"Rodney."
Mies stands there, hands deep in his pockets chewing on his lower lip. The sun shines through the large coloured windows outside in the hall and give the laboratory a faint orange tint. Rodney is hunched over a bench, circuits and parts of machinery Mies cannot name spread out before him, crystals and screens glowing and pulsing in the rhythm of the other man's typing.
He's tense, very tense, and Mies wishes he could do something about the miserable feelings Rodney experiences in that moment. There is all the grief and guilt and pain, the sadness because of a death that has not happened yet and Rodney seems to feel as if he is the only one to blame in the whole galaxy.
"Look," Mies sighs deeply. "It's not your fault…"
If possible the shoulders grow only tenser, head ducking closer to the screens. Usually there would be an explosion of accusations and arguments now, yelling and pointing and waving of hands to emphasize his point, but there isn't.
Rodney has not given up, never would, but sometimes there are things he cannot change and accepting that he failed breaks him, seeing Rodney like that really qualifies as one of the worst moments since he met him. Even blowing up the better part of a solar system pales in comparison.
Mies is too tired to stay on his feet as they return from the pilgrimage to the home of the Mother, but he stays awake long enough to see how Tuuli walks up to the wife of his son, tells her how the Mother wished him to stay with her and how he followed fearlessly and with his head held high into the light of the stars.
She is visibly shaken but tries to keep it together, leaning into her eldest daughters and granddaughters who take her away. Ilren is among them and he doesn't know how she is related to Njir, he just knows she will not return to Tuuli's house or Mies' bed for a while.
He tries not to feel too relieved about that fact, at least until the feast is over.
A feast for Njir and for the Mother.
They will hold a feast in Njir's honour and his wife and female descendants will hang strands of their hair onto the village tree, singing for him as the wind carries the hair away and out onto the grasslands. It's sending a piece of a beloved person on their way into the light.
The men will talk about how they are glad for Njir to have been chosen by the Mother to give her his life and strength, in exchange for her protection. For Mies it borders on madness; he wants to believe the whole story, the giving of life and flesh to become eternal. Something dark inside him, strangely enough coming as a faceless voice from deep in his dreams, tells him however, that he has just let someone walk to his death.
A cruel, painful death nobody deserves, least of all the loving man he had known Njir to be. Something about Njir's fate makes him incredibly angry, makes him feel guilty and helpless, makes him want to get his crossbow and march back up into the mountains to get Njir back. He doesn't want Njir to stay behind, alone and scared, although Mies knows very well that he's dead and that Mies may only bring a corpse back, if anything at all.
He balls his fists and watches how the women weep and sing a sad song that floats across the grasslands, together with the stray strands of hair settling in the grass and waving in the breeze like spider webs in the early morning. He can't stand it for long and returns to his bed in Tuuli's house as soon as custom allows him to.
"I don't understand this," he whispers and sits down on his bed, shaking his head. "I just don't understand this."
Vinte sits by the fire opposite him and avoids looking at him, her hands curling around pieces of wood she wants to throw into the flames, and she seems overall unhappy and sad. He doesn't wonder why; she has been Njir's grandmother of sorts, and now that he comes to think of it, he can even start to guess how many members of her family must have joined the Mother.
"Vinte." He stands up again and walks over to her, sitting down at her side with only the basket of wood between them. "Are you alright?"
She smiles wryly at his question, eyes fixed on the flames.
"I'm fine," she says softly; oh but he knows she's not. He is not, nobody is.
He wants to ask why Njir stayed behind and what the Mother has done with him, why there had been screams he is very certain were Njir's as he left the cave and why everyone seems sad on one hand but envious of him on the other. She looks old and fragile in this moment though, so much so that he doesn't dare to ask and instead joins her in looking into the fire, chewing on his lower lip.
She looks at him out of the corner of her eyes, face still turned to the fire. "Have you seen how Njir gave his life?"
He shakes his head. "I heard someone screaming," he says and she nods.
"I told you not to go," she says and one piece of wood falls into the flames. "It is cruel how the world is and giving your life for the Mother is always one of the cruellest things in it, no matter what good it does for the community."
