Tales of Ash (CoLoMARQR)

Date: ??/??/6,469 2.V

Location: Unknown

Ashlynne flicked the report off her holotablet screen. It was all more of the same. Not enough fuel, not enough coolant, not enough power, not enough food, not enough water, not enough oxygen, not enough anything. More than once she’d considered telling Kelseð to stop writing them, to save his efforts for something more productive. He was only wasting his time on this fruitless routine.

The sad reality was that the routine was all he had left, all anyone had left. Nothing could change what was going to happen. Their course was set weeks ago. The Arkships—Yaanis Falcons 1, 2, and 4—were fifty thousand parsecs off course. Falcon-3’s signal had been lost during the jump that sent them halfway across the galaxy. PhysTech had pored over the data since the incident and determined the only possible way to salvage the situation was to focus efforts and attentions on a rescue plan—another set of fruitless endeavours.

Engineering had suggested focusing Falcon-1’s sensors to locate a suitable moon on which to build a bunker-habitat. Problems arose from the first step. There were no suitable star systems, nor worlds, nor moons. Not within range, in any case.

Even if that wasn’t the case, and a suitable rock could have been identified, they had neither the tools nor the equipment to make such a habitat, and certainly not one that could last for what could be upwards of an Aion waiting for rescue. Ignoring entirely the fact that living for that long underground in a bunker would ultimately preclude any possibility of rescue. The colony would either implode due to social discord, or succumb to Paaldurin’s Psychosis.

Paaldurin’s...the bane of all long voyages. Borne of a combination of cosmic radiation and confinement, it drove anyone stuck in interstellar space too long irrevocably mad. Once it started, there was no reversing the disease. Those afflicted would descend into violent rages, driven by vivid hallucinations as their nervous systems burned themselves out.

Despite this, Ashlynne would have been partial to this plan. It had the highest odds of some definition of success. Were it in any way operable, she would have leapt on it.

It wasn’t.

They simply did not possess the resources.

The Yaanis Falcon Mission route was a simple, one-way transit to a world The River Department of Geoengineering had just completed terraforming. Er-ALÞ00797513+C12 or “Er Alaþ” was only a hundred fifty parsecs from their port of origin at Yaanis-5 and in a well-mapped, bustling sector of the galaxy. Every risk had been accounted for, calculated, and prepared for. Adjustments to the Arkships’ construction had been made. Their cargo holds had been filled with only what was deemed necessary to establish a self-sufficient colony on a T-0 Class planet. Er Alaþ had all the necessary resources to utilise light extractors and small microfabrication units for the establishment of Colonial Landing. Their navigatonal calculations had estimated a transit time of an absolute maximum of three weeks along a galactic superhighway through a sector teeming with activity. There wasn’t any conceivable situation to the mission planners where they would have needed to deploy a Level 6 Emergency Terrestrial Shelter—or 6-LETS—the only things capable of withstanding the fury of a nearby pulsar. 6-LETS were damn heavy and with the mission parameters being what they were, not a single unit had been packed.

Mission parameters being what they were, it came as a surprise to no one that the maths didn’t work out had they the necessary materials to dig in on some godsforsaken rock. Calculations for how much food and water would be required to sustain the hundred thousand souls spread across Falcons 1, 2 and 4, dashed any hopes of crafting an arkbunker, however long of a shot it was. Work on any ideas to that effect were swiftly abandoned. Every possible iteration on this concept failed at that critical threshold. Even sacrificing Falcon-2 to gut it, break it, and use its parts to build a shelter couldn’t solve the problem of food and water. When PhysTech came back with their analysis of the local sector, all attempts to bust the numbers on an emergency shelter were abandoned.

Neutron stars, young stars, temperamental giants, and black holes abound—a sector so volatile and inhospitable Laughlin’s Wall seemed a paradise by comparison. If Ashlynne attempted a transit inside the heliopause of any nearby system, the cosmic radiation of its host stars would kill everyone onboard and fry all of the ship’s systems.

A subset of PhysTech proposed a practical, but ultimately pointless idea. They suggested a mothball thumb. Shut all non-essential systems down and put all but a skeleton crew into stasis, rotated every decade or so. The hope was that somewhere in the next few thousand Tanno someone would pick up the distress beacon and give rescue.

The problems with this were numerous. Even with the proposed crew rotations, time would grind them down before the signal could reach anyone. Technical estimates placed the most generous wait calculation at three epochs just for their signal to reach any potential exploratory vessel. Even ideal circumstances put the wait calculation well in excess of fifteen thousand Tanno and there simply was not enough crew to maintain that rotation for that amount of time. Medical suggested century-breeding rotations, but that was not without its issues either.

Psychologists objected over the stark reality that over that period of time, Paaldurin’s Psychosis was inevitable. Each successive generation would pay escalating costs in manpower and resources to the progressive neurodegenerative disease, which would reach critical mass by not later than the fifth generation. That long adrift, waiting for rescue, would have made a matter of when, not if, the inheritors of this disaster destroyed themselves and everyone else.

Every rota, Ashlynne received new reports, new ideas, new suggestions. Objections and rejections would always follow. Hope was running low and all Ashlynne could do was keep the crew busy with pointless tasks and worthless orders. Engineers, deckhands, techs, docs, officers, all given pointless orders to distract them from the looming inevitability.

They were doomed and there was nothing they could do about it.

Forestalling mutinies and keeping the violence to a minimum was Ashlynne’s only current objective. As long as the crew thought developing a rescue plan was a worthwhile effort, order could be maintained.

