Tag Archives: Creative Commons

26 \ 208

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“This is my friend Kate,” said Bassel, indicating a Vedani who looked somewhat more mature, though not quite adult. A small group of young Vedani had joined the chamber of people after they’d oriented themselves with each other. There came the usual pleased surprise at the high degree of morphological similarity – familiar enough in the great void of possibilities.

“Bassel is a delightful representative of humanity,” Yykth said to his mother. “And, he’s great at puzzles. As you now know, us kids have been working on something that we’re ready to show you. Being here gives you some idea of the importance of the matter. This in particular is more part of your battle than ours, but we agree on bringing this to an end. We’ll be able to help each other.”

“I believe I understand, or that I will. I’m here to support my son, and assess this solution.” She wrapped an arm around Bassel and looked over at the other human children, with one guardian each.

“Allow us to bring you to some comfortable accommodations, first.” The word circulated through the group. They all went together into a nearby portion of this wing, windowless but graced with enriching wavelengths of light. A set of individual suites was arranged around a common area. The guests were released to make themselves at home. Mirya went in ahead of Bassel and checked the toilet. It was the same brand they had in their apartment. It worked great.

25 \ 207

Posted on by under Greater Beyond

Nine-year-old Bassel Ayo looked around his home apartment. Everything using electric current was turned off, including the lights. The only person he lived with, his mother, came out of her bedroom. She tidied the recently-made empty floor space just a little more. They locked eyes and smiled, sitting down together on the open floor.

Mother and child linked hands and looked up. Just above their heads where they sat, a disk of light appeared. Both carefully raised their free hand up to touch it.

The sensation of transport felt like being pulled upward, though it was difficult to focus on any part of the body. One seemed there and not there, inside the light. Then like a mist, the brightness dissipated, and they were standing deposited inside a comfortably-sized curved chamber.

Once they felt collected, they exited through a walkway that bent to one side, so the next room was obscured. Beyond was a space where they found the other human arrivals. All seemed more or less like they were already familiar with each other.

“We were all calm, and we were also ready. Because we knew. We knew that it was time for all of this to happen now,” read a page of the journal that he later began.

24.XVI \ 206

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Sturlusson drifted toward the house on the facing corner to the left, keeping a fixed gaze as though hypnotically impelled. “I replicated and re-engineered some of my father’s signal discoveries to regain communication with the Vedani. That was mostly after refugee block life, but I continually taught myself a lot of things. I got to know their old friends the Kao-Sidhe. From them I learned of the Aureny, and the Red Nexus Dragons found us all. One thing after another. Together, we could be more than Celeste, and Charlotte, and Vario could quell. Now, I myself cannot stop what I’ve set in motion. I’m not even at the center of it, and I never actually was.”

They’d arrived at the foot of a brick walkway leading up to the front door of this corner house. The roof sprouted plant life, and the facade peeled. “This change has taken my life to occur, and my entire lifetime has been this change. Yours as well. Here are remains of its beginning.” He hoisted a presentational hand, a gesture that said home sweet home. “I was born in this house.” His tone was pure nostalgia.

Soleil assessed the position of the sun in the sky, eyes sunk deep. It was about a hand’s breadth from the horizon, where before it had been two. Turning a neutral gaze to Raev, she said, “Leave me.” She gave him royal reception demeanor, conveying that she was processing in her official role. It was the sort of statement that came along with critical matters on the verge of immediacy. There was no canny response, and no better one than action.

Seeming to understand, Raev unhitched a nod. She could find her way back to the ship by sunset like everyone else. He left her there, walking back the way they came. Soleil lay down in the walkway looking up, rooflines and treetops framing a dimmed sky.

24.XV \ 206

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Soleil dropped a set of thought filters onto her perception, engaging her applicable knowledge to sift what was being told to her. She allowed Raev to continue without being interrupted.

“Also for the denial of the presence of Vedani sentience. The Kao-Sidhe cover-up and displacement was an old matter continually carried over, though who is really responsible for that, if anyone? The next to do so, it may be presumed. So far, that isn’t you. It seems you pioneered a different way. They actually… hang out with you.

“Overlooking the Aureny I see as pure human error. It definitely wasn’t Aquarii, or Dragons who wanted all their gems at the cost of their lives without recognizing them as people. Though, the Aquarii may have enjoyed benefits and advances with the unexplained influx of new materials… at least until they were removed of an intrinsic link to their ancestral history.

“The continued exile of the Red Nexus Dragons had coincidentally reached its time. They’d figured out their own situation, achieving contact with the Kao-Sidhe and Vedani as they were doing so.”

Raev let his head nod humbly with just a touch of self-aware sardonic mockery. “I was able to figure out how all their emerging grievances fit with the Hirylien Remainder as they reached a tipping point. There were ways we could create the changes we sought in a threatening and hostile society.”

24.XIV \ 206

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The street changed once they’d made their way beyond the first horizon. Their total walking distance wasn’t measurably huge, but they had certainly covered a lot of ground in barely any time at all. The sun was dipping, though not yet sinking fast.

Here the commercial buildings thinned into some undeveloped tree space. Through this micro-savannah, they approached some curved streets. Two semicircles met against the straight road they walked, forming a bisected loop. Raev paused for a long while upon the sight of this junction. Soleil took the opportunity to encapsulate the scene around them, and note its effect on him.  He continued again in the same relaxed and almost quiet tone. “Only one person remains with direct decision-making culpability in the Slaughter of Hirylien… your father.”