’s son. For me she was already a tragic figure. I cared more about her before her stand than I ever have Cervone.

“I came to Earth because of her. I fell in love with humanity, sure, but I saw that Argo would need someone, even before Cervone, even before her fall from grace. There’s probably a great deal more that needs explaining, here, my own son, how I lost him, why that made me sympathetic. Tales for another time, perhaps.

“I knew she wouldn’t take me seriously. I would have to maneuver, too. So that is what I did. I influenced her decision to live aboard the Whitfield. In these early days it’s the outliers living here anyway, right? The outsiders. Among the humans who rushed to adopt the novelty of living in the Ring Around the World…there were at least two aliens. A Puck, and a Danab.

“She called herself Shelby. I will call her neighbor.”