Yes, I did make this story years ago and I have just started to continue it. The first half was years ago and my style and grammar has -hopefully- improved dramatically since then! I cringe when I read my old work...Picks up RIGHT AFTER the last chapter on the first half. You can find the first part here at my old account Sataria on fan fiction . net ...
"My name is John Danziger. We have lost a member of our colony on the journey to New Pacifica. Janet Saint has died and her body washed away in the river, she died saving my daughter True. We knew little about her, her family were all gone, she had no one and nothing, we suspect now that her body was hyjacked by the Council. Her mission was to kill Devon Adair, our leader. We also discovered that our own Doctor, Julia Heller, was also a spy. She has been rectified. Janet, several times, would rather die than betray us on her own. However we travel on with or without her, no matter how hard it hurts to go. . ."
Days passed and they traveled on. Julia Heller, betrayed her people, was left behind, and then saved Yale from death and rejoined the group. They all learned about forgiveness in the deepest degree and took Julia in, with stiff spines towards however. Nothing pleased True, she missed Janet, the closest to a mother she had ever known. Even John was affected by her disappearance, though he forced himself to accept it quicker for his and his daughter's sake. Everyone took her for dead and everyone was forced to move on. Though none of them forgot Janet's sacrifice.
After drilling the children on every word they remember the Saint woman saying it was deduced-and after Julia was revealed to be a spy- that the Council had forcibly taken control of Janet's body and actions through a chip implanted in her spine. She truly never had wanted hurt anyone and truly had no choice. Julia remembered the spinal chips, similar to the brain chips in the sick colonists they encountered early in their journey. But Janet's had malfunctioned during her first crash and then it was reactivated when she began settling with the colonists. Surely, however, it must have been broken during her attempt at suicide in the woods, or so they suspected. Hoped, wondered.
As John drove along silently with his daughter trailing somewhere among the group, he thought to himself about how Janet had saved True Twice, without any apparent regard for her own life. True herself hadn't picked up her spirits this whole time. Her father knew of her sadness but could not do anything for it, Janet was gone, once again True's mother had been ripped away by death.
Julia as well was silently affected. She and Janet had been the same, controlled by the Council. Though Janet had been forced too, Julia willingly. Janet had fallen to her death while saving the second of the only two children in the colony, forcing herself to die to prevent herself from fulfilling her purpose. Once everyone knew, no one forgot.
The group could not waste valuable time searching for her, but it took a group meeting to vote on whether or not they should waste the days looking for their fallen comrade. The group decided against it with logic from Yale about how no human could survive that fall into such icy rivers. Rivers that were iced in the night signaling how Winter was approaching from the North. They had no idea where her body went or even if she was truly dead or alive, they could not follow the river to search without losing time and resources and the winter grew colder.
It was decided that Janet would be on her own if she lived and if she did not. . . .. it would not matter.
Just when it seemed that they could move on over the woman's sacrifice, John was only reminded of her further by a Grendler. One of them was spotted wearing Janet's vest on its bulbous head. The red was bright against the creature's grey clothing and skin and the markings were definitely hers. Bess tried to deduce where he found it, but of course understanding between the two beings was hard enough. She tried to barter for it but this Grendler was stubborn and refused to give it up.
"He stole it," John tried to argue. "That belongs to Janet and wherever she was he took it from her."
Bess knew his heart ache, she could feel it, see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. Ever the sympathetic creature, Bess knew his hurt.
"John I know its hard for you to take it, but she was most likely gone and dead when he found it." She hated to sound so cruel but the reality was far more deadly. "If all she had was her jacket and her vest and you took the jacket and he took the vest, then. . .. ." she didn't want to finish her thoughts.
John nodded and tried to move on, both from his feelings for the woman and to move on with the journey. In her short time she had confused them and wrapped in their hearts as much as they did hers. At night, True liked to sleep with the jacket they still had and John allowed it, he wouldn't be upset if True held on to that jacket until it fell apart. To break out of his thoughts they stopped suddenly for the night, the sun had hit the horizon and camp was being struck.
As he unloaded and set up their tent he watched True and Ully wander around, the red jacket around True was not his own. She wore it more than he cared to look at it. He had begun to understand how important Janet became to True, in her short time of healing with them she had bonded with the girl enough to die for her. John had forgiven her in that split second when he held out his hand out, and she had let go. At first it was betrayal that he felt, that she would leave them like that. But every day he got to look at True was another reason to give thanks to Janet's sacrifice.
The Grendlers had returned to their make shift huts that they built from here to there along the river banks. They shuffled into their mud huts to the fires they made and sat around them trading things between each other and eating and drooling. The one with the vest trundled through the bunch to the larger hut where most of them gathered together. In the very back, in a tiny alcove where they kept stuff, was a bed of reed mats and laying on it under a ratty fur pelt, was a red haired human. The Grendler with the vest went to her and stared, he could see her breathing faintly. He reached into his bag and pulled out a shell and pulled out some berries. He mashed the berried under his grubby fingers in the shell and then poured some water into it from the canteen he had traded with the other female creature back at the human camps. The woman drank from his shell when he grunted and put it to her mouth. She looked at him and spoke words he didn't understand. She hadn't made an attempt to leave since they rescued her from the river, they didn't mind nor would they have tried to stop her if she had.
