By the Light of a Dying Star
Brion I
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars
The first time you notice him you are four years old.
Well, four and a half.
It's your grandmother's birthday and the ballroom of Sing'dai Palace is lit with the luminescence of a hundred ribbons of white plasma, threading through the polished black stone in great glowing rivers.
The ballroom is massive, one of the largest rooms in the entire palace, superseded only by the throne room and its immense obsidian walls and high vaulted ceiling soar above your head. You stare up, captivated by it, awed by its simplistic splendour and dazzled by the huge crystal in the ceiling that sends brilliant fractals of light dancing below.
It's a beautiful space: all mirrorlike black stone and blinding light, bright despite the dark, and the largeness means that the music echoes; a haunting melody of hidden noise that ensnares your senses.
It's sleek, sharp and brilliant.
You hate it.
You hate the overbearing height of the walls, and how they make your small form even smaller. You hate the lack of windows, and how it makes you feel increasingly like a trapped tarash fly, just waiting to be squashed. You hate the silly dress your mummy put you in, and how the layers of diaphanous cloth tangle around your little legs every time you try to move. But most of all, you hate the people.
The ballroom is filled with crème de la crème of Brionian society: the hereditary lords, the city governors, the Hunter families and the rest of your own family. You dislike all of them with the fervour only a child can. The women are svelte and haughty, dressed in their flowing gowns of gauzy silk chiffon and the men imposing in their high-necked court coats; a monochromatic picture with sparse splashes of coloured gems draped over poised forms. They look at you, the small child in their midst, with diamond sharp eyes and hard unforgiving faces laced with disapproval. Even the other children stand straight and cold, their gazes placid and emotionless; you decided when you got here there was no point even trying to talk to them.
You're bored out of your childish mind and antsy with barely suppressed energy. You want to run, dance and play but your mummy told you before leaving home that you had to be on your Very Best Behaviour and that your grandmother Wouldn't Tolerate It if you were not. It frustrates you, why do you have to be here anyway? Your new Moon Day dolls are much more interesting than this and it's not as though Grandmother would miss your presence, she's scary and no matter what Mummy says you know she doesn't like you.
You follow your mummy and daddy around like a stray kvang pup, trying not to notice as the smile on Mummy's face becomes increasingly strained and set of Daddy's shoulders becomes steadily stiffer with each round of boring adult conversation.
They hate it too, you realise
You've just about had enough of all this dull standing around, and you're about to tell your parents exactly what you think of it when you see your grandmother gliding purposefully toward you.
The Queen of Brion is resplendent tonight, garbed in a modest gown of the finest white silk and her snowy hair adorned with a circlet of black opals. As she moves, her dress drifts around her in gossamer waves and the gems of her jewels shine in the light. But as always, it is her eyes that catch your attention most; they flash like ice daggers under the plasma glow and spear with their intensity, so alike your mummy's in their colour and shape but so different in their feel.
As she walks the other people part around her in flowing ripples of movement, bowing their heads in deference as they go. She comes to a stop in front of your mummy, completely ignoring Daddy as per usual, her frosty eyes staring straight into their warmer replica.
"You came," she says, her voice crisp and sharp despite her age.
"Of course, Mother," Mummy replies, her face set in a tense smile.
Your grandmother's gaze drifts over to you and she looks down on you with stony intensity, you can't help but wriggle nervously under her scrutiny. As she catches your anxious twitch her eyes narrow, the lines on her aged face making the look even fiercer.
"Control your offspring," she snaps, her eyes flicking back to your mummy's.
Mummy stiffens and replies tightly, smile unwavering "She's only four, Mother."
Your grandmother snorts and says, "It's unbecoming for any Brionian child to be so free with their actions. But then again, I'd expect such, coming from a child raised by you and your worthless husband. Neither of you show any regard for poise and composure."
