Date Point: 15y6m4d AV
Oriel Art Gallery, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“…You look great, but you also look stressed as hell,” Derek ventured, and thus immediately put himself several steps above pretty much every other man Ava had dated, at least when it came to tact and sensitivity. Most of the rest would either have failed to notice, or else commented that she looked like shit warmed up.
“Urgh. Work. I got called in for a breaking story and… whew.”
“What happened?”
“Daar made the details of operation LOST CUB public,” Ava revealed. She saw him wince, and nodded. “Yeah. The Internet is going fucking crazy, everybody has an opinion, the Old Media are fanning the flames with everything they can muster…”
“Where do you guys stand on it?” Derek asked. “I know you guys have neutrality and the facts as your mission statement, but y’all’ve gotta have some kinda official take.”
Ava sighed and sat on the bench opposite the art gallery to straighten her thoughts out. She’d left Hannah with Charlotte and Ben for the night, and was regretting it now. She could have done with the tiny warm pressure of a nose on her knee.
“…A lot of people died,” she said. “Daar says it was better than the alternative, and we don’t know enough to contradict him. I dunno… It makes me wonder how Hiroshima and Nagasaki would’ve gone down online, y’know? And they were firecrackers next to what he claims he deployed.”
Derek didn’t answer, just sat down next to her and put an arm around her. Score several more points in the tact and sensitivity column.
“Wanna hear my opinion?” he asked.
“No blabbing to the reporter, Derek,” she joked. It earned her a smirk.
“Just an observation,” he promised. “Things this big, nobody gets to be neutral. If you don’t pick a side, then everybody assumes you’re on the other side and that you’re just too chickenshit to commit. It’s unfair, but it’s the way of people.”
“Yeah-huh. My editor said about the same thing.” Ava sighed. “The network’s official stance is that Daar went too far.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
Ava waved a disgusted hand. “Ya valío verga. But I don’t like taking sides, that’s opinion commentary.”
“Ya valley-what, now?”
“Sorry. It means, uh… It’s outta control, and it’s not worth giving a fuck over anymore… And honestly, I just want a nice evening so I can forget about it, at least until I go to work tomorrow.”
“I think I can manage that,” Derek promised. He stood up, helped her to her feet, and let her lead him into the art gallery where her stress soon washed away. Folctha had a thriving artistic community, and the Oriel gallery put on a new exhibition every other week.
Derek turned out to have a pretty good eye for art. He didn’t think he did, but it was definitely there. He didn’t just glance disinterestedly at pieces in the exhibit, he considered them, properly and in relation to the other pieces too.
And frankly, if he didn’t have the first idea what the kind of terminology an artist might use was, that was actually pretty refreshing.
The piece that most caught his attention was a circular snapshot of part of a pencil sketch, about as wide across as a shot glass. That tiny circle taken from a larger image seemed to grab him more than every other piece in the room, and Ava let him consider it for a good long time.
“What’re you thinking?” she nudged him eventually.
“I dunno. I… guess it makes me wonder what the bigger picture looked like. Like…” Derek indicated the image with a wave of his hand. That tiny postage stamp picture caught only about half of somebody’s face and the corner of what was maybe a house or something. Otherwise, the canvas was blank. “I keep trying to fill in around him and imagine where he was standing and what he was doing that day.”
“There’s just enough there for you to recognise, but not enough for you to identify, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. Makes me think.”
She favored him with a grin. Visiting the exhibition first before going to dinner was definitely the right way round: they’d have something to discuss as they ate that wasn’t politics or work. She moved on to the next piece, and after a few more seconds of considering the little porthole snapshots he followed her.
The next one was a sculpture. In fact it looked for all the world like the artist had taken a bronze casting of a loose-knitted scarf… which the card underneath it confirmed was exactly the case.
“…I don’t feel this one,” she said after a while. He let out a relieved sigh and his shoulders dropped.
“Thank fuck. I thought I was just being dumb.”
“I mean, it’s… technically impressive, I guess,” Ava said charitably. “Like, it took skill to make it. I just don’t see what they’re trying to say.”
“Says here it ‘invites you to consider the relationship between material and function’,” Derek read off the card.
