Of Days Long Past:
Cold moons.
By Emparra
Disclaimer: This story has been disclaimed. The writer only plays in someone else's sandbox.
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Chen-tsi looked to the grey sky. Soft snow fell as it always did, and as it always would.
The bark of an angry man snapped him from his musing, and he returned to his task; hauling crates along the gorge to the great dome built into the mountain top.
Long ago, before the dark times, the Jeedai had come with their same-men to Orto Plutonia, and with the Pantoran folk they had brokered peace. The small woman had come with them, and called end to the battle, after the warrior called for war. For long years, they had been in peace. They had prospered beside the Pantorans and lived long and well because of it.
But, Chen-tsi remembered the Jeedai who had come after the great battles with the metalmen and same-men best of all. The fire-haired one and the loud, dark-haired one were strange and good-seeming, with their talk of peace and end of fighting. They were war-brothers, and they fought together in peace with angry voices and laughing faces and smiling, and side by side with grim faces and hard voices and sad eyes. They were power and fire and calm wind.
The dark-haired one, bright with his eyes of sunlit ice and a moving storm captive in his warrior bones, with giving on his tongue and tenderness in his mighty hands that offered a sign of goodwill.
The fire-haired man with the soft voice and living eyes was sleeping embers and anger leashed, and power hidden gently. He was old in the eyes and wise in tongue and hand, and good in heart.
The elders and wise ones used to speak of him softly and with much nodding, saying his words again and keeping them in wisdom. The chiefs asked the Pantoran folk many trade-times when the Fire Jeedai would return with wise words, but they did not know. They smiled smiles that were tired and big, and soft-huffed breath and turned away. They said the Jeedai were making peace with their same-men and on worlds far away, like they did on Orto-Plutonia. Maybe they would return when all the worlds kept peace?
But they did not.
The angry men and their new and different same-men came and said the Jeedai were brother-killers and were to be given to the new same-men to be punished.
Chen-tsi saw only two Jeedai in his time of life, but he heard stories whispered in the dark and cold of brown-covered beings speaking in battles with peace and great power, wielding colors of fire that they summoned from metal hand-sticks, and who possessed great powers of mind and air and sight and summoned them only at great need. He thought of the fire-haired one who gave peace in battle, and he believed those stories.
Even as the angry men and their different same-men told other stories of men with fire-swords who killed their war-brothers and slaughtered women folk and the young, he gathered his memories of the time the Jeedai came and spoke by hands and burned sticks to make peace with the Pantorans, even after battle, and Chen-tsi told them to his people, to his captive-mates.
He told of the fire-haired man with the old eyes and wise heart. He told of the loud dark haired one who sought battle and peace and made the fire-haired one glad. He told of the peace they made that lasted until the different same-men came and ended it, and took his people away to labor.
He hid those words in his heart and remembered the day the Jeedai came with peace.
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Finess.