Waterstrider

Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

I stared down at the card in my hands, deep in thought. I didn’t have any strong opinions about the man, having only met him twice. He had fought valiantly, but that was only what was expected of a man of his position and strength. I knew full well that the higher one’s rank in an organization, the more responsibility they had to protect it. This was all the more true in a clan, as the organization was the same as one’s own family.

It would be wrong to call Wei Hadal a saint for his actions, but if he had not fought to defend his clan members, I would surely have called him a devil. I supposed that was simply the nature of things.

I stood outside Doctor Tamara’s clinic, slowly making my way back through the sparsely inhabited streets of Canvas Town. It was the middle of the night, and the dome light was off. If I were to lean over the railing and look up, I could see the resplendent stars of this region of Telles. It still awed me to think that around many of the stars that I could see from here were inhabited worlds and stations, some of which even contained other Seiyal. This was not something we had much of a conception of when I was a child.

I idly considered walking over to do so, but decided not to. I wasn’t one to gawk in public, and I had more important things to do. With the fire in my head finally doused, it was time for me to return my focus to the fire in my heart. The next stage of the Redwater Sect’s development would begin tomorrow.

“Say, Rachel,” I said, the words trickling out as I pondered what I intended to ask. “What is your impression of Wei Hadal?”

She paused for a moment, seemingly considering her response carefully.

“I suppose I would say that he is generally well-regarded within the Hadal Clan, and very trusted by the Matriarch. It is likely safe to assume that he had it given to you rather than showing up himself in an attempt to not alarm you. Perhaps he wishes to rebuild the impression you have of them, after that Karie girl tried to kill you.”

I nodded, largely agreeing with her assessment. Before I could formulate a response, she made a snarky comment.

“What, looking forward to that marriage offer they made you?”

As I had expected, she couldn’t help but throw in a comment that I intended not to respond to. It would be better if I didn’t bite her bait.

“I think you might be right about his intentions. Most martial artists would have shown up in person regardless, however. Or at least sent a messenger in person to speak with me. Either Wei Hadal is an odd man, or something is going on in the clan right now.”

“Is there ever not something going on in a clan of that size?” she asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was being honest this time or making another joke. Either way, I had to admit that she had a point.

I slid the card into a pocket on the inside of my robe as I walked, passing by the drunkards, street women, and exhausted office workers that formed the majority of night pedestrians in this part of the district. There was a feeling of gloom to the air underneath the bustle and loud laughter. It reminded me of the place I had once lived in Crucible’s Edge as a child, before my master had taken me in.

The fire inside me still burned, but I found myself momentarily caught up in a torrent of nostalgia. Perhaps it was my relief from finally being freed from the pain and stress of my injury, or perhaps it was just the feeling of the cool night air.

Oh a whim, I found myself walking for the nearest stairwell, coursing up multiple flights of stairs before finally finding myself on the top level, between a skydock and a warehouse. I casually made my way over to the railing, leaning backwards on the railing, eyes directed upwards.

With the dome light off, I could see a vast expanse of stars marching their way all across a vast horizon, slowly sliding to one side as the spindle rotated. I tried to make out any familiar constellations, but as expected, I found myself unable to.

“What are you doing?” asked Rachel, curiously.

“Which one of those is Canvas?” I asked.

After a moment of silence she replied with a soft voice.

“Do you see that cluster of stars towards district 4?”

“Yes.”

My voice emerged softly as well, the word slipping from my tongue as if I had been scared of releasing it. I realized that a part of me was scared, as if just looking at the star I had lived most of my life around would bring back the part of myself I had abandoned in that far off system.

“It’s the second star to the left of it.”

I immediately found the one she was referring to, a tiny pinprick of light against the vast darkness of space. It was remarkably small and dim compared to the others around it, far too easily lost in the celestial tapestry that surrounded it.

“Such a small, fragile light,” I whispered to myself. “It’s insignificant to the universe.”

“It matters to you, though,” said Rachel.

Her words were still spoken in that soft, almost kind voice. If I was in a normal state of mind I might have found it off-putting coming from her, but at the moment I appreciated it. I sighed.

“I suppose it does. It always will, even after I ascend beyond this world.”

She laughed teasingly.

“You’re so confident you’ll succeed.”

I reached out my hand, as if trying to hold Canvas’ star in it, before clenching my fist in the empty air. The light disappeared behind it, as if it had been snuffed out. My hand slowly drifted back down.