“Eh. That kinda thing is like padding an essay up to the word count with purple prose. It’s lazy. There’s no real message here, the artist just decided they wanted to cast a bronze scarf and then had to come up with something to put on the card.”
“Heh. Like bullshitting on a report,” Derek nodded. “Not that I ever did anything like that…”
“Of course not,” she snarked, and took his arm. “…How ‘bout that dinner?”
“Sounds good.”
They walked arm-in-arm along Quarter Street, the gap between downtown Folctha to the west and the safety wall that protected the Alien Quarter from the human population on the other side. The Alien Quarter’s wall had originally been kind of a dull concrete eyesore, but Folctha’s residents had promptly fixed that. At various places along its length it was decorated with murals, hanging plants, posters… the Brothers of Clan Starmind had even decorated a length of it with a kind of painted sculptural low relief.
“So. That was your first trip to an art gallery?”
“Yup.”
“What did you think?”
“…I could stand to do that again.”
“Better not let the Lads hear that,” she teased.
“Hey, the Lads have brains,” Derek objected loyally. “Hell, Arés—uh, Marty—got ‘em all reading poetry. Though I think at this point it’s competitive. ‘Cuz, obviously, one of ‘em has to be the best at it, somehow.”
Ava smiled fondly. “…Only they could make a competition out of reading poetry.”
“I think their general leaderboard—yes, they have one of those too—has Murray and Firth tied.”
“Murray likes poetry? Also, no, wait, how do they score it?”
“Bro-logic.” He grinned and shrugged. “But yeah. Get a few drinks in him and Murray starts waxing about warrior poets, and Bannockburn. Give him a few more and he’ll stand up and recite that Robert Burns haggis poem from memory.”
“Well, he’s a long way from Scotland. Gotta represent!” Ava conceded, though internally she was giggling at the mental image.
Derek laughed, and indicated their destination. “You eaten here before?”
“No, but I know this place. They’ve got that signed photo of the Misfit trio above the bar, right?”
“…Poor Julian. Y’know he fuckin’ hates all of it, right? Even more than Allison does.”
“Wait, really?”
“Well, not the people. He likes meeting everyone, it just drains him.”
“Ahh,” Ava nodded understanding. She could sympathize. “So, did they recommend this place?”
“Xiù said we had to try the Greek salad.”
“Huh. Well, who am I to argue?”
In fact, the place was doing good business. If Derek hadn’t booked a table in advance, Ava doubted they’d have been able to sit. As it was, the waitress had saved them a secluded, intimate little table in the corner.
A lot of effort had gone into decorating the building’s interior as though it was some kind of Mediterranean stone farmhouse, and the effect was quite convincing. Ava hung her jacket over the back of the chair, parked her purse under it, and sat down only to find herself sitting below a rack of drying herbs. There were wine bottles everywhere, apparently stored in the walls as much for decoration as for ease of access, and the classical guitar music was just loud enough to give each table some privacy without forcing anybody to raise their voice.
She was impressed.
“Of course, you probably shouldn’t be leaking all this personal stuff about their personal lives to the reporter,” she pointed out.
“Probably not,” he agreed, “but I’m pretty sure you aren’t pumping me for information.”
“No pumping,” she promised, then grinned and sat back to let her eyes drift down his chest. Her teeth toyed with her lip. “Not on the first date anyway…”
He smirked. “…I set that one right up for you, didn’t I?”
“Would you think less of me if I confess I thought that one up ages ago?”
“Nah. Comedy’s all in the timing anyway.”
The waitress came round to take their drink orders and Ava gave an inward shimmy of excitement while Derek was distracted. This was going so much better than most any other date she’d ever been on already, and they’d only just sat down! And she had to admit, the age gap was actually working for her in the way it showed in his confidence and self-assuredness, which was the real thing rather than youthful bravado…
He ordered a bottle of wine for them both plus a jug of water, and settled into his seat comfortably.
“So, uh… Art,” he said.
“Your message you want to send?”
“Yeah. Mind if I tell you a story?”
