Fic: Memorial (PG)
Jul. 9th, 2007 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalYet another fic set in the history of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaypeta's Terinu universe.
Tags: Ari, Mark, Admiral Blake
Note: The Terinu universe and related images, characters and situations is copyright Peta Hewitt and used here without permission.
Spring in South Dakota, he remembered, tended to be short. The breaking of winter’s hold on the land went quickly into the baking heat of high summer. Still, the traditional white robes and cap he wore served well enough to stave off the morning chill that promised to break into a pleasantly warm day later. He stuck his hands in the sleeves of his robes to keep them warm anyway as he stepped out of his rented skimmer and onto the grass of the graveyard on the outskirts of Pierre. He had taken pills for his arthritis earlier, so at least that wasn’t a worry.
Like most such places on the Earth, there was a neat line of memorial stones set in the ground, interrupted by a large marker indicating the mass grave that was dug here to bury the victims of the Varn Dominion’s invasion in the middle part of the 21st century. Despite the agricultural state’s low population, he remembered that it had held several military bases, which had been targeted and bombed into oblivion by Vulpine pilots after the United States had launched a futile nuclear attack on the orbiting Dominion ships above them.
An attack prompted, in no small measure, by the actions of the man whose funeral he was attending.
He stepped into the graveyard’s small non-denominational chapel, then almost turned around, thinking he’d either arrived too early or at the wrong funeral. Aside from the body in the casket, there was only one other mourner, and no priest to be found.
“Oh, hello,” the woman called, out, turning around in her seat and approaching him when she heard him enter. She was a middle-aged woman dressed in a formal pantsuit in dark colors, the only bright dash being a small Red Cross pin clipped to her jacket’s lapel. “I really hadn’t thought anyone else was coming. Are you a friend of Mister Washburn?”
“I was, once,” he replied. “I am the Imam Yusef bin Safi. Have I come too early? I thought I was going to be late. My shuttle’s landing was delayed over an hour.”
The smile dropped from her face. “Oh, you aren’t early. I’m afraid we’re the only ones here.”
“Surely not,” Yusef said. He gave her a polite bow. “May I have your name, madam?”
“Oh, I’m Elizabeth Thompson. I was Mr. Washburn’s live-in nurse for the past three years.” She held out her hand, and he shook it politely.
“But, surely he must have some family,” Yusef protested.
“I’m afraid not. He mentioned that he’d been married once, but I couldn’t find any contact numbers in his effects, and no one responded to the notice in his obituary.”
Yusef nodded sadly. “He and his wife had gotten divorced. There were children, but I fear he outlived them. I had hoped that he had remarried, but apparently not.”
“Oh, how terrible!” Elizabeth said. “But surely he had grandchildren.”
“He outlived them as well.”
“Oh, my,” she said quietly, and followed as he approached the open casket.
The body that lay in front of him did not resemble the young man Yusef had once known. Beyond whatever appearance altering surgeries he must have had, it was lined and covered in age spots. The cheeks were sunken, hollow and very far from the laughing boy that had accompanied a much younger Yusef into orbit, so long ago.
“Is there no priest? No one to give ceremony?” he asked Elizabeth. The nurse shook her head.
“I couldn’t find one,” she admitted. “I’m afraid Mr. Washburn didn’t seem to believe in God. Or if he did, he didn’t have any good words to say about the fellow. If he lost his family, I supposed I could understand that.”
“I see.”
“But you’re a priest, aren’t you Mister Safi? Couldn’t you say a few words?”
Yusef shook his head. “I am more of a religious scholar than an active priest. At any rate, I fear I would only be giving a double insult, both to God for using His words to a non-Muslim, and to poor Mark for prayers he did not wish for.”
“Michael,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
Elizabeth nodded towards the body. “His name was Michael.”
“Of course, forgive an old man for his addled memory.” Despite what he’d said, Yusef still bowed his head over the casket and sent a silent prayer upwards. All Merciful God, please watch over my friend. Even if he did not believe in You, I hold in my heart that he deserves Your mercy. For he was my friend, and he suffered much trouble and grief, more so than even a man of God might be able to bear.
He stepped away, and Elizabeth stepped out of the chapel briefly to summon the funeral director and his aides to close the casket and carry it into the hearse.
