The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  Wednesday, September 24

  Privacy/Disclosure

  No dramas for me overnight, although Sen did wake up from a nightmare and come climb in bed with us. She was shaky and very upset and I think that's the first time I've seen her really cry. I couldn't make much out about what she'd dreamed, but it seemed to be about Nuri's loss, and trapped people. Once she'd calmed down a little, I lay holding her while Kaoren talked to her about controlling the things Sight made you see, and stepped her through one of the visualisation exercises until she fell asleep. She has Sight Sight, Place Sight, Path Sight and Symbol Sight, and an Ice talent, and Kaoren says that unlike Ys and Rye she's more than strong enough to qualify for Setari training, but that the whole Kalrani program is going to need to be reviewed, both in regard to teaching the awareness of a connection with the Ena, and for the program's intensity and volume. We don't know if we can fix the tears, or if everything's only going to get worse, and thus whether the program needs to be expanded or contracted.

  Kaoren also gave Ys and Rye a small visualisation lesson over breakfast, explaining to all three of the kids (and me) how Sight Sight and Place Sight tends to develop at Sen's age, and how to help Sen through learning to control her visions. Nightmares upon nightmares. We're going to add the visualisations to story time as a final step, since she's started staying awake until I've finished reading the chapter. Ys and Rye are always very serious about Sen's welfare, enough so that Ys briefly dropped her non-talkativeness to pepper Kaoren with questions. Kaoren also talked to them about learning how to focus their own connection to the Ena, since being able to do that will immensely strengthen their abilities, and had them try picking things up using Levitation/Telekinesis and then try to sense their connection with the Ena. He explained that it was something most Taren Setari couldn't do and he was only just learning, but that he wanted them all to try and sense it whenever they were using their talents.

  Another training day, with projection work in the afternoon. We went out to Keszen Point this time, and I recreated the first visualisation I'd done, of the museum Kaoren had described, this time with my senses expanded. Then the requisite nap in medical. Going to sleep in the afternoon and then waking up and being groggy till evening is annoying, but it's preferable to the maybe dying thing. Preferable to the look I've seen in Kaoren's eyes when he's contemplating what they can and can't do if this goes wrong.

  I had a swimming lesson to wake me up today, at least. I'd arranged with Zan (who is on a completely opposite shift and so had only just got out of bed) to meet me and Kaoren at the pool to give the kids another lesson. We needed three because that pool has no shallow areas, and I knew the sheer formidable depth of it would make it more than daunting for the kids. Their eyes turned to absolute saucers when they looked down into it, and down, and down. But Sen was okay so long as she could cling to me, while Rye's desire to win Kaoren's approval only grows, and I don't think Ys can stand to show she's afraid of things.

  Zan was fantastic with Ys. She's so calm and non-threatening and small, yet very sure and commanding when she wants to be. And, I think, Ys doesn't have such a big emotional barrier built up against anyone but me and Kaoren, so was able to concentrate more on the swimming part and less on not giving an inch to me.

  The main thing I wanted to teach them was how to get out of a pool, and then kicking and turning their heads to breathe while we held them. Sen was totally unkeen on being face-down in water, and I didn't push her since she's only young, just had her practice dog paddle again. Rye's gained a lot of confidence in the water, and I think he's enjoying swimming more for its own sake now, and not merely because it's time spent with Kaoren and earns him approving nods.

  After the kids tired, we had them sit on the side of the pool and had a race across and back, which Kaoren won easily. Zan pwned me as well – she's obviously been practicing hard. Still, I kept up, and it was fun, especially because I briefly had the lead because I dive and do the turn better than them both (though, knowing Kaoren, he'll have perfected that before our next swim).