She gestured for him to go ahead and he nodded. “So… back before I enlisted when I was… I’unno. About sixteen? This guy from my town came back from deployment in the desert. Marine sniper. Real… impressive guy. I thought he was the coolest motherfucker ever, right?”
“Okay…”
“I forget how, but I managed to get in touch with him, told him I was thinking of signing up, asked to talk it over with him… we met in Starbucks and I, y’know, asked him what Basic had been like and what serving was like… and then I got really, really fucking dumb. ‘Cuz I asked him if he’d ever killed somebody.”
“…What did he say?”
“He just…. Quietly nodded and said he had. No emotion at all, right? Just… poker-faced. So I’m young and dumb and can’t take a hint so I asked him where, and when and how… Again he was poker-faced, he said he couldn’t talk about it, ‘cuz it was classified. And I still remember the next words outta my mouth.”
“What?”
He grimaced. “I said… ‘That is so cool. What was it like?’”
“I… take it that didn’t go down well,” Ava predicted.
“He just… calmly pushed his coffee aside, leaned forward, looked me in the eye. And he said ‘If you don’t shut your mouth right now, I’m gonna take you into that restroom right there and fuck you up.‘” Derek looked down at his hands and almost-laughed at himself. “I nearly shit my pants.”
“But you enlisted.”
“Yeah. And nowadays, I know exactly why he reacted like that.”
Ava breathed out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding. “So… what’s the message?” she asked.
“I guess I just wanna… I wanna answer those questions,” Derek said. “I think somebody should. And I think you can help.”
“…What happened after he threatened you?” Ava asked.
“He… picked up his coffee and drank it. Then he stood up and… the last thing he ever said to me was ‘I got two pieces of advice for you: Don’t ask stupid fucking questions, and don’t be a sniper.’ And he left. I never saw him again.”
“You listened?”
“Yeah. It was good advice.”
The waitress arrived with their drinks and took their food order. Following the recommendation from Xiù Chang, they both chose the salad, and Ava took a long sip of her wine once the waitress was gone.
“…That’s powerful,” she said at last. “And you’re right, I think it’s important. So, how do you want to share it?”
“Well… I’m not the only one.” Derek reached inside his jacket and produced a folded sheet of printer paper which he handed over. “So I was thinking, what if I helped you write, like, a series or something?”
Ava took the paper and unfolded it. She speed-read the short message printed on it and almost knocked over her wine. “¡Carajo!”
“Yeah.”
“I…”
“You’d be doing both of us a huge favor, Ava.”
“I’d be doing you a favor? Derek, this is—”
“I know. And believe me, he has this weighing on him a lot more than I do.”
Ava drained half her wine glass in one gulp and took a deep breath. Opportunities like this were… well, they were like striking oil in her backyard, or finding a Renaissance masterpiece in grandma’s loft. They never happened, not without a lifetime of hard work and reputation-building.
What surprised her though was that that thought came in a long way behind the simple fact that she agreed with him: after what she’d seen and been through in Egypt, even though that was not even a fraction of the whole story…
And after the… spirited debate at work…
“Of course I’ll do it,” she said.
“Even with the network’s ‘official position’?”
“The network? I don’t give a fuck what the network’s position is: I’ll do it.”
He smiled.
“I’ll let Daar know,” he said.
Date Point: 15y6m1w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Senior Airman Rihanna Miller
“So this is a sacred circle, huh?”
Jack nodded and set his bag down outside it. “Yup. We set it up a few months after Sara died.”
“That musta taken a while.”
“Not really. Folctha’s pagan community is about sixty people.”
“That many?”
“One in a thousand,” Jack shrugged. “Anyway, we all carried a stone up here—Dad carried the altar—then we built the circle, and we had a moon ritual to consecrate it. I mean yeah, it took all day, but it was a fun day.”
Rihanna looked around. The circle was little more than a ring of stones, none bigger than a gym bag, with a larger stone in the middle that she guessed was a kind of altar or something. The whole thing was twenty feet across, and honestly she could have walked right through it without noticing it. It was about a five minute walk off the footpath from Memorial Hill, with a nice view out over Folctha.
“Why here?” she asked.
“It’s a nice spot.”
“Is that all?”