“Should we go to the burial?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. The body is just a shell. It is the soul that is important,” Yusef said. He cleared his throat and added, “Is there anywhere I could get you a good cup of coffee? Out of thanks, for watching over my friend in his final years.”
He followed her skimmer into downtown Pierre, which as the state’s capitol was one of the largest cities in the region. Even in this day and age that just meant it was slightly bigger than a small town compared to the metropolises of Melbourne down in Australia, or Restored New York. There she took him into a chain coffee shop whose product was predictably overpriced and awful. He drank it anyway, and promised himself to find a good cup of qahwah as soon as he returned home.
“I was hoping you could tell me, Ms. Thompson, how Michael was towards the end. I fear we had a falling out some years ago over… well; the details are of no consequence at this late date. I wanted to reconcile with him, but he rebuffed me several times over the years when I attempted to contact him. Perhaps I should have been more persistent, but I suppose we were both too invested in our arguments to ever give them up.” He sighed and sipped his terrible coffee.
“Well, he wasn’t very well towards the end,” she said. “By the time I was hired to be his nurse, his lungs were in terrible shape and he had to use supplemental oxygen most of the time. He didn’t go out much. Mostly he fiddled with his telescope. His house had a terrific view of Mount Crazy Horse and he used to spend hours staring at it.”
Yusef nodded. “He often spoke of it when we were younger. When we were living offworld, he said it was his dream when he got back to have a house with a view of the mountain. He missed his homeland, as I did mine.”
“Both of you were offworld?” she said in surprise. “He never mentioned a word about that to me. I thought he’d never left Earth.”
“The circumstances were not pleasant,” Yusef admitted. “It was a painful period for both us. A friend of ours had died shortly before we’d left, and I fear she was the center of many of the arguments we had. Michael felt he was partially responsible for her death, and I fear that gnawed at his soul, preventing him from reconciling with other events that happened later.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Oh, that’s so terrible. He always did seem so terribly lonely.” She glanced out the window of the coffee shop, and suddenly her mournful expression turned into a deep frown. “What on earth is that man doing here?”
Yusef glanced in the direction she was looking, to see a frowning, heavy-set man with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing an Alliance Navy officer’s uniform striding purposefully towards the coffee shop. “Who is that?” he asked Elizabeth.
“Captain Black, Blake or something like that, with Alliance Naval Security,” she answered her face scowling. “He came to talk to Mister Washburn last winter. I don’t know what they said to each other but it was enough to send the poor old man’s vital far out of the safe zones on my monitor. The Captain had a terribly satisfied look on his face when he left as well.”
“Oh, dear,” Yusef murmured. So you didn’t stay as hidden as you’d wanted, old friend. Now it appears I have not either. Bismallah. He sipped his coffee in its cheap paper container and watched as the officer entered the coffee shop and made a beeline straight to their table.
“Are you the man called Yusef bin Safi?” the captain asked.
“That is the name I go by,” Yusef answered, projecting as much serenity in his voice as he could manage, however artificially it was manufactured. I am an instrument of God’s will. You can do nothing to me that will harm what I consider truly important.
“I’m Captain Erwin Blake, Alliance Naval Security. I’d like to speak to you please.” The man spared a glance towards Elizabeth, then immediately dismissed her apparently. “Privately, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” Yusef answered evenly. “If you have something to say, then you may say it in front of us both. Ms. Thompson was kind enough to accept my offer of coffee and it would be rude of me to abandon her.”
“It concerns classified matters,” Blake said tightly.
“As I have never been an official of the government or the military, my access to state secrets is necessarily quite limited. I can’t imagine you have anything to say to me that can’t be shared with the general public.” Yusef favored Blake with a saber sharp smile.
Blake leaned over the table, glowering at him. “You know perfectly well what I want to talk to you about, Mr. Safi.”
“Yes, I imagine I do. As I said, there is nothing you have to say to me that can’t be shared with the public, no matter how shamefully it has been hidden from them.”
“You haven’t bothered to go public with any of it before,” Blake pointed out.
“I have my reasons, as am sure you well know.”
Blake’s jaw was set, his face flush with anger. “And if I tell this woman here who you are, who that traitor you buried today was, do you imagine she’d still want to sit here with you and drink that coffee?”