You watch timidly from your daddy's side as the air around the three of them grows more strained and the tension becomes thick like a cord. You don't quite understand exactly what's going on, but from the cold dismissal on your grandmother's face, the tightly reigned fury on your mummy's and the frosty rage in your daddy's eyes you can tell it's bad. This is why you don't like family gatherings. You may be young but even you can sense the underlying hostility in every interaction. It's not quite so bad with your daddy's family, or even your mummy's sisters, but that hidden edge of disapproval is still there. You don't understand why, your mummy is the bestest, nicest mummy in all of Brion and your daddy gives the greatest hugs, you just don't get what everyone else finds so wrong about them. It isn't even just your family, you find the same cold stare in the eyes of everyone you meet, even your agemates!
"Your Majesty," your daddy replies, "we understand if you have concerns with the way we're raising Isharia, but she is our daughter and we will raise her how we see fit," his face as impenetrable as stone.
Your grandmother looks back at you with her jagged white orbs, you shrink back slightly to hide behind your daddy's leg and stare up at her with wide, fearful eyes.
"See that she doesn't become an embarrassment to this family," she says tersely before moving on to the next set of guests.
Mummy's eyes follow her as she walks away, a dark storm brewing in their depths. Sensing his wife's anger, Daddy lays a comforting hand on the small of her back and Mummy sighs, slumping like a puppet with cut strings. With the quiet rage drained out of her she leans into your daddy, prompting yet more disapproving looks from the guests in the vicinity.
They make quite a picture, your parents. Mummy with her perfectly proportioned, perfectly symmetrical features and her stunning moonlight hair all wrapped up in layers of snowfall silk. Daddy standing tall, robed in head to toe in black, his onyx eyes glittering with intelligence and his white hair perfectly coiffed. Together they look like something out of a fairy-tale: the beautiful princess and her strong, handsome prince. You can't help but be proud of the way they shine.
It's while you're contemplating them that it happens.
You're still cowering behind your daddy's trouser leg when just there, at the corner of your senses, you feel something. A presence in the energy of the world (you'll later come to know it as the Force), a person, but no one you recognise. It sort of itches at your brain, tugging at the edge of your mind with an insistent pull. It's not the warmth-love-sunshine of your mummy's presence, nor is it the laughter-safety-strength of your daddy's, or even that polished ice of the rest of your people, humming away at the back of your mind, but it's there all the same. You can feel it coming from the back corner of the ballroom so you turn your head to peer in that direction, your petite face scrunching in concentration. You instinctively stretch out your mind and, focusing your very hardest, you try to get a better sense of it.
When you finally achieve the necessary state of mind to properly study the presence, a sort of half meditational trance, the first thing that hits you is sadness. A heart-breaking, crippling, aching sadness. You feel as though you ought to cry but you can't, being so young you simply don't have the emotional range or experience to process such raw, intense anguish. It's as deep as a crevasse and as vast as the ice sheets that cover Brion, the sort of torment that comes with having everything you love murdered in front of you or spending your entire life building something, only for it to be utterly useless in the end and watching it crumble. You want to curl up in a ball and scream in utter agony, to lock yourself away from everyone and simply fade. The shame that accompanies the sadness is agonising, a horrible symphony of intense guilt and a repeating litany of MyFaultMyFaultMYFAULT! It's painful, horrifying, lonely and desolate. So utterly lonely that it feels as though you've been left out on the ice to die, but it doesn't matter: you deserve it.
You can feel your breathing speed up and deepen as you start to hyperventilate on reflex. Your eyes water with unshed tears and your heart clenches painfully in your chest as the emotion transmits itself over the weak link you have unknowingly forged. Your parents haven't noticed, their attention has been taken by yet another pretentious nobleman and his dull conversation. As your vison starts to blacken around the edges, you get the strangest sensation of something coarse and grainy on your skin. The particulates rub at your face and arms, rough and scouring, pulled along but some non-existent wind that whips at your body. There is heat too: an intense, dry heat so unlike anything found on eternally frozen Brion. And finally, just before you completely lose consciousness, a flash of two burning suns blazing from their zenith.