“Pretty much.” Jack took off his shoes and socks and stepped into the circle, where he stooped to tidy out some twigs and debris. “You can make a ritual site anywhere, but we wanted somewhere out of the way. There’s a town in Wales near where Mum used to live, the circle there’s down in a little hollow near the university campus and they used to have trouble with people knocking over the altar and leaving lager cans everywhere.”
“Ugh.” Rihanna was no pagan herself, but the idea of desecrating somebody’s spiritual space like that still disgusted her. “Some people have no respect.”
Jack just shrugged again and finished tidying up to his satisfaction. He returned to his bag and retrieved some candles and set them out on the four larger stones on the circle’s circumference, which Rihanna guessed probably marked the cardinal directions.
“…Do you wanna join in, or…?” he asked after a few seconds.
“No thanks. But I’d like to watch.”
“Sure. Just don’t come into the circle, okay?”
“Okay…” She sat back and watched him unload a few other items from his bag: crystals, a short dagger, a bundle of white leaves, a shallow bowl and a long lighter. “What exactly are you doing?”
“It’s a healing spell,” he explained, laying the crystals, leaves and knife on the altar. “For the Dauntless guys. I could have done it at home but what’s the point in having this circle if we don’t use it, right?”
“Makes sense. How does this work, anyway?”
“It’s not super formal,” Jack said. He put his phone on the altar and tapped at it. “It’s just about raising the energy and sending it their way. How you do that is up to you and your tradition. Just so long as it comes from the heart, you know?” He tapped at the phone one last time and the quiet sounds of drumming and chanting started to waft through the circle. Satisfied, he made a procession around the circle, lighting the candles and muttering something. Rihanna was close enough to hear him as he lit the third one.
“Guardian of the West, I call upon you to watch over this rite. Powers of energy and will, guided by fire, let those in my thoughts know healing and comfort…”
He moved on, lit the fourth candle and retreated to the altar, where he knelt and bowed his head for some time. After a minute or so he picked up bundle of leaves and set fire to the end, which produced a surprising amount of smoke as it smouldered. Satisfied, he set the lighter down and waved the bundle slowly around himself and the altar.
She wondered what her grandma would think of her, sitting there and watching literal witchcraft.
When the moment seemed right she gave voice to the thought in her head. “I never figured you for…any of this, gotta be honest.”
Jack opened his eyes and glanced at her. “It’s how my family does things,” he said. He set the burning bundle on the altar and took up the knife. He grinned at the slight change in her expression.
“Don’t worry. It’s for symbolic cutting only.”
“I’ll shut up and watch.”
He smiled at her again then returned his attention to the ritual.
“Spirits of this world, extend your protection and love to Ben Cook, James Choi, Holly Chase and Damian Spears, and to the brothers of the HEAT, of First Fang, and of Clan Whitecrest. Help them cut away their pain—” he drew the blade in a strong cutting motion through the air. “Help them cut away their grief. Help them cut away their despair. Help them cut away their guilt.”
He drew one last cut with the knife, set it down again and raised his hands in front of him palm-up. “Help them forgive and love themselves. Help them see the good in their deeds, and help them be whole. Spirits of water, air, fire and earth… help them heal.”
He sat still a moment or two longer, then exhaled, picked up the smouldering bundle and ground it into the bowl to put it out.
“…That’s the whole thing, huh?” Rihanna asked. It had taken only five minutes or so from the moment he lit the first candle.
“Pretty much,” Jack agreed. “Ju st the devoking now.”
“The what?”
“I invoked the guardians, now I have to de voke them. It’s just… polite, you know?”
She watched him go round the circle and mutter a thank-you as he stopped at each of the candles before he pinched them out.
“Gotta admit… this is a lot different to what I’m used to,” she confessed. “Dunno what my grandma would think.”
“I take it she wouldn’t approve?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know what people think about paganism, and…” he shrugged in an I-try-not-to-let-it-bother-me way.
“It bothers you.”
He shrugged, returned to the altar and packed his bag. The air was still fragrant with the scent of that smoke.
“Well, you tell me: Did any of that look evil?”
“No. Actually it looked… peaceful. You looked like you enjoyed that.”
