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[crystal-quill]

He came to a halt beside the shield generator, peered for a moment at the lightsaber— And the brilliant blue blade flashed into existence. Padmé stopped short, raising her blaster, her first horrified thought being that Thrawn was about to turn the lightsaber on her.

- Thrawn. Alliances

[crystal-quill]

This train of thought has kept me up at night many times actually

Chiss would start noticing Eli as an unique individual after Faro shows up. Before this he was The Human, so whatever he did Chiss compartmentalized as something humans did. However, then comes Faro: taller, tougher, her skin lighter, her accent sharper, her way of speaking more rapid; their perception twists. Eli rounds his words, he arranges them in a way more typical to Lysatran, he has a different diction; less direct than that of the Core worlds, willing to explain actions rather than just state them. It is most obvious when the two speak in basic--quick exchanges, court orders--whereby both finish speaking at wildly different times.

Curiosity toward his home world would spike then, and they would realize how, I'm not even sure how to put it, but that he's different. How Lysatra is different. How it is as unknown to the Core as the Core is to the Chiss. How the way he walks and speaks reflects his upbringing among humans considered aliens among other humans. I often think about that too, how humans on other planets are aliens as well--adapting to their environments, extreme or mild, possessing different religions, norms, values. How there are billions of little Earths in the SW galaxy. Imagine Eli being on one continent on Lysatra, and how wildly we differ, and how wildly he'd differ. He cannot speak outside of the places he grew up on, he cannot comment on politics other than those of his own govt. The same way Faro would not understand him, and the Chiss notice that and pay attention to it.

Eli is so comfortable in the Unknown Regions because he is from Wild Space. The scary part of space. The volatile part of space. The Bermuda triangle of the Galaxy, the Antarctica; the place of legends and curiosities.

Eli knows so much about the Core worlds because he was the aide of a highly politicized figure, so when Faro rolls around and they ask her random shit about Wild Space, she's on uncharted territory. She knows they're far away but that's about it; and this drives me INSANE

[crystal-quill]

thrawn (2017)

thrawn: alliances (2018)

[crystal-quill]

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[crystal-quill]

Chapter Eight

    Patriarch Thooraki was just about ready to kill a man for a decent cup of vikn. He had come all the way to Rentor to inspect some of the senior cadets for promising individuals to consider luring away to the Mitth. He had been awake for fourteen hours already due to his extremely early morning arrival and wasn't going to see a bed anytime soon. Currently, one of the administrators of Taharim Academy was walking him behind some of the outer buildings of the campus, gesturing to the massive backlot and explaining about future plans for the area and potential for expanded programmes. He really wished the other man would shut up and take him back to his transport, the Patriarch had overestimated his own stamina.

   The administrator was mid sentence when the two heard a scream, a girl telling someone to stop. The administrator didn't even finish the word he was on, simply dropped his clipboard and took off towards whatever cadet was in danger at full speed. Thooraki blinks, needing an extra second to process before his lips curl in an approving little smile at the total lack of hesitation. Perhaps the cadets weren't the only ones with potential? Knowing he was bloody useless for whatever emergency was happening, he follows along behind more slowly, giving the administrator time to resolve the situation without the Patriarch most likely just getting in the way. The scene he happens on surprises him enough to make him feel fully awake.

    A petite, long haired child that couldn't be any older than nine or ten that was for some reason wearing the first year remedial uniform was absolutely ripping apart three older cadets that looked to be in their final year of training. A freshman, the girl that had been screaming probably, was trying to separate the smaller boy with assistance from the administrator. The three older cadets were covered in scratches, bitemarks, bruises, what looked to be shockingly deep cuts, and various rips to their uniforms. Two of them were already backed off, sitting on the ground and sending furtive, petrified glances towards the current scuffle. One of them had a ripped bag with supplies scattered over the grass.

"Vurawn! Vurawn calm down, I'm fine, I'm alright! Vurawn, please, come here."