  Good timing reading my diary tonight, since we'd reached the point where Zan was doing lessons with me in the pool. Kaoren was both very amused at the way I described Kajal and Forel, and hugely unimpressed with their behaviour. If Zan had been too severely impacted by their bullying, it was perfectly possible her distraction could have gotten her squad killed. We had another of our almost-arguments, since Kaoren thought Selkie needed to know, and I was pretty firmly of the opinion that Selkie already knows what both of them are like and that my world would be even more circumscribed if people felt they couldn't trust me not to replay everything they did in front of me. We're doing okay with our occasional disagreements – probably because we haven't yet hit anything where neither of us will give ground. Kaoren had to cede this one – my diary reading is something utterly private between us, and he won't act on anything I tell him unless I agree to it.

  Explaining the Orlando Bloom Meter to Kaoren was about a 7 on the Excruciating Scale, and I was glad to stop reading so Kaoren could catch up on the mass of reports he's supposed to review. I'm going to work some more on the Q&A thing for The Hidden War, which I've decided to answer fairly detailed in some things and not at all in others (particularly questions about the kids). But I think I'll make it a condition that they have to release the Q&A to the public after they've made their episodes. And I'm going to have fun writing up how upset I got because someone stole my personal file and turned it into TV.

  Thursday, September 25

  Gravity

  Again no drama overnight, and fortunately no nightmares for Sen. Breakfast was all about Tare's endless sunset, and another discussion of planetary rotation. I find it very weird how the day-night cycle on Tare is so long, yet the year so quick. We ended up deep in explanations of gravity and centrifugal forces and the fact that the entire universe is moving.

  Ys and Rye seem less reluctant to go to the Kalrani school than they were attending the talent school at Pandora. Not keenly eager, but treating it as a task like cleaning up after breakfast. They're the neatest damn kids – except Sen, who is mess on legs and has provided me with the challenge of teaching Ys and Rye not to clean up after her. Kaoren or I clean up Sen's mess, or Sen cleans up Sen's mess. Theoretically.

  I spent the day finishing off the Q&A. There were tons of questions about me and Kaoren, all about when and where and why and how we felt about each other during every single event, and I'm sure that they'll be disappointed that I simply added dates for when I first felt for him, and when he first felt for me, and when we got together.

  Most of the other questions I answered a little more helpfully, although there's quite a lot of things I would only go to the edge of (not describing the kids, or other Setari, or certain aspects of my talents). I took considerable pleasure describing how upset and violated I'd felt about my file-napping. Kaoren and Maze and probably a whole bunch of other people will review it before it goes to the show's producers, and I'm sure I'll regret some of the things I wrote down. I thought for a long time, and then agreed to release the Kalasa log as well. I’m not entirely comfortable with it, but I guess it will stop some of the more exaggerated stories about what I did there, and at least it won't be distorted by reinterpretation. It saves Se-Ahn Surat from a complete water-logging.

  Today's test was to simply have me expand my senses until my centre went vague, which I did without trouble or incident. Now KOTIS Command is having fun arguments about what the next test should be, and whether they can risk taking me into the Ena, and whether they dare take me back to Muina to see if I can help unravel more of its mysteries. So I'm back where I was before we last headed to Muina, frustrated at not being able to do anything useful, with the need to find a solution only growing more urgent. If there is a solution to be found. First and Fourth had a rough rotation today – a single six-person squad would have been overwhelmed. I'm not very keen to go through all that vomiting again, but having everyone
I know fight harder and harder battles until someone gets killed is even worse. I keep checking the news for new discoveries coming out of Pandora, but the most I've heard is that the nanite factory is close to activation, and that more of the Nurans are accepting the interface. There's not even news about the splinter group.

  I'm shying away from reading other news at the moment, and have been ploughing through more schoolwork instead. The rate that Ys and Rye are shaping up, they'll end up passing my Taren school level in a couple of years, which would be a little embarrassing. I keep telling myself I've graduated from high school back home, and am about to be paid an enormous amount of money, and there's no need to study geometry during a galactic apocalypse. And, yet, studying.