“I can not predict what she will do. That is the wonderful thing about human beings, their mutable nature. All are capable of being either saints or sinners, depending on their choices. I made mine, and when I die I will be judged by God for them. As was Mark. As will you.”
Captain Blake’s jaw twitched. “I need to know what you know, about the Varn Dominion. About their servants. What they were both truly capable of.”
“They’re both long gone,” Yusef replied. “We will never see them again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but that is what I believe in my heart. We dealt them far too grievous a blow. You have no idea how much they loved their little servants. What manner of man or other being could watch his children be murdered, and not be overwhelmed by grief?”
Yusef’s last statement actually made Captain Blake back away from him a moment, the anger in his face disappearing to a more thoughtful expression. He checked his watch, making some internal calculation. Finally, he asked, “Do you have any children, Mister Safi?”
“Several, I am blessed to say.”
“I have a daughter, a beautiful, smart little girl. She turns seven today and if I’m very lucky I’ll catch a suborbital flight to get back home before she goes to bed tonight and wish her a happy birthday,” Blake said. “If I found out that anyone had hurt her, or worse, killed her, I think I’d be devastated. Then after I finished crying, I’d hunt the people down who did it and make them pay with their lives for what they had done. If the Varn valued the servants they’d lost as much as that, don’t you imagine they’d do the same?”
“Perhaps they would,” Yusef allowed, “perhaps they would not. But you can’t assume it. Otherwise you world would narrow down to one where everyone is controlled by an overwhelming sense of vengeance, unable to conceive of any other emotion, either in themselves or their opponents. That path can only lead to damnation.”
Captain Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Then I guess I’ll be damned. Good day you, Mr. Safi, ma’am.” He turned on his heel and left without another word.
“What in heaven’s name was that all about?” Elizabeth exclaimed once Captain Blake had exited the coffee shop.
“Old wounds, old crimes, old regrets,” Yusef answered. He stood up from the table, feeling his hips creak in protest, and tossed the remainder of his vile coffee into a disposal chute, where it flashed briefly into its component atoms. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve made my peace with what happened, even if my friend never did.”
“But what could you and Mr. Washburn have to do with the Varn? The Dominion was destroyed centuries ago. And was that about Mr. Washburn being a traitor?”
Yusef opened the door for her and they walked outside. “Technically speaking, I believe the charge would collaboration with the enemy. I’m sure Captain Blake there could come up with more if he chose to be sufficiently creative.” He led her across the street to a small roundabout that had been shaped into a little memorial park. At the center of it was a bronze statue of the Three Children, though he’d always thought “The Three Teenagers” ought to have been a more appropriate title. As the preferred national figure of the region, Mark Wilson was front and center, flanked by Ari Suhayar on his left and Rachael Namatjira on his right, all three of them looking proudly up in the sky, as if to face the oncoming, crushing weight of the invading Dominion fleet with only their wills and the inherent righteousness of their cause. He sat down on a bench to rest his hips and let the sun warm them. It was indeed going to be a very pleasant day.
“Michael Washburn wasn’t his real name, was it?” Elizabeth asked, looking at Yusef’s face, then glancing back at the oversized bronze figure of Ari Suhayar.
“No it was not,” he agreed.
“And your name isn’t Yusef Safi.”
“Yusef bin Safi, and no, not originally,” he said.
Looking increasingly confused, she could only stutter, “But… but… that would make you over…”
“Ms. Thompson, if I have learned one thing in all my travels, it is that the universe is filled with wonders, many greater than a reasoning being can comprehend, and oftentimes more terrible than we can grasp,” he told. “Some us wish to explore these wonders, and understand them, despite the pain it may bring. Some find themselves overwhelmed, and retreat from the world, angry and bitter.” He glanced involuntarily at the statue of Rachael Namatjira. “Some never get the chance to really explore at all.” He stood up, and gave her a bow. “May the peace and blessings of our Creator be upon you.”
He left her still staring at the memorial, her eyes filled with tears of wonder.
The End
chaypeta's Terinu universe.Tags: Ari, Mark, Admiral Blake
Note: The Terinu universe and related images, characters and situations is copyright Peta Hewitt and used here without permission.