The group had found her on the banks, cold and near death. One took her vest and they all took her body, hoping to search for more useful things on her but she turned out to not be as dead as they thought. They took it upon themselves to care for the being, traveling with her among them, feeding her, keeping the strange creature warm in the cold they could expertly survive. She was like a baby to them, they accepted her as such. She could not walk properly on one foot, it seemed to be broken or caused her pain when she did and so the Grendlers made do. They didn't seem bothered by her at all really, they fed her, warmed her, carried her all without incident or complaint.
She herself decided this was better off. If she had to live she would live among those the council knew nothing about. If her chip was still active of course, which she felt it might be by the painful electrical shocks it sent through her body from time to time. She suspected it had been further damaged by both her falls that one day, from the tree and into the river. It was like it kept shorting out, was maybe even being rusted or eaten away by her own body. She had no way to tell the Grendlers about it and they had no way to know what to do.
But it pained her, like her re-broken ankle, it pained her. She could hardly move some days without intense pain shooting all up and down her spine. Her caretakers didn't seem to realize how burdensome it was, at least not for them. They didn't mind her needy presence and she began to realize just how caring these beings could be. How helping others just seemed like something they did without any reason. They had no reason to keep her alive, no reason at all, she was not one of them, not even one of the colonists anymore. Yet that mattered for nothing, the Grendlers took care of her and she tried to need as little as possible while they kept her alive on a solid diet of mashed berries and small meaty creatures that they caught from time to time.
Once again, Janet stared at them and ignored their stench in a confined hut and allowed them to care for her. An electrical shock shot through her spine and she froze as she contained the pain. Her body shook and she locked in place as she rode it out. When it finished she let out her breath that was pent up and breathed deeply with each new inhale. She sighed when it passed and collapsed back on the bed.
"If this never ends, I'll just kill myself and get it over with," she thought to herself.
But until she truly decided her life was ended she let the Grendlers be her home.
Bess had always wondered about the Grendler's home. She was recording her meetings with them, documenting their encounters. Yet for as much as she thought she had learned, she didn't know their home lives. Finally, one day after trading, she decided to follow them. The one with Janet's vest caught her attention especially, where he got it from she wanted to know. Yet he could never answer her questions and never gave her the vest no matter what she offered.
She decided to follow him. She didn't tell anyone and didn't plan to be gone long enough for anyone to get concerned, surely Morgan would object and someone would want to follow her. Having worked up to a trusting relationship with these beings she didn't want to scare them or drive them away. So she followed at a distance, trekking behind them as they made way to the river at the bottom of a gorge. It hadn't taken so horribly long but was still a good ways hiking from their own camp. The sun was nearly setting.
Even across the river, she followed, as they went deeper into the forest. All the while she watched the Red Vest Grendler, he was the one who interested her. They knew she was following and were comfortable with her enough to let her do so. Still she cautiously approached the encampment, following their path across the shallow part of this river and her eyes took it all in and right away she could see that they were nomadic. She sat on a rock on their side of the banks and wrote about what she saw.
Her eyes watched and scanned carefully as they went about their day. Some cooked, others put mud on their huts, some tended to fire pits and some sorted their wares. They didn't seem to pool their hauls together, each for his own yet they all fed each other and shared commodities such as huts and pelt blankets. Simple they seemed, they were a tribe, a clan. She saw what she suspected was young or offspring, just smaller versions of the adults she knew. Smaller, but not by much, that was all that set them apart.
The One she followed she sketched, capturing the way he wore the vest wrong, sewn onto his ratty robes atop his hunched head like a hood rather than an actual vest. He went into the largest hut, what was the central hub Bess thought. He carried in his bag, then came back out and held a large piece of shell in his stubby fingers. He went to a fire pit that another Grendler was roasting some form of small animal over, and torn into the meat. He put it on the shell and then turned and returned to the big hut. It was nearing dark when Bess saw him come back out only to sit around the fire pit and eat food with the others.
This she wrote down and hurried back to camp before night fall. Later, after everyone had said good night, had food to eat and watch was posted, she read through her notes of the day. When she read the last bit, about Her Grendler, it seemed odd. He went into the hut with food, came out with neither shell nor food and yet sat and ate with the others outside. That seemed odd to her, not normal behavior and no other Grendler she observed did what he had.
Was there someone inside maybe? Surely she didn't think it was a baby Grendler, from what she had seen and knew, they raised one offspring until adulthood at a time. Unless one of the females had had young that she hadn't seen. But then again it wasn't a female that went into the hut, it was the male. Did they act as parents equally then? She wrote the question down and then put her journal away and went to sleep.
However, her questions wouldn't die. She couldn't stop thinking about it but the colony moved on. She had noted that these Grendlers were seemingly nomadic, they followed the river. It was another week or so before she found them again though, they had gravitated back to the colony. She went to their camp, found her Grendler and inched closer to the main group. They noticed her but did not seem upset, she inched closer yet again. They allowed it.
She crept among them, creeping slowly towards the main hut. None of them seemed bothered by Bess, so familiar to them by now. She boldly made her way to the main hut and when none of them were watching she looked inside, dying to know what they had hidden away. She saw it was spacious and a small fire burned inside. It looked like many slept here, their bags laying next to mats where she guessed they slept. In the back she saw a nest of pelts and blanketing. It was certainly a sleeping place.
Just as she looked in and saw it the pelts moved and a figure surfaced from their bed. Red hair was wild, and face was pale but there, very much alive, was Janet Saint. Bess felt her face flush and her eyes go wide in shock. She stood in the entry way, stepping into the fire light and letting the woman see her.
"Janet?" She said.