  Friday, September 26

  Ball

  Weird dream last night. Not the rush-to-medical type, and not a projection, but a bit like when I was dreaming of Kaoren at Kalasa. I was dreaming of a bunch of children playing, kicking and tossing a ball made of cloth (a hacky sack?) to each other. Dressed in 'non-tech' clothes, which could mean Nurans or old Muinans, and most of them the same gold-brown skin, black-eyed, black-haired type as Kaoren and Sen. There was a girl watching them, standing at the top of some whitestone stairs leading to a walkway, and although physically she was far more like Sen, she reminded me so much of Ys – that fiercely shut down expression, the stubborn don't-need-these-people attitude. She was dressed a good deal more formally and expensively than the other kids, and I could see her working herself up, until finally she strode down the stairs and into the courtyard area where the children were playing.

  They ran. Abandoned their ball and scurried like rabbits through archways and doors, looking genuinely frightened. The girl pretended she hadn't noticed, and strode chin held high across to another stair, managing to kick the little ball into a muddy patch as she did so. I had to wonder what she'd done to make them so scared of her.

  I described the dream to Kaoren this morning, which mainly served to spark a discussion on whether I was supposed to wake myself up from all of my dreams, or just the ones we've established are a problem. He wasn't even sure himself which was the better response to dreams about unhappy little girls, and uncertainty's a pretty rare thing for Kaoren. Then he told me to write a report up describing in tedious detail everything I'd seen, including any decorations, and style of the buildings and types of plants and clothing. I asked the kids whether Nurans ever played with balls made of cloth, and Rye shrugged and said balls were made of lots of things.

  Training, training, training all day. I'm far more toned than I ever imagined being. Mara has recovered really well, although she still has a fair bit of cosmetic work to do to get rid of the scars. The skin on my stomach has settled down, although there's a faint difference between the new and old skin. Nothing so bad as to need another session.

  Today's test was just another visualisation, with no ill effects, but tomorrow we're going to go into the Ena so I can attempt to visualise Pandora. Four squads as guards, and they've had drones set up out there to scan for any sign of Cruzatch.

  We had Siame over to our apartment for dinner. Kaoren wants to have her more regularly involved in our lives to make her feel less excluded. That went okay, I guess – she at least has decided to talk to me now, if only to ask questions about precisely how my talents work, and what exactly was the crisis which sent us back to Tare. That was more detail than I'd given the kids, and I had to be careful not to show any hesitation in letting them know more about what was going on with me. I think it would be harder on them to feel we were keeping the truth from them, than to know.

  Sen insisted on showing Siame her spruced-up bedroom. Rye was cautiously polite. Ys was silent unless asked a direct question. I'm hoping things will get more relaxed as these meetings go on. Kaoren's looking worn again – he hates how unhappy Siame is. I think I'll see how he feels about back rubs.

  Saturday, September 27

  Edge of Drama

  I dreamed about that girl again. At least this time I knew to try and spot identifying marks, for all that there was precious little to see. I wanted to try doing a projection of it, which is so much simpler than trying to describe things, but when I suggested it later Kaoren and Maze said to not try that yet. It was duller than the first dream – the girl was in a narrow corridor (possibly even a secret passage), apparently eavesdropping on conversations.

  These were muffled – whitestone blocks sound pretty efficiently, and unlike the girl I couldn't press my ear to what I guess were purpose-built listening holes. Besides, I think they might have been talking in old Muinan. The tone of the voices was mostly casual, occasionally intimate. Finally the girl stopped to listen at a room where I wasn't even sure what I was hearing. A group of people, yes, male and female, angry and worried, not quite shouting, but the words sounded like bells and thunder; resonant, strange, inhuman. Then the conversation abruptly faded, a deep voice said a couple of short words, and the girl took off at a run.

  I woke up then, and snuggled into Kaoren's side, and tried to decide why I was dreaming these things. The best I could come up with is that I'm dreaming about the last touchstone's life, before the disaster on Muina. She looks about the right height for that small, shrouded figure. That's nothing more than a guess, but Maze and Kaoren haven't been able to suggest any solid alternatives. Of course, if it is the last touchstone's life, then anything or nothing could be important. It's given the technicians something else to argue about, and during the debate about whether I should sleep in medical I considered just not mentioning any more dreams, but I've accepted that enduring medical is part of what I need to do.

