Forgiveness

A Thousand Thousand

His breath caught when she touched him. He hadn’t touched another human in - he didn’t know how long. There was something almost electric about it, something frighteningly intense, and he found himself pulling back a little. She was too close for propriety, close enough that he could see every eyelash, could feel her body heat. But maybe that was the custom here; maybe touching strangers and invading their personal space was accepted or even expected. That wasn’t natural, he thought. It wasn’t the way things were supposed to be done.

But he might have to live with it if he wanted to avoid offending the natives.

He’d almost forgotten about the gun until the woman tried to pry his fingers from it. It felt so natural in his hand; even after years without it, it was still an extension of his arm, as much a part of him as his hand was. A soldier wasn’t a soldier without his weapon; he was a prisoner. And Tristan had been a prisoner for too long. Part of him wanted to cling to the weapon, insisted that it had no intention of being disarmed by an alien, no matter how friendly she seemed.

Her hands were gentle, though, and she met his eyes without hesitation. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her eyes - something like worry or … he didn’t know the name for it. His mother had looked at his father like that sometimes.

It definitely wasn’t hostility.

And anyway, if he did die here, it wouldn’t really matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. He was tired enough, he thought.

He let her work the gun out of his hand and set it on the ground. Did she even know what it was? he wondered. Probably not, judging by the way she handled it, the way the barrel was pointed at her stomach for a second. Granted, the safety was on, but no one who knew what it was would ever hold it like that.

He couldn’t understand her words, but her voice said she didn’t mean him harm. Her voice, and the soft touch of her hand in his. He couldn’t remember ever holding someone else’s hand - maybe when he was a kid, but since he’d joined the army the most familiar he’d gotten with another person was a hand on the shoulder to reassure a frightened rookie. Usually it was just salutes and polite nods.

Her fingers tickled a little as they ran over the lines of his palm. And he found that he couldn’t hold her gaze for long. A few years ago he wouldn’t have backed down from this. He might even have drawn the gun on her. But he wasn’t the same person he’d been then.

There was no point talking much if she couldn’t understand him. But he could at least give her his name. “I’m Tristan,” he said quietly. “Tristan.” He pointed to himself, like something out of a movie where a settler had to find a way to get along with the natives without speaking their language.

"Tristan," she repeated thoughtfully, tracing the lines on his palm - his heart line, his life line, his love line... "You have been given the name Tristan?" She looked up to his eyes once more, but he still could not meet hers. Kshana could not understand why, but she felt as though it was her fault, for whatever reason, and guilt washed over her, partially for upsetting him, but mostly for being unable to understand why.

I cannot see, Mother, cannot know what is in his heart. Why does he hide himself from me?

It was a feeble attempt to comfort him, but an attempt nevertheless - Kshana bent her head low, baring her neck to him. It was a sign of such trust, to allow herself to be so exposed to this man. He could strike her down easily if he liked. She prayed he would not. Gently, so gently, she pressed her lips to the heel of his palm, begging it to be enough, willing it to be enough. She was sure that this man would at least understand the intentions, and imagining that he would lift her head and forgive her for not knowing what to do. Perhaps he would eventually explain why he was so different from her dreams

But she would not ask it of him. She would not ask of him anything he did not offer to her first, and even then, Kshana doubted she would have the heart to say yes. It was not that she was trying to be too polite, but simply because she simply did not know if she could do it. As large as he was in body, Kshana could not help but feel that his heart was different.

I am small and lost and insignificant. But my star, my Tristan, he seems so much smaller.

But so much more important. Never was anyone as so significant to Kshana the moment she met him as Tristan, whom she already felt so protective over. As if he was hers to care for and protect, though his clothes may be strange and the thing that was not a star burned her. Though her hands still stung from touching it, she held his hands in hers, and kept her head bent low, waiting for his approval, rejection, calm or fear, or...anything. She knew what she hoped for, but not what to expect. It would be his call when she could look up again, his and not hers.

Mother, I beg you, help me help him.

It would be best, Kshana decided, if they could find something for Tristan to wear that was not so restricting, find something he could clean himself with if he did not allow her to do it herself. Likely, he should be kept away from other people for now, especially with how short his hair was. He would be seen as an outcast or a deserter, and likely as not, Kshana would be sent away with him to find a new place. It was not right to help those who had been cast out, willingly or otherwise. There was a reason they turned their backs on their families, and Kshana would not know what to do if she could not return every night to the sounds of people going about their business. Cooking, cleaning, laughing, joking, all these she would miss, even if she hardly did them herself. Kshana was a potter, like her father, and that was all she ever did.

But first, he would have to trust her. He would have to allow her to lead him away from his thing that was not a star, and if she could not explain it to him with words or ideas, then something else would have to be used, and she did not yet know what.

