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 slumbering, arms crossed, as he waited for some future call.
“The warrior?” Rassa’s uncomprehending fingers followed letters in no language she knew, nothing like Mikkian. Nothing like her world at all. Something... offworld? Rassa dug out her datapad to take shots of the carvings, but her hands shook so hard she dropped the tablet.
The warrior wasn’t... a child she produced, at the hands of the elder or his chosen. It was something to be woken by someone like Rassa—Rassa, whose time running had made her fit for finding the warrior, no matter where he rested. No matter which world he’d found to sleep in.
Rassa emerged from the caves with her eyes blazing like the sleeping warrior’s tendrils. Her shadow—leaning against the stalagmite—looked up at her steps. He cursed and began to move, but Rassa was faster. She gripped him by his gray lapels.
“Tired of following me?” After a moment, the Imperial rolled his eyes.
“Am I! Ten years of following you? I thought this was going to be a breeze, following one of you people! Stay in the town, learn your trade, but no. The only time I get rest is when you finally go in for whatever muddled lessons your people call schooling.” Rassa’s hands tightened.
“Help me get offworld,” she said.
“What? Where are you going?”
“Don’t matter to you, does it? You don’t care about aliens.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Why did you help me?”
The man turned his gaze.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “My instructions are to follow you, as a particular person of interest to the carvonite elder and his superstitious sentiments about this ‘warrior.’ Lest he use you as a figurehead to cause trouble.”
“If I leave, he can’t use me,” she said. “And me, and the avalanches, blood-sucking bugs, jungle rot, leave with me.” She released his lapels. The man stepped away from her and straightened his jacket.
“Be ready in two days,” he said.
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