Trouble's Precursor

Posted on 21 Jul 2023 @ 7:29pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 8:22pm

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Itonian Colony, Loki III (Planet Obsidian)
Timeline: M3 D3 1045Hrs - Imediately following "Flutterbugs"
1019 words - 2 OF Standard Post Measure

Xerne set his daughter back on her feet and gave her a dusting off. She was never very presentable. The dust seemed to magnetize to her and she seemed forever sticky and greasy. She traipsed along back to the family’s booth which he had managed to secure in the agreement to have their new homes. It made little sense to forever rely on charity, but in order not to be a drain on the little settlement, they had to have something to begin their own productive work with. It made him sad to see the little booth, though he knew he should be thankful, he used to lay claim to expansive tracts of land, herds and wells, and a compound full of buildings handed down in his family for generations. He and his brother made a split agreement and he had been making the effort of expanding on his new ranch building since his wedding to Mizia.

Ayalou had been little when the trouble began. Xerne and his brother had taken the wrong side of a debate. The planet was supposed to have been a landholder’s democracy, but when they made the journey to attend the bi annual debates, there was something else going on which the brothers could not make heads nor tails of. It seemed someone had concocted a shadow influence and turned the majority into some kind of pact. Anyone who deviated in their expression came under suspicion on spurious grounds. The courts soon challenged the brothers’ generational settlement claim. And when they refused to leave their land, they were arrested by force, not by the citizen responders, as should have been the case— although Xerne suspected that all of his neighbors would have refused to form such a gang against him— but instead by hired muscle. He and his brother were held without charge, their rights suspended and the condition of the rest of their family unknown to them for some time.

The sun washed booth was a token, maybe small, but a little bit of something granted back to his long beleaguered family.

Xerne paused, as he often did when he shuffled now under the weight of fear and a broken heart, and gazed around. Something was irritating his spirit afresh. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. The air was hot and dry. When he exhaled slowly he opened his eyes again and watched his wife, retying some herbs she had gathered from the mountain brush. She’d adjusted quickly, he felt. She’d married a man with expansive holdings and had the promise of house help and physical comforts as a young bride. And now she was gathering weeds into her own apron, peeling bark from stems and pulping them to squeeze out a little bit of resin to make some remedies for sale. Their newest one, little Enyari, born during their flight, was wrapped against her, the little one’s arms and legs dangling while drooling into her shirt.

Lifting the hinged entry of the counter top to join his wife, he slid into the shade. His eyes had to adjust from the harsh sunlight and he blinked to see clearly inside. Ayalou had already beat him there, stirring the dye pots on the floor where the cut beads her mother had been making from oasis reeds were soaking.

He moved to the side wall where he had strung the erihb bulbs. They were half dry and in need of turning.

“Why does my husband look over his shoulder twice as often today, hm?”

“Mother,” Ayalou interrupted. “I want a camera to take pictures of the flutters.”

“My daughter, be content in all things and the desires of your heart shall find you. Have you lost your head covering again?”

“It slides off. But mother, I saw a man, he has a camera and he takes pictures.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, he talks to me and he has a picture of everything, so he can remember.”

Xerne saw his wife’s face and posture shift to something stiff and alert. She looked around the market. “This man is still here, taking pictures and talking to our daughter?” She asked, in a barely coded way, really addressing her husband. She locked eyes with Xerne.

Knowing this was a sign she needed to speak with him, Xerne stopped evaluating the bulb drying and followed her to the far corner of the stall.

His wife was protectively covering the baby’s head and glancing back to Ayalou. “You know, there were drones flying overhead, taking pictures of our home the day before you were arrested!”

“I know. You told me.”

“And do you think there was no planning and intelligence that went into the assassination attempt on the Station? Do you think they did not have a layout of the promenade, a scope of life signs, and some tip as to the time of the attack, the one they acted during, trying to mask their attempt in the rest of the trouble?”

“Of course.”

“And now a man is photographing the square and talking to our daughter!”

“He said he was a relation of Elderman Dhow.”

“Every friend we had either sold us out or turned their backs, and now a man drops a name and you forget! Don’t make my heart sick again, Xerne!”

“You are right, Mizia.”

“I am right. Of course I am right. What are we to do about it?”

Xerne frowned. There seemed no shelter for them in the whole universe from the enemies he had made. “I will inform the council. I don’t know what else can be done. Keep Ayalou close until I can find some answers.”

She huffed. “That is no little task you ask. Get answers quickly before she drives me out of my own mind seeking her new playmates.”

Xerne kissed Mizia on her forehead and ran a hand through his son’s sweaty hair, leaving him a little mohawk. His eyes lifted back to his wife's. “I promise you," Xerne said, "I will see what is to be done.”