I said it and I meant it, still working hard on the story. The last chapter took a good long while, however this one was ready to go weeks ago. You are never far from my mind, dear reader, the work continues apace. Two chapters in two days! Enjoy!
-Old Night
Sid sat alone as was her preference in the bright cafeteria of the remedial education center whose name she never bothered to fully remember. Now as yesterday and the week before and the years before even that she felt disconnected from the world around her. The city around her was noisy and bustling and the people bothered her in a way she couldn't quite describe to anyone. They seemed comfortable to her. Their chins tended to hang low to look at their omnitools or another form of communication or entertainment. Only a subsect of them seemed to be outwardly strong but listening to them made them seem vapid or vain. These people existed but they weren't truly living. Not in the way she thought was proper.
But worst of all, people lied. And they cared more about appearing nice than being forthright about their feelings.
Most of her classmates were like this, especially the girls. It annoyed her. She couldn't find the energy to even be angry at the bullies like she used to. These people were lambs and sooner or later they'd be out of her life forever. There was no point in getting upset.
I'm not like them.
Any earnest attempts to bother her dried up once she became thirteen years old. She could almost look Vetra in the eye and she had wholly embraced Sindri's old routines for fitness. She felt like an adult in a classroom full of children.
Frowning she pulled her brother's poncho tighter around her lithe frame.
Sid had hoped her Sindri would have been proud of her. She'd looked up the definition of the word honor and found it perplexing. At once it was a characteristic and almost a physical thing, but it was also a status and it varied from culture to culture. People would argue over it and it could increase or decrease, you could lose it or win it back. Some people didn't care about it and some lived for it. Vetra had said Sindri had lots of honor but how did he get it all? She'd asked on the extranet about how to measure it but there was no universally agreed upon metric or points system, which was frustrating.
One day I'll have lots of honor too. One day I'll be smart and strong and I'm going to be good too.
Over the years she'd looked up and memorized the entire recorded history of the Darskirri people before they were fractured into clans. From the early days of Lowell City as the first colony established by the ESA after nearly two decades of relentless work and the discovery of the Prothean ruins forty five years later. History held that the Darskirr had sprung from "disgruntled" members of society who'd taken up terrorism but she knew the truth. As Sindri told the tale the early Martians before they'd become Darskirr were being edged out by the interests of the Terrans. Almost three generations removed from their world of origin they'd developed into a culture and a people of their own, instead of clinging to the ways of Earth. And they thought they could just push the proto-Darskirr off their lands and out of their homes without reprisal.
The tribes had gone after the individuals responsible, instead of the masses when the Terrans began to push them off their lands. And they chose exile in the wilderness instead. That was almost forty years ago that they'd been removed from Mars and seeded themselves across the galaxy.
It had been a challenge in of itself not only to learn to read their alphabet but also teach herself how to speak the language, though she had no idea if it was passable or even accurate. As it turned out, in order to protect themselves, the Darskirr invented their own language before their exile when they'd begun to see the writing on the wall. It hearkened back to the cirillic alphabet of Earth and the spoken language was a blend of several from its northern hemispheres. Even past that their outlook on the gods, family, customs, ethics and war appealed to her. It was a society built on the shared destiny of people willing to embrace suffering and become stronger for it.
She craved it, to know where the boundaries were and what the proper way forward is.
Squirming she looked up at the sunset and the emerging moons then smiled, she so many questions for Sindri. Over the years she'd prayed to every god she remembered and the ones she hoped would listen that he was better and happy in Grennik. Or wherever he was. Missing him in the mornings and at night was part of the day. His absence was felt keenly with cooking in particular, his efforts tied the house together in a way for their daily rituals of eating at the table. She hated eating at the table now. The idea of sharing a meal in their family of three being short one member seemed wrong. To add insult to injury Vetra also proved herself to be a bad cook.
Sid had wanted to complain in those first few nights; remembering Sindri's words clarified what she could and what she should do. He'd told her once that you either choose to do something or you don't and that is enough. So she took it upon herself to begin cooking at home for the two of them. At first Vetra had discouraged her from having to do a 'grown up' responsibility but she persisted. Her older sister eventually snapped at her.
"Sid, enough! I'm the adult, you shouldn't feel responsible for the food situation at home. Act your age!"
"Somebody has to."
"Excuse me?"
"If I'm cooking then I don't have time to talk to you. Not that I want to."
"Too bad, kiddo. I'm the best you've got and like it or not it's just you and me now."
"No, it's not. I'm only here because it's what Sindri would have wanted me to do. Not that you ever cared about what he wanted, or how much he loved us."