Those who knew the truth, however….

When the time came, she hoped she had the strength to do what needed to be done. Until then, she hoped against hope someone could figure a way out of this mess.

Ashlynne tossed the holotablet aside, the polymer projector clinking against the bottle of absinthe she’d brought from Yaanis-5. It had sat patiently on the desk for three Lunes now. Tied around its waist with twine was a note addressed to her by her husband, Elser.

The scrawl of his hand used to give her comfort. It was only her name, and a sloppy attempt at freehanding the graph of the Mandelbröt set, but just looking at it reminded her of him. His smile. The tender touch of his thumb on her bottom lip after a sip of coffee on a lazy morning, brushing away a stray drop. His eyes, doting and overflowing with the same, intoxicating, infatuation as when they first met. All coming back with the bright intensity of sunrise over Alfarstvo.

Since the disaster, the sight of it only deepened her distress. They were supposed to open it when they made landfall, after she’d pulled him out of stasis and retired her pilot’s wings once and for all. The rotae following landfall on Er Alaþ were meant to be their second honeymoon, a celebration of love and unity and the beginning of a new chapter in her life, beginning with a glass of ceremonial absinthe.

But…

There would be no landfall.

No second honeymoon.

No more coffee.

No more smiles.

No more tender gestures.

No children playing in the garden.

Only a life full of regrets and squandered opportunities reflected in a bottle of absinthe staring back at her,

tempting her,

taunting her.

Every rota when she woke, she saw it. She would reach out a hand, grasp its neck, caress the cork with her thumb. Before she could pry it out and drown her dread, her senses would return, and she would release it, shame lashing at her heart.

Faithless, hopeless, they seemed the same word. Lines between once distant concepts had blurred in the Lunes since the incident. What was once inconceivable, unthinkable had moved so far inside the Overton Window, and altogether too easily, without a moment’s realisation until rotae later.

Once a woman of hard, harsh realities, she had fallen far, faced with data that did not lie but which she simply could not accept. She was the Captain, after all, a fact in counterweight against the disquieting truth lurking in the encroaching inevitable. To believe in some miracle manifesting itself was her duty. She had to believe that for everyone. For Elser. And for Eljah.

As the rotae turned over and over, it got harder and harder to believe the lies she told everyone else. To resist giving in to the temptation nagging at each of them. To not give up. There was some way forward, something buried in all the data, some idea they’d yet to stumble upon. There had to be. Don’t abandon hope. Salvation is out there. Somewhere.

Do as your Captain says.

Not as she does.

Thumbnail digging into the cork, Ashlynne ignored the holotablet buzzing on the table. Aching for some relief, she knew she’d be forgiven. Accidents happened. Elser knew this as well as she. Space was littered with the wrecks of stricken ships. If their places had been swapped, she would have wanted him to—

No! No! Stop that, Ashlynne! Stop thinking that!

Next to her, the holotablet started buzzing again. It was the third time in five minutes.

Eljah!

Ashlynne scowled.

Eljah wasn’t even supposed to have been on the crew. As Ashlynne’s sister, it was considered a safety concern. Family loyalties were known to run deeper than an individual’s loyalty to the ship. Only extraordinary circumstances overcame that policy, circumstances that, tragically, befell several deckhands. Crushed under one of the last cargo containers being loaded into Falcon-1, the command vessel was made short two-dozen qualified longshoremen. Due to manpower needs of the mission, there weren’t enough on-hand at the Alfarsstvo Starport to spare.

Ashlynne had pressed the Governor of Yaanis-5 to delay the mission so longshoremen from off-world could be brought in. But the Falcon Mission had already been delayed five times for refits and mechanical testing and she was told New Rio would permit no further delays. Despite Ashlynne’s objections, exemptions were made and Eljah was assigned to Falcon-1.

Truth being told, Ashlynne didn’t want her sister aboard any ship at all, and certainly not under her command. She loved her sister dearly, but Eljah was as shallow and vapid as they came. Their mother used to joke how Ashlynne had taken all the family intellect and ambition, and Eljah all the fun and adventurousness.

She could still hear her mother chastising her. Books splayed out on the dining table late into the night, mother would come from the sofa where she passed out every night watching the holos. Peering over her shoulder at vector calculus or fluid dynamics, she’d say ‘You think too much, Ashlynne. Spoils the little things in life, that.’

“Oh, mum,” Ashlynne whimpered, brushing tears out of her eyes.

Ashlynne lifted the bottle out of the mesh pocket. She’d always been her sister’s keeper. Always. Every time she came home drunk from partying too hard, she was there. When some deadbeat boyfriend couldn’t comprehend the word no, she was there to chase him off with a few deckhands and a pry rod. Eljah would get herself in situation after situation and Ashlynne would get her out of it because what else could she do? When their mother lay in hospital, dying, Eljah was off getting wasted and despite it all, she just told Ashlynne the same thing. Ashlynne remembered holding her mother’s hand as she begged and pleaded, ‘Keep her safe for me. Promise me that, Ash. She’s not got your sense. Take care of your little sister. Take care of her for me. Please.’

What could Ashlynne do but agree? Eljah was all she had. Empty-headed, oblivious, and reckless, she was her little sister. Looking after her was Ashlynne’s duty, just as it was to look after mother in those final anno.