"Why do it then?" he asks and she sighs heavily.
"There is a story before the story of the Mother," she starts and throws another piece of wood into the fire. "It tells of the first people that lived on this world and how people from the darkness of the sky came to help them out of poverty and hunger. They knew of miracles and flying cities amongst the lights of the sky and while these strangers, at first, promised great things and miracles they left eventually for a war against a nameless threat."
She hangs her arm into the basket of wood and looks inside, fingers dangling over another small log of wood and her fingertips tracing the round edges where the material has been split. He can read sadness in her old eyes, almost something like pity and figures it's probably for the poor people she's talking off.
"And then?" he asks when she hesitates a few moments more.
"They were left behind with not more than the promise that their helpers would return one day. But they never did, and after a while, nobody could man what the strangers had left behind for them anymore," she says softly. "Eventually, after the last of the those the strangers had instructed on the handling of their legacy died, all lights went dark around them and the cold and darkness came back far worse than it had ever been before. Since these days we call the strangers the shadow bringers."
He frowns and nods. This point in history must have brought the appearance of the Mother and her sons and her struggle for her people, the battle she fought for them to bring light back and all the pain she went through.
"The Mother made all better," Vinte continues but a good amount of the usual belief in her words is missing. "All she wants in return is the flesh and life of a few, for the survival of all."
"Huh." He can still relate to that; still, the feeling that Njir's sacrifice seems wrong is still there.
"I do know you feel it is wrong; most youngsters do," she says and the hand formerly inside the basket reaches out and comes to rest on his arm. "But it's the way it is meant to be; some things you cannot change."
Oh, yeah, he's so good at holding still and doing nothing, because seeing others hurt and dying while he could change something about it is so easy. The acidic sarcasm in that thought startles him to the core for a moment and it must be visible on his face as well because Vinte pats his arm and smiles in her usual way, all wrinkles and bright eyes.
She puts the last of the wood into the fire and rubs her hands against her dress to clean them of remaining sawdust and splinters.
"Help me up!"
"Sure," he says and hurries to do so.
He sets the basket aside and hoists the old woman up gently. She signals him to bring her towards the door and outside, where they stop under grimacing figures carved into the door frames and watch the tribe mingle outside for a moment. He spies Ilren dancing slow and tired around the village tree, her movement lacking the fire he has grown to like about her and she seems too worn out to even lift her head; all the women seem to be as they move around the tree. Njir's wife is hoarse as she chants and watches, wrapped in the furs of the last game of her late husband, how strands of his family's hair lift from the tree branches and into the falling night's purplish blues.
Vinte curls her hand around one of his and leans over a little, drawing his attention to her with the movement.
"Do not worry, Mies," she whispers. "Great times of change are about to come."
He frowns down at her for a moment but eventually his eyes drift back to the people outside as the music dies out. They are silent, the entire tribe staring into the sky as night finally settles above their heads, trying desperately to find the new star Njir is supposed to be at the horizon. Njir's grown children point at the sky for their own kids and younger siblings to see, some light here or some light there, it's mostly an attempt to explain it to the children and Mies is sure there is no new star by Njir's name out there, won't be ever.
Tuuli climbs on the stones by the fire to tower above his people after what seems an endlessly long moment of silence and claps his hands three times.
"The time of darkness will come soon," he says and smiles, although it doesn't reach his eyes as it usually does. "And the Mother has warned us that with the night there will be strangers coming from beyond the mountains, curious, two-faced and dangerous to us."
Whispers and mutters go through the crowd, not understandable over the hiss of the fires and the blowing of the wind around the houses. Tuuli quiets them with the raising of his hands towards the night sky in the same way he had called to the Mother and the beast's mouth.
"But you must not fear," he says. "The Mother shall see their true intent and the Mother will judge them," he adds and smiles.
Mies tries to hide the flinch at these words and is thankful as Vinte pulls on his arm to turn and go back into the longhouse. As he lies down he hopes to dream, even though his dreams are full of cruel things and confusing pictures, they still promise the comfort he yearns for now amongst all the confusion.