by I. Christie
She could feel the Sha'Kar's disagreement with her understanding.
admired his quick assessment that she would be good at gaming, but then maybe that was one of her first level thoughts. He was even kind enough to show her some of the games;
give her the rules, and point her in the direction of where a game might be in play. If the youth was an example of the culture, she wondered what problems Mcarn was having in cleaning up Alan's mess.
Sitting through her first game, she worried that her thoughts would give away her strategy; however, that was not the case. She won a handful of the local coins and collected information from the group she was playing. A part of her was suspicious that maybe they were letting her win. It was too easy.
At the end of a week on Arnica she was no closer to finding Alexandra. Besides not discovering a path that led up the mountain, she was stopped by impenetrable underbrush and an indescribable something else. The soldiers that were dogging her tracks she would occasionally drop behind and observe their behavior trying to pick up something from them. However, she was not as good as the Sha'Kar in listening in on their deeper thoughts. The female MS did not visit the group while she was watching them, but the Sha'Kar reported she visited daily. JG played with the idea of kidnapping her, but practicality overruled her impulse.
JG found spending nights in the monasteries had two advantages. She felt invigorated the next day and peaceful. Her outbursts of negative emotions seldom overtook her as her filtering skills got better. With the exception of the first temple, the rest of the monasteries she approached had a monk at the gate waving her in as if she was expected. Though no one spoke to her, there was always a bed waiting her, with food and privacy. She assumed they practiced silence, and therefore never asked about a path up the mountain. She had been hoping to see how they practiced with their weapons, but the dojo was always empty when she entered.
With the Sha'Kar's teaching, she learned to disappear in another's mind to keep from being detected. Such as with the soldiers that were surrounding her last rest stop.
However, even with this new trick, she was getting predictable. Not good for a soldier on the run.
JG smiled ruefully. She had always been a loner that struggled to be sociable around others. Now after being in companionship with the Sha'Kar for over three months, she was feeling almost lost at the thought of being alone again.
"Look, I like being a warrior. Under most conditions, I can abide by not killing, but I won't give up being a warrior. I like the competition, the winning, and sometimes the losing, if the competition is worth it."
JG took a deep breath, momentarily unsettled by fear that was being used to put distance between the Sha'Kar and herself. She glanced at the Sha'Kar whose form was nearly impossible to see, but she knew where the Sha'Kar was. Humming she sought to drive the intense feeling out, and suddenly it left.
JG turned and started through the brush.
JG sat on a flat portion of temple roof in a lotus position. One of the monks had indicated to her that it was an ideal place for her to do her exercises. She was startled that a monk spoke, but he said nothing else and did not stay long enough for her to ask anything else, so to the roof she headed. After she meditated, she tried the breathing exercises the Sha'Kar had been showing her, breathing in and out, and standing in the horse stance and slowly moved her arms out, and then breathing in, she moved to another position. They were positions she once had seen Alexandra do before she started her morning stretches. Once finished, she could feel her feet and hands tingle.
Staring out into the darkness she chose one particular entity that caught her attention. For the last week of travel, she had been separating this one entity from everything else that was bombarding her. It was the large cat she had seen on her second day on the planet. Her admiration for its stealth and hunting abilities brought her in sudden contact with it.
:Where are you from?:
The touch from the creature vibrated her primal feelings and a multisensory connection to the life around her.
A grin curled JG's lips, and she willingly replayed the images of her air approach to Arnica, only in reverse. Showing the many stars and planets back to her own planet where she spent her childhood. It was not interested in this. It was interested in her athletic training to compete in the galactic sports arena. The leopard gave a low growl in its throat in appreciation of the competitive energy JG felt when she was in the arena with the crowds roaring enthusiastically.
:I am Nameer, protector of my mother's territory: The leopard's eyes showed intelligence and then as it moved its gaze out through the forest, she saw through his eyes the life that existed in the forest. Nameer also showed her soldiers dressed in black clothing, burning, and poisoning the environment they passed through. The creature asked her if she knew of these off-world soldiers.
"I have fought them. There is a group from my world that is here to neutralizethem and remove them from your planet."
The leopard showed her another group settled in a valley that was polluting the cat's land as well as hunting them for sport.
"Colonists!" JG realized that she growled in unison with the cat at the destruction the colonists were perpetrating against the wildlife in their surroundings.
JG hesitated. The colonists were Alexandra's assignment and she was to assist her…but she wanted to first connect with Alexandra before seeing what these colonists were up to.<
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:Your mate? I will help you find her. Will you help us to get rid of these hunters?: JG silently sighed. The memory of her comments to the Sha'Kar that she was a warrior first was already coming back to haunt her. Even though it was made in a sudden emotional outburst she could feel an energy that was constantly pulling at her to accomplish something aside from meeting up with Alexandra.
"I will help you. But first… I need to know that my mate is safe."
Nameer was amused.
"I want to let her know of this change in my destination."
There was a sudden break in their communication. JG was momentarily disorientated causing her to nearly topple off the roof. Something, like a force field prevented her fall.
The sound in her head was not familiar but it reminded her of Onogla.
