Jend-Ro Quill
Loske Treicolt
Weyland Castril
An Ithorian approached, in a grey smock and pale shawl that indicated little beyond a priestly air. Her well-dark eyes drew in the long glades and unpaved township main-streets crowded with furtive thousands. A transport in the demarked landing zones rose off its staunches and began wheeling its rounded nose toward a high overcast. Aft engine nozzles blazed hot-white and blanketed the settlements with drizzles of sonic backwash. The Ithorian turned with genial slowness, remarking wordlessly over every detail, enormous and scant. Seydon looked up from his datapad at her hands; her long fingers rubbed over a smooth-worn silver stater.
“That’s a very old coin,” He murmured, logging a family in through his ‘pad, briefly addressing the next.
“Hmmnn, a dear keepsake,” She said. “It’s touched by luck; hence I keep it near.”
“Lucky? It’s enchanted?”
“My boy, luck is quicksilver and mercurial. It can’t be harnessed and its whims are its own. But it likes keeping an eye out for the downtrodden and the vulnerable. I don’t keep the coin for myself; I keep it for them,” She said, sweeping out her long arm over the crowds. “And for you.”
“They need it,” Seydon grimaced, peering back at his datapad. “I will survive.”
“There’s a string of rumour going through them now,” The Priestess continued. “Something about a place called Uystrao. It’s a whisper, elusive and fervent as prayer. These are not folk given over to faith. They believe in seasons and astronomy, things of certainty. Before, there wasn’t any thing like a promised land and now, a few are pooling their credits into buying further passage beyond the core. Very curious. Do you know what faith is, Dunaan?”
“No,” He said curtly.
“It’s the assured expectation of things. It’s also hope and like wildfire, if you give it a spark and some wind, just enough, it flies like lightning.” The Priestess began chuckling. “Tell me what you hope for them.”
He sighed through his nose and shut down his datapad. Seydon looked to clumps of smaller clans trudging up to be checked through to the waiting landing fields, pulling ever shrinking trains of luggage in their wake. Parents led or clutched their children close, peeking woefully at the clouds, perhaps imagining the sky growing dark as a clot and bleeding invading dropships. He smelled fear like a sour bite of ice and acid. “…I just hope they endure. It’s one thing after the other for folk like them, one gut punch following by knuckles to their throats. Dictators and conquerors and tyrants and hierophants and redeemers, saviours, prophets, dark messiahs. We just found our feet after the Dark Age and suddenly, Ashin Varanin was stepping over the backs of ten thousand worlds. It’s not stopped since. I just want them to find someplace faraway and worthless, so all the Kaines and Ashins and Halcyons look elsewhere.”
A note of deep air trembled up through the Priestess. “Endure and then, perhaps, live on. Simple enough, like blades of grass. Maybe through these small throngs, there’s been enough seeds planted that they’ll carry that wish on the solar winds.”
“Hopefully…” Seydon murmured, trying to return to his work.
“You should confer with your compatriots.”
He again thumbed off the screen. “They don’t need any conferencing,” He said. “Besides, if people see a pack of FU’s standing about jabbering, they’ll take it for all kinds of foolery. Besides, I’ve got my work. That’s all that matters. …Perhaps you should go on, Priestess. There’s a great many grass blades needing your touch not to wilt.”
The Ithorian gave a languid bow and sauntered off in a glide down the small hillside. Seydon shivered in spite of himself, checking his blades and kit were still in place. Would if only a beast reared its head somewhere in the cramped back-alleys. That he could solve with surety. A haunting, a possession, an infestation, perhaps even a curse. Trying to solve societal ails tied his wits into knots and left him feeling the idiot. He turned to the next family, typing out their essentials.
