Home. What is that? The boy thought to himself as he lay on the clay roof of his apartment building. It was a warm day already, the bronzed shingles heating rapidly beneath his bare back even though it was only midmorning. He would have to go in soon; his pale skin couldn't take direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time. Maybe today I'll stay out, he thought as he yawned and rolled onto his stomach. After all, does it really matter?
He was sitting on a low shelf covered with cushions of various colors. At his feet, a pool of water reflected the dim light from candles perched in clefts about the roughly hewn walls of the tiny room. The boy leaned over, an image peering back from the water. It could have been him: a long plait of pale lavender lying across his shoulder, wide amber eyes tinged with pink, ashen skin. Somehow though, he knew it wasn't. The boy looked over his shoulder as he kneeled by the pool. "Mother…" he called.
He felt slender fingers smooth stray hair from his forehead, touching his arms. Instinctively, the child leaned back, knowing he would find his mother's lap. Her arms wrapped around his chest, the burnished metal of her gauntleted forearm glowing brighter than he thought the candlelight could afford. "I don't understand what's going on." The boy frowned.
"That was your father you saw," she hummed. He smiled. He loved how his mother always sounded like she was singing when she spoke. Especially when she spoke aloud.
"Am I named after him?" He traced a finger over the intricate vines that twisted their silver limbs over her wrist and across her arm, as if they had grown into the skin.
She smoothed the boy's braid over his chest. "No. Yuki… it means…snow. I had never seen snow until we arrived on Sernissha. It's a symbol of a new life."
"Oh." Yuki snuggled into his mother's embrace, staring off at the far wall. They sat in silence for a while, his mother singing to him softly in his head about their new life and their cause, about how he would grow to carry on her Craft, about the Maker's gifts. After that, there was merely silence as he drank in his mother's smell. Like fire and rain: he had forgotten how much he missed that smell.
"Mother?" She looked down at him warmly as he spoke, pausing as she rebraided his hair. She had amber eyes, like the moon at harvest. "Where is my father?"
"He felt it was wrong that we left. He stayed on Cortiaari." The woman seemed to have trouble with the braid. She hastily retraced the movements. After undoing the plait three times, she ran her fingers through the loose hair and gently moved her son from her lap. He sat up, rubbing at his eyes, his long hair streaming over his shoulders, just brushing the floor. His mother was already gone.
"You remind me very much of your father, Yuki," the voice sang in his mind. He felt himself being lifted to stand, compelled to look into the pool again. The man smiled back at him kindly. He was very tall, built like Yuki with slender arms and legs, his lilac hair freely brushing the backs of his armored thighs. Armor, like his Mother's, only dark and masculine. For all the man smiled, Yuki still felt a great sadness behind it, the mirrored, garnet eyes regarding the boy mournfully as if…heartbroken. "He was so very kind to me, to everyone. If you could have only grown to know him, my little one, you would have known he was a good man…"
"But what?" the younger wanted to say. He could see the look on his mother's face in his mind. He would have seen her look away as she used to do so many times when he was younger. Were you not happy with me, Mother? Was I not enough like him, or too much? He could feel her voice slipping away inside. He could no longer remember her face. He tried to find her, but she was no longer in the room. Not even her smell. Yuki collapsed to his knees, forcing tears that were not there, hugging his arms to his chest as being held by a mother that would never be there again.
The boy groped awkwardly at the base of his neck, a tight pain in his back flaring up at the movement. Whimpering, he crawled down the ladder to the courtyard where an elderly Quarren caught him by the wrist.
"Chut, chut," she chided, pulling him into her small apartment, setting him on a stool in the room that served as a kitchen and a sleeping area. Yuki did not resist, hanging his head as she began to administer a thick salve to his badly burned back. "Did I not tell you to stay out of the sun, little Skink?" she warbled. She loved to tell him he was like the tiny lizards lived in the city, always sunning themselves on the rocks in the Square.
"I'm sorry, Mekna. I fell asleep." Remembering, he reached up, touching his neck. The alien slapped his hand away.
"What do you think you're doing, Yuki Na'Men?" She reapplied ointment where he had rubbed it off. Muttering to herself, she disappeared into her tiny storeroom where she housed the rest of her various potions.
While she was gone, he wandered over to the basin of washing water. He ran his fingers through his hair, tucking the longer strands in front behind his ears, smoothing the tapered point at his neck. It really was just a dream, he reminded himself, looking closer at the reflection in the water. It held no exotic warrior now, no proud, wounded man. Just a little boy, pale featured with a back burnt the color of well-cooked shellfish. He blinked. Garnet eyes, the color of bloodshot honey, peered back. Yuki splashed his hand across the image.
When he turned, Mekna was already standing there, his shirt in one hand, a roll of fine-spun gauze in the other.
