DAY SIX – PROMPT: IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY
NOTE: Not really sure where I was going for this... maybe some kind of space ninja-soulmate mix? Since I'm late posting, someone else naturally came up with a similar idea. Hope they don't take this badly! I was going to fill in the gaps a bit more, but I kind of like it the way it is... I think I manage to hint at a lot of background in this 'verse without having to outright say it.
Grant is already six when the one he is destined for is finally born, and the dark smudges first appear on the inside of both his wrists. By the time he is sixteen, they have grown almost to the bend of his elbows; smoky, half-formed trails on his pale skin. By the time he is nineteen, they have sharpened into distinctive pictographs.
The inside of his left forearm bears a repeated pattern of a sun-in-glory, with various shapes of clouds and swirls that he thinks represent winds. Hidden in the pattern are marks in a non-Terran language that Grant has seen on ships bearing those known as the Star-Seeds. The inside of his right forearm bears a row of marks shaped like the phases of the moon, from crescent to gibbous to full and back again. Surrounding them are four-pointed diamonds, arranged into constellations Grant doesn't recognise.
Grant is the only acolyte in the cloisters who is old enough to shave, and still called Ward, not Warder. Despite the marks that decorate both his inner forearms, the one he was born to protect and serve either cannot find him, or refuses to claim him.
Grant is twenty-one when a former member of the Order visits. She is the first Warder he's met who is also Marked on both arms; the patterns curl around her wrists like bracelets, elegant and discreet. He spars with Melinda May for an embarrassingly short time – but finds out later that he lasted far longer than anyone else.
What Grant doesn't know is that when May returns home, she immediately goes to her own Protectorate. Phillip and his wife Audrey have spent years wondering about the Protectorate marks that their Star-Seed fosterling bears. May is finally able to tell them why the marks form ancient sigils of protection, defence, and warning; why the marks Skye bears are a powerful safeguard for her in their own right. The one born for StarLady Skye did not reject or abandon her; he was simply born too early, and has been patiently waiting ever since for her to come for him.
Devoted as she is to Phillip, May has never told him that several of the sigils indicate that Skye's Warder will also be her lover – perhaps even her Mate. But from her brief time assessing him, May is sure that Grant will be outstanding in that capacity too.