The truth they saw was as the sun
Undeniable, and so painful to stare at
Everything they were, everything they had been
It was all the fabrication of infantile make-believe
The world was nothing but a theater stage
And they played their parts to perfection-
Say Headmaster, do you believe in that parable?
Headmaster Clint looked up from his copy of the passages being read aloud.
Carmen had that all too familiar glint of curiosity in her face. Clint knew the rewards of nourishing this particular tree, but nourishing also requires trimming rogue branches every so often.
“What part of the parable?” Clint said in the very specific tone of a teacher reminding a student of a lesson.
“Do you believe that the primecestors’ whole identity was actually from fiction created before their awakening?”
“What do you think, Carmen?” He asked back, though this time in a casual tone.
Carmen’s face lit up in that instant.
“I really like what the parable conveys…” Carmen set aside her copy of the passage and leaned on the room’s blackboard “Our whole society is built on the idea that the most sacred things are the deeds passed on, and the parable feels like it’s asking us to question how much our actions are our own.”
Carmen then reached for her bag.
“There’s also this book I borrowed from the library… by…” Carmen made a token attempt at guessing the pronunciation of a name with too many umlauts for her tongue before giving up “Anyways, it proposes that it might’ve been a push for the arts, since…”
“This is why you make all your teachers proud” Clint interrupted “But I did ask you your opinion, not your opinion on others’ opinions.”
Carmen opened her mouth in a really small “ah” exclamation before putting her bag aside.
“It’s… too convenient?” She added, looking for the words “I like the parable and how it asks people to question what they take for granted as fact, but I don’t know how I feel with it as… you know… fact.”
Carmen absentmindedly twirled her pale silver hair as she looked for the right words in a gesture that Clint thought was shockingly girly.
“Because that’s what she is, she’s a young woman.” Clint chided to himself. It had been four years since that became reality, so why was this surprising?
Then Clint realized that the surprise wasn’t from a novelty, but from how thoroughly of a reality it was.
She is a young woman, the signs were always there before, and now it was like she was growing into what she was always meant to be.
And she was growing so fast while at it…
“…so the idea that whole cities and political systems were kickstarted from children making up stories feels like a bit of a stretch.”
Clint was pulled out of his thoughts in time to listen to the tail end of Carmen’s opinion on it.
“I see…” He said, guessing what she said on the whole from the end of it “Well, you might be shocked to hear me say I like to believe in it.”
“Wait… really?” Carmen asked, surprised.
“None of its elements feel particularly fictitious to me and I want to believe in the cascading effect the actions of others can have…” He said putting aside his copy of the passages “Have you considered also that you’re taking it too literally?”
Carmen frowned for a moment, then her silver eyes opened wide, and finally facepalmed.
“They might not have been literal kids…” She muttered as if realizing the most obvious thing in the world.
Carmen was reciting and then arguing with Headmaster Clint about what those in the Khanon Belt know as the “God Children Parable”. It is the closing chapter of the “Gnosis Regained” mythic cycle.
It tells tales of mighty heroes and kings of different backgrounds, born “from the land itself” with their destiny in life pre-assigned to them. Some of them following it, some of them hoping to defy it.
As resources in the land start to wane, wars broke out and the real structure of the land showed itself. Metal under the soil, glass at the bottom of the lakes, their sky naught but a projection. This is when it’s revealed that all along they were in a generational colony spaceship called Valvion, that they didn’t “sprout from the land” so much as “woke up from cryostasis” and that their predetermined destiny was nothing but the result of child’s play.
Before they woke up from their frozen sleep, the colony was inhabited by ever-decaying generations of other humans, what came to be called “the forewakened”. The God Children Parable specifically reveals to the mightiest lords and heroes that they’ve only acted like so because their ship profiles, in place to remind those just awakening of who they were from the brain fog induced by the process, had been tampered. Turned into fiction by the last children left alive at the end of the forewakened’s reign in the ship.
Thus, leading to the closing words that Carmen didn’t finish earlier.
The truth they saw was as the sun
Undeniable, and so painful to stare at
Everything they were, everything they had been
It was all the fabrication of infantile make-believe
The world was nothing but a theater stage
And they played their parts to perfection
For these God Children in the beyond
Of course, as Carmen came to realize just moments ago, perhaps the “children” part shouldn’t be taken literally.