-*8*-
The first thing you notice when you come to is that you are no longer at the palace. The towering black walls have been replaced by your own clean white ones and the vaulted ceiling of the palace by the high flat one of your own bedroom. The light no longer comes from plasma streams but from the large holo-window on your right wall; currently set to show the ground level of an extinct forest at sunrise, complete with artificial birdsong.
You raise your head slightly from your sumptuous taki-taki down pillow to notice your daddy asleep on the pristine cushion of your window-side ledge. He's still dressed in his palace formal-wear, the velvet of his coat creased and open to show his starched silk shirt, perfect hair mussed by sleep.
You briefly contemplate waking him to tell him about the presence, but decide not to. Your parents have had enough stress tonight –they did have to deal with Grandmother- and you don't want to add more worry to their shoulders. Tomorrow, you nod to yourself, you'll tell them tomorrow. You lay your head back down on your pillow, snuggle up tight in your duvet and drift off back to sleep, comforted by the knowledge that your daddy is there with you.
-*8*-
You are five when you truly learn about the Force for the first time.
It's been seven months since the incident at the palace. You'd woken up the next day to the view of the soaring skytowers of Sing'dai gleaming in the midday sun through your window. Reluctantly hauling yourself from the cosy cocoon you had made from of your bedding, you'd trudged half-asleep through the mirage-door to your room and on to the mezzanine balcony that overlooked the main space of your family's penthouse. Stopping to face the apartment's expansive holo-windows, you had rubbed the sleep out of your eyes and yawned loudly, observing as thousands of repulsor-lift vehicles sped along on the numerous skylanes that dotted the city.
"HAIS, what time is it?" you'd mumbled tiredly as you stretched your arms out above your head.
"Approximately one-fifteen in the afternoon, Mistress Isharia," had come the disembodied, vaguely female voice of your family's AI unit.
"Th-th-thaaaanks," you'd replied yawning.
You'd padded slowly with heavy feet down the spiral staircase to your family's living area and meandered past the white square arch sofa to the kitchen section. Scratching your fuzzy bedhead, you'd clambered up one of the stools sat at the granite top island and plonked yourself down on the black leather cushioning. You had watched as opposite you, your mummy diced dasha roots with practised precision before throwing them into a pan of boiling water sat on the hob, her elegant hands quick and efficient. Her long platinum hair had been pulled back in a messy bun and an ash coloured top hung scruffily off one shoulder. She had looked up as you sat down and laid down the knife.
"Oh good, you're awake. I was just about to have HAIS wake you up," she'd said frowning worriedly, "how are you feeling?"
"M'tired," you'd slurred, before laying your head on your arms.
Mummy's frown had deepened as she'd observed you, she'd wiped her hands on the tea towel hanging from the cupboard door under the worktop and walked around the island to sit on the stool beside you. You turned your head to look at her and blinked wearily.
"Isharia, what happened last night at the palace?" she'd asked, her voice tinged with concern.
You had thought back on the presence from the night before. The unbearable sadness of it and the soul crushing loneliness. About how it had made you feel, briefly, as if you were the last member of dying species that you personally destroyed. About the way its powerful emotions had made your body respond as if they were its own, shortening your breath and wetting your eyes. But most of all you had thought about how no one else, not even your parents, had sensed it. This confused you, Mummy and Daddy were really smart and they should have noticed the presence. In an uncharacteristic bout of childish selfishness, you had decided to keep the presence to yourself, it was your thing; if no one had else had felt its overwhelming emotions, then they obviously weren't meant to know about it.
You'd turned you head back so that your forehead rested on your arms again, "Nothing, I was just really, really hot and dizzy," you'd answered, voice muffled by the granite surface.
Mummy had raised a disbelieving eyebrow, "Really?"
"Uh huh," you'd nodded at the worktop, "and bored, Grandmother throws the most boringest parties ever, no one was having fun."
Your mummy had smiled sardonically, "Well my mother doesn't exactly believe in fun. Anyway, don't change the subject. Your father's taking you to the doctor when he gets home from work."