Thinking back on it all, Ashlynne couldn’t help but see her life as a monument to failure. Ambition, intellect, grit, what did it all matter? What did she do it all for? What use was it all anyway? She’d failed at the one thing she was supposed to do and in the worst possible way. It was all her fault. Chasing some stupid dream, she’d undone it all by being a useless, worthless, waste.

Everyone had their reasons for prolonging the inevitable, for not saying the thing everyone knew was true. Ashlynne should have distributed the blackpatch weeks ago. She should have shut down the ships, drank the absinthe, and sailed off into that last good night. They were only holding on because she couldn’t face the fact that she’d failed. She couldn’t accept the reality that she would have to kill not just her husband, but her sister, and then herself. It was just too cruel.

Shaking her head, Ashlynne could scarcely believe herself. That she’d deluded herself for so long thinking she had somehow achieved something no human ever had. Death’s shadow loomed like an ever-present spectre over everything she did, and what was she doing if not trying to bargain with the reaper of bones? Begging for more. Always more. Enough was never enough. The die was cast and it was entirely beyond her control, and yet there she was, gripping on so tightly to vanity and desperation.

So. Fucking. Human.

“Fuck!” Ashlynne swore, her holotablet ringing again.

It was Eljah. Always Eljah. Always!

“What!?” Ashlynne snapped, accepting the holocall.

“Hey, sis,” Eljah responded, her voice as frightened as her face, “you-you might want to come down here. I-I-I don’t know how to describe this, but…just come down here.”

Sighing angrily, Ashlynne ended the call. She set the bottle of absinthe back on its shelf, scowling. It seemed like more pointless effort, but she was nothing if not sailor, and Eljah’s cry for help was nothing if not a siren’s song to Ashlynne’s ears. She slipped the holotablet projector into her belt, zipped up her flightsuit, and left her cabin for Cargo Hold 17. At least she wouldn’t have to don a spacesuit. Hold 17 was where all the materials and gear that couldn’t be exposed to a vacuum was stored.

***

“Is that…” Ashlynne said, raising a hand as she attempted to peer into the airlock.

Brilliant golden light poured through the airlock viewport, bathing the unlit cargo hold in sunset hues. Squinting, Ashlynne peered inside the airlock, attempting to make out what was inside. All her eyes could distinguish from the blinding light was the outline of a vaguely humanoid female figure sitting inside.

“Do you think it’s her?” Eljah asked.

“The Goddess?”

“Stölrmaþr herself,” Eljah nodded.

Ashlynne shrugged and approached the airlock control terminal. After inserting her keycard into the terminal, its display came to life. Of the various information panes, Ashlynne brought up the security mesh display. The screen flickered briefly, and then revealed the shape of a nude woman seated cross-legged on the ceiling of the airlock.

Scratching her head, Ashlynne returned to the Airlock viewport—still flooded with golden light—and looked through it again, this time waiting until her eyes adjusted. When they did, she saw whatever it was inside staring back at her. A spike of adrenaline lanced through her gut and she leapt back to the airlock control module.

“Ash! What’s wrong!” Eljah exclaimed.

“Nothing,” Ashlynne lied, activating the airlock’s broad-spectrum optical sensors.

The screen split four ways, showing her the infrared, radio, UV, and X-Ray imprints of whatever was inside the airlock. It was all banal. Whatever it was that was sitting inside was a flesh and blood, carbon-based lifeform.

After a brief moment of consideration, Ashlynne activated the pressurisation sequence.

“Wait!” Eljah exclaimed, as the airlock alarms sounded off. “It might be—”

“Salvation or damnation,” Ashlynne muttered, feeling the exterior pressure gates grind shut, “does it really matter?”

Eljah gulped. Another alarm blared, and Ashlynne flipped the manual switch to pressurise the airlock. As gas flooded into the small chamber, the figure inside rose, illuminating the unlit cargo hold in even more golden light—a dazzling radiance. The light on the panel turned green, and Ashlynne threw the lever to open the interior doors.

To the fanfare of airlock alarms and flashing hazard lights, out strode the figure of a pale woman draped in a loose, flowing gown. Seemingly spun of light itself, it flowed and rippled like liquid gold, with filaments and prominences drifting off its folds as if its maker had woven a star about her form. Whether it was an illusion or an object invisible to the airlock’s sensors didn’t matter. It was as beautiful as its wearer.

The creature’s face was one of delicate features, so nearly human Ashlynne almost mistook her for a Grace or Angelic. A pattern of glittering scales on her forehead told her this was not the case. They descended from temple to the bridge of her nose, following the arc of her hairline—a widow’s peak. Her hair was dark as empty space, swept back in a plain single braid that arced below her waist, back up her spine, and draped over her right shoulder before twisting nine lengths around her left arm. Brilliant, luminous, aquamarine eyes held within them the depth of rain, supported by cheekbones, nose, mouth, and jaw fierce and fine as those of a Trønheimar skørð hawk. Her frame was tall and slender, with oceans of curves. Hills and valleys subtly accented by the rippling plasma of her mysterious gown.

Intuition told her this was not Stölrmaþr, the goddess of the sun, though she seemed to fashion herself in such a way as to beguile the less discerning. Ashlynne couldn’t be certain of motive, but a woman clothed with the sun appearing before a group of humans who worshipped a deity of similar description seemed to her an unlikely coincidence.

Then again, she had seen a Mirage weave similar illusions before. Not for any particular effect at beguiling the foolhardy, but out of equal parts a sense of style ill-suited to the banalities of cloth and stitch, and a seeming disdain for wearing anything that would constrict his form too greatly.