“I mean, how fitting huh? Here I am doing the same thing that the supposed ‘God Children’ were doing that I wrote off as ‘too convenient’…” She continued.
“Yes, indeed” Clint said before adding “How long are you going to put off the practice, though?”
Carmen pouted, her shoulders slumping. And Clint mused that some things never change even at 20 years old.
“Come on, from the top” He clapped to stir her back into action as they both grabbed their copies and Carmen cleared her throat.
For you see, this wasn’t a history lesson, this was practicing for a speech.
The people in the Khanon Belt don’t believe in a God or in Gods, but that’s not to say they don’t have a belief system.
As far as they are concerned as a culture, the primecestors, those mighty heroes and leaders that sprouted from the land in the mothership, did what not even the forewakened before them could and reached their promised land.
Thus, if the people assign higher power to something it is to actions and legacy built in life. They don’t thank a higher entity they’ve decided is responsible for good harvest, they thank in the name of the researcher that they’ve all agreed was responsible for that method of cultivating that crop.
Depending on the region and even the household, the dogma might be based on anything from a common primecestor, to a more recent ancestor, to even just someone really important for the community.
This idolatry of genetics is epitomized by the Royal Family. A circus of inbreeding so long and convoluted that it’s always one miscalculated surname away from spawning something modern medicine has never and should never have seen. However, during less peaceful times there was a practical reason for their constant efforts in turning the family tree into a family wreath.
Most of the sensitive equipment from Mothership Valvion is locked behind biometric sensors. Generations of descendants in a brave new land has made the genetic makeup of those living in the Khanon Belt deviate enough for the sensors to not recognize them as related to those that came from the ship, thus access to all this ancient and effectively sacred tech was one of the many excuses behind creating nobles with the same surname repeated thrice.
However, even this specific biosignature can be replicated with the right technology nowadays, and as such Royal Families have become nothing more than cultural figures in the land.
Immensely rich figures, but figures nonetheless.
This is where Carmen Carmine comes in.
Carmen is the product of a passionate fling that some noble she refuses to learn the name of had with her mother in the 20 years period before Voidslashers were developed and thus people were able to return to Valvion from the Western Belt.
The noble took Carmen’s mother away while leaving the shameful result of their supposed love behind with Headmaster Clint.
Clint is the Headmaster of Station 35’s Archivum. The “Archivum” is a combination library and museum complex set every few Stations that, due to containing family archives and relics as well as knowledge on a myriad of topics, is the closest the Khanon Belt has to religious buildings, minus a lot of the dogmatic rituals associated with it.
♫~
And on the outside of this complex, in the back garden, Carmen could be heard singing.
♪~
It was a popular song heard in the radio waves, a passionate and rapid call to action against those that do you harm romantically.
♫♪~
Carmen’s voice was melodious and full of emotion, a marked upgrade over the more flat melody of the original singer.
♪♪♪~
When she sang, however, red sparks seemed to fill the whole garden. And as the song’s tempo and momentum ramped up, these red firefly-like particles only increased in amount. Likewise, the more the song amped up, the more that Carmen’s normally silver eyes pulsed with a red tint.
“And not! for…!”
As she approached the end of the chorus, the air seemed charged with something, until she finished with a…
“ME!!”
ZAP!!
CRASH!!!!
On cue with her exclamation, a red lightning hit a stone decoration in the corner, tumbling it down. The red fireflies around the garden also dissipated afterwards.
“You’re gonna burn the Archivum one of these days and make Papa Clint very sad, you know?”
A youthful voice called for Carmen’s attention above a nearby fence. It was Lucretia, one of the youths from the nearby village. Though years of familiarity had Carmen just call her “Tia”.
“How long have you been there?” Carmen asked, her face not smiling but being the sort of relaxed that was a smile in all but name.
“Since you were cursing up a storm a few minutes ago.” Lucretia replied, jumping down.
As she landed from the fence and walked towards the stone decoration to assemble it back up, Carmen couldn’t help but think how some things about “Tia” never change.
Growing up, Lucretia was the sort of girl that was more comfortable among boys, being rough and running all over the place. Lately she had seemed to mellow out somewhat, but that same rowdy girl making boys cry after a fight snuck out in small gestures like how she just jumped down from the fence.
