Disclaimer: I own nothing except Kara, and the Sh'ahrn.
A/N: Hey ya'll, here I am again, yep another Tarsus chapter. Seriously, people please vote when I request suggestions because I'm actually going with about maybe three more Tarsus chapters(including this one) before moving onto the 2009 movie events. Please review and tell me what you guys think of the story thus far, I promise that I'll get to the K/S goodness as quickly as I can. (And as far as Jim's age, since it's a different universe(J.J. Abrahms-verse) , the Tarsus IV Massacre occurs a couple years earlier, oh and I lied, Jim is like 11.)
Guide of Things to Know:
-Words and such.- = Emotional projection
"Words and such." = Spoken words
'Words and such.' = Thoughts
Fade-Reavers = telepathic/energy-based beings that originate from the eighth(or fifth, it's debatable) dimensions, they are a species which will be fully explained later, but basically they devour your soul/katra(for all you Star Trek-wise people out there), your memories and after that they drain your body of any forms of remaining energy before moving back to wherever they came from. Fade-Reavers can only cause physical damage when they are in the Alter-Hyper-Dimension(Yes I'm still working on the name…)
Sh'ahrn fear Fade-Reavers more than anything because they are all over the dimension that the Sh'ahrn use to travel across several multiverses and across the galaxy in less time(something like "A Wrinkle in Time" or Z-space from K.A. Applegate's "Animorphs" series). The complete details are too much to put in this paragraph without boring you, so I will explain more at a later date.
Lost-Call = Telepathic/empathic call of a lost child, Sh'ahrn children each have a unique Lost-Call to define which child is whose. Only Telepathically/empathically sensitive species can hear/sense a Lost-Call when it's being put out.
Translation/s: (Sh'ahrn to English) =Note that Kara actually speaks the simplest of thousands of different Sh'ahrn dialects, she speaks the most simplistic one because of her physical limitations=
Kh'reehling/s – small child, infant, child, or children
S'hnkm'uerti'hm = Saved for death, kidnapped/taken to be put to death, literally translated it means "led-death-time"
"S'ohhmn'ihs y'ai." – "Sleep now." (S'ohhmn'ihs is the informal command form of the verb "soh'nmi'hii" which means "to sleep", y'ai is the gentle-toned now)
N'rriiyyrr'muu – Nightmares, killer dreams, dreams where Fade-Reavers can enter your mind and devour your 'soul', memories, personality, basically
Chapter 2: Note's Unwavering Faith
StArrdat ?
Jim sez 2 kep a jorenall,as I lern Standard and he teech me hoo too rite. Draggd bodees out of dwelling place too-day. Eat-ed sweet plants with Jim an-d Mason, yonger clanmate.
Riting iz hard.
Kara
Kara closed her journal, which Jim had given her about three days after the incident that killed his Aunt and Uncle.
Mason had stayed oddly silent, alternating between clinging to Jim and wandering the house quietly.
By the fourth day, Jim decided that the bodies needed to be moved form the house, he struggled at first, then protested as Kara pitched in with her uninjured arm. After several hours of tugging and dragging and pulling, they managed to move the bodies of those dead intruders out the back door and into a pile behind the house…
Jim was smart, he covered them with many branches, leaves and bushes from the woods behind the garden. And with that, both children went inside, and Kara observed as Jim piled the intruders weapons in a corner of the room that the three children had been sharing for the past few days.
Jim had grown paranoid, and the paranoia had started to rub off on Kara, because soon she was checking over her shoulders every minute or so, constantly doing empathic sweeps and searching for other unfamiliar auras.
Jim sorted out all the food in the house, making sure that they ate the perishable food first, the meat, burnt or not, usually went to Kara, who ate it raw.
Jim had Kara help him barricade themselves in, boarding up windows with boards from the shed outside and using large furniture to block off the front door and windows.
They still took care of the garden, watering and weeding it, Kara following Jim's lead, Jim's little cousin helping as well.
It had been a few more days, but Jim and Kara had finally cobbled enough things together to leave the house if need be.
But despite all this, Jim still took the time to continue teaching Kara standard, for which she felt very grateful, earning Jim another large glob of affectionate saliva in his hair.
-Joy.-
Jim shook his head, as Kara's emotional poke to his brain produced another prickling sensation that he was quickly getting used to. He knew that Kara didn't understand, he didn't have to be fifteen or twelve to know that Kara didn't really know what was going on.
