Hourly Challenge: Blue
a/n: Many years after the game is over, decades later, Wolf the Scary Trainer from the Missions Board is still solving the problems of Prone citizens. He remembers that that Prone engagement rings require a ringstone in Oblivia and three sapphire horns from xiphias.
You could read "Three Sapphire Horns" to help yourself out. Or not.
All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but the Wolf/Duna OTP and also Paseen are my creation.
Wolf was one of the oldest humans in NLA, by any measure. The years he carried from Earth, the battles he'd seen on Mira, and simply the years he carried in his body, one of the last original mims. Somehow he'd never taken the leap to the newer versions, never asked to risk the more organic solutions. He'd lived as he had when they'd first arrived, traveling with his scarred face and increasingly battered body. When they finally ran out of replacement parts for his obsolete model, he supposed he would finally go off line. It was a surprise; as a soldier, he never expected to simply wear out.
In the meantime, he spent his twilight years puttering around the Ma-non ship, itself fast becoming a relic. The Ma-non had spread a little, adapted a little. All of their guests had done the same. What remained was a sort of symbolic meeting place, where all the xenos would gather for stilted meetings to discuss policy or resources. The parties and brawls, the boasting and flirting, those were long gone. His training scheme to bring xenos into BLADE, making the NLA Coalition Forces more than an aspirational name, was long concluded. It had been a success, how could it not have been with Miss Duna Valdileo as his second, but it was long over. She had lived to see this herself, and they had shared a few more years before he had had to say goodbye to the most beautiful woman he had ever known.
Once her children had come to see him regularly. Now they were more worn than he was, so it was their children who made the pilgrimage. Sometimes he was their only reason for the visit; more often he knew that their main focus was whatever parliamentary discussion they were members of. He accepted it with equal gratitude, claiming whatever snippets of their lives and hopes they could spare him.
"Grandfather."
He turned from his musing, to see a young Prone woman approaching. Had he been sleeping under the glittering ceiling of the Starboard Hall? He worried that his mind would fail him, prevent him from knowing this youngster, a child of a child, maybe even a great-grandchild. They all called him Grandfather, when they didn't call him Auld Wolf.
But he knew her. She moved with the mixture of impatience and grace that marked her as Duna's kinswoman. It was the youngest daughter of Duna's eldest son. "Paseen, you're looking well."
"Yes, Grandfather." She sat down beside him on the bronze bench and stared into the shimmering hall, her hands in fists at her hips.
He studied her with side glances. She was bluer than her father, which must have pleased the pompous man. It was sad, really. Her father was so ashamed of his mixed Cavern-Tree heritage. Duna had loved him before she had ever seen him, but the boy had never been certain, and had grown into a man that behaved as if all things Tree Clan were moral perfection rather than a cultural choice. NLA welcomed the swelling number of Cavern Clan allies in NLA and elsewhere, but you wouldn't have know it from his behavior. The civil war between the Prone clans was still not over for him.
Paseen kept her head up, proud but not stiff, her head tendrils flicking in studied grace and calm. False calm, he recognized that movement from decades ago. She was a woman trying not to rage at the fool family members that she loved so dearly.
"Is your father being difficult again?"
A shrill growl shredded the young woman's throat. "He doesn't agree! He won't ever! The most hypocritical thing in the world when you think who his father was! Stupid stupid blind and stupid. He hasn't six eyes, he has zero, and probably zero brain cells as well!" Paseen wasn't as controlled as her grandmother had been, but then again she was much younger. Wolf wondered what it would have been like to face a young Duna.
Wolf nodded for a moment, slipping into a new dream, but a further growl dragged him back to reality. He patted the young woman's hand. "Ah, that boy. He's always had to be so careful, you know, so perfect. He never got over the fear of being taken away."
Paseen snapped at him. "My father is a grown man! And the war between Cavern and Tree was over years ago!"
"The pain never left him, though, my dear. He remembers the worst of it, every day. He can't escape it." The girl hung her head, but her tendrils were snapping. And yet her major eyes winked with sadness. "Does he still have problems with your ... ah ... Cavern friend...?" he asked carefully.
Paseen lifted her head and looked directly at him, all six eyes to his two. "I love her."
A very small smile slipped onto Wolf's face. It twisted his scar, making his visage frightening. "I've been expecting you to say that. Would you allow an old man to accompany you on your search?"
"No, no, that would never do. You're so ..." Paseen faltered.
Now Wolf's smile was less twisted and more smug. "I still have friends in the ECP. No need to carry my carcass across Mira. I think they'll let us have a skell."
Paseen sniffed angrily, but there was curiosity in her voice too. "I can do it myself. I should do it that way."
Now Wolf's voice became sly. "Ah, but don't you want to make a ring to match your grandmother's?"
The young woman looked at him with surprise. "You never helped my brothers! You never told them where the special sapphire horn came from. No one knows where you got a stone so dark, like the night sky."
Wolf nodded in agreement. "I never told your grandmother either, but she knew anyway."
a/n: I have given up hope of finishing the Treasure of O'rrh Sim, but I still know what happened to those two dorks, Wolf the Scary Trainer by the Missions Board and Miss Duna Valdileo the Prone with a Thing for Large Humans.
They started in New Faces, went on through Three Horns and also Simple Gifts, showed up in Inktober 17/17&24, and Apriltober 2020/21. If you ask nicely, I'll tell you what happened...
I still need prompts for NotInktober, pretty please and thank you.