Carmen kept looking as Tia put stone piece over stone piece on the decoration, getting a small static shock from some leftover lightning…
She kept watching as Tia looked proud at her fix and went back to grab the bag she had come with here.
And she kept watching as…
“Carmen, want a snack?” Tia was now but a breath away from Carmen brandishing a bag in her hand.
Carmen had no words… or rather she had a lot of words in mind like “pretty” and “you smell so good” and a couple perhaps too vulgar but nonetheless flattering in the right situation.
“AHEM…”
So in a superhuman effort to not let any of these slip through her lips, Carmen just cleared her throat.
This petal storm of feelings was not by any means one-sided.
In fact, Tia had harbored a crush on Carmen since they were kids, and the true Carmen coming to the forefront a few years ago did nothing to lessen those feelings… if anything, this Carmen only made the feelings even stronger.
“This really is getting to you huh…” After a few minutes of blissful silence, Tia decided to break the verbal stalemate.
“Royal blood has given me nothing and here I am expected to do stuff for them still…”
In about a week’s time, Carmen has to travel to Station 51. There, a ceremony honoring the 46th anniversary of the Westward Break will be held, and because no royals would be caught in such a backwater frontier nowadays, the committee opted for the next best thing in those circumstances.
“A royal bastard from over fifteen stations away.” As Carmen has been constantly deriding since then.
“Have you SEEN the creatures that the princes and dukes have been birthing lately though?” Tia interjected in a gossipy tone “Being a ‘bastard’ means you get the silky smooth hair but none of the extra chro… chrono… chro…”
Tia absentmindedly reached for Carmen’s hair as she failed to say the word “chromosomes”, and when both noticed it an eternal pause seemed to hang between both of them.
“S-Sorry…” Tia said, retreating her hand, to Carmen’s disappointment.
“Man, I’m not allowed to say no to that task and now I’m not even allowed to be angry…” Carmen said in a tone that was, shockingly, very jovial.
“You can be angry if you want, nobody can take that away from you.”
“You can.”
Tia looked away as her face felt hot and stood up.
“Hey, since you’ll be off in a few days and won’t be back for a while…” She started.
“Yeah…?”
“Can you sing me a song? A happier one.”
Smiling and giddy, Carmen stood up again as if in an imaginary stage.
“Any requests?” She asked.
“Whatever you feel like!” Tia replied excitedly as she went to the middle of the garden to fit her spot in the hypothetical audience.
Both in their positions, Carmen started singing a song that was popular a few years ago, a pop ballad that equated the stronger heartbeats of seeing your beloved to the ringing of ceremonial bells.
As she did so, her eyes barely open and focusing on Tia sitting in the garden emitted a faint green glow as she sang, green fireflies also started appearing all over the garden.
The air around the garden suddenly felt refreshing, like a cool breeze after rain stops, like morning dew showing up in the middle of the afternoon.
It was a moment of pure bliss.
Both of them letting those feelings always on the verge of exploding just quietly trickle out for now.
Headmaster Clint was in his office going through genealogical files as requested by someone a couple of stations away.
It was a routine situation, a shopkeep requested confirmation that his bloodline was actually related to “Breacken the Broken”, a primecestor famed for having fought even after his limbs gave out.
The shopkeep probably wanted a bank loan and put that in his application. Despite what people believe, banks don’t actually care about that kind of genealogy, but they care about honesty. So if someone brags about being related to a specific person, the bank cares to have that confirmed, if nothing else as proof of character.
Despite being such a common thing to do, however, Clint couldn’t focus properly. His mind was anywhere but there at that moment.
ZAP!!
CRASH!!!!
“…the poor fountaintop is being used as a punching bag again…” Clint sighed, not even flinching at the sound of Carmen letting out one of her “chants” onto her preferred stone decoration.
The decoration in question used to be part of a fountain that Clint’s predecessor installed that eventually broke down. And when Carmen started throwing lightning bolts whenever she felt moody, the decoration at the top of the fountain had the bad luck of being the most resilient thing in the vicinity.
Having given up on focusing on his current task, Clint went to the window to check up on Carmen and to his relief Lucretia was already there.
“She’ll calm her down” he thought before wishing someone could calm him down.
He sat back down, lamenting how he and Carmen were of the same mind.