    The girl was trying with some success to restrain the child now that the administrator had physically placed himself between the boy and his targets, and Thooraki notes with increasing interest that herself and the older boys are all wearing Irizi family patches, and the the smaller boy is not affiliated with a Ruling or Greater Family. Also, despite his downright feral behaviour, the Patriarch does not fail to see that he avoids harming the girl and does eventually allow her to hold him close from behind. The low rumble of his still-developing vocal chords would sound utterly ridiculous if it weren't for the injuries on the other three combatants and the clear anxiety they now displayed towards him. The girl steps back, taking him with her, and he offers a small, final hiss as the tension drains from him. The girl hushes him, looking frazzled and upset and trying to pry something out of his hand. Looking closer, Thooraki raises an eyebrow when he notices the plastic protractor clenched tightly enough to draw blood. So that's where the cuts had come from. Resourceful.

    The Patriarch waits patiently while the rest of the drama unfolds. The girl, Irizi'ar'alani, her face and voice coloured with betrayal and hurt, claims the three boys and an accomplicethat had been waiting for her outside of her classes and set her up so they could harass her about being Vurawns' friend. The older cadets, however, claim that they had arranged to meet young Ziara out here to simply talk, as Family members do, and the boy, noe identified as Kivu'raw'nuru, had attacked them out of nowhere. The boy himself offers no defense, staying silent, hovering protectively to the right and slightly in front of Ziara for the entire conversation. She makes several small soothing gestures even as she demands with increasing heat that the older cadets be punished. Thooraki looks at the administrators face and knows that nothing will happen.

    Nevertheless, he is impressed. The unusually young cadet is clearly an intensely loyal boy with no small talent in combat, he didn't appear to have more than a few bruises on him. Thooraki notes several obvious signs of long term abuse, and is satisfied that if handled properly, young Vurawn would grow to be a fine young man indeed. An interesting case, and perhaps bearing further investigation. He considers for a few moments, and makes a decision, stepping forward to interrupt.

"I will be certain to discuss this personally with the Irizi." Thooraki puts some real scandalized venom into his voice, older cadets identify him and pale immediately, understanding that this would not end well for them. The Mitth Patriarch inclines his head to Ziara slightly. "You have excellent taste in friends, cadet."

   He continues for some minutes, thoroughly dressing down the senior cadets for their inexcusable behaviour and detailing precisely the consequences they could expect to recieve as members of a Ruling Family, adding some pointedly acerbic comments about his eye on their careers in future. Thooraki does not miss the curious, intense gaze of young Vurawn and the equally curious, but suspicious gaze of Ziara. Fair. The Mitth and Irizi weren't exactly friends. Still, Thooraki feels his lips curls in a small, secretive smile as all five cadets are bundled off to the infirmary. What absolutely fascinating potential, the both of them.

Irizi'ar'alani and Kivu'raw'nuru. He'd remember that.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Seven

    Taharim Academy is a far more massive campus on paper than it appears to be in person, and the reason for this is the area known to the students as the backlot. A five acre wide, three acre deep territory of woodland considered part of the academys' property, bordered at the back by a fast moving river with deep, fern and moss slicked banks. Originally meant to be cleared out for a massive training ground and additional facilities, the backlot was left to grow wild as enlistment numbers never met the expected projections and funding could not be obtained. Most of it is left unexplored by the cadets, with only a few clearings near the actual buildings haunted occassionally, largely for the purpose of indulging in contraband and furtive midager laisons.

    Vurawn was an exception, as he often was. The boy preferred the denser wood, it reminded him of the orchard back home, his safe place. He had especially grown to love the river, and had found a small nook in some tree roots on the bank that was lined with thick, soft moss and hidden from the paths made by game animals by a lofty tun'esar bush, the only one he'd ever seen on Rentor. He'd looked it up in the library and apparently it wasn't native to anywhere in the Ascendancy. Fascinating, and the sweet, gentle scent was absolutely lovely.

    At the moment, Vurawn had two free periods back to back. His schedule had a lot of strange holes in it, largely because he had straight up skipped the equivelant of two grades and there were certain freshman classes that were considered either too academically advanced, such as actual combat training not just physical conditioning or maths that he did not have an appropriate foundation for, or inappropriate for his age group, such as the freshman health classes which spent the first half of the year on sex ed for the cadets who were now well into starting their adolescent journeys. What he was supposed to be doing was teaching himself the necessary fundementals for the scholarly classes he couldn't take yet, but today had been very stressful. Nothing specific had happened it was just one of those days. So instead, he was curled up in his little moss lined nook, breathing in the scent of the yellow and white flowers above him and allowing himself to be lulled by the whispers of the leaves and the rushed chattering of the river.

