Entry 9

I suppose I ought not be surprised that the peace lasted less than a week from father's return home. For once though- truly surprising as it is- I was not the instigator of discontent though I was, perhaps, the subject of it. The trouble was easily enough foreseen, and truly began less than a day after father returned home… and less than an hour from Davin's arrival on Nirauan.

My eldest brother made his obligatory report to Stent and Parck upon his arrival, and then preceded father in returning to our quarters, where he embraced mother and Cherith, and a nervous, shy Wynssa; and then after a brief and faint smile towards Jagged, he turned to stare at me blandly and asks, "So… still here, then?"

All I can wonder is whether he would have said it had father been present, but my mouth worked automatically. "Where else should I be?" To my credit, I don't believe I even sounded bitter. Davin shrugged and changed the topic of conversation before mother could catch what was going on, and it didn't come up again until much later that night when my brothers and I retired to Jagged's room.

Davin could be a holostar. The first of my parent's children, only he and Wynssa, the last, inherited mother's blonde hair and blue eyes. The rest of us have the darker hair of our father. Chak and Cherith also took his dark eyes, Jagged's are green; mine are in between, a hazel which mother says is evocative of her brother, Wedge. I think it makes her sad, sometimes.

But Davin's fair complexion gives him the appearance, I think, of something he is not, of something soft, spoiled, pampered. At times, even I forget that he fought for his right to fight alongside the chiss among whom he played, studied, and eventually trained, before they reached their advanced maturity and left the deficient humans behind. He fought for that right and won it, surpassed his superiors' highest expectations, and earned the command and allegiance of those who once saw him as slow and inferior. Davin has refused to let circumstances beyond his control- that is, father bringing us here in the first place- to dictate his course in life. It is no wonder that Jagged aspires to follow in the footsteps of our oldest brother.

And apparently Davin feels it is time that I do the same. Not to follow in his footsteps, per se, but to set my own path, with or without the blessing of father.

My obvious question to him is how I might do that without father's blessing; he seems to feel that it ought to be as simple as leaving. But for all of Davin's intelligence, capabilities, drive… he doesn't understand, couldn't understand, what it is to be in my position.

I do not exist.

It can never be as simple as leaving for one who does not have proper clearance and identification to even be flying in Nirauan space. It can never be as simple as leaving for one who has known nothing else beyond the small world of his family, our quarters, the family yacht… I know the rest of this fortress like the back of my hand but have never actually seen it… It can never be as simple as leaving for a shadow child of humans inexplicably carrying on a chiss tradition.

I am isolated and alone in a way that Davin, who grew up dealing with the low expectations and skepticism of the chiss, but dealing with them nevertheless, could never understand. It is not whining to say that, it is simple fact and reality, a reality even further out of Davin's grasp now that he has seen more than Nirauan, now that he has moved beyond father's shadow and proven his own worth beyond simply bearing the name Fel.

How do you explain to someone… a brother, a confidante, a friend… who stares death in the face and emerges triumphant time and again… a warrior in whom others willingly place their lives and trust he will not spend them in vain… how do you explain the oppressive weight that accompanies my useless duty of remaining unheard, unseen, nonexistent? How do you explain the horrible confliction between desiring any life besides your own, yet not wishing to disappoint father, from whom we all derive our damnable sense of duty in the first place?

I first thought it was just… a mood, the temperament born of a long journey and little sleep. When Davin got into a long and loud argument with father five days later though… I wonder what has happened to suddenly drive him in this sudden quest for, as he put it to father, my freedom.

Normally, I would phrase it in such a way as well; but seeing my steady, stoic, serious older brother quarrel with our father in a way none of us have ever dared… not even me, at the height of my bouts of impudence… I could not even bring myself to add word to Davin's arguments, and cowardly obeyed without a second thought when father gestured me out of his office. I practically fled.