A KURSED LIE, A KRYSTAL TRUTH

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Fox and I had met a different way. If we had met somewhere other than at the top of the Krazoa Palace. I wonder how I would have felt about him if my first impression of him wasn't that of a striking hero saving my life. Would we still have felt the same way, would we still have felt so happy together, if we had met in some more mundane way? How would we have felt if we had met in a bar? How would we have felt if we had just bumped into each other? I wonder that, but then I remember that we didn't meet that way, and I remember the fact that Fox and I fell in love because we needed to. I don't know what my life would have been like if I had met Fox somewhere other than where I did, but I do know what my life would have ended up like if I hadn't met Fox.

By the age of eighteen I had lost everything I held dear. I had lost my world to an attack, I had lost my parents, my friends, everything. I had literally nothing left. All the wealth that my family had had was worthless now, all the things that had defined me were shaken. I was left to wander the galaxy alone, not really knowing what had happened to my people other than that they had all been killed. When you're a telepath there are certain things that can be very crippling, and one of them is the emotion of grief. Cerinians don't respond well to the death of someone they love, because when someone dies it isn't just that you don't see them anymore, it's that you don't feel them anymore. I grew up feeling the thoughts and the presence and the emotions of my sister, my parents, and any number of other people. It was a sort of quiet noise, a comforting sound, and one that once you are used to it is hard to live without. Even from a great distance you can still feel it, and when you meditate you can feel the way my people's minds interact with each other, the way they feed off of each other and give each other comfort. Death is something that happens often, and for my people the grief would be crippling without the presence of all those other minds to help mitigate it. But when my people were destroyed I had to deal with it on my own. I had to cope with total silence when I meditated. There no longer was that comforting noise, there no longer were those comforting voices. That was something I had no idea how to handle.

When it happened I didn't believe it, I denied it for months. Eventually I began to accept the fact that those voices were never coming back, but it made it no easier to live life. I felt cursed. Cursed by silence. As I wandered the galaxy I found that I couldn't trust anyone, I didn't have those comforting voices in my telepathy telling me he or she really could be trusted. I just had the accursed silence. When Cerinians are alone, truly alone as I was, we are not a trusting people. In fact we can become near paranoid. I have seen Cerinians who leave their homes for too long, who travel so far that they can't hear the voices of home anymore. They are wretched creatures, suspicious, violent, often hateful of everything they come across, jealous of people who still feel things like love and comfort, even in the limited fashion of non-telepaths. There is in fact a name that Cerinians have for such pitiable creatures: Kursed. It is a name that no one in their right mind would want, but as the years went on I began to feel it might just apply to me. I certainly tried to fight against becoming like Kurseds, I made every effort to stay the compassionate, loving, innocent person I had always been. It wasn't easy though, and there were times when I felt like I was living a lie, that I should be honest and give into the paranoia, the hatred, the despair, and become Kursed. When I heard the distress call from Sauria I investigated to prove to myself I still cared, that I could still be moved by a plea for help. Still, at the time I wasn't entirely sure whether or not the compassion was a lie, or the compassionate person I wanted to remain was the lie.

Sauria was, trying. I was trapped in a diamond above Krazoa Palace. I was sustained by the spirits there, but I had precious little to do but think. And think I did. I thought about everything that had happened, I thought about all the things that had become a part of my life over the past three years, at twenty-one I suddenly felt as if my whole life was over. Like the past twenty-one years of my life were all done, that a new life was ahead of me. The question was what would that life be like? I felt sure it would be the life of Kursed. I would be a paranoid, depressed, violent woman, lashing out against the silence in my mind, the lack of others like me, hurting anyone I could however I could. That was what I was going to be, I was going to be one of those pitiable wretches, a broken heart, and with my beauty a heartbreaker as well most likely.

Weeks passed, I became vaguely aware of someone other than Krazoa and Sharp Claw visiting the Palace. In my semi-conscious state I couldn't really tell who it was, not that it mattered. It was probably just someone who worked for the entity that had trapped me. Then finally I felt something, the Krazoa around me went from my body and then channeled out towards something. I knew what had happened, and in that one second I was certain I was to become Kursed, I had just allowed myself to be used to resurrect an evil being, there was no other fate I deserved.

Then the diamond around me disappeared, I was falling. I was going to fall either to my death or be caught by a wind lift to survive and be Kursed. Then I grabbed onto something, it was as if life itself was reaching a hand out to save me from either of those fates. I looked up and I saw him. I saw that orange and white furred fox, our eyes met, and everything shattered. All of a sudden I knew the truth, I was not Kursed, I was Krystal.

Life after that became different, more focused. I joined Star Fox, I was given a new purpose in life, to fight alongside heroes in the good fight. And I had Fox. Fox McCloud as I discovered his name was, was a man who I quickly found myself falling deeply in love with. I both looked up to him and understood him. And he seemed to understand me. As we grew closer I told him about my past, how I had lost so much, and he hadn't just sat their quietly, he had cried and said he knew how I felt. He had lost so much as well, he had lost his parents, his parents who he had loved as much as I had love my entire family, as much as I had loved my entire world.

It took us awhile but our friendship finally began to blossom into romance. I convinced him to read more, he showed me a new kind of dancing, we kissed, we made love, we did all the things I had thought would be denied to me. We did all the things that Kursed, a Kursed, would never have really done. All the joy in the world came together when he asked me to marry him. We married atop the Krazoa Palace, in front of Tricky, a legion of dinosaurs and friends, and every Krazoa in the Palace. We honeymooned on Sauria, and when we returned home to Corneria I found that I had developed a bit of a bump in my midsection. As soon as Fox and I realized what that meant Star Fox was ended, we left the defense of Lylat to other heroes, gave them a chance to shine. Nine months after our honeymoon Marcus was born. A beautiful little boy with his father's looks and my fur. Ever since we've lived happily together without a care in the world. It's a life that I thought I would never have.

All of this has taught me something, it has taught me that no matter how bad things get, they can always get better. They can always get better so long as you trust in yourself, and you remember to trust in others. My life with Fox has taught me that through all those years of self doubt, all those years where I questioned who I was to be, that Kursed was the lie and Krystal was the truth.

A/N: So that was a bit of a twist on the standard Kursed story, but I like to be different. I've found that I really do enjoy writing these introspective reflections so I think I may do more in the future, but from the perspectives of different characters. Maybe Wolf, or Bill, or heck even Panther, or maybe just every single character in Star Fox. Anyways leave a review, and if you have a certain character (non-oc) that you would really like to see one of these for tell me in the review. I really just need something to get me back into writing, and I really enjoy writing these. Until next time...

-general whitefur