    It really was a lovely day for it, and Vurawn had allowed himself to totally space out watching the dappled sunlight on the forest floor from where he lay for nearly an hour and a half before it occured to his sleepy mind that he should make his way back. Sighing heavily and stretching long, thin arms to the canopies above, he stands and begins his run back the Academy proper. He was fast, better fed, and he knew the area, so it didn't take him long to cover the distance. It didn't take him long to come within hearing range of the furthest clearing used by cadets.

    Hearing voices, Vurawn slows relunctantly, wishing he had discovered an alternate path and wouldn't have to cross the open area to get back. He is debating whether it would be worth trying to slip past unnoticed along the edge when he hears a voice he recognizes, feminine with a core of steel spitting rage and disdain so powerful it was practically literal acid.

"-don't care what problem you have with it, he's my friend and I'm not dropping him just because you're a bunch of k'on'becsoi that think being part of a Ruling Family makes you better than everyone else.."

The response is laden with digust, offense, and cold anger, and makes Vurawn feel as though a void has swallowed him with its unending chill.

"Fine. Then we'll just have to teach you how to be a proper member of this family."

Vurawns tiny, birdlike form darts, panicked, into the clearing just in time to see an older midagers heavy fist bury itself under Ziaras ribs.

The world becomes sharp and hard and bright and his body is iron and stone, unmoving under the unseeing gaze of the sun with the thick, bloated sounds of grunts and strikes of flesh against flesh.

And there's a scream with words he can't understand.

And then Vurawn doesn't understand much of anything, anymore, as the world

                                                                                                                          cracks

                                                                                                                                       and

                                                                                                                                               shatters

                                                                                                                                                               into

                                                                                                                                                                          so

                                                                                                                                                                                  much

                                                                                                                                                                                               red.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Six

    About five months after classes began, the two of them had seemed to settle rather nicely into a kind of routine. Vurawn would quietly attach himself to Ziara in between shared classes so they could walk together, and they would study together on the weekends at the Academy library. Vurawn was remarkably scrawny, his far too tiny build reminded her of a jaybird. Ziara became concerned about how Vurawn was handling physical conditioning, which he took as a remedial class because of his age. But she also noticed that Vurawn seemed to experience mild anxiety if he was outright gifted anything, especially food. He would steal it from her though. It broke her heart to try and imagine what taught him that behaviour, but he was so clearly wary of her questions that she couldn't work out how to ask him, or if she even had the right since she hadn't known him that long. So, instead of trying to feed him up directly, she would 'forget' various snacks, like granola bars and other easy to hide things, in his room when they studied together. Not every time, but enough that she felt a little better about his situation. Despite his attachment to her during study time and classes, he often seemed to disappear before and after school hours. Sometimes, she could find him by his favourite paintings or in the courtyards, but more often than not he was just... gone. She worried about him, but it wasn't her place to be constantly in his business, especially with how defensive he seemed to be about his personal details.

She was headed back to her dorm one day when one of the older students that also had an Irizi patch, a third year, stopped her.

"Hey, you hang out with that little freak right?" He lounges against a pillar, scrutinizing her lightly with a vague gaze.

"Excuse me?" she half spat, hackles already raised.

The older boys eyebrows shoot up and he raises his hands lazily in a gesture of peace. "Hey, calm the fuck down girlie. No harm in taking on a charity case." His lip curls in a snide, bemused smirk, "I stopped you cuz we're family, gotta look out for each others interests yeah?"

Ziara glares at him and snaps her boots crisply against the sidewalk as she strides off, determined to ignore him. He calls after her, voice coloured with derision and offense.

"Just thought you'd like to know the cadets in my year don't like that feral little upstart. If you run to the backlot, he won't die." He glances up, checking that the cameras cant see him before lighting up a cigarette and mumbling indifferently, "Probably, anyway."

She was already sprinting.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Five

The first week at Taharim was largely uneventful. Classes proceeded normally, and Vurawn continued to follow his new friend around like a lost kitten. Ziara already felt fiercely protective of him, and she made a point to do homework and take meals with him as well. He was very quiet, and rarely shared personal details about himself.