More than once she'd seen or heard her cry in her bedroom or alone in the living room and pretended not to notice. It was hard but she brought it on herself, she didn't need to leave Sindri. She chose to.
Honor is in part about doing the right thing even if others don't.
I have to take care of Vetra. If I leave her then I'm no better than her for leaving Sindri.
The young turian continued to frown as her mind raced with thoughts of dinner and how to prepare it. It took her a moment to register the movement of an adult approaching her table before she looked and then rolled her eyes. Sid feigned interest in her food in the shallow hopes she'd be left alone.
The adult turian walked over to her and gave her a little nudge with his elbow.
"Mind if I join you?"
Sid shook her head as her new homeroom teacher sat next to her at the cafeteria table. Mr. Parthas was one of these people she was unsure about, but then again there was no point in making new friends. Sooner or later they would leave and go live someplace else.
"How are you doing today, Sid?"
"Sidera, my name is Sidera."
"Your sister told me you go by Sid to your friends."
"You're not my friend, Mr. Parthas."
"That's a hurtful thing to say, Sidera. You looked lonely so I thought I'd just have lunch with you and talk for a while."
"About what?"
"Whatever you like."
"I don't want to talk to you about anything."
"Then we don't have to talk. We can just eat together, the xillah meat it pretty good today."
"No it's not, they didn't make it right."
"Oh? What's the right way to make it?"
Again, Sid thought of her home in the woods and the taste of sahroon powder.
"Not like this. Brother used to make it better at home."
Parthas frowned at her, his mandibles limped by a few centimeters or two as his eyes looked at her with what she imagined was insincere concern.
"He used to? Why doesn't he make it anymore?"
The little turian looked away, suddenly angry.
"I don't want to talk about it."
Her homeroom teacher picked at a singular bite of his lunch and looked at his young student again.
"Your shawl is really unique, where did you get it?"
"It's not a shawl, it's a poncho. My brother's mother made it for him and it's mine now."
"Don't you mean your mother?"
"No."
"What happened to him?"
Sidera's mandibles clicked and she stood up and quickly walked away from her teacher over to the trashcan where she scraped her food off the tray before storming out of the cafeteria.
Mr. Parthas sat quiet and still in his chair for a long moment as he sheepishly forked over his food. Young Ms. Nyx had him terribly concerned, he'd only rarely seen a child so obviously filled with anger and grief.
-0-
The air in Uncommon Grounds was filled with the hot aromas of a hundred competing spices, oils and the teas and coffees they would go into. On any given weekday the place would be busy all throughout the day as customers would clamor and rush for their particular fix before returning to work though there would be lapses in between the tri-hourly rushes. The common starving artist would hunker down in a corner with a device or two to write their novel in plain view of everyone else. But the artists didn't sit in the way like most students or clerical workers would chatting away happily as they sifted through their packages of information with their long suffering classmates or coworkers.
Vetra had come to appreciate the busy atmosphere because her work kept her occupied and it didn't give her the luxury of being alone with her mind. Both her waking thoughts and nightly dreams were riddled with grief and a shallow sense of neglect, as though she'd been ignoring a wound that had been left to fester.
"I'd like a lemonade please."
"Right away."
Turning on her heel Vetra faced the multi-pronged device and flipped the correct tab to discharge the tart smelling drink.
It'd been a refreshing change of pace to be back in a city with people she could actually speak to without getting dirty looks or worrying about ancestral grudges or clan elders. Vetra felt that she'd been around humans for so long in Grennik that just seeing more than two asari or turians in a month was almost outlandish, but here in Kuov they were everywhere.
And frankly being able to nod and splay her mandibles in the silent greeting only a turian could give another was nice. And she hoped over time that it'd be good for Sid, even if her sister was not willing to forgive her after leaving the town and Sindri behind.
Things slipped back to how they used to be when it was just the two of us. But at least she is staying out of trouble.
Smiling a little Vetra turned again and handed the customer her drink and took her credits.
"Enjoy."
Giving the digital clock on the wall a quick glance Vetra realized the day had flown by and it was less than an hour away from ending.
She frowned, but only just. The worst part of the day was almost upon her. Punching out and grabbing Sid, who was always sullen and distant now, then making the silent journey back to their sterile apartment and quiet house.
-0-
Sid sat alone on the curb by her school as she waited for her older sister. Across the way she stared at the few trees set on one of the innumerable micro parks that dotted Kuov. Deep in a daydream her mind's eye wandered to distant worlds she'd never visited during a decade where she wasn't even alive. On the red lands of Mars she walked through shifting dunes and frigid winds with a sense of direction that baffled others as she led them through a sandstorm. Eventually her train of followers made it into the stony crags of the canyon where her clan lived, inside a deep bunker that peeked out demurely like a nail buried into living rock. They would thank her and she would be proud of what she'd done. She was strong now. Strong enough to be a credit to the clan. No one would look at her askance for being a turian.
