Title: Mixing Brushes
Category: Atlantis: the Lost Empire
Words: 987
Disclaimer: I am making no monetary profit from this publication.
Summary: AU. Milo Thatch is an Atlantean scholar named Mayloth'tash, and he's finally found the fabled "surface"…sort of. He's a little too injured, disoriented, and in awe of the foot soldiers looming over him to realize it just yet.
Notes: This is another little exercise in reinterpretation: how would Milo and Kida's first meeting look if Milo were Atlantean and Kida were American? Everyone in the story has been "heritage-swapped" and the plot adjusted accordingly. This kicks off right when Milo's expedition realizes he's gone after the bridge burns.
Language Notes: Adding the suffix "top" (rhymes with "nope") to a name in Atlantean denotes a friend. Also, their names are spelled now using actual movie-verse Atlantean phonetics, not just the author's whims.

"What do you think, Mayloth'tash?"

No answer. Helga looked around, the blue tattoos on her right cheek and across her nose seeming to glow in the light. "Mayloth'tash?"

"Maylo-top!" Adri called, swinging her lantern around wildly. "Maylo-top?"

"Look!" Mol leapt to his feet, holding aloft a glowing blue crystal pendant. A quick look around confirmed that everyone else already wore theirs; it was an extra.

"It has to be Maylo's," Adri declared, snatching the precious gem from Mol's dirty fingers.

"But if Maylo's crystal is here…" Jashwa trailed off uncertainly, dark eyes scanning the surrounding forest.

Helga had no such qualms about speaking everyone's thoughts out loud.

"If this is his crystal, then where is he."

{{}

"That's unnatural, that is."

"Where did he come from?"

"Maybe he's Indian?"

"No, look at his hair."

"He doesn't look old enough for hair that white…"

"What do we do with him?"

The voices were strange—though Maylo could understand the meaning behind the words, the words themselves sounded so very foreign. Curiosity gripped him, and he struggled to wake, to face the owners of these strange tongues.

When he opened his eyes, however, he found himself staring right into impossibly dark eyes, inches from his own.

Maylo gasped and flinched back, eyes flickering frantically about himself, trying to take everything in. He appeared to still be in the dark forest, but he was surrounded by unfamiliar creatures… Were they humans? They were bipedal, five-fingered organisms like himself, but their faces were shrouded in shadows cast by helmets, and all he could see of them were very pale chins. He had never seen any human with skin lighter than his own. Not only that, but their style of clothing was peculiar. Thick, coarse, and covering everything from their chins to their fingertips to their toes…aside from their pale jaws, he couldn't see any skin whatsoever. Was that on purpose, to cover tattoos by which they could be identified? Or was it an armor of some sort? Shiny black things were attached to their hips, and though he did not recognize the objects themselves, he had been travelling with soldiers long enough to recognize the way in which the creatures sported them and gripped them—they were weapons.

"Who are you?!" Maylo asked, his voice hoarse.

The reaction was instantaneous. Every one of the strangers, even the one looming over him, jerked back as if stung, letting out sudden, deafening shouts of shock. Maylo released his own startled yelp and jerked back, colliding with the boulder he had previously been slumped against—only for a sharp pain to shoot through his arm and back. He doubled over with a grunt, clutching his shoulder and wincing to feel hot, thick liquid coat his fingers. Great night, he'd been injured.

With his free hand, he fumbled for his crystal…only for his blunt fingers to meet merely bare skin.

His crystal was gone.

Why hadn't he realized it sooner?! Now that he knew that it was gone, the absence of the soothing, illuminating blue glow that he was so used to seemed as plain as day. His breaths began to speed up, and his hand clenched into a shaking, white-knuckled fist. He trembled.

"Are you okay?"

The feeling of coarse fingertips on his arm made him start violently, flinching away despite the pain, and his eyes flew from his wound to the face of his attacker. What was it going to do? Kill him? Bind him? Eat him? He knew nothing about the fauna of this new world…

Then, the thing reached up and removed the strange helmet from its head…and Maylo was blown away.

She was…so strange. He had never seen skin so pale, nor eyes so dark, nor hair that color, almost like gold, but warmer and darker. He had no idea what the spirits had been thinking when they painted her—had they purposefully mixed up their brushes to turn her skin pale and her hair dark? The resulting effect both terrified and fascinated him, and he found himself unable to twitch even a muscle as he stared at her, trying to decide between his curiosity and his fear. His wound was almost forgotten, as blood dripped, unnoticed, down his palm.

Her eyes met his for only a moment before she looked down, digging around in some kind of square pack. The objects she produced—white cloth and a bottle of clear liquid—did not look dangerous, but when she removed the cap from the bottle, the smell it released put Maylo on edge. Though he did not recognize it, he found himself instinctively shying away. Her grip on his arm tightened.

"Hold still."

That strange language again—that he did and didn't recognize. Now that he was fully conscious, he realized that he had heard it before. Somewhere…but…where?

All thought was driven from his mind in the next instant, as the woman wet the clean cloth and pressed it firmly to his wound.

He sucked in a startled breath and flinched back, only to find the boulder once again in his way. He let out a hiss of displeasure.

"Stop struggling."

"What is that?!" he demanded, fingers curling into fists.

"Yes, I know it hurts, but it'll only hurt for a second; I promise."

"What? That's not what I—"

She interrupted him with more soothing words, sweet nothings that, as her care of his wound continued, he eventually realized were akin to what one would say while tending an injured animal—a dumb one who couldn't understand what you were saying—to keep it from running away. He figured out that she couldn't understand him and so assumed that he couldn't understand her, as well.

So he quieted, and he listened, determined to learn how to speak their language. He knew that it was familiar somehow… He just had to figure out where he had heard it before.