Had Ashlynne the same powers, she would have done the same. The only thing she hated more than the strict fitness requirements to captain the ship was the dress code. If the banal flightsuit wasn’t bad enough, the seams of the compression suit she had to wear underneath was the bane of her existence. Uncomfortable, constricting, it pinched and squeezed her in all the wrong places and made going to the bathroom such a chore she’d taken to stuffing incontinence pads in the crotch in case she couldn’t get it off in time. For weeks and weeks she had to wear this awful thing without repreive.

Shore leave never proved any bit of an improvement. Given strict weight limits starship crews were given for personal baggage, a single change of street clothes was all most crewmates could carry on. Ashlynne was never simple crew, though. Being either Captain or First Officer for most voyages, Ashlynne rarely got to spend much more than an evening away from the ship, and even those were spent in Officer Halls, still in uniform, drinking alone. In the long stretches away on voyages, the only times she was allowed to take off the ugly, uncomfortable clothes were the ten minutes every three rotae she had to bathe.

Those ten minutes became sacred to her. They were the moments she looked forward to most in-flight—the only times for lunes on end where she could take everything off and just let her body breathe. Every last thread and fibre of the clothing she’d grown to loathe with a burning passion could go into a box and she could just stand there under the water, naked and free. More than anything, Ashlynne just wanted to enjoy the freedom of going about in the comfort of her skin until she grew tired of the experience.

Looking to her left, Ashlynne saw her sister swaying about, eyes glazed over.

Sod...it is a mesmer.

The epiphany didn’t help. As the woman approached them, she felt more and more detached and woozy and…

It’s an oxygen leak, isn’t it?

Ashlynne made one step back toward the airlock controls. The woman, if that term even applied, turned her slender neck, locking eyes with Ashlynne. She froze, drowned in crystalline blue. Clarity broke through the fog and the world snapped back into focus.

“Who are you?” Ashlynne asked, averting her gaze.

Something in the woman’s eyes was so piercing she could almost feel her gaze inside her skull. Like tendrils of thought worming their way through her neurons, Ashlynne could feel every part of her being extracted from just that momentary glance.

“Who are you?” the woman replied, inquisitively.

The voice came seemingly from nowhere, a melodious, overtoned soprano Ashlynne knew it was the woman who had spoken—that question unambiguously answered through the same glance. She did not move her mouth or any other part of her that could be seen, but it was her who had spoken. The voice felt like it was inside her head but also large enough to fill the cargo hold. Looking at Eljah, Ashlynne knew her intuitions were correct once more.

A deeply unsettling feeling came over Ashlynne, as the gears in her head started turning faster and faster. Something in her bones told her this was no chance encounter. This woman, whoever she was, had encountered humans before, and always in similar circumstances. It was clear, by presentation and perfect pronunciation of Riali, she knew a great deal about humans, knew their fears and superstitions, knew how to craft the image of deity, and how to soothe them with a delicate mesmer they would not recognise until already hopelessly, helplessly ensnared in her spell.

The woman wanted something from them.

What, Ashlynne couldn’t say. To play games, offer aid, make a Sphinx’s bargain, who knew?

Any creature who could appear inside of an airlock, impervious to the vacuum of interstellar space was clearly one of immense power. Denying her whatever she’d come for was not an option.

“Ashlynne…” she began to answer, but was swiftly interrupted.

“…Torvë,” the woman interrupted, notes of vexation in her melodious soprano. “A name. Given, yes. Not taken. Not claimed as your own. Accepted as such. Is that who you are? Or whatever convenience compels you tolerate to be called?”

“I…” Ashlynne responded, but stopped short, realising she did not have an answer.

Her gaze gravitated back, locking onto the woman’s again. In her eyes, Ashlynne could see the woman had understood her halting reply.

“It will suffice,” the woman said, her eyes glancing to the left. “What name did you call me, when you thought I could not hear it?”

“The Goddess!” Eljah squealed, delightedly. “We’re saved!”

Ashlynne resisted the urge to pinch her brow. Her sister was still so very naïve.

“Salvation,” the woman mused, “a fickle mistress, Eljah Torvë. What is its shape, I wonder…”

“It’s…” Eljah began.

“Eljah!” Ashlynne hissed, but the woman held up a hand, as if she knew well the gestures and mannerisms of humans.

Ashlynne fell silent and watched as the woman’s brow furrowed in concentration.

“A world, fertile and gentle,” the woman said, as if pulling the thoughts directly from Eljah’s head, “nourishing like a mother’s breast. Yes…. Salvation for you and your kin that would be. But I have seen what your kind did to your mother. Raped her, plundered her, ravaged her, took all she had to give, all to spread yourselves like an infestation across the stars. How valiantly she fought against you, as you fought against yourselves, against your nature. How very nearly she succeeded time and again and despite all that now, here you are, so very far from Mother Earth, and not much changed. But holding her absence, she is so much more valuable now, isn’t she? The trees and the fields, the thick air, the oceans crashing against the rocky shores, the birds a-twitter in the heath north of warmth and comfort. All of it worth so much more now than it ever was before.”

“Yes,” Eljah answered, emphatically.

“What would you do with such a world, I wonder?” the woman asked

“What humans always do,” Ashlynne interjected, before Eljah could.

Eljah shot daggers at her. The woman turned her head back. This time her gaze did not cause Ashlynne the same discomfort, only a sense of great expectation.

