Dara squeezed her eyes tight, as if that would make the memory change, alter it, or just simply go away. It didn’t … with a sigh, she opened her eyes and a tear ran unchecked down a smooth cheek to drip from her chiseled jawline.
A third holograph accentuated her frown into a somber, tight line across her face. It was one of herself with her youngest offspring: Lunon. She was holding him as a little boy of five cycles old, a standard pose, siress and baby, locked in a 3-Dimensional frame, for safety. In a quick instant, she had a memory flashback of his ghastly death -- at the means of that crivit on Thilen Nine's planet. She shivered. She was furious at her helplessness during the whole incident and at the injustice of the universe, too furious even to cry.
For a long while, Dara stood before the holographs, unable to move as she tried to comprehend the maelstrom of feelings that buffeted her soul. They all surfaced -- her hope, her grief, her anger, and her love. She closed her eyes, again. As if doing so would shut out reality and the pleasant memories would overtake her and become real once again.
Behind her shut eyes, she remembered sitting beside an open trunk, in the cellar of their family dwelling on Aidennia prior to the launch, where the baby clothes were folded away, locks of hair cut on Moela's, Retho's, and then Lunon's second birthing celebration, in an vacuum-sealed envelope and labeled, caramel-brown. All had gotten darker later.
I don't have those things anymore, the clothes and hair. I wonder what happened to all our things. Looted, dumped out, and carried away during the Occupation, even burned when the dwelling was probably set aflame. Maybe even confiscated.
Part of that long loneliness would never be over. Her parents and siblings were dead along with the trillions of other Aidennians that had been murdered during the Tauron Assault. Even though she had not personally witnessed the demise of her species, she no longer felt the united-Ka that was always present within her -- even during stasis in the suspended animation tube onboard the Saarien. As far as Lunon was concerned, nothing could bring him back, nothing could ever fill the hollowness his death had left in her heart.
Within exactly eight rotates the Pioneer Four would be returning to familiar Space, returning to The System, returning home; knowing that lightened her mood. Dara eased back into a self-conforming chair as she turned on the entertainment synthesizers, playing a pastoral melody written by a famous composer from Aidennia.
The door chime sounded, startling her from her reverie. She glanced down to make certain she had remembered to dress herself, and then went to the entryway.
Her son Retho stood in the shadows, dressed in his regulation uniform. "Why, Retho, what brings you here?" she asked.
"I was about to start my duty stint and I felt your melancholy," he said, a tender hand touched her nearest arm. "I thought you might want someone to talk too. Where’s Sire?"
“He’s in Engineering fortifying the new installments.” She heaved a sigh and gestured him to come inside. Her dark eyes looked at him and she hesitated before answering. "Forgive me, I'm just feeling sorry for myself, I guess. We're about to arrive at Sheey, but I can't seem to shake this nostalgic mood I find myself in!"
Retho saw more wistfulness than sarcasm in his siress's eyes. As she slumped back in the self-conforming chair, he closed the entryway and let her go on. "Sometimes it wears on me knowing that everything and everyone I knew and loved are gone. Because of the Mira Project, I was with my clan only a fraction of the time I could have been before the launch of the Saarien. I can count on my one hand the number of times I had visited them. I didn't even have enough time to feel like a member of an extended clan before we left Aidennia. Now I am having regrets." Then she looked directly at him. "And, now we're about to return to whatever is left of The System. I feel like part of my life is missing."
Retho crouched before her and reached out to touch her arm again. "That is in the past, Siress. You must let the "Now" be the focus of your life and not become distracted by long ago things."
Dara reacted more strongly than he had anticipated, drawing away. "Maybe I'm afraid of that, Retho. When I look at you, I am haunted by what "Was" and now I am filled with the uncertainty of what "Is". When I look in the mirror, I see an expression in my eyes, as if a vital part of me has been burned away by the personal hells I've walked through. Surviving the Tauron Assault, life on that planet in the Thilen Nine system, escaping the demise of that world along with its suns, dueling with a Tauron squadron as the red sun went nova. If that's what is in the "Now", maybe I don't want to participate in it anymore!"
She held up her hand to stop him from saying anything until she had finished. "At the start of the Mira Project, I thought I was doing important work for the Senate. I thought this mission to Mira would help build a whole new annex to the democracy that would ultimately include a thousand solar groups. I thought that was my life's work; but now I could care less about the whole bureaucracy. Maybe, just maybe, I might want to just be something I never really was to any of my children. Maybe, I just want to be a siress."
Retho looked at her, unmoved. She couldn't read his expressions anymore; he was no longer innocent. "It doesn't seem to be such a horrible destiny to me, Siress. It's a good thing you've realized it before we reestablish contact with Sheey. Once we're known, we'll all have to keep our goals in clear sight. Because if you thought everything we've been through was hell, just wait till we experience the pangs of war." They stared at each other in an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Retho looked away first, retreating from that line of conversation. "Anyway, you've always been more than just a siress to me, Dara Lidasiress. You've been more like a friend."
She reached out with her fingers to touch his auburn hair, drifting over the contours of his head. Retho let his eyes fall half-closed, then sent faint tendrils of thought into her mind, deftly touching the topography of her memory. The gesture was soothing and comforting, the bond between them seemed to grow stronger; and, for the first time, Retho felt that he knew is siress.
Sidereal Quest Page 28