A Thousand Thousand

Tristan fought off the urge to draw his gun when the woman approached him. She was a savage, yes; there was an almost feverish glint in her eyes. But she’d dropped the rock, the only weapon he could see on her. She meant him no harm.

Or at least he hoped so.

It was strange that she didn’t seem afraid, though. Even the Saurians had been afraid, and they’d been armed and armored. Even the men in Tristan’s platoon had been afraid when they’d been confronted with the enemy. Maybe she’d simply never seen a gun before - maybe she didn’t know he could be dangerous to her. It’d be impractical to scare her off, but still, he kept a hand on the grip, in case he needed it.

It sounded like she was hissing at him through her teeth, and it took a second for him to realise what that was. Words. An alien language he had no hope of understanding, at least not yet. With the Saurians he’d had help - there were interpreters and translation programs; they’d been communicating with humans long before the war began. And he’d spent enough time on their vessels to become more or less fluent. His survival had depended on it, knowing whether the guards were saying they were planning to feed him or kill him, eavesdropping on their schedules and habits the few times he’d thought he might be able to make an escape plan.

But here, he was on his own. No phrasebook to get him started, just a lot of strange sounds that all seemed to blend together at the back of her throat so that he could hardly tell them apart.

He started to shake his head, but stopped himself; he didn’t know what that would mean to her, or what he was responding to. “You don’t understand me, do you?” he murmured, trying to keep his voice gentle. It came out hoarse and tired. He tried Saurian too, a series of guttural consonants and clicks, even though he was sure it wouldn’t do any good. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t understand him, he thought. He didn’t know the protocol on this planet, what one was expected to say by way of greeting or any of that. At least if they didn’t share a language, he couldn’t say anything to offend her.

He wished he could say that he wouldn’t be there long enough for it to matter, but judging by the state of the ship, it looked like he was going to be on this planet for a while. So he gritted his teeth and stood up straighter, ignoring the way every movement hurt, and tried to at least look like a respectable soldier.

The language Kshana spoke consisted of very few sounds. A few hissings, a few vowels, something that sounded like a mix of a soft "dj" and a click, but so much of her language was non-verbal. So much was communicated through emotion alone that a full sentence could sound, to inexperienced ears, as nothing more than, "Djj-shakachth, Ksha-nah." And this was what she said to him. "I have been named Kshana," because perhaps he did not know.

In the very next second, she dropped her eyes, and searched for the proper way to apologise, because of course he knew. He was a star. More than that, he was her star and there was no reason this man did not know more about her than even she herself did. In her heart, she knew shame, and if he could feel her, in his heart he would know it too.

The guttural sounds scared her. They were more foreign than the consonants and vowels she was used to, and though the first time he spoke, while the language was strange, it was not so...animalistic. Perhaps they spoke a different language in the stars, and that was why he could not understand her, and neither could she him. But if that was the case, why had they had been given this language and no other?

She knew the answer. Because the stars are above her, she reasoned. So far above her that they must have a different country, a different forest, and so they named their forest differently than her own. Because the humble named the forest here, not the stars. Perhaps she could teach him the words for each tree, each animal, each creeping thing that crept upon the ground.

Mother, what does one do with a man from the sky?

He was in pain, she could see if not feel. The way his jaw was set, the way his shoulders were held. It was as if someone tied him to a board, how stiffly he stood. Kshana moved forward again. She was careful not to touch the thing that was not a star. Perhaps it was his house, and

I know him. I must know him, and so I must know what to do.

Gently, so gently, she touched her fingers to his hand that held the stone. His fingers were so large compared to her, though they seemed to her to shake in the slightest. In the way hers did when she tried to hide her fear. Kshana looked up to her star and worked his strange stone out from his hand to set it on the ground. With his hand empty, Kshana could turn it upwards, could run her fingers along his palm and fit them together. Her hand was so small compared to his, so slender and still.

"I cannot feel you," she whispered, lowering her eyes to the level of their hands. "I cannot feel you, but I see your pain." And with all her heart, she willed him to know just how badly she wanted to take it away.

A Thousand Thousand

When he woke again - minutes later? hours? - it was to bright light streaming through the slim, thick-paned windows. Bright light, and a loud repetitive banging that reverberated through his skull. The worst headache he could remember. Dry throat, a weird taste in his mouth, and gravity. That was enough to make him want to throw up, after three months in a shuttle with no gravity sim. At least there was a cool breeze on his face, and he could really breathe for the first time in what felt like years.

Except that was wrong. Recycled air didn’t move like that, didn’t smell like fresh clean bedsheets and rain. He had to be dreaming. But dreams didn’t hurt like this.