“Eljah, don’t pretend like we are anything but what we are,” Ashlynne said, tiredly, “like we were on a voyage to do anything but what we have always done. Rape and plunder a world engineered for us until the blank slate left behind is not enough anymore. Exploring the stars, however noble the intent was when we began, has been, by no means, a process devoid of exploitation to feed the insatiable lust of humanity for more. And here we are, begging what some would call a deity for more than what fate has made so clear is our lot. Always more, isn’t it? It’s never enough. Never.”

“Dim,” the woman said, looking over at Ashlynne. She turned her head to Eljah and said, “bright. Sisters and yet you are each other’s foil, love and resentment for each other held in equal measure. Your visions of the universe the inverse of the other. One erudite, driven to deeper understandings. The other ignorant, driven to deeper sensations. A curious duality. Ashlynne, what is the shape of your salvation?”

“There are thirty thousand souls asleep on this boat,” Ashlynne answered, “another seventy thousand in the two to my left and right. Six hundred more are doing their level best to overcome the impossible. Salvation is one hundred thousand people who did not die on my watch.”

The woman’s expression changed. An intrigued, inquisitive grin turned the corner of her mouth as she turned her attention fully to Ashlynne.

“One hundred thousand?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Ashlynne answered.

“What of the Third Falcon?”

“She would have made two hundred thousand, but she was separated from us Lunes ago.”

“A tragedy among tragedies,” the woman sighed, “two hundred thousand souls you count. Eight hundred crew. One is yet unaccounted for. What of the last?”

“What of her?” Ashlynne asked.

“Ah, so it is the Captain’s End,” the woman mused. “To go down with her ship for the sake of all those aboard? Is that it?”

Ashlynne nodded. Beside her, Eljah gasped in shock. Dating simulators were always Eljah’s flavour of choice. There was something alluring about escaping the banal and ugly reality and losing oneself in a fantasy orchestrated around the whimsy of a goddess of love. Ashlynne didn’t fault her sister for it, but, if her intuitions were right, the game they were playing was more her forte. One of strategy and quick thinking, navigating the moves of her opponent to outplay a losing map position.

“I don’t know who you are,” Ashlynne said, “nor do I know what you are, but suspect I know the game we’re playing.”

“Do you now?” the woman grinned. “Well then…let us play.”

Taking a step closer, the woman focused the whole magnus of her presence on Ashlynne.

“You are the captain of this ship, yes. A great responsibility, a heavy mantle. Two hundred thousand and one lives relying on you, your leadership, your level headed guidance. Tell me, Ashlynne Torvë, in the timeline where you arrived on your beloved Er Alaþ, what would become of them when you are no longer there to lead them?”

“I am not irreplaceable,” Ashlynne answered.

“Oh, but you are,” the woman chuckled, “there is only one of you. When you are gone, there will be no other like you. So I ask again, what will become of your wards when you are no longer there to lead them?”

“They will elect a new leader,” Ashlynne answered, “as they would have had we arrived as planned on Er Alaþ, as they had done before they left, as people have done for hundreds of thousands of years. I was not appointed their queen, nor would I have accepted such a mandate.”

“Oh, but you are,” the woman grinned.

“I am no dictator, no autocrat,” Ashlynne said.

“This is your empire, is it not?” the woman challenged. “Your word is law, here, on these islands in the void, is it not?”

“I am one person,” Ashlynne answered, “I lead by consent, by the trust and respect of my crew. Without that, I am one woman against hundreds, or even thousands.”

“Mutineers, they are a captain’s ever present nemesis,” the woman agreed, “what would you have done to them?”

“That is a broad question,” Ashlynne replied, “there are many kinds of mutinies. Some bloodless, some not. What is to be done about a mutiny is decided in the moments following its inception. Conditions must be assessed, a course of action plotted. What would you do?”

The woman paused for a moment, as if considering her response, and then asked, “What would you do if I offered you a flavour of your salvation more bitter than sweet?”

“This is the metaphor of the Iron House made real,” Ashlynne answered, “what alternatives do I have with even a molecule of sugar lurking in their acrid bite?”

“Ones reminiscent of certain fabled geneticist,” the woman responded, “whose satire became a costly salvation. How dismayed she must have been to see her parody of ruthless pragmatism played out.”

“Indeed. But Synnovë’s genius has not been forthcoming. If that is what you offer, what would you ask of me in return?”

“To be a queen,” the woman answered.

“That’s all?”

“Forever,” the woman replied.

“Over whom?” Ashlynne asked.

“All the children of Er Alaþ,” the woman answered, her eyes drifting off, “the four made one made whole made new. The first florid orchids of peace and cooperation, overseeing the care of their sleeping kin to spite the reaper’s smile of scythes. The second to commune with all the wild things, and to sing the sword-song when its aria is due. The third to seed the earth and make of fallow ground wild places, green places, verdant and lush. The fourth to bridge the vastness of space and time, thoughts dispersed across a knotted cosmic dendrite drift. And you, the fifth, a far-flung vision, you and your kin tending the garden forevermore.”

“You have that power?” Ashlynne asked.

“No,” the woman smiled, “that power is yours, should you but wish it.”

“I am no goddess,” Ashlynne objected.

“So you say,” the woman replied, “yet a hundred thousand souls you command. Life, death, the long slow decay of the Iron House, it is all up to you to decide, is it not?”

“That does not make me a goddess,” Ashlynne argued.

