Disclaimer: I definitely do not own Jason Morgan. (Nor do I own Katherine, come to think of it, at least not most of the time.) This entire thing is just for fun, I'm making no money off of it; the only one who makes money off of Morgan is Julie E. Czerneda, the amazing author who created him.
Author's Note: Bet you didn't think I was going to post this, Flickerfoot! But it's just such a good story… I hope you understand.
This began as a short story in the back of a friend's yearbook, but I realized after I was only a way into it that it would make a great full-out story. We never do hear much about Morgan's life before he meets Symon. In this story, I intend to create and explore a possible friend and romantic interest of Morgan's before he ever left Karolus. I have no idea where this is going, and I'm slightly rusty on my facts about Morgan's past, so please excuse any inaccuracies (but if you find any, inform me of them!). I think I'm correct in saying that Morgan is about twelve when Karolus is plunged into civil war, and since this is directly before that, assume him to be around that age during this story.
Summertime
Chapter 1: The Jacket
Jason Morgan sat silently on a boulder, looking out at the horizon where a medium yellow-orange sun was setting in a red-purple sky. This planet, Karolus, was his home. Though his general personality qualified him as a loner, here he felt like he belonged. The almost-teen sat in the middle of a deserted field but did not feel alone, surrounded by the impending night. He liked it here, where quiet places still existed and serenity could be found. In much of the universe, machinery and electronics had ruined the calm life, or so he'd heard from those he knew who'd been offplanet. For him, this little patch of earth and sky was quite enough.
Suddenly the boy heard a sound in the long grasses. He turned to see who had interrupted his silence, hoping it wasn't one of his parents come to call him back home.
It was someone, but not a parent of his. The girl walking through the field towards his boulder looked to be about his age. He'd maybe seen her somewhere before, but couldn't match the face with a name. She wore a cream-colored tunic that fit loosely and fluttered in the slight breeze over baggy green pants the same color as the tall grass. Their eyes met, and for a minute Jason was startled by her clear blue eyes staring confidently back into his.
She broke the silence. "Why are you sitting on my rock?"
Jason was taken aback. "Your rock?" he asked incredulously. "This is on my parents' land. It's more mine than yours."
"But I come here every day," she countered. "I read here every afternoon."
"And I watch the sunset and stars here every night!" Jasen retorted. This presumptuous girl was quickly getting on his nerves.
The girl nodded. "It must be a good place to watch from." She looked at him silently for a minute. The light breeze blew through her loose brown-blonde hair fell just past her shoulders. In the waning light, Jason could not deny that she looked beautiful.
But the beauty suddenly left as the girl did the unthinkable: she climbed up onto his boulder and sat down next to him. Jason's first instinct was to shove her off, but he figured that wouldn't be right—after all, she was a girl. He had enough manners to know it wasn't polite to push a lady anywhere. Still—that barely made him want to do it any less. Since he could not pick her up and carry her down from his rock, he did the next best thing and decided to ignore her, hoping that she would go away.
Unfortunately, she didn't. After a moment she spoke. "So you live around here, then?"
"Well, obviously," Jason said. Why did she want to talk to him anyway?
"I haven't seen you—at least, I don't think so," she continued. "I'm Katherine. And you are…?"
"Jason," the boy said grudgingly.
"Oh," Katherine said. A pause. "You don't want me to talk, do you?"
Jason answered with a glare, and Katherine fell silent. She maintained the silence for several minutes, looking up at the quickly-darkening sky, sprinkled with familiar stars. Jason, too, gazed heavenwards. Though he had never been off this planet, something about the stars called inexorably to him. That, in part, was why he came here every night to contemplate the things out there, things seemingly beyond the grasp of a farmboy on an out-of-the-way planet. Perhaps someday he'd journey through the stars he pondered, but he knew he would be equally content to grow up and live a pastoral life on Karolus.
Beside him on his boulder, Katherine shivered. The breeze over the plains was slightly chilly, but Jason was warm in his bulky jacket. Again the girl shivered, before looking sharply at him. "Don't you know that if a lady's cold, it's polite for you to offer her your coat?"
Jason bit back a sharp remark about not seeing any ladies around. Katherine did look cold, and he would be fine without his jacket for a while. He shrugged it off and handed it to her begrudgingly. "Here."
"Thank you," Katherine said, smiling as she nestled into his jacket. "It's very warm." Then, almost unnoticeably, she nestled closer to him as well. Jason didn't know how to respond. He fumbled around, trying to find something to say.
She beat him to it. "So, what brought your folks here? You're too young for them to have been born here. Why Karolus?" She looked at him expectantly. When he didn't answer right away, she added, "Unless you don't want to say. Oh, I'm sorry, you probably don't want me talking, do you?"
Jason sighed. Katherine was annoying him to pieces, but somehow she managed to endear herself to him at the same time. "It's okay," he said, turning to face her. "I don't really know why mom and dad decided to come here. It was after they married but before they had me; I was born here. I think dad had had enough of the hi-tech noisefest in the more central worlds, and wanted life to be…well, simpler than all of that." He sighed.
"So you've never been offplanet?" Katherine questioned.
"No, never," Jason responded.
"Do you ever want to leave?"
"Hey, since when do you get to ask all of the questions?" Jason asked. "My turn."
Katherine smiled and pulled his jacket tighter around her. "Go on, I can take it."
"What are you doing here?"
"Well, it looks like I'm talking to you, and before that I was looking at the stars, and before that…"
"Not that," Jason said exasperatedly, "I mean what brought your family here, to Karolus?"
"Oh, that," she said. "Well, I'm the oldest child out of four, with a fifth on the way, and there wasn't any way that we could afford to live in a city, or anything like that. Mom and dad don't exactly have a lot of money. Dad used to, but then he married mom, who was dirt poor, and his family sort of cut off ties with him, and now…" She looked up and met Jason's eyes, blushing lightly. "Sorry, I'm rambling. I do that a lot," she explained.
Before Jason could stop it, a small grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. "That's alright," he said, finding that, surprisingly, the statement was true. Somewhere he realized that this was possibly the first civil conversation he'd had with a girl who wasn't related to him.
Katherine pushed back the over-long sleeve of his jacket to check her wrist chrono. "Ooh, it's late!" she said. "I didn't realize. Well, I better get going. It was nice meeting you, Jason." With an impish grin she hopped down from the boulder and ran off into the darkness. Dazed, Jason watched her go, and it wasn't until several minutes later that he realized she still had his coat.