“Everything… all I have done, it would be meaningless if I were to fail,” I said. “Mine is the legacy of my people, and I will paint their story across this tapestry.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Rachel suddenly appear beside me, a smirk on her face. She was still using a sei variant of her appearance, and wearing martial robes similar to my own. Her hair was loose, not tied up like a female martial artist would normally do. Her amber eyes were as deep and limpid as the blue ones I had first seen had been.

“You aren’t supposed to paint on a tapestry, silly,” she said, the corner of her mouth slightly lifted.

I chuckled.

“I’ll do it anyway. It’s better than this world deserves.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she replied, eyes roving upwards towards the sky. She seemed to have lost herself in thought. After a moment of silence, she spoke again.

“Say, Cyrus?”

I looked over, meeting her gaze. Her eyes were filled with a deep melancholy. I could tell she was thinking about the past. She stretched a thin, pale arm out, and I followed the direction to another cluster of stars, this one over district 2.

“Do you see that yellow star right above the center of that area?”

I could guess where she was going with this.

“I do.”

She leaned over to me, a sad smile on her face.

“That’s the star that my- my Earth orbits. Where I was born, where I lived my entire life. It wasn’t always the best life. I worked hard for little result, suffered under overwork, and never had a lasting relationship. But you know what?”

Her eyes seemed to be a little bit red, and I just continued to watch her as she kept talking.

“I was happy there. I liked my shitty job, and my annoying friends, and my parents who kept pressuring me to get married. Then- then…”

She sniffed, turning back to lean on the railing and look back up towards that small star.

“Then the war started…”

She let out a deep, expressive sigh.

“You know, Cyrus, I haven’t been back there in centuries. It’s uninhabitable even to spirits like us, now. Even if I did, their graves had been blasted to glass.”

She let out a pained chuckle.

“It’s always been pointless, I suppose.”

Instinctively, I wanted to give her a pat on the shoulder, but at the last moment I held back, realizing that my hand would just pass through empty air. My hand slowly fell back to my side and I leaned back and looked up at the two stars, one for each of our worlds. We fell back into silence in the night air, ignored by the occasional passerby heading to and from the skydock.

In a way, we were both exiles, unable to return home. For the both of us, the home we yearned for no longer existed. It was what had brought us together.

I finally spoke up, needing to let words out, to end the oppressive silence.

“I’ve heard a saying around the station, that various alien races have the concept of this same thing. It goes something along the lines of ‘revenge will not bring you happiness.’”

I turned back to Rachel, and our gazes met again.

“My people of course,” I continued, “have no concept of this idea. For us, revenge is both the means and the end. Those you have lost cannot rest until they are avenged.”

Rachel laughed again, her voice bearing a hint of a slightly brighter note than it did earlier.

“I suppose that’s why your people write so many tragic poems.”

I glanced back up to the dim, distant light of Canvas’ star.

“I have a feeling that this story won’t be written down as a tragedy. An epic, perhaps. Or even a comedy. But it will end rightly. Of that I am sure.”

Rachel tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and stood up from the railing with a grin. She stretched a hand out to me, as if offering to pull me up.

“We should get going,” she said. “If you want to make that happen, you have a lot of work to do in the coming days.”

I chuckled again, pushing myself off to join her.

“That goes for you as well. You don’t intend to skive off work now that we have subordinates, do you?”

We bickered lightheartedly for a bit more as we made our way back to the fledgling sect that we had founded. For a moment I almost felt like I was back in my childhood, talking with friends as we hid from our masters and skipped out on our duties as inner disciples. For the first time in a very long time, I felt a sense of peace.

Tseludor: [The Pantheonic Goddess of goodness and love, Tseludor is a brilliant moral icon who promotes a concept of goodness that many races fundamentally disagree with. As many aliens have said, 'in the end she is fundamentally a Staiven goddess, so she thinks like they do.' Of course, it is possible that the truth is the other way around. Tseludor promotes being kind to others and being ethical in all of ones actions, but her ethical framework highly promotes fulfilling one's role in society and doing what is expected of oneself. In addition, the Tseludorian concept of charity entirely involves donating to the church and paying taxes, and has nothing to do with the poor or needy. To the Staiven, worshipers of Tseludor are nonetheless seen as kindhearted fools who do not know how to have true ambition. The church of Tseludor has invested into funding expansion of the Pantheonic Government's control of the territory, allowing more space for refugees in more stations and more systems, so as to provide more funds for the government and the church, promoting their use in benefiting the church, the ultimate calling of all peoples. Tseludor is the patron saint and namesake of Tseludia Station.]