The image of the young girl the Sha'Kar had pictured appeared in her mind's eye.
Through the connection, in a flash, JG saw more than what a conversation would have revealed.
JG was hesitant. She wanted to see Alexandra and to touch her.
JG flashed on Alexandra and how she became sick from the after affects of unintentionally taking another life. The emotional feeling she received from the Queen took her off guard.
Queen M'Lu did not explain herself nor could JG decipher the feeling. However, in that moment, JG knew she was more traumatized by Alexandra's experience than Alexandra was.
JG was amazed at the clarity of everything when she was in communion with the Queen. However the moment the connection dropped her awareness dropped a few levels. She thought there would be a feeling of loss and a profound longing to reconnect with the peacefulness, however there was none. JG wondered how that could be.
That night JG dreamed of Alexandra. They embraced, touched as if it would be a long time until the next time and cried their dismay when they parted.
JG was looking around her from a tree branch when she spotted someone moving as if hunted. Nameer growled softly in his throat. He was sprawled over the limb next to hers. His ears flickered back and forth and then he swung his great head toward her.
:He is being herded by a group of men:
She too could smell his sweat, hear his worry and feel his excitement. She sensed he was not too concerned about being hunted. Men of various species, some dressed in black and some in red, were in a fan-out search, but far behind him. A Catalls was in the center of the search line. Every now and again he would drop to the ground, sniffing to assure they were still on his trail. As the Catalls shifted so did the line.
"Alan's soldiers! I haven't seen this many before. Why would they be looking forhim?"
Nameer rose from his limb and moved with JG, tailing the hunted. She laughed to herself when he gave his hunters the slip several times, making the trackers look silly, and very angry. Except one soldier. He traveled, like she and Nameer, in the trees. And very quietly. She spotted him scaling a tree and then lost him. She made sure he was in her sights before she moved. Every time he touched a tree she was on, she could feel his energy. The tree shivered as if in distaste and Nameer's hackles stood up. He was not dressed as a metrasoldier…he was not dressed as any one that she had met so far.
The hunted gave the hunters the slip once again, doubling back through a river that was too strong for any of the other species to cross, including the elusive tracker that stayed a distance from the whole group.
Nameer showed JG another way over the powerful river. If it was possible for a cat to smile, Nameer was wearing a wide one.
Their quarry led them two days later to the outskirts of a pitifully kept village.
The man spent a long length of time studying the few residents that moved about. JG
thought maybe the town was on its last leg of existence. There were many untilled fields and fences were down, or leaning as if ready to fall. Even the road looked unkempt. This was unlike any of the other villages she had passed through.
At noon he left his roost in the tree, only to duck back into the cover of trees as an aircraft arrived. It was as silent as a glider with only its shadow on the land below giving its arrival away. It settled on the landing pad near a building where two people came out to welcome it. An older man and a young figure, dressed in a traveler's cloak, alighted.
The pilot watched as workers moved around his plane. The other passengers remained inside. By the pilot's actions, JG wondered it he worried someone on the ground crew would rob his passengers. It happened often enough on isolated space stops.
Her target moved around the village, unseen, following the traveler's progress. JG
was curious about the youthful figure that kept cloaked. When confronted by a hostile local the figure pulled back the hood of the cloak. A young female. JG's target cursed under his breath. The young girl was soon surrounded by men larger than her, but she easily put the group in their place.
She was torn between following the young woman or her original target when they went in different directions.
:I will follow the prey. You follow the warrior.:
JG climbed
higher into a tree to get a better view of the town. She knew the hunted man was not going to leave town until he finished whatever business he had here.
Movement in the forest around her was telegraphed to her via a small furry creature that chattered a message that had others echoing it. The small creatures reappeared after Nameer had left. Then suddenly all went silent. JG felt the young woman may be in danger and decided to get closer. JG followed her feeling better when she headed back into the forest were the brambles where thick and made it difficult for most trackers to follow. From atop her branch, JG watched as she settled for the night.
Horiku slept until dawn. Her dreams had been disturbing. Though she did not wake up, she wished she had. She relived her parents stoning. After their attackers left one of her parent's neighbors came back and tried to bury her parents honorably. That was when they found she was still alive, though unconscious. They secretly cared for her until a group of nomad traders, often referred to as gypsies, came through. They made arrangements for one of the gypsy traders to care for her.
In her travels with the gypsies she ran across the Ju'n family again. They were old when they had saved her and were even older when she saw them in their new town.
They had left Ringlett shortly after she did, and made their way into the city where other members of their clan were. Horiku shook her head to rid herself of the last clinging fog of her dream and the heavy feeling it gave her.
Dripping foliage attested to how heavy the night fog was. Now only a blanket of gray covered the forest floor, hiding everything below her ankles. Horiku was curious at what was happening around town, so she clambered into a tree on the outer parameter of the village to peer through the leaves, grateful to get out of the wet grass. For a long time she stared at the deserted streets, wondering if she had the strength to let the memories go... as well as the anger.
She felt torn between feeling bad for the residents and smug that they got what they deserved. Unconsciously she wiped away tears that trickled down her cheeks. Not all the people she knew as a child were bad.