  The test in the Ena was uneventful. I visualised the café at Pandora, and found it dark – night-time there. It was tiring enough that I didn't mind a nap afterwards, in medical or not, and again had no dramas.

  Tomorrow they're going to have me do another projection of the place where I was dream-trapped. Kaoren's not keen on this, and nor am I really, but it is the logical next step. They're bringing Inisar back from Muina to get the benefit of his Sight Sight as well.

  Sunday, September 28

  Stress

  No dream of girl last night. I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Today the visualisation of the room I'd been trapped in went smoothly, right up until they started talking about lifting the cloth covering the figure. Maze moved toward it, and I said: "Don't!"

  My heart rate spiked through the roof, and I lost the projection, and then couldn't explain why I'd felt so panicked. Maybe it was just the idea that they might lift that cloth and the little girl I've been dreaming about would be lying there. Or what's left of her. I earned myself an extra-long time in medical as a result, and then while I was there news came in that there'd been a massive attack on Kolar South.

  The Kolaren Setari and military had managed to kill it, but people had died, including two of the Setari. The two who died weren't Setari I'd met, and I feel bad that this makes it easier for me. Everyone's looking seriously stressed out – massive attacks have never been close to so frequent before this. The kids picked up on it – or probably had been reading the news services again, which were full of doom-laden predictions.

  I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares tonight, no matter what visualisations I try. I'm just too upset by the idea of more and more massive attacks.

  Monday, September 29

  Settled

  Nice to be right. I kept having projective nightmares, over and over – mostly the Velcro massive dream. I've become very adept at recognising them and making myself wake up, fortunately. I put into effect Kaoren's suggestion to try to wake myself up from anything even mildly disturbing, even when I'm not sure if it's a dream, and am feeling all the better for that working. Otherwise, right now I wouldn't be able to risk sleeping anywhere near other people. Poor Kaoren woke with me each time, and after the fourth dream we gave up and had hot drinks – and then I heard Sen murmuring and fretting, so I went and smoot
hed tangled threads of hair off her forehead until she settled down. Since she was as usual in Ys' bed, I managed to wake Ys in the process, but I just gave her the same treatment, and she stood it for a full ten seconds before turning her head away.

  I was less stressed out by the time we went back to bed, and had another dream about the unhappy girl. She was sitting on a whitestone roof, looking very wan and confused and vague, like she'd been doped up on drugs. I had a good view of the scenery, and divided my attention between the girl (who sat unmoving, even when it started to drizzle) and trying to memorise as much detail as possible of a busy Muinan-style city. It looked like Nuriath must once have looked, although there was a single very tall statue off to my left. It was facing away from me, and dominated the city.

  After a good survey I tried to go kneel in front of the girl, but that made me aware that I didn't have a me to kneel with, and so I woke up. All this waking up (and using my talents while sleeping) meant I spent the day feeling gluggy and tired. Despite longing to get things done, I was glad that they decided to make the day a training day instead of another session in the Ena. Not that I felt like exercising either.

  Fortunately, Mara toned back her intensity, and we even had time to fit in another swimming session for the kids with Zan. Rye's determination to do well in front of Kaoren at least sparks an equal determination in Ys to not lag behind, so they both made good progress. Sen is growing more confident with the dog paddle, and thus less inclined to cling, and the three of them looked to be enjoying just paddling back and forth to each other (in that so-funny little-kid way which makes them look like frantic frogs). Kaoren's been off in a Captain's meeting most of the evening, and it felt very strange to have dinner without him. I've yet to understand the difference between the meetings he can attend over the interface and the ones he has to go to in person.

  Ys is drawing ahead of Rye in terms of reading ability, judging from their attempts with the beginning of tonight's chapter. Taren isn't nearly so inconsistent a language as English, and they're both able to consistently sound out words now, just with varying levels of speed and some distinctly odd syllable breaks. I did notice that they're beginning to shift to a more Taren rather than Nuran accent, which I guess is what you get when you cram yourself full of Taren schooling for weeks on end.