Jack smiled. “Healing energy is like that. It always makes me feel… warm, and loved, and… yeah, peaceful.” He stepped out of the circle and put his shoes back on. “Shall we?”
“How come I’ve never seen this side of you before?”
“Well, I don’t cast spells at work.” He grinned at her. “Besides, I don’t really know much about your religious life either. I mean, I assume you’re a Christian…”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t really go to church as often as I should… at least, not according to my grandma.”
“Life’s busy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“D’you think God minds?”
Rihanna thought about it. “…No, I doubt it. I mean, He’s meant to be forgiving and loving, ain’t he?”
“Right. You can’t be all faith all the time, that’s no way to live. And I think… well, Mum’s kind of my high priestess, and she thinks that if the universe wants us to be anything, it wants us to be ourselves. And you can’t be that if you spend your whole time praying.”
“That makes sense.”
They walked in silence back as far as the hiking trail: Jack seemed to be in a contented, relaxed mood where he was happy with whatever, and Rihanna had a head full of thoughts.
“…Hey. Thanks for letting me come up here with you,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“I dunno. I just… appreciate it. It was nice of you to let me in.”
“Best not to tell your grandma, though.”
She laughed. “Hah! Yeah. Better not.”
“So what now?”
“Hey?”
“Well, you’re my most favouritest person to hang out with,” Jack said, in his best imitation of a Stoneback’s drawl. “We’ve done what I wanted to do… what do you wanna do?”
Rihanna rolled her eyes. “I never understood that verbal tic of theirs…” she groused. “…Anyway. I still haven’t seen this two-seventy bench press of yours, and I know it’s your heavy day. Moho told me so!”
He sighed with a slight grin. “Fiiine. I usually work out with my dad, that cool?”
“Your dad’s a badass viking warrior. That’s definitely cool.”
Jack snorted. “Please. He’ll spar with us gym rats and all that, but the man feels bad when he swats flies! He’s the biggest softie ever.”
“Just so long as he spots good.”
Jack nodded, put his hand to his pocket, then stopped dead in his tracks. “…Shit.”
“What?”
“I left my phone back at the circle.”
“…Guess we’re going back for it huh?”
“Sorry, sorry…”
Rihanna didn’t mind. In fact, as they turned back up the hill, she decided she was glad for it. Because the feeling was mutual, he was definitely her ‘most favoritest’ too.
What better way to spend a day off?
Date Point: 15y6m1w AV
Multi-Faith Center, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Champion and Grandfather Gyotin, of Clan Starmind
Gyotin liked to observe human spirituality in all its interesting forms. Although he himself was firmly a convert to Buddhism, the sheer variety of it all was… intoxicating. He had a huge and complicated web of interconnected links hung on the wall of his private office, a tool for teasing out the commonalities and the symbology they all shared.
Some days, it looked impenetrable even to him. The taboos in particular could be a truly closed book at times.
Take caffeine for instance. To insects, a fatal pesticide. To humans a million times more massive, it was a pleasant stimulant with few if any consistent drawbacks. To Gaoians…it depended, and there was no way to tell how any particular person would respond. Gyotin quite enjoyed it. The Great Father seemed to get a buzz just from sniffing an espresso and, allegedly, actually drinking the stuff was enough to have him tearing around in a frenzy.
Its trade and import, as far as Gyotin had learned, may have been instrumental in the development of Humanity’s Renaissance and Enlightenment eras. And tea was the very model of a civilized drink, having a history that allegedly went back five thousand years.
Why should either be a taboo among humans? And yet they were, to Mormons. But hot chocolate was not, despite the fact that the sugar and fats were objectively far more unhealthy than caffeine.
It was all so intriguingly confusing, and it was why Gyotin’s little impromptu coffee shop in the Multi-Faith Center (free, but donations gratefully accepted) always kept a healthy supply of Ovaltine and herbal infusions for when the Buehlers were having a session.
There were about forty Mormons in Folctha, total. The branch president was a happy, smiling, truly lovely guy named Ted who gave so much of his time to other people that there was no possible way Gyotin could see that he might have any other hobbies or personal interests.
But the Buehler family was the bane of his life.