Spring in South Dakota, he remembered, tended to be short. The breaking of winter’s hold on the land went quickly into the baking heat of high summer. Still, the traditional white robes and cap he wore served well enough to stave off the morning chill that promised to break into a pleasantly warm day later. He stuck his hands in the sleeves of his robes to keep them warm anyway as he stepped out of his rented skimmer and onto the grass of the graveyard on the outskirts of Pierre. He had taken pills for his arthritis earlier, so at least that wasn’t a worry.
Like most such places on the Earth, there was a neat line of memorial stones set in the ground, interrupted by a large marker indicating the mass grave that was dug here to bury the victims of the Varn Dominion’s invasion in the middle part of the 21st century. Despite the agricultural state’s low population, he remembered that it had held several military bases, which had been targeted and bombed into oblivion by Vulpine pilots after the United States had launched a futile nuclear attack on the orbiting Dominion ships above them.
An attack prompted, in no small measure, by the actions of the man whose funeral he was attending.
He stepped into the graveyard’s small non-denominational chapel, then almost turned around, thinking he’d either arrived too early or at the wrong funeral. Aside from the body in the casket, there was only one other mourner, and no priest to be found.
“Oh, hello,” the woman called, out, turning around in her seat and approaching him when she heard him enter. She was a middle-aged woman dressed in a formal pantsuit in dark colors, the only bright dash being a small Red Cross pin clipped to her jacket’s lapel. “I really hadn’t thought anyone else was coming. Are you a friend of Mister Washburn?”
“I was, once,” he replied. “I am the Imam Yusef bin Safi. Have I come too early? I thought I was going to be late. My shuttle’s landing was delayed over an hour.”
The smile dropped from her face. “Oh, you aren’t early. I’m afraid we’re the only ones here.”
“Surely not,” Yusef said. He gave her a polite bow. “May I have your name, madam?”
“Oh, I’m Elizabeth Thompson. I was Mr. Washburn’s live-in nurse for the past three years.” She held out her hand, and he shook it politely.
“But, surely he must have some family,” Yusef protested.
“I’m afraid not. He mentioned that he’d been married once, but I couldn’t find any contact numbers in his effects, and no one responded to the notice in his obituary.”
Yusef nodded sadly. “He and his wife had gotten divorced. There were children, but I fear he outlived them. I had hoped that he had remarried, but apparently not.”
“Oh, how terrible!” Elizabeth said. “But surely he had grandchildren.”
“He outlived them as well.”
“Oh, my,” she said quietly, and followed as he approached the open casket.
The body that lay in front of him did not resemble the young man Yusef had once known. Beyond whatever appearance altering surgeries he must have had, it was lined and covered in age spots. The cheeks were sunken, hollow and very far from the laughing boy that had accompanied a much younger Yusef into orbit, so long ago.
“Is there no priest? No one to give ceremony?” he asked Elizabeth. The nurse shook her head.
“I couldn’t find one,” she admitted. “I’m afraid Mr. Washburn didn’t seem to believe in God. Or if he did, he didn’t have any good words to say about the fellow. If he lost his family, I supposed I could understand that.”
“I see.”
“But you’re a priest, aren’t you Mister Safi? Couldn’t you say a few words?”
Yusef shook his head. “I am more of a religious scholar than an active priest. At any rate, I fear I would only be giving a double insult, both to God for using His words to a non-Muslim, and to poor Mark for prayers he did not wish for.”
“Michael,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
Elizabeth nodded towards the body. “His name was Michael.”
“Of course, forgive an old man for his addled memory.” Despite what he’d said, Yusef still bowed his head over the casket and sent a silent prayer upwards. All Merciful God, please watch over my friend. Even if he did not believe in You, I hold in my heart that he deserves Your mercy. For he was my friend, and he suffered much trouble and grief, more so than even a man of God might be able to bear.
He stepped away, and Elizabeth stepped out of the chapel briefly to summon the funeral director and his aides to close the casket and carry it into the hearse.
“Should we go to the burial?” Elizabeth asked.
“No. The body is just a shell. It is the soul that is important,” Yusef said. He cleared his throat and added, “Is there anywhere I could get you a good cup of coffee? Out of thanks, for watching over my friend in his final years.”
He followed her skimmer into downtown Pierre, which as the state’s capitol was one of the largest cities in the region. Even in this day and age that just meant it was slightly bigger than a small town compared to the metropolises of Melbourne down in Australia, or Restored New York. There she took him into a chain coffee shop whose product was predictably overpriced and awful. He drank it anyway, and promised himself to find a good cup of qahwah as soon as he returned home.