Vurawn learned from her that Ziaras' favourite colour is a soft pastel yellow, that she is in fact thirteen years old, she has never left Csilla before. She is blood of the Ruling Family Irizi, she prefers to keep her hair up in a tight bun rather than have it cut short like the others, and her Family sends her an exorbitant seeming allowance of fifty unilever a month. She hates skirts but loves dresses, and she has never eaten fresh off the farm produce before because of Csillas' environmental restrictions, being an ice planet and all. The boy finds this last point completely mindboggling, moreso than her personal finances.

The things things he's learned that she didn't tell him is an equally long list. She's fascinated by weather and the sky in general, which he finds baffling. It's as if she's lived her life entirely underground. She loves rah'sp berries and will take any excuse to eat them. She hates strong wind because it messes up her hair. She wants to hold his hand or touch his hair all the time, but seems unsure if she's allowed. He's glad she doesn't just touch him. Ziara is also much smarter than she shows herself to be, and her warmth is genuine.

In that same time frame, Ziara has learned from him that Vurawn is ten years old, he previously lived only with his mother, and his favourite classes are history and the simulators.

What she has observed is a much longer list than what she's been told. Vurawn flinches slightly if she moves towards him too quickly. Or if any femme presenting adult did so. He will not go new places without her unless she goes with him at least once, and he stays precisely one step behind and directly to her right. He doesn't like certain vegetables, but he will eat whatever is placed on his tray. He has no allowance, and she suspects, no casual wear. He thinks the Academy is pretty and is utterly fascinated by certain textures. He is an excellent forager, and has on more than one occassion already randomly picked a flower or a berry or a leaf and handed one to her before chewing on one himself. He's an excellent artist, the diagrams he does for school are precise and the lines are delicate. And more than that, he loves art. Ziara has learned that if she cannot find him, he's probably somewhere the Academy displays various art pieces. His favourite appears to be a painting of sprays of wildflowers behind a bride removing her red silk veil.

Irizi'ar'alanis' opinion of Kivu'raw'nuru as a flighty, meek sweetheart lasts an entire five months.

...And then there's the Protractor Incident.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Four

Taharim Academy was a surprisingly lovely building, built of clean lines of smooth stone and sheets of gleaming glass and steel. The numbness drains from Vurawn almost immediately and without him really noticing, and he delicately presses his fingertips against the sun warmed stone of one of the pillars in the courtyard near the entrance. It feels good against his callouses, and he's deeply absorbed in the task of petting the stone with an utterly fascinated expression when a girls voice speaks up behind him.

"Do... do you have an older sibling that's enrolling here? Hello?"

The boy looks up and blinks owlishly, and the girl has to suppress a giggle, redirecting it into an inquisitive smile. Her hair is longer than his, falling to her waist with a very slight wave and shining a true black, with no undertone. Her eyes and skin are brighter than his own dark garnet and sapphire, closer to a ruby shade and a bright summer sky. She's also older, around thirteen or so, a proper freshman. It takes Vurawn a moment to fully process her words.

"No, my school district and family decided I ought to be sent here. I'm from Kivu'vetihn. My name is Kivu'raw'nuru." The response has that odd, lilting quality of a rehearsed line, and his voice is soft and gently uncertain. The girl notices that he isn't quite making eye contact, and something clicks. She shifts her own gaze to slightly avoid his, and is gratified to notice slight lines of tension she hadn't seen before fade from his body language.

"So you're from here on Rentor, then. I'm from Csilla, my name is Irizi'ar'alani. You can call me Ziara if you want. Also we're going to be late to orientation, you can walk with me."

He hesitates, but nods, and falls into line quietly beside her. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and feels a surge of protectiveness. Where were his parents? Who sends someone this young with a clear social disability to a military academy? His family must have very harsh punishments, and she couldn't imagine this meek little boy doing anything that awful. She thinks of her own family, how anything 'abnormal' was harshly stamped out, and wonders. But maybe it was a bit soon to ask. And maybe he'd be transferred to a regular school or something when the teachers realized he oughtn't to be here of all places. Until then, Ziara would keep an eye on him.

Orientation was fairly straightforward, and they recieved their dorm assignments and schedules. Classes would start the day after tomorrow. Vurawn follows her like a little shadow, and Ziara takes it upon herself to wander about the campus so he could explore by proxy. She made a point to stop by the supply distribution office and gesture him forward before her to turn in the request form for his uniforms. She gets a few strange looks from other students, as since she's from a Ruling Family the Irizi insignia is on a patch on her arm. Their dorms are in the same building, and she's happy when he takes the initiative to make sure they both knew where each other would be. He doesn't speak, simply glances back to make sure Ziara is following once they had found her door, and leading her to his.