You'd sat up abruptly and snapped your gaze to Mummy's, "Doctor? I don't need a doctor! I'm fine."
"Not if you're fainting at palace parties you're not. You're going to the doctor and that's final."
"But I don't want to go to the doctor!" you'd whined in that annoying tone that all children are innately gifted with.
"Don't you use that tone with me, young lady! There are plenty of other children that would appreciate your new dolls if you don't want to visit the doctor!" Mummy had scolded, eyebrows pulled together and her voice firm.
Your eyes had gone wide and panicked, your new dolls, the ones you got for Moon Day? "No! You can't! I haven't even played with them yet!" you'd replied hastily, eyes darting over your mummy's face to see if she was serious.
She'd raised both eyebrows at you, "Oh, I can't can I?"
And so, after multiple trips to various doctors and a plethora medical facilities around the city with no conclusive results, the subject of your fainting spell at the palace was dropped. However, you still catch Mummy and Daddy eyeing you with anxious concern from time to time, as if just waiting for you to suddenly collapse again.
The presence, also has reappeared from time to time, drifting in at the edge of your awareness with seemingly no pattern to its sporadic visits. It still sends awful waves of sorrow and self-hatred throbbing through your body every time you try to touch it with your mind, sometimes it's even caused you to burst into uncontrollable floods of tears when it catches you unaware. Nevertheless, you have acclimatised enough to it by now to tentatively probe at it with your fledgling abilities, and as unrefined as those attempts are, you have manged to gain a sense that the presence is decidedly male.
Recently you began to try to communicate back, poking and prodding lightly at the delicate psychic fibre of your connection, pushing through the happiest thoughts you can muster in a desperate attempt to stop him from feeling so sad. You send all sorts of things: the quiet joy and feeling of love that comes from being with your parents, the bright sparkle happiness of watching Liberation Day fireworks from your daddy's shoulders and the innocent thrill of pride you get from learning something new. None of it works though, despite all your effort the Sad Man stays sad.
You are contemplating the Sad Man's happiness when your mummy comes to find you. You'd retreated upstairs earlier to moongaze on the rooftop garden of your skytower, an activity you rarely get to do due to the fierce and angry snowstorms that frequently spiral across the planet's surface.
The garden itself is a small oasis of nature amongst the towering leviathans of durasteel and permacrete that dominate Sing'dai, one of the few places where flora is allowed to thrive. It winds like a green snake around the edge of the building, coiling upwards with scales of carefully maintained flowerbeds in every hue and small streams of crystal clear water that flow lazily down its body. You lie on the ground in the cordoned off area that belongs exclusively to your family; revelling in the feeling of soft spongy grass and loamy soil on your skin, your wild white hair splayed out around you like a fan. Nearby, a spherical water feature made of a polished grey stone gurgles happily into the night and a gentle artificial breeze caresses the flower petals.
It's a clear night tonight and the four moons of Brion shine hazily through the giant thermo-reg shields that encapsulate the city. Dormai'at, the largest, rises high to the north and glows a sickly yellow caused by the sulphurous clouds that cover its atmosphere. The moon, much like Brion, is mostly uninhabitable with any life living there having had to adapt or die long ago.
You gaze aimlessly up into the heavens, knowing by now that the millions of tiny globes of light down in the city ruin all your chances of seeing stars in the sky. You've never seen the stars. Almost no Brionian has. Those tiny pinpricks of light are only visible from outside the city, where the landscape is a frozen wasteland, magnificent in its desolation. You dream that one day you will be able to stand amidst those fields of ice, and gaze upwards to see the patchwork sky. Instinctively, you know that the Sad Man is out there too, on a distant planet orbiting a lonely star; his pain is just too real for you to have made him up and the flashes of heat and arid planes that come with his presence are just too foreign to be anywhere on Brion.
Mummy creeps up and lays soundlessly down beside you, you curl up into her side and let the comforting warmth of her body envelop you. She wraps her arms around you, pulling you closer and lays her chin on your head.