Gyotin made a point of hanging around the Center a little later for him. Quite aside from the opportunity to give a little kindness back and help a stressed-out man de-stress, it was a good opportunity to learn more about a faith he otherwise knew little about.
Ted’s drink of choice was a lemon and ginger infusion, which he accepted gratefully as he sank into one of the soft, comfortable chairs that were the Faith Center’s hallmark.
“…That… was tougher than usual today,” he said. Gyotin got the impression that he would have sorely liked to swear, something that he usually abhorred.
“I didn’t hear shouting this time,” Gyotin ventured.
“I think they’re past that point. Each of them blames the other for the fact that they’ve—their words, not mine—’lost control of the kids.’”
“It always comes back to control with them, doesn’t it?”
Ted sighed. “Yes. Always. And it’s…” He scooted forward in his seat and put his drink down on the floor between his feet, untouched. “The truly frustrating part is that in their way I think Jacob and Amanda really do love their children. Even Allison. But they got so completely fixated on being their children’s protectors that they forgot that the other side of parenthood is letting the kids leave the nest someday.”
Gyotin decided to make himself an Ovaltine. “A Gaoian male might not be the best to talk to about this, you know,” he said. “I don’t know much about raising cubs.”
“Neither do I,” Ted confessed. “But we can both spot when they’re doing it wrong.”
“Seeing that they do it wrong is not the same thing as being able to show them the right way… assuming they even can be shown the right way.”
“They’re both prideful.”
“Hmm.” Gyotin mulled that over as he made his drink.
“…What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking…Pride like that, where does it come from? What are they proud about, you know?”
Ted nodded and sipped his drink. “I find… in most people, pride like that is all about protecting their own fragility. It’s less that they’re proud of something, it’s that they’re afraid that if they let something touch the bit inside them that’s already crumbling then it’ll finally fall apart and take everything else with it.”
“So is prideful the right word?” Gyotin asked. He sat down with his own mug warming his paws.
“Maybe ego is better. And that’s a real problem, because neither of them can see their own imperfections. And if you can’t do that…” He sighed and tapped his fingers on his mug, then gave Gyotin a curious look. “…What do Buddhists believe about repentance?” he asked.
“Uh… in short, it’s internal. You don’t repent to anybody or make a confession or anything. Repentance is done inwardly with the awakened quality of our own mind.” Gyotin sniffed his drink and savored the aroma. “…Obviously you apologize to anybody you wrong, but when we don’t follow right action, the fault is in us.”
“That’s their problem: The fault is always in somebody else. Amanda insists that Jacob is the problem, Jacob blames Amanda, both of them think Allison was poisoned by a third party and that she’s passing that poison on to the boys…” Ted sighed. “If only I could get Allison’s perspective on it…”
“She won’t talk to you?”
“She’s… polite.”
“Ahh.” Gyotin nodded. Humans had some wonderful ways of being polite that had absolutely nothing to do with being friendly or open. “But you think it all comes down to fragility in the end?”
“Yes. I think… if either of them ever really accepted and understood the role they’ve played in their own misery, it’d completely pull them apart.”
“Maybe that’s what they need?” Gyotin suggested.
“Perhaps, but the Devil is in the details, and getting them to realize that will require…much patience. And it’s a delicate moment, too. You hope what you’re left with afterwards is a person who’s finally ready to move forward and heal…”
“But what you might get is a wreck who’s in a worse state than before,” Gyotin finished.
“Right. I guess you’d call that a moment of epiphany or… whatever you’d call it.”
“Kenshō. It means, uh, to see one’s own nature. Or in Gaori, we have the term Kuo! wan u.”
“…I’m not even gonna try,” Ted said, though he was smiling.
“It’s okay. That yipping sound is hard for Humans. But it literally means, uh… ‘scratching your own back’.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Because it’s basically impossible without help. We don’t have that clever monkey shoulder you do—You have that little spot that’s hard to reach? We have a whole stripe up the middle that’s impossible to reach. And maybe, some people never manage to scratch that itch.”
Ted shook his head. “I believe in healing, and I believe that everybody can be healed. I know there must be some way to get through to them, I just… can’t figure out what it is.”