“I was hoping you could tell me, Ms. Thompson, how Michael was towards the end. I fear we had a falling out some years ago over… well; the details are of no consequence at this late date. I wanted to reconcile with him, but he rebuffed me several times over the years when I attempted to contact him. Perhaps I should have been more persistent, but I suppose we were both too invested in our arguments to ever give them up.” He sighed and sipped his terrible coffee.
“Well, he wasn’t very well towards the end,” she said. “By the time I was hired to be his nurse, his lungs were in terrible shape and he had to use supplemental oxygen most of the time. He didn’t go out much. Mostly he fiddled with his telescope. His house had a terrific view of Mount Crazy Horse and he used to spend hours staring at it.”
Yusef nodded. “He often spoke of it when we were younger. When we were living offworld, he said it was his dream when he got back to have a house with a view of the mountain. He missed his homeland, as I did mine.”
“Both of you were offworld?” she said in surprise. “He never mentioned a word about that to me. I thought he’d never left Earth.”
“The circumstances were not pleasant,” Yusef admitted. “It was a painful period for both us. A friend of ours had died shortly before we’d left, and I fear she was the center of many of the arguments we had. Michael felt he was partially responsible for her death, and I fear that gnawed at his soul, preventing him from reconciling with other events that happened later.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Oh, that’s so terrible. He always did seem so terribly lonely.” She glanced out the window of the coffee shop, and suddenly her mournful expression turned into a deep frown. “What on earth is that man doing here?”
Yusef glanced in the direction she was looking, to see a frowning, heavy-set man with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing an Alliance Navy officer’s uniform striding purposefully towards the coffee shop. “Who is that?” he asked Elizabeth.
“Captain Black, Blake or something like that, with Alliance Naval Security,” she answered her face scowling. “He came to talk to Mister Washburn last winter. I don’t know what they said to each other but it was enough to send the poor old man’s vital far out of the safe zones on my monitor. The Captain had a terribly satisfied look on his face when he left as well.”
“Oh, dear,” Yusef murmured. So you didn’t stay as hidden as you’d wanted, old friend. Now it appears I have not either. Bismallah. He sipped his coffee in its cheap paper container and watched as the officer entered the coffee shop and made a beeline straight to their table.
“Are you the man called Yusef bin Safi?” the captain asked.
“That is the name I go by,” Yusef answered, projecting as much serenity in his voice as he could manage, however artificially it was manufactured. I am an instrument of God’s will. You can do nothing to me that will harm what I consider truly important.
“I’m Captain Erwin Blake, Alliance Naval Security. I’d like to speak to you please.” The man spared a glance towards Elizabeth, then immediately dismissed her apparently. “Privately, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” Yusef answered evenly. “If you have something to say, then you may say it in front of us both. Ms. Thompson was kind enough to accept my offer of coffee and it would be rude of me to abandon her.”
“It concerns classified matters,” Blake said tightly.
“As I have never been an official of the government or the military, my access to state secrets is necessarily quite limited. I can’t imagine you have anything to say to me that can’t be shared with the general public.” Yusef favored Blake with a saber sharp smile.
Blake leaned over the table, glowering at him. “You know perfectly well what I want to talk to you about, Mr. Safi.”
“Yes, I imagine I do. As I said, there is nothing you have to say to me that can’t be shared with the public, no matter how shamefully it has been hidden from them.”
“You haven’t bothered to go public with any of it before,” Blake pointed out.
“I have my reasons, as am sure you well know.”
Blake’s jaw was set, his face flush with anger. “And if I tell this woman here who you are, who that traitor you buried today was, do you imagine she’d still want to sit here with you and drink that coffee?”
“I can not predict what she will do. That is the wonderful thing about human beings, their mutable nature. All are capable of being either saints or sinners, depending on their choices. I made mine, and when I die I will be judged by God for them. As was Mark. As will you.”
Captain Blake’s jaw twitched. “I need to know what you know, about the Varn Dominion. About their servants. What they were both truly capable of.”
“They’re both long gone,” Yusef replied. “We will never see them again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but that is what I believe in my heart. We dealt them far too grievous a blow. You have no idea how much they loved their little servants. What manner of man or other being could watch his children be murdered, and not be overwhelmed by grief?”