"The moons are bright tonight," she says hushed, "you know when I was your age I was constantly pestering my mother for one of the suites at the palace with a balcony, so I could watch them at night." She laughs softy under her breath, "She would always refuse and tell me that there is nothing out there in the sky that could possibly interest me, my place was on Brion and not up in the stars."
You turn your head up to look at your mummy's face, "You've see the stars?" you ask awed.
She sighs down at you, "No, but someday I will, hopefully." She directs her eyes back up to the skies and hums quietly, "You start school soon, with you at one of the academies and your father at work I don't know what I'm going to do with myself during the day." She grins widely up at the moons, "Maybe I'll enter the racer circuits again, like I did as a teenager, that'll surely horrify your grandmother," says Mummy, her voice coated with rebellious humour.
You frown up at the brown orb of Larasho with its frozen methane seas and ask, "Why I am going to one of the academies and not normal school?"
Mummy pauses, "I never explained it to you, did I?" she murmurs. She jostles you gently so the two of you are laying in a more comfortable position before beginning, "You remember the feeling on Liberation Day? When Mother connects Brion?" she asks you.
You nod your head. Obviously, Liberation Day is the best day of the year, and the Moment of Oneness is one of the best parts!
"That feeling, my dear, is caused by something we call the Force. You, like all Brionians, have the ability to connect to it, just stronger than most, which is why you're going to an academy."
"What's the Force?"
She chuckles quietly and looks down at you with raised eyebrows, "Now isn't that the question! People much smarter than you or I have been trying to answer that for thousands of years!" She sighs gently and looks back to the heavens, "The short answer is no one knows, and you're too young for me to go into the particulars of Force philosophy and its study. But what I can tell you is the generally accepted view of it."
And so there, under the invisible stars and the shining moons, you get your first glimpse of the wider universe. Your mummy tells you in hushed tones that the Force is a massive field of energy that connects everything that exists everywhere and anytime in an enormous web that spans the entire universe. She tells you that it binds all living things in the galaxy together, the good and the bad; that all is one and one is all through the Force.
She goes on to tell you of the Balthurians, your distant ancestors, the extinct native humanoids of Brion and how once upon a time they built their entire civilisation on the study of the Force. How all of them truly were one through the Force, all of their minds linked together in a massive psychic network spanning from young to old, and how this led to planetary harmony and the absence of any real violence. Hard to hurt someone when their pain is literally yours, she says. She tells you of how it is the Force traditions of their people that survive today on Brion.
She tells you of the Balance, the Illumin'ar, a state in the Force where all aspects of it co-exist in complete harmony, no one part more prevalent than the other. She tells you of the Kim'ar and the Ishk'ar: the Light and Dark and to remember that Light and Dark don't mean Good and Evil, merely opposing sides of the same thing and that for the sake of the galaxy they must always exist in Illumin'ar: in Balance.
She tells you that this is why you are going to an academy, not normal school. That you have been given a gift and that you need to learn to control it, to keep yourself balanced. She lets you know that all Brionians have the same gift in some capacity, but less are strong enough to truly feel it. That all her family have been powerful, which is why they've been the ruling dynasty for so long and so it was expected that you would too, even if Daddy's family were all Force weak.
All this talk of mystic energy fields and psychic links makes you think of the Sad Man. About how he's there but he's not; an ethereal unreality, existing between the threads of your world, perceived only by you. You come to the realisation that you must be feeling him through the Force, that this strange energy field has inexplicably given you access to a stranger's state of mind. But where is he from? When is he from? And why you? You're only five, what are you supposed to do? You can't even get the most meagre attempts at communication through to him!
You decide to ponder on it more later, there are more immediate matters to attend to, like snuggling up to Mummy. You lay together in companionable silence, enjoying the muted hum of the city and pleasant glow of the moons. You can feel your eyelids grow heavy and begin to droop as the minutes pass, it isn't long before your small body succumbs and you drift off to sleep.