He knew that with Kara's alien-ish body, she was capable of defending herself, but her saw that her understanding of the situation only expanded because of his own paranoid behavior. The eleven-year old knew, more soldiers would be coming, and the barricades would not hold them back forever.
They would have to run, Jim decided, but first, they would check the town, maybe things were still calm there…
It was a new day, and Kara's wing was looking a little better, Jim had shown her how to change the bandages.
Kara followed Jim as she tucked his young cousin in for a nap, telling his cousin that they'd be back. Kara still didn't understand most of what was being said, but she could get the basic gist of it through another empathic poke at Jim's emotions.
They made their way to town in silence, and for once Jim was glad that his Aunt and Uncle had lived in a house well out of the way. If their house was far enough out of the way, they'd have less soldiers to deal with…
But Jim didn't grow up surviving Frank for nothing, he knew they'd always be in danger. Especially in a place where soldiers burst into your house and demanded you to hand over you children to be "removed" due to food shortages.
Jim looked at Kara, following him faithfully, he hadn't even known her for more than a couple of months yet she stuck close to him and always attempted to comply with what he told her… Despite the whole language barrier thing…
He only hoped that it would go well, Jim vowed to find out what was going on, before it fucked them all over…
OOOOO
Jim felt sick, he'd known that something was wrong. He'd thought it was odd, people disappearing slowly prior to the attack at his house, all non-human, all the too-old people…
Someone was getting rid of people, for seemingly no reason at all...
Jim hurried Kara out of the town, they had to book it and quick. They had to get out before they were seen… Caught…
Everything could've set Jim off, but then he noticed Kara's tensed shoulders… Of course, he'd forgotten that she was sensitive to what other people's emotions were, he was making her nervous.
Jim could tell she was nervous, her tail kept flicking back and forth from clubbed to tail-spikes as her yellow-on-black eyes darted around them.
"Everything's going to be fine, okay?" Jim assured Kara as she walk-hopped on all four's rather awkwardly behind him.
Kara gave him an unconvinced chirp.
"I mean it." Jim reassured her, patting her head gently.
-Hopeful.-
'Yeah,' Jim thought silently as he locked the door behind him, and directed Kara in helping him barricade the house, 'I hope so too.'
OOOOO
Things went to hell pretty quickly, Jim had always made sure that they were ready to leave the house at a moment's notice, Jim had saved whatever vegetables he could from the garden, and given all the raw meat to Kara.
They had clothes, medical supplies, limited food and the rifles.
Kara had woken to Jim whispering hurriedly to her, shoving he bag into her arms and her through a back window.
They were to be 'collected' by the soldiers, for execution by order of Kodos. Jim's heart raced as he shoved his cousin outside too, and he looked at Kara as she shouldered her bag.
Together, they ran.
Not that there really was any place to run too.
Not really.
OOOOO
Still DoN't know stardaat?
Left living-place many days B4.
Wing an shoolderr steell hurt.
Caught small animal to shayre. Jim cooks good.
Little-One coffing toOday. He tiired. Jim iz too.
Stayed up all dark-tyme. Jim an' Little-One sleeped good bekuz.
Smelled burning tooday, heared screeming from far away. Scared me.
Jim sez we'll be okay.
I beleeve him.
-Kara
OOOOO
They'd been going for three and a half weeks, and Jim could tell that his companions were feeling the strain, and frankly, so was he.
Three and a half weeks of little to no sleep, and less food as they'd been forced to make sure that the food lasted them.
Jim had also worried for both of them, his cousin had been nothing but quiet for almost nearly the entire time since his parents were killed, and Kara's emotional 'pokes' to Jim's brain had grown few and far between.
He'd noticed Kara writing in the unused journal he'd given her, though he knew that her spelling was probably atrocious. Kara, though obviously used to sleeping less than Jim did, was descending into exhaustion as well.
But Jim had a goal for them, the mountains. If they could get there, they'd be safe until all the soldiers killed each other, or were killed by .
But they'd passed behind another house, forced once again to venture into the city for food.
The sounds of energy rifles firing, screaming, struggling… Silence…
S'hnkm'uerti'hm, death…
Yet, this was how Jim and Kara's little family grew…
They'd broken into an all-out dash to the safety of the trees, another Kh'reehling in tow. Only a couple of years younger than Jim was, his parents as dead as Jim's Aunt and Uncle.