The two children hadn't spoken to each other much, but niether had really felt the need to do so.

Vurawn feels a warmth in his chest as Ziara compares their schedules and offers to walk with him when they have classes near each other.

The warmth burns, and it hurts as it forces the cold to retreat a little, but he finds himself smiling and nodding in agreement anyway.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Three

Vurawn sits on the floor in the living room, his mother stitching something as she hums quietly to herself. Today is one of her good days. He is allowed to be here. He holds a needle and thread in his own smaller blue hands, repairing one of her dresses and refreshing the rah'sp berry embriodery in places.

His internal struggle is invisible from the outside, but today is the last day he has to say something.

"Momma, the school administration decided I ought to be sent away. To a military academy. I'm to leave tomorrow, I've made arrangements for you, for while I am gone." The child's voice is quiet, gentle, not shaking but on the edge of doing so.

She looks up, and her son catches his breath. Her expression is not empty, for once, but he is young, and he cannot read the myraid of emotions that twist and weave their own complex patterns across her features. He does not recognize the tapestry of shock, anxiety, guilt, possessiveness, disgust, resolve.

He does recognize when her expression settles into one of cold, indifferent rage, and his own eyes widen slightly in fear as his body tenses, ready to flee. But she doesn't move from her chair, only stares at him, her gaze boring into his skull with an almost painful intensity until he felt his own eyes start to prickle with tears. It would be worse if he didn't make eye contact like a 'normal' child.

After an eternity of silence, her face softens from rage to something hard and uncaring, like flint. He feels a sense of relief, allows himself a tentative hope that she would let him go.

"Among Chiss, it is often the tradition to wish a warrior home with honour. But you do not have these things. I wish nothing, there is nobody to wish for. You will have to find another way if you require a guardian signature on anything."

Pain.

Pain so deep and sudden and cutting that he gasps, and chokes as his tears spill over. On the rare occassions she has spoken to him, she has always done so as if he is not Chiss, she has always been clear she does not consider him her child. He does not understand why he is crying, sobbing, curling in on himself while she sets aside her sewing and simply watches, calmly. There is no pleasure on her face, no satisfaction, she is as of stone and colder than ice. He cries out with the agony of this final, shattered hope that she might love him, might show some sign that he matters to her, that his devotion has made a difference, that his love is deserving of recognition.

Pain, agony. Abandonment, desperation, total and complete.

More than anything, he is unmoored, adrift, lost in himself and a world that feels so, so cold no matter that it is barely autumn and the leaves have only just begun to turn.

He will not consciously acknowledge the first whispers of anger, the first hint of resentment, the ghost of relief as they brush across the depths of his thoughts, and their heavy weight of guilt.

Outside, the sun is bright, and the wildflowers sway.

[crystal-quill]

Chapter Two

Twelve years old and practically vibrating with nerves, Vurawn tugs slightly at his best hand-me-down tunic knowing his educational advocate will be gazing at him in mild disapproval and reprimand. The entirety of the last two weeks had been a blur of test after test, hard won after nearly four months of his homeroom teacher fighting to get him the privilege of skipping several grades and entering a university level education. The major roadblock had been Vurawns own lack of social skills, which despite his most desperate efforts he had been unable to improve. He’d found that it helped when he had a script of some kind so he’d been practising relentlessly in the orchard, pretending the trees were the adults he had to not only satisfy but impress.

He allows himself a moment of hope as the test administrators open the door and gesture him and his advocate into the conference room, a fleeting image of a now ancient sketchbook crossing his mind. Maybe he would be allowed to attend an art school, maybe he had done well enough on his tests, scored well enough for the appropriate scholarships. Artists are supposed to be weird, his social awkwardness might not be noticed as much there.

He feels his pulse flutter as he looks up into the eyes of the adults that will decide his future, their faces somehow stone under the falsely kind smiles and proud gestures. The lead administrator looks back and delivers his results.

“After reviewing your test results, for both academics and aptitude, it is the decision of this board that you will be permitted to skip the remaining years of this educational phase for your age group, enroll in courses for secondary school, and be placed immediately and on full scholarship at Rentors military academy as a board student. This has been deemed the best path for your service to the Ascendancy as a common citizen.”