-*8*-
You are almost six when you start school.
You are going to be attending Central Sing'dai Force Academy in a sprawling skytower complex in the heart of the city. You have such high hopes for it, a place where you can make friends and learn to do cool stuff with your burgeoning Force powers. But as you soon as your family turn up for the entrance ceremony those hopes are dashed.
It's the same as everywhere else, cold dismissive gazes from impassive black and white eyes greet you. The three of you are blatantly ignored by everyone in that entrance hall, even the children receive you with utter apathy. Mummy and Daddy give the same treatment back, with their heads held high and stony contempt in their eyes as they stride through the hall with you between them, half running to keep up with their long steps.
Whoever had designed the academy had obviously taken inspiration from the palace: the walls are the same mirrorlike black, but durasteel not stone (and of noticeably lesser quality). The lower halves of the walls are shot through with bright blue plasma arranged to mimic the patterns on a circuit board while upper halves contain long, wide windows set to show the white sand and aqua waters of a tropical beach.
You rock nervously back and forward on your heels, fiddling with the hem of your pretty black dress and glancing around the room anxiously at the children that will soon be your classmates. Daddy, noticing your uncertainty, reaches down to ruffle your hair and grins widely when you puff up like an angry kizzi and glare up at him while trying to flatten it.
Mummy rolls her eyes, "Try and control yourself, Devron," she sighs exasperated.
Daddy flashes her a wicked smirk and winks at you, "You sounded just like your mother then, Elyssi," he replies.
Mummy shoots him a poisonous look in response.
You giggle at their antics, feeling mildly less apprehensive now watching your parents bicker. They've really gone all out for this, Mummy's hair is pulled back into a sleek, high bun and her eyes darkened to accentuate the clear white of her irises. Her dress is beautiful, it wraps around her body in a sheath of black silk and a pair of long gloves cover her arms. Her neck is encircled by set of diamond encrusted neck rings and on her right hand, a single platinum ring shines.
Daddy looks handsome in a long, high-collared white jacket and fitted white trousers, the buttons and cuffs glinting with sapphires. His hair is neatly slicked back, his black eyes stand out and his lips are quirked up in a ghost of a smile. They look fairly similar to all the other parents, Brionian formal attire is never any colour other than black or white, but they wear it with a languid grace and easiness that speaks of money and influence: an obvious but unarrogant confidence that makes them stand out.
You look around the room once more, taking in the blank faces of the other children with a sense of foreboding churning in your gut. You so desperately want to make friends here, you've never really been exposed to others of your age before, being as your cousins live over in Yazu'ai on the other side of the planet. However, eyeing their tightly controlled features tells you that that is looking to be more and more unlikely. While the children haven't mastered the utter stillness and discipline of their parents, their faces are just as barren of emotion and their muted presences almost as restrained.
You feel tense and uneasy; your parents have never taught you the emotional control that other Brionian younglings seem to intrinsically show. Instead, they have always encouraged you to smile freely and cry whenever the need to comes, to run around and laugh with abandon, to rage and scream without concern (granted the last one usually ends with you confined to a corner and all your toys confiscated). Unlike other adults, they seem to almost treasure your emotional responses, not scold and deride them as your grandmother does, and they aren't afraid to answer in kind.
It has always seemed perfectly natural to you, to emote. To express yourself through the flex and relax of the muscles in your face and the light in your eyes. Your very first memories are of your parent's glowing smiles and the warm, love-filled caresses of their minds. The younglings here look as though they don't even know what a smile is, let alone how to give one.
You flinch slightly as a smartly dressed woman with long black hair turns her frozen black eyes on you and looks at you as if you personally offend her before pulling her young son toward her side. You feel tears well up in your eyes, wet and salty, as you comprehend the reality of the thirteen long friendless years in front of you; outcast as the academy pariah, ignored and alone. It isn't fair! You feel like raging, these people have never met you before, never even spoken to you, how dare they treat you with such scorn! You suddenly understand why Mummy barely speaks to anyone outside your little family, why Daddy always looks so tired and angry after coming home from work if this is the way they're always treated.