Many stations over the years had pestered Clint to send Carmen for any number of ceremonies, reasoning that she was the only person with any amount of confirmed royal blood in the vicinity, but Clint had always rejected them, knowing full well Carmen despised that sort of circus at the best of times.
And this was the one time he couldn’t say no outright, and to his dismay Carmen kicked and pouted but agreed nonetheless.
She was such a sweet girl. Gritting her teeth and letting everyone know she was not pleased at all, but nonetheless doing it for him. Doing it because Headmaster Clint requested it.
Because her adoptive father asked for a favor…
Clint slumped in his chair with a deep sigh. All of this was stuff he already knew perfectly well top to bottom, but it wasn’t what was bothering him.
There was something… else nagging at him. An abstract gut feeling that told him Station 51 would be very bad news that day. But it wasn’t anything based on fact or even suspicion, just… anxiety.
Clint was ready to dismiss it as just anxiety yet again when he saw a figure, like a woman in a thin silky red robe, looking out the window. By the time he blinked trying to focus his sight on her she wasn’t there anymore.
Afterwards, he just stood there, trying to understand what he just saw. Maybe he was finally off his plot, maybe stress got to him, he did have a history of delirium in his family after all.
But something else was nagging at him, like a memory demanding to be paid attention to.
And as he tried his best to remember, he heard Carmen singing again.
He went to the window and now Carmen was giving a solo concert to Lucretia.
“Oh to be young…” Clint muttered, and in that moment, the memory finally came into focus.
Solemnly, Clint went down to the Archivum’s vaults, where many “relics” of emotional or spiritual importance for the locals laid, and grabbed a tall bundle in a corner.
He turned it around and around… did it get bigger since the last time he saw it?
“This will either be the best gift I’ve ever given her…” Clint thought “…or it will be the thing that finally makes her snap.”
A few days later, Clint found Carmen in the garden again, though she was only reading a book instead of singing.
“Got a minute, Carmen?” Clint asked her.
“Yeah?” She immediately stood to attention, marking the page where she just left off.
Clint sat besides her, and Carmen wondered about the weird wrapped bundle Clint carried with him.
“Have I thanked you enough, Carmen?” He asked her “For putting up with my unreasonable request.”
“You have, yeah.” She said, surprised at this. Headmaster Clint wasn’t really reserved with affection, but his tone was less like that of an adoptive father and more like that of… an equal?
“But has it been enough, I wonder…” He then brought attention to the bundle “I’ve got you a gift, but I wonder if it’s a good gift.”
“Any gift is good!” Carmen exclaimed excitedly like her age just got cut in half.
“Even if it’s from your biological mother?”
“…what?” Carmen’s face turned unreadable, the kind of unreadable of someone that doesn’t even know how to react.
“About seven years ago or so…” Clint started reminiscing “A messenger from a royal house came here with this and with strict instructions to keep it hidden until ‘the right time’”
“What the hell is ‘the right time’?” Carmen asked, an edge of annoyance in her voice.
“It wasn’t back then, that much I know!” He added with a laugh “Not when a certain petulant teen was starting to insist everyone refer to her by the last name Carmine to disown any biological parentage.”
Carmen blushed at this very accurate portrayal of her at age 13.
“But I actually asked the same question…” Clint added while patting her on the shoulder “In fact, I believe my comment was, and I quote: ‘When in the rusted bottom of the abyss is this right time of yours?’”
Carmen immediately lightened up at hearing this.
“Not the nicest thing to say to a messenger, I’ll admit…” Clint rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment “…but I’ve always agreed with you on all of those matters, don’t I?”
“Did the messenger tell you?”
“He apparently asked the same thing and was told the answer was ‘you’ll know’.”
“And do you know?”
“No… but the whole Station 51 thing has a nasty air to it that I can’t shake off and I assume that’s my cue.” He said leaving the image of the woman in red silk out of it.
He handed the bundle to Carmen, who opened it up with some trepidation, but her face turned into excitement as she continued unfolding it.
Inside of it was a scepter, or rather, something that looked like one.
It was a long branch, so straight and smooth that it looked like it was carved into that shape, but it still seemed to have its bark on it. The top end of it suddenly turned thicker into a spiraled stump, a crystal-clear stump seemingly made of some sort of colorless amber except… except it still was part of the branch, it wasn’t a decoration but rather the wood itself turned clear near that end.
