Only a Name
Posted on 02 Jul 2021 @ 1:03am by Kaspar Ibanash
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Obsidian III, Far in the desert, outside of Kalara.
Timeline: Prologue to "M2: Sanctuary"
1074 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure
The angled grate between Ivnthel Nargi and the sky had burned a reverse form in Ivnthel’s retina, so that when she closed her eyelids against the light, the squares became solid and the lattice made of light. Each time she blinked, she opened her eyes more slowly. Sleeping through the day was often her only respite from the unrelenting desert heat. She’d lost track of time, of the number of day and night cycles that had come and gone. The stagnant world no longer seemed to her to turn at all. And this stifling pit was better than what awaited her each time she was removed from it. She was reminded of the terrors in moments punctured by the outcry of another prisoner, dragged by their hair and struggling, or every time another cracked and aching voice howled involuntarily against the strike of a hand, or a whip, or worse. She hugged herself against the rough hewn stone floor, hoping to be truly forgotten. Ivnthel’s breath was barely deep enough to move and she was perfectly still as the sand fleas climbed over her trying to draw blood she had in such short supply. She no longer bothered to scratch or ward them off in futile attemts. What was the difference if they had their fill now or when she were laid out in the sand to dry in the sun for good?
Absently her dry lips formed the words of a song, but she could only hear it in the delirium of her own mind.
The hills will rise, the hills will rise to meet you
When you return home, the hills will rise to meet you
Bring your sweet sage, bring your drum, bring a nepta blossom for the fire
The path you followed away will be the path to guide you home
The hills will rise, the hills will rise to meet you
Setting sun behind, the hills will rise to meet you
Shadows crossed the hewn and grated portal to the sky and another voice seemed to interrupt Ivnthel’s own silent song trance. She couldn’t make out the words, though she wasn’t making much of an effort to strain. She didn’t want to know what new sadistic torture her keepers may have devised today for a confession she didn’t have, or a lie she wouldn’t testify to. But after the low voices carried on, it was clear that one of them was earnest and even familiar— not the voice of one of the guards making their occasional rounds and shaking the locked grates.
Another slow blink against the sky, and when the shutters of her eyelids opened again, she thought she saw the form of a wide open Obsidianite man’s hand reaching with its long sinewy fingers and prominent bony knuckles.
“Vinthi, Vinth— Ivnthel! Oh, God, please, please, be alive.” She heard him beg desperately in his always perfect Federation standard. “Ivnth….please…” She saw him stretching with both arms through the grate, kneeling on the ground and grasping in the dark beneath toward the vague lump that was barely distinguishable from the dusty pit itself.
“-spar?” Ivanthel tried to say his name through her cracked throat where it had broken from screams and crusted over with the thirsty dust of the air.
He broke into an involuntary sob, “Yes, yes, it’s me, it’s Kaspar.”
The pitiful form answering to Ivnthel’s name crawled itself along the floor by thin legs and dragged itself up the wall by bruised arms. Coming full into the light, Kaspar saw the purpled and yellowed blossoms of new and old bruises on scabbed over, flea bitten skin. Her eyes were swollen half shut and her hair matted. She could barely be recognized as the joyous, full bodied, Risan-born woman he knew.
She reached towards him and he snagged her fingertips as though he could fish her out of the hell hole. As they gripped one another’s hand, he wished for her sake they never would have traded places as infants.
“I searched everywhere for you, Vinth. But it’s over, it’s over now. You’re coming with me.”
She wasn’t sure she understood. The outline of the guard Kaspar had bribed for this conversation was still visible in earshot, and he wasn’t moving to open the grate to release her. Neither would Kaspar ever be able to overcome him alone, let alone the others likely to stop them, and even if he had such a plan, they’d be outrun in the desert. She could hardly run. Ivnthel’s eyes begged him to continue in order to tell her his meaning.
“All they want," Kapar explained eagerly, "is for you to renounce your Turani name and they’ll release you now, this minute. We can go.”
“What?”
“If you renounce your Turani name, you’ll be—”
“No!” She’d heard him, she just couldn’t believe him. With identical offers, he sounded no different than her captors. In fact it was the cruelest torture of all, coming from Kaspar.
“It doesn’t matter.” Kaspar insisted again, “Tell them what they want.”
“Can’t betray my name!”
“Is it worth dying? Like this? Come with me, tell them what they want and you can come with me. It doesn’t matter. Not this much.”
“It doesn’t matter, to you it doesn’t matter. Because you are *not* Turani!” She inhaled raspily with sorrow, bitterness, and frustration to find the voice she still had in her belly. “You are of the sky! Federation thinks it can become everything it touches but it is nothing, nothing.” Another rasping breath pierced her speech. “It is nothing for you to renounce a name that isn’t yours to renounce!”
“Please, please, Vinth, you are dying for a name that isn’t even going to survive! The Turani are dying!”
“Then I will go with them.” She loosened her grip so that she dangled from his, waiting for him to let her go back to the floor of the pit. Kaspar stretched to hold her up with both hands, but couldn’t catch her in time.
“You’re going to die stubborn!” He shouted into the pit, shaking the grate with his frustration.
“Live or die, I am Turani.” Ivnthel sank back into the dust, certain she could be nothing else.
