Terms
He calls her Soldier. The name is everything from a private joke to a rebuke.
"Good work, Soldier." When she'd deciphered the hand-signals on Hasl 9.
"Bad move, Soldier." When she'd accidentally tripped the guiding mechanism on that bomb. "Run!"
"Think, Soldier!" He nearly shouts at times, "Use your head!"
"Aren't you just the soldier." He'd said bitterly when he'd caught up to her on the water-covered planet, about to fire her weapon. The woman she'd been aiming at had killed dozens of people. And yet her father had cut her to the core with that phrase, made her lower her weapon with it. The fight ended on that rock. But not with a bullet.
Sometimes he calls her Kid. It usually means that he's very amused, or very cross.
"You idiotic kid!!!" he had yelled as they ran. She'd insulted a gang of pirates, and they wanted blood in recompense.
"Crazy kid." He'd laughed the first time she'd had an ice-cream cone in the park. Ice-cream was delicious, but the cones were pretty impractical. She'd ended up smeared with the stuff. To be fair, so had he.
Once, he had called her taruelai. She'd been in her room, in bed. The quiet energy of his presence had pulled her from sleep. He'd leaned against the doorframe for so long that she'd nearly drifted off again. Then he'd whispered.
"Good night, lah taruelai."
The words had been the barest hush of air. But she'd heard.
Taruelai. A concept word. My offspring. My child. One I cherish and nurture. One I would give life to defend.
Jenny is a soldier. She's born to it, proud of it.
Jenny is a kid. Her father said she would be for a good two hundred years.
And now, she is her father's daughter. Now, she is taruelai.