On another wooded world she lay on her stomach with a rifle and bayonet amidst a line of her brethren as they stalked a monstrous god they sought to slay for killing their livestock and threatening the clan.
On yet another world made up of mostly oceans it was she who found the north star amidst a storm and turned the ship's heading away form vicious rocks and towards safer shores. Once they made landfall she led her older brother to a cave where she knew they could find the strongest steel in the universe and from there she made him new limbs. The hands had claws too, like swords, so he could defend himself and the clan too. He would always be nearby, he was her shadow.
She was a hero. They called her Sidera Bogatyr and she was the most fearsome warrior, greatest navigator and bravest girl in the entire clan. Nobody looked at her like an outsider. All those humans, smiling at her from behind their gilded veils, looked at her as the clan's most beloved daughter. Like family.
Her house would be loud and she would never be lonely again.
But they will look at Vetra like she doesn't belong. And she deserves it. She's not one of us, she's not Darskirr. I am Darskirr.
"Hey Sid."
With a little jump she looked up at her homeroom teacher who stood away enough to not encroach on her space.
"Waiting on Vetra?"
She glowered at him and resumed staring at nothing.
"Mhmm."
"I'll just come out and ask Sid; what happened to your brother?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Sid, I'm worried about you. It's not healthy to be this upset for this long, I just want to understand what is bothering you."
Standing up and dusting off her poncho the little girl turned to look at her teacher again.
"Don't worry about me, Vetra and I will move away eventually. So what's it matter?"
"Have you two moved around a lot?"
With a sigh Sid broke eye contact before looking down the street and spotting Vetra making her way over, clearly visible and a full head taller than the rest of the pedestrians around her.
"Yeah, we used to live in Grennik."
"That's a rough place to live, I've heard."
"It's not bad. I had friends there and my homeroom teacher Mrs. Rivana was really nice. And I had lots of grownup friends too."
"But the Darskirr are everywhere there, aren't they? Were you scared?"
"No, my big brother told me he only likes toughs. I wasn't afraid when he fought the Darskirri men during New Year's Pyre."
"Sidera, that was unbelievably dangerous and stupidly reckless of him. The Darskirr are violent and he could have provoked them. They hate us."
"Because turians hurt them, of course they'd be mad at them."
"Why are you speaking like that? They hate you and Vetra and me. What did she think of all this?"
The little girl sneered at her teacher.
"Sindri was smarter than any of them and braver. He told them off when they tried to hurt Vetra and he wasn't afraid when they came after him either."
"Who is Sindri?"
"He's my brother."
Sid turned homeward bound and left her teacher there, very satisfied with how lost for words he looked as she left him. A gust of icy wind blew her poncho's hood off and she kept walking along.
Oblivious to how Mr. Parthas' face obviously furrowed with worry, or how he'd turned away from her to intercept and speak to her older sister.
-0-
"Did she get into a fight, Mr. Parthas?"
"No, Ms. Nyx. Please call me Avitus."
Placing a saucer with a cup of tea onto the turian's table Vetra took a seat as he offered it to her with a gesture.
"You normally ask to speak to your students' guardians at their coffeeshops?"
"No, to be honest I'd rather speak to you in an unofficial capacity before I bring up my concerns with Sidera to the school."
Grimacing, she braced herself for another load of bad news as her eyes casually glanced at a human couple sitting by the window.
"Sidera is obviously upset about having moved here to Kuov and she's very visibly upset about her brother's absence. And as she tells the tale; the Darskirr 'came after him' and now he's gone. What happened in Grennik, Vetra?"
Her azure eyes locked with his own, a cool seafoam green, and softly screwed shut at the bloody memories of the man she'd found almost frozen to death. Her hands felt tingly and numb. Phantom ice nipped at her fingertips.
"Sindri."
"Was he your older or younger brother?"
Vetra blinked and her mandibles drooped.
"No, he was a local in Grennik. He was a veteran of the Relay 314 Incident and he ran the only clinic in town for aliens, the Darskirr hated him for that."
Darrek blinked for a moment then his mandibles splayed out and he bowed his head an increment towards her.
"The brass balls on that guy."
"You don't know the half of it. Sid and he bonded really hard and he took us in when the Darskirr made life there unsafe. We stayed with him for a little less than a year."