“Hmm.” Gyotin sipped his Ovaltine then set it aside. “…Are you sure you’re not being prideful yourself?” he asked innocently.
“I… Hmm. I… what do you mean?”
“Well, ask yourself: What’s riding on this for you? Will it touch anything fragile and crumbling inside you if you can’t get through?” Gyotin asked. “We said earlier that their flaw is they blame others for what they’re doing wrong… but it’s also possible to wrongly blame yourself for the flaws of others. You can’t get through to them, so you ask ‘what am I doing wrong?’ Well, the answer may be you’re not doing anything wrong at all, they’re just not ready yet. And I think maybe you need to entertain the thought maybe they never will be.”
“…I don’t like that idea.”
“I know. It’s a gloomy thought. But how well can a doctor treat a patient who doesn’t take their medicine?”
“Hmm.”
Ted finished his drink in thoughtful silence, and Gyotin let him. He’d said what he felt needed saying. Finally, both drinks were empty and Ted stood up with a groan. He looked much happier.
“…Thank you, Gyotin. I think I know how to approach this now.”
“That’s what I’m here for!” Gyotin assured him.
He tidied up the center once Ted was gone, checked that everything was neat and orderly, and returned to the Starmind monastery enclave in the pleased mood he always felt when he’d helped somebody. Maybe he’d see if he could help build a bridge between Ted and Allison Buehler later.
Finding a pair of hulking Stonebacks looming quietly inside the Enclave gates thoroughly disrupted his train of thought.
The larger ducked a respectful posture at him. “Champion. The Great Father’s waiting in your office.”
Maybe others would have frozen up or felt a sense of panic, but Gyotin had literally given the Great Father a cuff on the muzzle one time. And besides, he knew the truth: underneath the weight of his titles and all the muscle and claws, Daar was a huge soppy softy.
At least, when reality allowed him to be.
“I take it he was happy to wait for me,” he observed.
“That’s right, Champion. He took a tour of the garden. Seemed to enjoy it.”
“Very well. Thank you.”
Sure enough, Daar was in Gyotin’s office, poring over the confusing mass of interconnected lines on the wall. At the moment Gyotin scratched on the door and entered, the Great Father was studying the top-left quadrant, the big one on Gaoian native spirituality and ancient mythology.
Doubtless he’d have a few observations of his own later.
“Good evening, My Father.”
Daar was in a quiet mood tonight… relatively speaking. He still showered Gyotin with booming affection, but it was pretty clear his mind was elsewhere.
He never got the chance to ask where, though. Daar was far too interested in talking about Gyotin’s research board, which he’d pretty thoroughly decoded without any help and even recorded some thoughts of his own.
“It’s interestin’ how all that symbolism is connected, huh? ‘Specially ‘dragons’ an’ their ‘world serpent’ thing.”
“Ah yes. Jörmungandr, the serpent that encircles the world and is destined to slay and be slain by the warrior-god Thor at Ragnarok. I see some parallels with recent history there.”
Daar didn’t seem moved. “Y’do, do ya?”
“Imagery that evocative will always inspire the imagination. But I note that your world-serpent is dead and you’re still very much alive.”
“Eh, Judge-Father ain’t decided on that just yet.”
Gyotin chittered and indicated another section of the board. “Many traditions have it that death does not need to be literal. The Death card in Tarot, for instance, primarily represents upheaval and new beginnings.”
“Yeah…So I’m here to do an interview with this Ava Riòs character.”
“I know her well.”
“So I hear. That’s why I’m here, talkin’ ‘ta you first. I wanna know what your nose says about her.”
Gyotin had been taking lessons from Genshi about the Championly virtues of keeping his expression controlled and his thoughts obscured, but he’d always sensed that Daar treated the whole opera of that as an unwelcome sequence of theatre that veered uncomfortably close to falsehood at times. Rather than playing that game, therefore, Gyotin allowed his ears to wiggle and roam freely as he thought.
“She’s very… human,” he decided after a while. “Actually, I respect and like her very much.”
“That all?”
Gyotin considered the Great Father for a second, then tilted his head interrogatively. “…What’s your real concern, My Father?”