Yusef’s last statement actually made Captain Blake back away from him a moment, the anger in his face disappearing to a more thoughtful expression. He checked his watch, making some internal calculation. Finally, he asked, “Do you have any children, Mister Safi?”
“Several, I am blessed to say.”
“I have a daughter, a beautiful, smart little girl. She turns seven today and if I’m very lucky I’ll catch a suborbital flight to get back home before she goes to bed tonight and wish her a happy birthday,” Blake said. “If I found out that anyone had hurt her, or worse, killed her, I think I’d be devastated. Then after I finished crying, I’d hunt the people down who did it and make them pay with their lives for what they had done. If the Varn valued the servants they’d lost as much as that, don’t you imagine they’d do the same?”
“Perhaps they would,” Yusef allowed, “perhaps they would not. But you can’t assume it. Otherwise you world would narrow down to one where everyone is controlled by an overwhelming sense of vengeance, unable to conceive of any other emotion, either in themselves or their opponents. That path can only lead to damnation.”
Captain Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Then I guess I’ll be damned. Good day you, Mr. Safi, ma’am.” He turned on his heel and left without another word.
“What in heaven’s name was that all about?” Elizabeth exclaimed once Captain Blake had exited the coffee shop.
“Old wounds, old crimes, old regrets,” Yusef answered. He stood up from the table, feeling his hips creak in protest, and tossed the remainder of his vile coffee into a disposal chute, where it flashed briefly into its component atoms. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve made my peace with what happened, even if my friend never did.”
“But what could you and Mr. Washburn have to do with the Varn? The Dominion was destroyed centuries ago. And was that about Mr. Washburn being a traitor?”
Yusef opened the door for her and they walked outside. “Technically speaking, I believe the charge would collaboration with the enemy. I’m sure Captain Blake there could come up with more if he chose to be sufficiently creative.” He led her across the street to a small roundabout that had been shaped into a little memorial park. At the center of it was a bronze statue of the Three Children, though he’d always thought “The Three Teenagers” ought to have been a more appropriate title. As the preferred national figure of the region, Mark Wilson was front and center, flanked by Ari Suhayar on his left and Rachael Namatjira on his right, all three of them looking proudly up in the sky, as if to face the oncoming, crushing weight of the invading Dominion fleet with only their wills and the inherent righteousness of their cause. He sat down on a bench to rest his hips and let the sun warm them. It was indeed going to be a very pleasant day.
“Michael Washburn wasn’t his real name, was it?” Elizabeth asked, looking at Yusef’s face, then glancing back at the oversized bronze figure of Ari Suhayar.
“No it was not,” he agreed.
“And your name isn’t Yusef Safi.”
“Yusef bin Safi, and no, not originally,” he said.
Looking increasingly confused, she could only stutter, “But… but… that would make you over…”
“Ms. Thompson, if I have learned one thing in all my travels, it is that the universe is filled with wonders, many greater than a reasoning being can comprehend, and oftentimes more terrible than we can grasp,” he told. “Some us wish to explore these wonders, and understand them, despite the pain it may bring. Some find themselves overwhelmed, and retreat from the world, angry and bitter.” He glanced involuntarily at the statue of Rachael Namatjira. “Some never get the chance to really explore at all.” He stood up, and gave her a bow. “May the peace and blessings of our Creator be upon you.”
He left her still staring at the memorial, her eyes filled with tears of wonder.
The End
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 11:47 pm (UTC)I do love the way you portray Erwin Blake. Obsessed, almost to the point of paranoia, about the varn and their possible return. He knows they weren't defeated, only chased off. Poor buggar, you could smack him only he's right. (Only varn grief for the ferin is limited to the Gene Mage and a few others. Most varn are just pissed at being toppled from their throne: ergo Dream Stalker.) It sets him up nicely for the way he is in the canon.
This is a great little story that closes Mark's life. Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 12:41 am (UTC)Also, Ari's opinion of the Varn's grief over the loss of the Ferin is likely colored by living in close quarters with the Gene Mage for such a long time. I don't think he had much contact with other Varn (the GM probably shielded both of them from being interrogated by Dream Stalker.)
And yeah, it's a shame that Mark never found out that Racheal survived, but the Three Children's story was a tragedy from the get go. :/ I'm so cruel.