Hidden from the Stars
Posted on 19 Feb 2021 @ 8:28pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 21 Feb 2021 @ 3:38pm
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Obsidian Command, Guest quarters
Timeline: MD 06 1900hrs
1045 words - 2.1 OF Standard Post Measure
"I am Ayalou," The girl said into a mirror, introducing herself to the reflection. It was a strange visage. She had caught glimpses of herself before, but never really had the chance to dally with it so long. She crunched her face small into the center, then drew her chin down until her bottom teeth formed a strange grimace. She forced a cartoonish grin, and then made it even more so by pulling on the corners of her mouth with her fingers until the edges ached. Her face became a putty in her fingers and she pushed her cheeks up and up until her eyes squinted closed. Letting her cheeks spring back into place, she moved to tug on her ear lobes, stretching them just as far down as the ends pointed upward.
Wanting to know what she would look like if she made her eyes both focus on her nose, she was disappointed. For while she was forcing her eyes to cross she could not at the same time appreciate the sight of it. "I am Ayalou. Louaya. Aya. Aya. Lou. Aya. Ayalou."
"At least," She told her reflection in a conspiratorial tone, "I think it's my name. Lots of Romulans have way longer names, with parts about clan and hometown and stuff. I'm Ayalou of no place and no clan. Ayalou blank blank." She picked up the tooth stick her mother had provided from their bag of essentials and gnawed on it. "Father says a name has power." She leaned in to the mirror, talking around her chewing, "If someone calls you by your name, it makes you look, and if someone had your name they can tell you where to go and where you belong and who you work for. Like a name is a thing someone can pinch you by and hold you. Maybe it's best that I don't have a name, not really a name. We've changed our names more times than I can count." She confessed to the glass. "That's safest. If I don't know my own name, I can't tell it to anyone else, and they cannot capture me by it."
She switched to chew on the other side. This stick was getting worn out. "But then there's that story of the Yorchamegeth Father tells me: the shapeshifter who forgot his own name and his own face and so he uses the identities of others and no one can remember him, just as he cannot remember himself." Ayalou paused from her conversation with the reflection and looked at the worn out stick. "Mother?"
"Yes, dear one?" replied her mother who was sitting on the floor beside the bed nursing the baby, little Enaryi, who was born in camp months ago. He was big enough to walk now, but still nursed. Ayalou remembered the birth. It left her eyes so wide she felt she might never close them again.
"Can I have a new twig for my teeth?"
"We are nearly out."
"What's that?" She pointed to the row of little boxes and packages on the counter.
Her mother sighed. "They're from the Federates. They clean their teeth differently. We will find someone with nsur twigs eventually. They are best for your gums, little one."
Ayalou dropped her worn out twig next to the sink and then collapsed to the floor. There was another mirror there beside her. This one long, and she could see her disgusted and exasperated face. Seeing it made it feel even stronger in her gut and so she emphasized it even more until she felt she was ugly and monstrous and it was no longer about twigs or names, but about this nameless bile in her belly.
"Stop looking in the mirror, Ayalou. You make yourself upset to see it."
Ayalou flopped her whole body on the floor, arms and legs wide and kicked her feet.
"Ayalou, come," Her mother said, motioning for the girl to move near. She did, but the baby, jealous to share his mother with his sister, kicked his feet against Ayalou, suckling loudly as if smacking his lips and grunting would emphasize his claim. "Do you remember seedlings we sowed when you were little?"
Fending her arm from her brother's feet, Ayalou nodded. She could just barely remember a life on a planet, with a sun and big fields, and plowing time. She could remember father marking off a patch for her beside the house and letting her paint a sign. She could remember mother showing her how to space her seeds.
"Did the seeds rise right away?"
"No. There was just dirt. Every day, just dirt."
"But then?"
The girl thought about it. Just about when she had forgotten and stopped checking on her garden, Father had called her out to see what had come of her seeds. "The new leaves came up later, after I forgot to check them."
"All of the things you feel, they are like the seeds in the soil. It's not right for them to awaken yet. It's too soon. Sometimes," Her mother's voice fell to a whisper, "I too wish to cry. But it isn't yet time. I store it all up for now, and I place it in the envelope in the heart of me, to open and read another day. I keep all of my feelings in the soil. When the seeds sprout later, we will deal with the harvest, the good and the bad. Everything must wait. We are of no state, we are of no sacred spheres, we are hidden from the light of stars until the truth finds an ear."
"What is truth?"
"That is a very big question for a little one." Her mother looked amused but thoughtful, trying to give serious ear and not make light of difficult things. "In one sense? Truth is what we bear witness to. To witness is to see and experience. It is a kind of known truth. The kind that Justice knows."
"Justice?"
"Justice, true justice, always seeks the truth. Justice just takes longer to find some of us than others."
"Is Justice looking for us?"
"I think so."
"Then why are we always running and hiding?"
"Justice is not all that is looking for us, child."