“…I’m facin’ up to some real hard truths, friend. An’ Stonebacks do not lie. I want her to ask hard questions, and I wanna know how much this is gonna hurt.”
Gyotin duck-nodded slowly and retreated to his desk. “As it happens, I was talking with… well, a leader in one of the local faith communities earlier. He has a problem family he’s dealing with who just do not understand the concept of repentance. It was an interesting conversation.”
Daar could be patient when he wanted, and paid Gyotin the compliment of listening rather than interrupting the explanation to demand an explanation. He duck-nodded, but listened with his ears up and alert.
“Ava understands penitence. Perhaps to the point of not being so good at understanding some other things. I’ve never met another person, Human or Gao, who has explored herself so thoroughly and faced her flaws without flinching or breaking.”
“That’s…useful, I think. An’ I assume that’s ‘cuz of her history with ‘Horse?”
“Certainly that’s the largest part of it.”
“Yeah…I bet there’s a long-ass story there but I ain’t got the time. Sarry.”
“I’m sure it would be best if I didn’t tell it anyway,” Gyotin assured him. “She has a right to tell her own story, after all.”
Daar duck-nodded amiably. “I also wanna ask you somethin’ else that’s been botherin’ me.”
Gyotin inclined his head and listened.
“You still want me to go through a coronation?” Daar asked. “You better’n anyone know the implications.”
Gyotin duck-nodded instantly. “I do. It’s necessary, My Father. I’ve laid out my reasoning many times.”
“Yeah. But if I do this, I wanna do somethin’ the Prince o’ Wales talked wit’ me about. I don’ wanna be a God. If I’mma do this, it’s gonna be to serve the Gao.”
“So I must ask again, My Father. What’s your specific concern? It seems like you’ve already made up your mind… why are you asking my opinion about Ava?”
Finally, he managed to sting Daar’s temper. The Great Father scowled at him and growled, “I ain’t sure I appreciate havin’ the subject changed like that…but…fair, I guess.” Having voiced his irritation, he deflated and thought about the question for a moment. “My worry is this: if I’m gonna be some kinda galactic emperor—yeah, that’s absolutely how this’ll be seen, don’t pretend otherwise—then what I really gotta worry ‘bout is what the Humans think o’ me. I’m pretty sure they think they’re at a disadvantage t’us but that just ain’t so, not for a while.”
Rather than push his luck and nettle Daar again, Gyotin simply tilted his head the other way and listened some more.
Daar rewarded his patience by finally getting to his real question. “Is she gonna fuck me over?” he asked “Everythin’ I think I know says no, but ain’t nobody I trust more than you to answer this question. I can’t ask ‘Horse, he’s loyal. I can’t ask the HEAT, they pretty much hate her the mostest. Genshi is a Cousin but he’s got other motivations, and Regaari is in the same boat, ‘cept worse. He thinks I don’t know what he’s plannin’ but I do. So…do I trust her?”
A simple question got a simple answer.
“I would.”
Daar grumbled to himself, and set to a low prowl around the room for a long moment, thinking over his options. “Well…that’s that, then. Onward.”
“If I have any advice to give, My Father, it’s this: Decide for yourself when you meet her. Don’t just do what I would do: you are not me.”
Daar flicked his ears in a bemused sorta way. “Naw. ‘Yer, like, way too puny! Also, ‘yer right too. I’mma get a good sniff o’ her before I let it get serious…” He rumbled something that was almost a chitter, then looked Gyotin up and down. “It’s late. You sleep in ‘yer office?”
“I prefer the nest-beds over in the monastery.”
“Mind if I join ‘ya? The Statler is a bit too public an’ if I go visit the Lads it’ll be…well, I dunno how they’re gonna feel jus’ yet.”
“Of course you’re welcome. But I should warn you, we get up early for dawn meditation before breakfast.”
“Sounds good! I’m an early riser too. Might even join in, mebbe.”
To Gyotin that sounded like an excellent idea.
“Well then,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get your day off to a good start…”
He led the way, reflecting as he did so that he spent his whole life guiding people nowadays… and that he wouldn’t change it for the world.