"If you are done admiring yourself, my lizard, we can finish patching you up." She tried her best to imitate a smile, the tentacles around her mouth turning up. Eventually, she resorted to a chuckle. Yuki could not help but return a grin.
The boy squinted at his work, sliding closer to the forge. His mother never installed practical lighting. She said she preferred the pure light of the sun that streamed through the frame of transparisteel every morning. She liked to make due with what the Maker provided for her. Yuki sighed, sliding even closer to the blazing fire behind him. His mother always said that when she refused the little electronic devices that made life a little less harsh: make due with what the Maker provided. The boy's tiny, calloused fingers worked almost automatically, weaving the chitinous fibers together into fine, flexible mesh. Eventually, threads of metal were added, piece by agonizing piece. It was always done this way, his mother explained years ago before Yuki's fingers were mature enough to guide themselves. She used to take his hands carefully in hers as she worked, going through the movements. Even when she was sick, the boy thought heavily, pushing the finished piece across the table, the heat of the forge blazing against his back.
The sparse apartment felt so hollow to him now. Everywhere were reminders of his Mother: the dusty leather apron hanging from the ledge of rock beside the open-pit forge; various tools strewn about the work table, the grips worn down by a single hand over time; the bits of colored cloth hanging from windows and in the sleeping room that his mother said was to remind them of the manifestations of the Maker. All of these things made Yuki ache inside. They reminded him of his loneliness. The boy spared a glance at the timepiece on the table. Typically, Mekna would remind him to sleep. Tonight, she was late.
He stretched one lithe arm behind his head while the other scratched his stomach, noting with appreciation that the tightness in his back was gone. She's getting to be such an old woman, he thought and giggled.
"Might as well go wake the old nag up," he said aloud to himself, using his favorite name he overheard at the cantina, giggling again, his conspiratorial comments lightening his mood considerably.
However, by the time he reached the elderly Quarren's apartment, he felt guilty at poking fun at his friend and caretaker.
The healer sat hunched over in her favorite chair in her kitchen, clutching a crumpled piece of parchment in her fist. When the boy entered, she hastily wiped at her eyes, warbling a less than hearty hello.
"Come boy. Come sit by old Mekna," she said, breaking the silence as Yuki stared at her from the doorway, confused. She fussed over his unruly hair for a moment before breaking into tears again, thrusting the paper at the bewildered boy.
The adolescent armor-maker read over the Cortiaari script once before looking up at the Quarren, his own red-tinted eyes brimming with tears. "But Mekna, I..."
"Shh, child." She wiped her cheeks and flapped over Yuki again. "Your mother always said, 'Give this to him when he's old enough. He has to find his own way!' Your mother was forever speaking in riddles like that. Sha'al...she said, 'Tell him to have his own truths he can stand by, like his father.'" Mekna swallowed and swatted at him again, cutting off his comment. "No, no. Let me say all this. I tried too hard to memorize it for this moment, so let me say it. 'He'll know I'm with him,' she said. 'And he'll have questions, too. Tell him, the only thing that made me sad all those years is that I knew I wouldn't live long enough to see him grow into a fine young man. He'll have to be content that I am watching him through the Maker's eyes.'"
The story seemed to take the energy out of Mekna as she slumped back into her chair, warbling through her sobs. "So now, tomorrow is your birthday, little lizard. You become a man tomorrow."
It was all too much information for Yuki. He clutched the parchment much like the old healer had, only he knew what the strange symbolic script meant. Tomorrow, he would be 15. His mother had been preparing him his entire life for the Rites, only...
"New Rites for a new life, Yuki," it read. He knew what it meant. He would have to leave Sernissha. Suddenly, the life he always sought to escape didn't seem so bad. The pale little boy lurched forward, reaching his arms out to his caretaker.
"Mekna! I don't want to leave!" He wrapped his arms around her middle, weeping into her coarse grained tunic.
"Chut, chut," the Quarren cooed. "No matter how far you go, you'll always have a home here, my tiny Yuki."
The transport left early in the morning, giving the teen little time to pack
his meager belongings. In his bags were a few worn tools, an old leather apron,
some changes of clothes Mekna mended for him, and two
jars of burn salve complete with instructions for more batches. She sat with
him in the spaceport, warbling on about how important it was to dig for the
correct roots early, and to boil until the worst of the smell was gone.
Payment had been received for the armor and placed with a note in the Quarren's kitchen explaining how he had left his apartment to her, so she would have plenty of extra space to play with her plants and a nice fireplace to rest her old bones next to.
When he boarded his flight, she fought off another bout of tears as she waved after the passenger freighter his mother had booked years ago as her final act. Yuki watched until the spaceport became impossibly small, his own little town indistinguishable against the green of Sernissha. In the space of a few breaths, even the planet was small enough to fit in the round port window.
"Don't worry Mekna, I'll be home soon..."