They can't get enough of the stuff although I can't see why. All it does is stain my beak purple and turn to sticky mush in my gizzard. But it's easy money. Anyway, I'd gathered up enough for one day and was about to head back to the village when I fell down a sinkhole. You have to remember it's sinkhole country around my village. Why only a few years ago a whopper opened up in the market square over in Turel D'Yan. Took over fifty souls and none of them were ever seen again.

I was terrified that I might break my armwings on the way down. Now we may not be able to fly like the lesser birds but we've inherited their hollow bones so I did my best to bunch up close as I crashed and tumbled my way past the hanging vines, roots and loose soil that lined the sinkhole. Fortunately I made a soft landing when I eventually hit the bottom. This particular sinkhole wasn't too deep so there was enough light filtering down so that I could just about see my surroundings in the dim gloom.

As I looked around to try to find a way to climb out I could see that this was no ordinary sinkhole. Underneath the tangled roots and thick layers of soil and grime I was able to make out what looked like metal walls and machinery. A bit like what you'd see in an off-worlder's ship except that it was ancient, broken and covered in dirt. It must have been there a very long time as stalagmites and stalactites had grown inside it. At the time all I could think about was getting out of that sinkhole so I used a few loose pieces of metal I found as spikes to climb out with.

The next day I returned after tending the Porlakh fields. Only this time I came prepared. I brought some rope, a torch, a knife, a blanket in case I had to stay overnight and an opticorder as well as some food and water packed in a satchel. It was so heavy that it crushed my back feathers but I didn't mind as my curiosity was getting the better of me. What I found when I climbed back down resembled the interior of a derelict spaceship. But how had it ended up underground? The most surprising part was that, in spite of its condition, parts of it still appeared to be working.

I have to admit I was scared. Scared that someone or something would jump out of the gloom and attack me and maybe even kill me. But the only living creatures I saw were nocturnal Gliss-Voles who scurried away wherever I went. I took pictures with my opticorder and left markers as I went deeper in so that I wouldn't get lost.

Eventually I found this chamber that seemed to stretch on forever. It was lined with broken and shattered transparent canisters holding the remains of some off-worlders that I'd never seen before. Most of them were just decaying skeletons but a few were mummified. They all looked as if they'd died in their sleep. I spotted a distant glow of light and followed it to an intact canister. The off-worlder inside appeared to be alive but in some sort of deep sleep as it didn't respond to my presence. Over the next month I'd go back there exploring this strange underground ruin. All that time the strange off-worlder slept in its canister. Then one day when I went back the canister was open and the off-worlder nowhere to be seen.

At this point I didn't know what to expect. I thought the off-worlder would jump out from a dark corner and attack me but eventually I found it lying on the floor behind the encrusted remains of a bank of controls running down the middle of the chamber. We looked at each other for a few minutes, too surprised to say anything. It reminded me of the mythical dragon people who, according to legend, had once lived on our world. But that was only an old folk tale that no-one really believed. It tried to flap its wings but was too weak. All it could manage was a feeble hiss so I offered it my food and water and wrapped my blanket around it. Neither of us had a translator. Hah! No-one in my village had a translator. We never needed them as off-worlders hardly ever came to our little village. We couldn't understand a word we said to each other so I built a fire to keep us warm and left in the morning.

Over the next few weeks I'd return daily with food for the solitary off-worlder. During that time I built a percussion set out of pieces of the spaceship in my attempts to communicate with it and, when it wasn't showing me around attempting to explain the alien technology we were looking at, we would bash around and play on it. To my surprise the off-worlder not only had a sense of rhythm but seemed to enjoy making our weird clangorous noise.

One day, it met me at the bottom of the sinkhole as I was climbing down and pointed up. It wanted to go outside. We climbed up and made our way down the slope through the woods to the Porlakh fields. That was when it jumped up and flew a short distance. I guessed it was still pretty weak as it didn't fly very far before it came back to me. It must have seen our village because when it landed it pointed towards it. So I walked back to my nest and it followed me walking and flying part of the way. That's how I met Alazarin and how we started up our crazy little band.