"Who are you guys?" The male child had asked shakily as they shared some canned food between the four of them.
"I'm JT," Jim said easily as he tried to get them all comfortable for the night, making sure that they couldn't be seen no matter what, then he pointed to Kara, "and that's Note."
And that was how they met Kevin Riley.
Kara liked him, and greeted him in the limited Standard she knew, and gave him a huge, sloppy saliva glob to his hair.
She didn't want her and Jim's new friend to catch fire, that would be bad…
"Note," Jim pointed to Kara, confusing her for a moments, wasn't she Kara? "You go by Note now."
"Why?" Kara questioned, scratching he clawed right hand absently across a piece of tree bark.
"Because we have to," Jim explained softly, "you call me JT now, okay?"
Kara could sense Jim's exhaustion, didn't even need the empathic ability to tell that Jim was beyond tired, and had reached his limit as he began to doze off.
"S'ohhmn's y'ai." Kara said as she grabbed a blanket out of her pack and draped it around her sleeping friend.
After checking her friends heartbeats, it baffled Kara that their species only had one, and their emotional auras for any N'rriiyyrr'muu, bad dreams, and Fade-Reavers, Kara's yellow irises shone as they pierced the pitch night as she searched for-
'As beings say, AHA!' Kara had found it, as quietly as she could, she scrabbled up a tree and perched herself on a branch. The perfect vantage point, offering her the view of things some distance away, of Jim, his cousin, and Kevin, and most of all the perfect vantage point to drop onto any intruders who wished to hurt them.
Kara would tear their throats out, if it came to that.
Jim had kept her safe, and was teaching her Standard, he was patient, so much was happening… So quickly…
Kara winced as she flexed her injured wing and shoulder, the holes cut into the back of her shirt were rubbing her sensitive nerves in her wings uncomfortably… Jim had saved her life, several times over in the past few weeks…
Kara would keep Jim safe too…
Until her Father came for her, he would save them all…
Kara then focused her energy into putting out her 'Lost-Call', when kh'reehlings were lost or separated from their parents or clan, they could put out emotional psywave-songs out, so that the adults could find them, these calls were silent, so almost no species except Sh'ahrn could hear it. Every child had a different one, so even Kara had her own…
Gathering up her wits, Kara focused on her Lost-Call, which she had put out almost every night before.
Even as her silent notes echoed into the emptiness around them, Kara was sure that someone would come.
Adult Sh'arhn loved kh'reehlings, regardless whether the kh'reehling was biologically theirs or not, someone would come…
Someone would come for Kara, and Jim, and Jim's cousin, and Kevin too.
Someone had to come for them, someone… Just had too…
Kara had faith, yes, her Father would come, he would answer her Lost-Calls like he'd done many times before…
To feel the safety of her Father's wings again, and have him take them all away from this terrible place…
And as the last notes of Kara's Lost-Call faded, she took another deep breath into her four lungs…
And Kara began once again…
She had faith, help would come…
Her Father had never failed her before, and he wouldn't fail her now...
But until then, Kara and Jim would keep each other safe, as JT and Note, and maybe find others too. Jim would lead Kara where it was safe, like a Clan-Brother would…
And yet again, her Lost-Call ended, so yet again, Kara began once more...
A/N: Yep, FINALLY! I got a chapter done. Sorry, this fic was kind of on the back-burner in comparison to my other fics on my other account, which amount to like 8 or 9. Sorry if I took so long, and just to clarify, Kodos's soldiers are not outright killing people in their homes, their taking them into custody to be executed in one fell swoop. If the people resist too much, then the soldiers kill them(like Jim's Aunt and Uncle). Kara still doesn't get that she's on her own, in terms of her biological family anyways, but like a child, she still doesn't "get" that yet.
Also, IMPORTANT NOTE: Please, I need you guys' help, you know that alternate, in-between, dimension thing I mentioned several times? I need a name for it, I can't think of one, and I'm running on coffee fumes right now, so could you guys please give me some suggestions, preferably something that's short and rolls off the tongue easily. Thank you.
PLEASE REVIEW! Okay there I said it, leave a review, tell me what you think and I'll try to update this as fast as I can, as soon as I churn out some updates for my fanfics on my other profile. Ciao! ;)