He feels his pulse freeze, his heart squeeze hard and sudden, at the final pronouncement. His young face remains blank, neutral, but he feels his throat and lungs grow hot and tight as if choking back a scream of agony. His ears seem to ring, and it is difficult to understand what else is being said. But he somehow manages to make the appropriate responses he had practised alone in the orchard under the heavy dance of fruit in the wind, and his bones creak under the weight of his internal suffocation when he bows his acceptance and farewells. He notices with a distant surprise and mild, detached interest that his hands are not shaking as he accepts the file with the school transfer details and other required paperwork.

Military.

The military.

Vurawn can only imagine cold metal hallways and harsh voices and shades of grey and black defining hard bodies and lonely quarters far from the scents of moss and honeysuckle.

He thinks of stern, unforgiving faces and tightly pressed lips and sharp, horribly decisive gestures cutting off lives.

He thinks of corpses. And blood, the warmth of it sticky and thick through his fingers and the metallic tang of its scent sharp and thin like a knife's edge.

The child tries to take a subtle breath to steady himself as a wave of nausea causes a brief upsurge of acid in his throat, hot and harsh.

The ache in his chest feels like it is silencing him on the way back home, his tongue turned to lead even as he somehow forces it to move, reassuring his homeroom teacher, and his art instructor who had come to support him, that he was happy to be seen as worthy of anything at all that his sentence achievement made him proud. Somehow, their own mute horror is worse, Vurawn finds it difficult to care about his own muted agony when the two adults are trying so hard to hide how upset they are for him. The child is compelled to comfort them. He doesn’t know how, and feels helpless.

Vurawns’ steps change unconsciously as he approaches the worn wood and stone of his home, shifting his balance more towards his toes and moving a little faster, resting his weight a little lighter on the rough grass and deep moss along the path to the front door. The wood creaks a little as he opens it slowly and counts to five before fully entering. His mother is sitting by one of the broken windows, gazing sightlessly out towards the garden, the dull garnet fixed on a distant point that her son isn’t sure is even really part of the physical world. A forgotten embroidery panel in her long, scarred fingers shows a pattern of small wildflowers in bright yellow and deep green.

The child freezes and holds his breath, watching her for a moment in the dim light of the room, the red glow of both their eyes casting a barely perceptible sheen on the dirty, yellowed walls. Her hair was thick with dirt and oil, the red tinted black of it dull, more like thin strands of dried blood than anything. It had been roughly woven into a careless braid, so it was at least partially combed. He wonders if she just used her fingers or if he would actually find hair on her comb. The bags under her eyes were deep and looked almost like bruises with how dark the purple of them had become over the years. Her cheekbones were high and far too sharp, and Vurawn recalls with a crushing wave of guilt that his testing period had prevented him from feeding her properly, since she no longer cooked for herself even on good days.

She doesn’t move, so he makes his way to his room and quietly changes out of his ‘good’ outfit into his housework clothes before heading to the garden. He harvests what’s ready, stores everything in the ice box and pantry as appropriate, and steps up on an old box to pull a pan off a hook on the wall. He cooks something simple that can be eaten with hands, and quietly leads his mother to the table. She eats almost mechanically as he fills the bath and prepares clean clothing.

She doesn’t respond as he undresses her and carefully sets her in the tub, gently scrubbing her scalp and skin free of any dirt. The boy cannot handle the empty expression that refuses to acknowledge his presence and keeps his gaze fixed anywhere that is not her face, and finds his eyes tracing the silvery blue stretch marks across her stomach and hips, and the purple-black of the old caesarean scar from his difficult birthing, thick and shiny and deep set like a line of jewel enamelling. He wonders if she can feel the tension of the scar tissue on the days she has the strength to move, and if that’s what makes it hard.

When she is dried and dressed, he fetches her comb and carefully works it through, gently rebraiding the fine strands to keep it out of the way. He leaves her by the window again. She’ll go to bed or she won’t, and leaving her in her bedroom wouldn’t change anything. Her eyes still do not see him as she picks up her embroidery again and begins methodically slipping the needle through the cloth again, weaving the stitches into a vibrant field of colour that anyone else might mistake for joyful.

