To us Damaskians the weather is not kind. It is bitter cold, the biting type that tugs at your skin until it is chapped and weathered like gnarled tree bark. To hold each others’ hand would be like gripping fractured spikes of Velcro made of desert-dry skin. But yet, we still crave contact, warmth, and love, so instead we caress the folds of the fabric that adorns every one of us. It is much softer than our beaten bodies could ever be, not even the most bijou of us.

I imagine one who does not know us would think it strange that we focus so much on a sense most handicapped by the chill. Why don’t we use our eyes to peruse the beauty and love etched into our profiles?

Well, I answer you this. We have no form of illumination with which to do so. Our sun was eaten away until it was replaced entirely with a small black hole that seems to threaten us day after day as it grows. It prepares to suck us inside its numbing depths of inkiness.

And fire? Well, for the materials we have, we could surely build one! But yet, it is easy to forget we aren’t the oxygen-dwelling sort of creatures.

Without light to brighten our days, there is no reason for us to need eyes at all. In fact, we believe it is a rite of passage for our young ones to remove them, to shed their excess parts and begin anew. It is no different from how past species, like the humans, removed wisdom teeth or a pesky appendix.

But what is at the very core of our culture is fabric… intricate tapestries that weave stories into our attire. We wear our pasts with pride to build the foundations of friendship and understanding. We wear our hearts, embroidered into braille, on our sleeves.