Hearsay Horizons

Another lesson with the elder; she dares not deviate this close, lest he foul her up sheer minutes from salvation. She bears his lesson with stoic detachment. So close. She ignores him, his sounds, his actions, the way his hands caress her tendrils as they had that first day, in front of everyone. As she gathers her things, he speaks:           “I know about the shuttle.” She doesn’t say anything, and does not look at him. “You won’t be on it, of course.” She feels him moving toward her and Rassa will hate herself for years for the way he backs her into the corner, literally trapping her, this frail old man empowered with her family’s trust and faith. One hand goes to her tendrils, the other to her neck. “The warrior will come—I felt it in the webbing of your tendrils, the nets like the nets here in our home. No matter where you go, your home—your destiny, Rassa—is here.”  His hand tightens on her throat; her hand tightens likewise. ...

A week later, Rassa found a note on her family’s dining table in Elen’s handwriting. She was going offworld, to learn the arts of a doctor amongst a more varied population. I hope we’re still friends , her words said. But this is an opportunity I can’t afford to waste. If you wan— but the rest was gone. Torn off. Beneath it was a letter from the elder requesting her presence. Rassa left again. She returned to the caves where she’d found that citrine rock. A good place as any for her bones. She moved her way further and further into the caves, until she struggled through gaps too small for her—or her shadow. Rassa stumbled through caverns that had probably never felt the step of another sentient... except that must be wrong. Here, carved on the walls, embedded with black rock she’d never seen before: images of a Mikkian, tendrils flaring like flames, standing strong over smaller forms. Rassa traced the wall back and found the image before that: the flame-haired Mikkian s...

Rassa grew older, and her lessons grew rarer but more intense. Her travels took her further; none of her congregation questioned her. No one outside it had authority over her. She—and her shadow—made it across the plains to the badlands where grasses faded into stone sculpted by winds, into the true forests of trees so big Rassa couldn’t make her way to the top, into jungles where vines thick as those trees choked out all light. She, eventually, made her way to the poles and almost froze to death more than once. Everywhere there was to be on Mikkia, Rassa went. Even so, she could not escape her destiny—or her lessons. Sunburnt, frostbitten, nearly-drowned, the elder met with her no matter her condition. Only here did her shadow fail to follow. Her name was Elen, and she was beautiful. Rassa found her at a food hall after her last trip, the one where frostbite cost her the tip of her nose. The bartender told Rassa the name; Elen knew him. Elen seemed to know ever...

Rassa had been standing in the ceremonial room’s dismal storage space for two hours, and her legs felt it. She emerged into the plush inner room and blinked her eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness. Her family whooped, quietly, from seats to one side. Rassa smiled; with their sound, she oriented herself. Rassa made her way to the pillow at the front of the congregation. The old man beside her waited as she knelt and inclined her head. She jumped at the sensation of his fingers on her tendrils, but she squared herself at his murmured admonishment. The old, gnarled fingers worked along the skin, almost too soft and too fast at once. He pushed aside one of the main tails, almost snagged his nails in the webbing between the tendrils, and murmuring all the while. He—perhaps it was just the different touch, but Rassa thought he caressed in his touches, fondling while he sought for meaning in the size, number, and placement of her head tendrils. “Ah, Rassa,” he fina...