Well, this has been in my head for quite some time and I just never acted on it until now. Now I'm just seeing how this will go over, so don't expect regular updates until one of my other stories are finished. Then I promise I will begin to update this story more regularly.
As always, enjoy!
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Prologue.
My mother was never odd to me, not really. Of course I realized how different she was. But she acted just like any other Sanghelli. It wasn't until I was older that I began to resent her differences. Those same differences she gave to me.
She has noticed that I shy from her, and though I know I have hurt her feelings, she hides the pain of my rejection well. She has become nearly indifferent. It is no doubt a side effect of me treating her that way.
I can't bring myself to feel bad about it either. She's just so different, and I'm the one that catches everything bad about her.
She used to tell me that it doesn't matter what others say so long as I know myself. But how can I know myself when I don't know her? My father I have figured out, but she is confusing.
How did she get here? What did she do to make my father fall in love with her? How could she have carried me in her womb?
All these things and more confuse me.
You see, my mother is a human.
She's integrated into the Sanghelli world, but she is still just a silly weak human. She cries when she steps on insects. Often when she is in the garden, I catch her playing with the little things, letting them crawl over her or moving them to a safer spot where she won't step on them.
She has a strange obsession with animals. Father says she simply respects all life. He says that she believes that everyone and everything are equal, no matter how big or small or where they came from or what they look like.
I wish I could just leave. I am Sanghelli, but she has cursed me to carry her oddly colored eyes. A Sanghelli has never been born with green eyes before. It's unheard of.
My existence is unheard of.
Finally, after nearly a year of watching and assessing, I ask my father. I cannot figure my mother out.
I want to know why my father married a human.
He looks out the window where she is sitting across the pathway. I do the same. She is surrounded by women at the neighbor's house, helping to sew a blanket for Mina's new baby. Mother calls Mina her soul sister. I think she's crazy.
"She…She wasn't even supposed to be here long. She was almost dead when the Arbiter brought her here from Earth. He wasn't the Arbiter then, and we were still fighting the humans. He thought she would be useful to learn human weaknesses. But he was called away to battle on the Halo, and she was left behind."
He is silent for the longest time, and I imagine that I can see him playing events over in his head.
I call him back to the present and ask him why he chose her. He shrugs.
"It just happened."
And so, my father begins the story of how he fell in love with a human.