“What does it make you?”

“Responsible,” Ashlynne answered.

“Are gods and goddesses not also?”

“No,” Ashlynne answered.

“How’s that?”

“Gods and goddesses aren’t real,” Ashlynne answered.

Beside her, Eljah gasped in shock.

“They are fantasies,” Ashlynne continued, “stories we tell ourselves to make the world hurt less, to make the darkness beyond the campfire a little brighter, and to lighten the weight of the things we’ve done. They are convenient answers to the mysteries of the universe, the unenlightened reply to the mad machinations of men, the unanswered and unanswerable questions solved with fudge factors and make-believe, but more so they are the convenient scapegoat to excuse our own actions. To be solely and exclusively responsible for all your deeds it…it is a terrifying thing. If there is one thing all gods fear, it is to be judged by their creations. Power they wield, yes. But who holds them to account when they misuse it? No one.”

“Ash!” Eljah exclaimed.

“I know, El,” Ashlynne sighed.

“Why? How? How could you!?” she recoiled, indignantly. “When did you—!”

“A long time ago,” Ashlynne sighed.

“You! You just! All this time!” Eljah shouted, indignantly.

The woman raised a hand, and, to Ashlynne’s relief, Eljah fell silent. After their mother died, she couldn’t hold onto the pantheon anymore. It was so ingrained into who they were, The Old Ways, it would have devastated mother to hear how far Ashlynne had drifted. The deities didn’t answer any mysteries, and certainly none of her prayers. They were just another mystery until the solution that had been staring her in the face her whole life finally broke through the woollen barricade she’d built for the sake of her family.

For docades, she’d gone through the motions and put on a convincing show for Eljah, telling herself the sweet little lie that it was for mother. She was keeping little Elli safe by hiding the truth. In reality, she was only protecting herself, too much of a coward to just rip the bandage off.

The woman shifted her gaze back to Ashlynne. Her eyes were inscrutable, expression unreadable. She seemed somehow amused, perplexed, curious, and a million other things all at the same time—an overwhelming maelstrom. It stung and burned in the back of Ashlynne’s mind, as if simply looking at the strange creature was inflaming her very neurons.

“There are many paths to power, Ashlynne Torvë,” the woman responded, after what felt like an eternity, “and many flavours thereof. Some more godly than others.”

“I do not wish to be an Undying Queen,” Ashlynne objected, “that kind of power is corrosive. None should have it.”

“What would you do with it?” the woman asked. “If it were thrust upon you?”

“Give it away,” Ashlynne answered.

“If you could not do so?”

“Use it to build for myself a prison even I could not escape,” Ashlynne replied.

“Why is that?”

“To protect everyone from me.”

“From you?”

“Yes. From me. From what I would do as my heart begins to atrophy and I begin to see the world and all its inhabitants as playthings for my desires.”

“And you believe this will happen?”

“Whether it does or it doesn’t is irrelevant,” Ashlynne dismissed, “it could happen, and all those people would be as powerless to stop me as I would be to stop myself.”

“And yet they would fall at your feet, fawn over you, worship you all the same,” the woman argued, “a resplendent vision of the glorious holy icons of faith. You could do no wrong.”

“I don’t want that,” Ashlynne countered, “I don’t want power, or fame, or prestige, or wealth. I certainly don’t want to be worshipped.”

At this the woman’s eyes lit up.

“What do you want?” she enquired.

“My vanities are petty,” Ashlynne answered, “more than anything, I want to be useful. I want to be helpful. I want to have real, human moments. To understand, to be understood. And, when it is time, I want to be returned to the earth, to be useful one last time in maintaining the great circle of life. That is what I want. Is that what you had of me? To give all that away in exchange for their rescue?”

“But you wouldn’t be giving all of it away, would you?” the woman asked.

“No,” Ashlynne admitted, “I would still, in some small way, be useful.”

“Does that give you hope?”

“No. But it does give me comfort. And that is enough. Is that what you want?”

A long pause followed, the woman’s brow creased into the depths of thought.

“I think I understand better now,” the woman said, the pause that followed heavier than a neutron star.

“I...think,” the woman repeated, “I am beginning to understand what it was that she meant. You would willingly give an eternity in the Dream of The Whisper for the sake of a hundred thousand?”

“Yes,” Ashlynne answered, “I suppose I would.”

“A hundred?”

“Yes.”

“How about only one?”

“Yes.”

“But not yourself?”

“No.”

“Eljah?” the woman asked, nodding her head toward Ashlynne’s dumbstruck sister. “Or Qi’el ta Ser?”

“Eljah,” Ashlynne answered, knowing in her inmost heart the truth.

For the first time, Ashlynne saw a scintilla of surprise spark across the woman’s vast eyes. If Ashlynne was being honest with herself, the answer even surprised her.

Deep down, though, she felt to choose Elser would have broken him. His gentle soul could not endure the consequences of that choice. Every time she left, every mission, every flight, every journey, even to the corner store for cheap wine and bottom dollar cheese, he told her the same thing. Demanded it.

“Come home, Ash. Swear you will. Swear you’ll come home to bury my bones before your time is due.”

Qi’el ta Ser, Elser’s true name, wasn’t something given to him. Ciþwa discovered their names by discovering themselves. Qi’el meant something akin to “Stalwart” and ta Ser meant “the Devoted”. The former he found, the latter he’d acquired by his deeds. Without her, what would be left of Elser? What he would become forced to wander the stars knowing he could neither die nor see her again Ashlynne dared not even imagine. She couldn’t do that to him. Not Elser. Not her Devoted Stalwart. Not that gentle soul.