He gazes at her for a moment before going to eat dinner himself and take his own bath, letting himself pretend for a precious few seconds that he only just got home, and dinner had been waiting and she would look up soon and smile. He doesn’t remember what that looks like anymore, no longer trusts any memory that says it happened once.

Late that night, the young Chiss slips from the house to pad silently to the orchard, flitting up the oldest tree to the tallest branches and gazing up at the stars, just letting the silence wrap around him comfortingly, listening to the insects and the leaves of the trees sing.

Vurawn absently rubs his arms and rocks from side to side, the only outward indicator of the intensely roiling emotions inside as ruby eyes reflect cool silver starlight in a gentle glow like dying coals, the motions smooth and regular like a metronome. It’s a warm night, and Rentor is a temperate world orbiting an entirely different star, but he wonders if it’s possible to feel Csillas eternal chill from there anyways.

[crystal-quill]

Breathe and Reach, Darlin, I Promise You’ll Touch Me

UPDATED ONCE A MONTH MINIMUM What is the ache of love that you know will always be rejected? The purpose of a heart afraid to have a Self? Decades of building his walls, for others and himself, is torn away when the Exile finds himself gazing into the light brown face of a young human cadet, and the name his accent makes half into a song. "Chiss. At least, that's what the stories call them, sir."

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Chapter Links

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

[crystal-quill]

Chapter One

The planet of Rentor is physically close to Csilla, but considered largely rural regardless due its lack of cultural centres and the reduced circumstances of the family that technically ran most of the trade and commerce for a few select luxury goods. The Kivu family, small and relatively poor, kept largely to a valley within a mountain range, where they farm various agricultural goods mostly for their own use, and produce beautiful formal clothing with complex, masterful embroidery and dye. The buildings are constructed of wood and stone, worn in that way generations of feet and hands have on a place.

On the outskirts of the Kivu village is a small home, with its own vegetable garden and orchard. It is just as solidly built as the rest of the town, but there is something neglected, nearly abandoned, about this place. The shutters are left to hang in splinters, and the paint has long since worn off of the front door. Panes of glass are cracked in several windows, and the roof is visibly in need of repair. The garden is fruitful, but the paths are choked with weeds and the orchard has briars growing between many of the trunks, shaded by the waving leaves.

Here, there is a child with sapphire skin and glowing red eyes. His hair is so black it almost seems blue, long and rough and dirty, and his clothing is old, clearly patched in several places. His build is lithe and quick, and gives the impression of a young jaybird in flight as he flits from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, the dappled light creating small kisses of god rays on his small face and a delicate halo about his hair, like a golden circlet. His feet are bare, and move silently over the grasses and moss with sure, light steps almost as if a dance, barely leaving any imprints behind.

Deep in the orchard, there is a hidden small niche formed from briars someone has patiently been guiding the growth of. This living, woven den is surprisingly spacious and weathertight, with saplings bent to form its frame and having grown along with the briars, gaps filled in with thorns and tall weeds. The inside of the den is further weatherproofed with woven reed mats, crude and rough, held up by thick wooden stakes lashed together with rope. The floor is also reed mats, and a tattered blanket piles itself forlornly in one corner, next to a battered sketchbook and several broken, bright pencils. A small knife lays near the entrance, with wooden shavings from when it had been used to sharpen the pencils. This is not a shelter that could have been built easily, and the reed mats and stakes show signs of wear and splintering, the ropes faded nearly white with age and strands of thorns starting to poke through the walls.

The child is crying, small whimpers escaping him as he slips into this sanctuary and begins to gingerly apply disinfectant stolen from the house's first aid kit. The bruises on his back and legs are starting to smart terribly, but his tears aren’t from the physical pain. He was used to that.

“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Small fingers tear up bandages from an old pillowcase and wrap them tightly around thin calves, “I did all my chores really fast and I didn’t talk to Mama’s friend when she came over, I stayed out of sight.”

The child sniffles, heart aching, and he pulls the blanket over himself, curling up under the soft green and sharp black of the briars. He would sleep now, and after the sun went down he would scavenge something to eat in the garden and orchard. The glow of his irises dim as his eyes close gently, and he slips into the refuge of his dreams, clutching his sketchbook close. He dreams of when he was smaller, held by a girl a couple years older than him with a face he can't quite see and a voice he can't quite hear. She sings to him softly, and the bitter ache in his chest is eased a little by the sweetness.

Kivu’raw’nuru is ten years old today.