A wave of black fury wells within your heart, icy cold and precise. They are the odd ones, they deserve the scorn! Anger dances within your soul at the thought of spending the foreseeable future surrounded by these people. These parodies of the sentient state, marble sculptures brought to life. A sense of complete isolation washes over you, compounded by the sudden appearance of the Sad Man at the edge of your senses, his own desolation bolstering yours. Your two presences swirl as one, your emotions playing together in a discordant melody of loneliness.
It is there in that dark, sterile entrance hall you learn something, with rage in your young heart and the pain of a man with the galaxy on his shoulders in your growing soul.
For the first time, at five years old you, you learn what it means to hate.
-*8*-
After that the entrance ceremony flies by, a haze of meaningless pageantry and forced politeness on the behalf of others toward your family. Your mummy is, after all, still their princess and that automatically makes you and Daddy of higher status than them. They aren't of the noble classes so any comments directed towards your family have to be of the utmost courtesy, not the biting backhandedness of palace nobles and your grandmother.
You pay attention to none of it.
The subdued and painfully courteous meet-and-greet is of no interest to you, nor is the rambling address of an older looking man in sharp formal attire you assume to be the headmaster. It's not as if you can understand it anyway, he uses far too many long words and even Mummy and Daddy seem to be having trouble focusing. No, you are far too interested in the chaotic flurry of new emotions churning within you and in separating yourself from the Sad Man who appears to be intent on sicking around. Your presences have become dangerously intertwined, and while you may know absolutely nothing about the Force, you know enough to know that the level of connectivity between the two of you at the moment is bad. Your auras seem to be resonating together like strings, one amplifying the other and tangling them together increasingly complex knots.
The bond itself is almost a tangible thing now, a thin woven cord rather than the fragile, ethereal yarn it was before. The psychic threads of your connection have been plaited together by your shared emotional feedback, causing the fibres to strengthen and the link to firm. You feel your stomach clench with worry. You have no idea who this man is or even if he's real, he could be a made-up apparition of your mind for all you know. The only other people you have anything comparable with are your parents; their bonds are braided golden ropes within your consciousness, tying the three of you together in a metaphysical triumvirate. Your connection with the Sad Man, on the other hand, shines a dull, metallic silver in your mind's eye, weak and sad but with the potential to be something brilliant. You can't help but feel the smallest ray of happiness when perusing the bond, as although you can't communicate, and he doesn't seem to know you're there, it feels like you have a friend. Something you will need in order to face the cruel detachment of your classmates.
You grind your teeth together in frustration, still undeniably furious about the reception you and your parents have been receiving all day and trying to contain the urge to scream in the faces of all the unbearably impassive children. How do they do it? You think you might go mad if you are forced you endure over decade of this and you can't bear the thought of seeing the placid apathy turn to cool judgement as they grow older. It hurts. This realisation that based on the experiences and reactions of your mummy and daddy you will never be accepted by them, never fit in. And as with all things this pain is quick to turn into a simmering resentment, an undercurrent of bitterness that will never go away.
On the way home you stare out at the forest of metal through the window of the speeder, absentmindedly listening to Mummy and Daddy discuss the academy's syllabus and league table placing. You don't actually understand any of what they're saying (the subject is quite beyond you and by the sounds of it, incredibly boring) but they seem to be debating it fiercely. It's dark now and outside the city's shields a massive storm of ice and snow buffets against the protective force field encircling Sing'dai.
Looking at the bright lights and big city pass you by, you can't help resentful of it all, of the towering prison it represents. Long have you known that your family were different, looked down upon by others. That other people were cold like Brion, their hearts guarded and hidden like scandalous secrets. But not until today have you ever considered what this would mean for you. You are too young to really grasp the enormity of what you have stumbled upon, and it would not be for years that you truly understood. But the seeds of lifelong anger were planted and they would never really die.