The woman saw this. Ashlynne knew it. There was no hiding anything from her. Still, the woman nodded and turned to look at Eljah.

“What of you, Eljah Torvë? Would you take your sister’s place?”

“Um,” Eljah floundered.

“It’s okay, Elli,” Ashlynne encouraged, “the truth hurts, but you need to say it.”

“No,” Eljah answered.

Despite already knowing her sister’s reply, it still hit like a shot to the heart when Eljah said it—an unspoken truth between them given voice, made real. Ashlynne was her sister’s keeper, but that was a loyalty and dedication Eljah could not reciprocate. Eljah resented her for it, but all Ashlynne had as reply was a patience that burned slowly.

“And you would still give everything down to the last mote of yourself for her?” the woman asked Ashlynne.

“I am my sister’s keeper,” Ashlynne answered.

The woman smiled.

“I offer you power and wealth and immortality, an empire of your own to rule forever, all the boundless riches of man’s wildest dreams. You, a goddess, draped in comfort, her desires boundless and ever satiated. But all you want is enough.”

Ashlynne’s heart sank with the intonation of the woman’s voice. Even though it was impossible to tell if she was disappointed, bemused, confused, or upset, she was running too low on hope to have any to spare on what was, in all likelihood, nothing more than a vivid hallucination. Intuition told her she’d failed. All she ever did, it seemed.

“All you want is enough,” the woman repeated, grinning again. “Nothing more. Even if the measure of enough is diminished to an unbearable existence forever, cold and hungry and alone, clinging to your sister, praying to nothing and everything that at least she’ll be alright, she’ll make it through, that’s all you’d ask of me.”

Ashlynne nodded in agreement.

“Only the salvation of one other. Someone who would not trade places with you.”

The woman looked deep into Ashlynne’s eyes, and she knew she had egregiously misidentified the game they had been playing. This wasn’t a bargain with a wishgiver who fed off the misery of imprecise language and their victim’s lack of foresight. She was being tested, weighed, and measured. The woman wanted to know the substance of her, her mettle down to the marrow.

“What she does for Alkione,” the woman said, notes of disbelief and wonder in her voice, “what she does for us all. How many like her are there?”

Gathering herself, the woman held out her hands, closed her eyes, and turned her face toward the ceiling.

“I will make for you and your beloved a Garden,” the woman said, the light about her figure intensifying, “and when they wake, will you show them the way, Ashlynne Torvë?”

“Yes,” Ashlynne answered, “as best I can.”

“Then that,” the woman said, firmly, “is enough. Sleep now.”

Overwhelmed by a sudden wave of exhaustion, Ashlynne stumbled to the left. All around the cargo hold, the light intensified. She tried to lift a hand to cover her eyes, but felt her arm like tungsten. The other arm, the one holding her steady, gave. Her feet lost their hold on the floor and she collapsed into a stack of crates. She felt herself slide down the steel boxes, eyes falling shut, mind fading into…

Date: ??/??/?? ??.??

Location: Alaþ Fasjël, Er Alaþ

Wakefulness came gently. Cradled by soft loam and blanketed by leaves and tender undergrowth, nature kissed every cell of her bare skin. Spreading her fingers, she pushed them into the soil, spread her arms and legs, pushing and pulling dirt and detritus around like a child making angels in the snow, luxuriating in each exquisite sensation. 

As she moved and flexed muscle after muscle she could feel something different about her. Her body was changed. Strength surged beneath her skin, her muscles crackling with power she knew in some instinctual way how to bind and bring to bear with grace and ease.

Slowly she rose, her head rising from the pile of leaves, breaking away the moss and lichen and small tree roots that had grown around her like a strange amniotic sac. The sun, from its low perch scarcely a fingerwidth above the rims of distant mountains, filtered in crepuscular rays through the boughs of a great tree. Taller than their snowcapped peaks, tall as a space elevator, the tree’s trunk reached for the stars themselves, its uppermost branches scratched the face of the moon as she passed overhead.

She did not know how she knew this, only that she did. Like she knew the Great Tree was the Goddess’ Icon, its name Er Alaþ. This was the Allmother, the Wellspring, Asiyn eþ Uhayd. Here was where the Children of the Goddess, the Children of Er Alaþ—Alaþilhinë— would be born. In the hollows between buttress roots, where she sat, these were the cradles, the foretold Nestles, the strange and wondrous womb of The Goddess.

She knew all these things as well she knew she was no longer what she was nor who she was. She had been reborn, as all Alaþilhinë would soon be reborn. Her form was as theirs would be, reconfigured to serve a greater reason for being. 

Half-buried in enormous tree leaves, she lifted one up to the sunlight, its expanse twice or three times as big as her hands—hands she barely recognised. Her fingers were too thin, skin too supple, too smooth. The fine vellous hair of her forearms was gone. She lifted her arm and saw her armpits too bereft of any follicle. Panicking, she put her hands to her head, sighing with relief when her fingers found soft, silky strands still there on her scalp. 

She ran her hands through her hair, the texture foreign to her as well. A hundred anno of rough soap and dry starship air had erstwhile robbed her scalp of its moisture. Pulling bundles of fine strands over her shoulder, she beheld a shimmering curtain of crushed lapis lazuli. It was not cropped close anymore either, not even trimmed back. Pulling more over her shoulder, she almost wept as the full length of her hair draped over her—

No...it can’t be...