Carmen stood up and stepped into the garden, as if giving something a try.
She put the scepter in front of her, looking at the fountain decoration through its clear end.
And then she started singing as if the scepter was her microphone.
♪~
The red fireflies started appearing all around her, her eyes focusing on the clear branch pulsed a faint red.
♪♪♪~
Then, the fireflies gathered near the crystal end, like moths to a flame.
“And not… for…”
It was the same melody as a few days ago, but it wasn’t filled with the same kind of fresh anger that she had back then.
“Me!”
BZZZZZZZZZAP!!
CRACK!!!!
The lightning was more powerful, so much so that Clint felt its shockwave in his chest.
And despite carrying less fresh emotions on it, not only was Carmen able to call forth the red lightning strike, but it cracked the stone decoration too.
Carmen trembled with excitement. This scepter felt like a missing extension of herself, like the missing piece to what came naturally to her, everything made so much more sense when she held it.
When she turned around, though, Clint was not only already besides her, he was hugging her.
And he also trembled, not out of excitement, but out of fear.
Not fear of Carmen, but fear for Carmen.
Everything was making perfect sense to him too.
The listless anxiety, this tool coming back to his memory now of all times… he felt as if even if he insisted Carmen stay behind, the unknown consequences would just be delayed.
“Carmen…” He finally whispered in her ear, his voice cracking.
“…yeah?”
“Whatever happens, promise me you’ll come back alive.”
“Why are you saying tha-”
“I don’t know!” He tightened his hug before controlling his voice again “I… don’t know… but just promise me that, please…”
“Of course I’ll come back.”
“Alive.”
“Alive…”
“Thank you…”
Carmen had an endless list of reasons to despise her biological parents.
It had everything from abandoning her for seemingly pointless reasons to making everyone insist she gets involved in annoying ceremonial stuff.
And today, making her actual father cry while making her promise she’d come back alive was added to it.
Despite the turmoil and emotions flying high, the day of departure eventually came.
Clint fussed about all the details, about not missing anything, about remembering how to pronounce her i’s right. Eventually, Carmen hugged Clint.
“I promised you I’d come back alive, didn’t I?”
Clint let out a defeated sigh and returned her hug until she tapped him in the shoulder that others wanted to see her away too.
The rest were mainly people from the nearby village that wanted to give her encouragement.
At the end of them all was Lucretia, keeping to herself in an uncharacteristic way.
They stood in front of each other quiet for too long until Carmen finally spoke.
“Well, I’ll be off for a while.”
“…yeah…” Tia said avoiding eye contact.
“Do you want any souv-”
Carmen couldn’t keep speaking.
For you see, it’s hard to talk when someone else has their lips pushed against yours.
After a kiss that seemed to simultaneously last forever and not long enough, Tia held Carmen’s face in her hands and said…
“You” She replied to Carmen’s interrupted question “So you better come back in one piece, you hear?”
Tia then turned around and tried really hard to walk away like nothing had happened.
Carmen remained frozen in the exact same position she had been in, nobody dared say a single word until the carriage driver insisted they had to get going.
“See you all later…” Carmen muttered flatly before entering the carriage.
CLANK
The sound of its door seemed to break a trance. Everyone broke into raucous exclamations, laughs, and goodbyes, while Carmen’s face turned completely red.
“Just what in the abyss is this trip…” She said, covering her face.
What had started as just her needing to go to a station to open up a ceremony by reciting the God Children Parable had devolved into a gift from her absent mother, her adoptive father crying, and now her first kiss being stolen by the girl she had a crush on for so long…
Was something really going to happen?
What was going to happen?
Carmen saw her face reflected on the crystal end of her new scepter, all red and flustered, and then traced her lips with her finger.
“So you better come back in one piece, you hear?”
The words echoed in her head, and she smiled.
“Whatever happens, I promised to come back…” She said to herself while looking out the window.
She started absentmindedly humming to herself, giving everyone in town a sight to remember her by.
Because as the carriage went on its route, it started leaving behind a trail of green fireflies and a sense that everything was going to be okay.
Forsaken Gaia – Chapter 3: The songstress at the edge of the world.
Written by: Fernando Damas (@ironiclark)