The turian looked away from her for an instant before a mild anxiety expressed itself through an almost imperceptible quiver in his jaw.
"What happened to him?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"It's obvious he had a huge impact on Sidera, and on you."
Vetra didn't wince as she remembered the shallow ache in her heart. The sense of 'missing' she'd been carrying since that bright morning in Kuov. A sense of impropriety that refused to leave her no matter how much she reasoned or repeated to herself.
Avitus leaned back on his chair and took a sip from his warm drink and frowned with sympathy.
"I get where Sid is coming from. She lost an older sibling. To have bonded so strongly into a blended family only to have had it torn apart must have been traumatizing."
"Not sure what she's thinking sometimes. She's changed."
"Was she more cheerful when Sindri was around?"
Nodding, Vetra glanced again at the human couple. The female was blonde with blue eyes, and from the back the man had dark hair and fair skin she could tell. He sported a peacoat in the latest fashions and sturdy boots for the winter's chill.
"A loss like that can leave an enormous change in a preteen. Especially if it came about through violence, but it's obvious you are in pain too."
"Listen, Avitus. With respect, I don't need you psychoanalyzing me. I'll speak to Sid and ask her to-"
"Vetra, please don't misunderstand my meaning by asking you to speak to me here and off the clock. We turians are so few on Mirrard, I'm offering a hand to help because we need to stick together and while I'm sure you and Sidera would be fine if you polish enough gizzard it doesn't mean you have to. Let me help you two."
Looking straight at the man in front of her Vetra relented and gave him a half-hearted nod.
"You sound like Sindri."
"Is that a good thing?"
"It's just a little uncanny. He was always on about helping others, even if he was a little mean about it at times."
Avitus smiled.
"I've met the type. Liked playing the bad guy?"
A little grin found its way to Vetra's lips as her mood rose.
"Oh you have no idea. I always called him on his shit too, he had a very barbed tongue but I left him speechless more than once. He was surprisingly modest for being so publicly shameless, little shit."
"So you like complicated men, huh?"
She shook her head and glanced again at the human patrons across from her as his fingers lightly touched those of his beloved.
"He was an odd one, he never cared what others thought of him. And when he did he would follow his conscience anyway. Even if it came back to bite him. Sindri was really simple once you understood where he was coming from."
Avitus nodded pleasantly and held his mandibles close in a reserved smile.
"You were absolutely head over heels for this guy, as the humans say, weren't you?"
The grin vanished.
"You sound disappointed, Mr. Parthas."
"Just a bit, it's easy to recognize that you've been through a lot and that you love your sister. Someone like you deserves to be happy. It is a little amusing how the reckless men always get the girl."
Vetra scowled without realizing it, and her eyes darted to the human couple as the dark haired stranger kissed his companion.
"I don't deserve to be with anyone, Avitus."
"That sounds like you have some regrets."
"More than a few. Anyway, is that all? I'll have a word with Sid when I get home."
Nodding and standing up, the male turian bowed his head and she mirrored the gesture.
"Speaking of which, I'd like to invite you to a little house party my friend is having this Saturday."
"Avitus, I'm not interested in pursuing anything right now with anyone. But I appreciate the gesture."
The man shook his head curtly.
"Oh no, I took the hint before that. I get it, this guy was the love of your life and you're still hurting. I won't pry. But really it would do you some good to be with a few friendly faces, you know? Just to unwind and talk. Sid told me you don't have many friends here in Kuov."
"You're being polite, that blabbermouth told you I have no friends."
With an apologetic smile Parthas scratched the side of his head and a little blue worked its way onto his cheeks. The thought crossed her mind that the man in front of her was passably handsome. He had a nice crest and long spurs on his legs and his face plates weren't ashen, his mandibles were perky. Glancing back again at the human couple Vetra felt a little dirty for having noticed Avitus and a little envious of the blonde woman. She never thought she'd long for chance to run her hand through a head full of black hair. But the fur on human's heads framed their faces nicely and she'd gotten good at understanding human expressions of emotion. The trick was the lips and the eyebrows mostly. Their smiles were so pleasant to look at.
Turning his head then looking back at her, Parthas smiled.
"Little gross aren't they?"
"What? They are just kissing."
"Human lips are so weird looking, and all that hair everywhere."
Vetra frowned.
"Anyway, give it some thought and let me know. I think it would do you some good to see some more-"
"Sure."
"Really?"
"Yes, I could use the company for an evening. It's either that or at home with Sid and I know she thinks she doesn't need me anymore."
"All kids get that age, don't take it personally."
Not all kids lose their older brothers after their sister rips the family apart.
"Right."