Reaching up, she clutched at her chest to convince herself what she was seeing was real. Her palms confirmed what her eyes could not believe. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. It was too much. All too much. One hundred and forty-one Tanno. Almost a century and a half. She’d forgotten what any of this was like. All she knew was dry, rough skin, a crew cut, and the flat chest and hard corners of a starship crew’s physique.

Her first rota at the Alfarsstvo Pilot’s Academy, they’d shaved her head. She remembered how hard it was to hold back the tears as the auburn locks she’d grown out since middle school were shorn away. Then the physical training began, and she watched curves morph slowly into edges.

Memories of the youthful figure she’d sacrificed resurfaced as she moved from stroking her skin, to massaging her breasts, to combing her fingers through her hair. This was a dream. It had to be a dream. Curves and soft skin and long, shimmering, beautiful hair. Hair that was a deep, rich, gorgeous azure. Her favourite colour. It was everything she wanted so badly but couldn’t have. Not as a starship captain.

“This is real, isn’t it?” she murmured, running her hands down her torso until they ran into a root draped over her lap.

To her surprise, she felt something moving inside of her. Parting her hair, she looked down and saw a root attached to her belly. Spiderwebbing tendrils branched over her abdomen, wrapping partly around her waist as if for support.

Perplexed, she took the root in her hand and tugged at it. The spiderwebbing tendrils broke off, and she felt a bizarre sensation deep in her core. It wasn’t unpleasant, only strange. She pulled at the root more, and felt something begin to unravel itself from around her heart. Looking down at her belly, she saw the root was coming out of her navel. Coarse, dry structural root fading into white surface root, coated in a viscous, clear fluid. Continuing to pull, she felt it unwind completely, its length descending through her belly, and then out of her navel.

Lifting the long, white, snaking tendril up to her face, it didn’t look like anything other than a normal tree root—except for the viscous liquid dripping off of it. She didn’t know what the liquid was. Looking down at her belly, she saw the same liquid oozing out of her navel and a feeling of disgust overcame her.

She tossed the root aside, scrabbling to her feet.

“This is getting freaky,” she recoiled, her shaky legs finding footing with ease she hadn’t expected.

Hands against the impossible wall of buttress root, she climbed out of the hollow and beheld a landscape transcending the limits of her vocabulary. Beyond the enormous hill-like mound of titanic buttress roots supporting Er Alaþ lay forests and mountains and a wealth of wondrous things more beautiful than she could bear. 

Islands floated in the sky, either held aloft by unknown forces, or suspended by enormous vines hanging from Er Alaþ’s gigantic branches. Creatures from beyond her wildest imaginings roamed the ground below or soared through the skies above. Cloudbreaks of ineffable majesty hung like cathedrals in the azure expanse above.

“This…this is…” she murmured.

“A dream?” a voice said in her head.

“It’s…”

“Not real?” the voice chuckled. “Oh, but it is.”

“Who…are you?”

“Your sister called me The Goddess,” the voice answered, “I suppose, by a certain definition, this creation of mine would make the title only fitting.”

“But what’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” the voice mused.

“Ash…” she started, stopping halfway.

“Go on,” the voice pushed.

“Ashglen.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” Ashglen said, confidently. “I am Ashglen.”

There was a rightness to that, a resonance so deep within her she knew it was who she was.

“Go, then, Ashglen” the Voice of The Goddess commanded, “See what there is to see and show your people the way to paradise.”

“What…what have you made of me?” Ashglen asked.

Looking over herself, she barely recognised what she saw. Her body had been sculpted, formed into something more akin to a Grace than what she’d been born into. Hair tumbled from her scalp down to her ankles, but grew from nowhere else. Every curve and contour of her body was perfect to her eyes—she could find nothing wanting, could recall no figure with features more to her preference. Even though she could not see her face, she knew it had been similarly arranged into a shape so resplendent it would be at once foreign and yet familiar as her very own.

And though these truths were self-evident, as with the root she’d pulled from her navel like some kind of strange birth cord, the realisation seemed natural and fitting. In the same way, she stood there naked but felt nothing but a rightness in that. In her inmost heart, she could think of nothing that could be put on her figure that would do anything but defile, insult, and degrade it.

More and more things flooded into her mind. Epiphanies cascaded from some unknown source, truths inherent and instinctual came to her like a deluge, and she began to see a path unfolding.

“What…what have I become?” Ashglen asked.

“A lily,” The Voice of The Goddess answered, playfully, “an orchid, a perfect flower never wilting, never closing, pollinating the cold cosmos with a vision of fruit everlasting.”

Lifting her hand to her chest, an instinctual response, she was surprised to feel no heartbeat. Only the hum of something else came from beneath her ribs. Not a machine, but like a stone brimming with energy.

“You will hunger for light,” said the Voice of The Goddess, “thirst for pure water, yearn for touch, connection, entanglement. Let your love for your fellow creatures flow without restraint. Those who come to you will know who you are, and you will know them, both more intimately than you can bear. Built to withstand pleasure and pain in equal measure go forth, when the time is right, and receive all the passions the many worlds of your kin can offer. Entwine the totality of experience around your infinite heart and spin salvation of it anew with each reunion. Show them the way, my Orchid. Show them The Way.”

“How?” Ashglen asked.

But all she heard in reply was the wind in the trees, the birds in their nests, and the beasts calling to their kin.