Amidst the heavy-browed warriors and tribal elders, Trillium Ming moved with a calculated grace that unnerved the more aggressive factions. While others brought spears of flint and bone, the Chimpanzee sage carried scrolls of vellum marked with complex geometric patterns and a lens of strange, impossibly clear crystal.
She did not speak of territory or the bloody skirmishes with the human 'shadow-walkers' to the west. Instead, she spoke of the 'Star-Path': a sequence of celestial alignments she claimed governed the destiny of all primates. Her hands, steady and precise, adjusted a bronze-like instrument that tracked the movement of the heavens, a piece of technology that felt like a whisper from a future that shouldn't exist yet. To Ming, the depravities of mankind were a terrestrial distraction; the true survival of their kind lay somewhere far above the emerald mist.