The button that should’ve unlocked his harness was jammed or broken, so he flicked open his switchblade to cut himself out, and staggered to his feet. Or tried to. His head hurt too much and his knees felt like they’d give way and he really wasn’t used to gravity. He let himself fall back into his seat and took a minute to assess the damage, blocking out his senses so he could think. One thing at a time.

The first thing was that he was alive and not missing any limbs, which was much better than he’d expected. The inside of the shuttle actually seemed relatively intact, except for the lack of blinking lights - a sure sign that the computers were fried. Great. So he was stuck here. But at least he was alive.

Alive, if not entirely unscathed. Everything ached. His left shoulder and his neck were too sore to move, felt like they were on fire every time he shifted, but he moved them anyway just to prove that he could. Pain lanced down his spine, but it was an aching-muscles kind of pain, nothing life-threatening. No broken bones. Good.

The back of his head smarted when he touched it, though, and his fingers came away bloody. He might have a concussion, then - that would explain the headache. But his thoughts were relatively clear and he’d woken up on his own, so once again it was nothing life-threatening. At least not immediately. Maybe it’d kill him in time, but he had other things to worry about before then, like oxygen and where the banging was coming from.

He forced himself to his feet and tried to find the source of the breeze. It couldn’t be real atmosphere - the chances of randomly landing on a planet with an earth-like atmosphere were impossibly small. But then again, it couldn’t be anything else. It didn’t take him long to find the breach in the hull letting in the air - a thin crack that let just a sliver of sunlight through.

It was definitely natural light, definitely fresh air. And he could breathe.

He supposed that a couple thousand years ago, when people had still believed in God, someone might have called this a miracle.

The next thing that required his attention was the noise. It wasn’t as loud as he’d originally thought, now that he could focus on it properly. Muffled, like it was coming from far away or through layers of metal. It echoed faintly around the whole shuttle so he couldn’t discern which direction it was coming from. He closed his eyes and counted beats. Not exactly regular - so it wasn’t mechanical. Could there be wildlife on this planet?

If so, it was a pretty good bet that whatever was hammering so insistently at the outside of the shuttle was dangerous.

Still, he had to figure out what it was. The windows weren’t much help; they weren’t designed for this much sunlight, and the glare was too bright to make out anything but a few indistinct blotches. So he could either hide in the shuttle like a scared Saurian kid, or he could open the hatch and have a look.

Neither option sounded appealing, but who knew, maybe the creature was edible. He had to think ahead.

It took more effort than it should have to stumble over to the hatch. It opened like a safe - the only mechanism on the whole ship that didn’t require a computer’s approval - and he turned the combination wheel slowly, painfully. When the hatch opened to blinding sunlight and a blast of cool air, he was leaning against the doorframe, one hand on his gun. He wasn’t sure what to expect.

He certainly wasn’t expecting another human. A beautiful, primitive woman with wild eyes and dark hair down to her knees, banging at the side of the shuttle with a rock.

"Bloody hell," he breathed. That was one too many coincidences for one day.

Somewhere to the right of her, the thing that was not a star moved. There was a distinct hissing sound when it lifted what she supposed was its mouth. Kshana was not sure why it was trying to make itself like a creeping thing to be feared. There was no getting past this thing's armor, and it was so large she could make a home in it. It had no need to be feared. Still, she watched it, lifting her hands and trying to ignore how they stung.

From the mouth emerged a man. At least, she assumed it was a man, judging by his profile. His hair was cut so terribly short that she could see his ears - was he an outcast? A deserter? Worse, still, was he a leper? Kshana could not make sense of him. She searched his face for signs of the stars. He was not silver, but the color of ash and bone. He may as well have been dead. But his eyes, the color of sweet water, they told her that he was alive. There was something like fear in them, something like recognition as well. Did he know her? He spoke words she did not know.

Mother, I am afraid.

He was not a beautiful woman dressed in the thinnest, finest of fabrics, he was not a tall creature who was here to quiet her fear, to take her hands in his and tell her who he was, who her mother was, what would become of her and her people. But Kshana worked it out, she reshaped the pieces of her dream to fit the reality. After all, she was no prophet. Her dreams would not perfectly mirror reality. She named him:

"My star."

Kshana had only ever thought the words before, but they came from her tongue as if she knew no other words. She spoke them again, louder this time, more confident, so that he might hear her over the pain of the forest. Perhaps the trees could only see the stars at night and this was why they cried out for an end. But they could not help the trees. It was beyond the humble power of her or her people, and so she sent out to them feelings of comfort.

Forest, be gentle, be sweet and quiet. He is my star. He is the man I have known all my life.

The rock fell from her hand as she approached him, came close enough, to touch him. Kshana was afraid, because it was not her perfect dream. She did not know if he would be gentle himself, if the stones he wore that glinted in the sunlight would not be used to hurt, if the stone in his hand would not be used to strike her down. She knew the sharp bite of the earth when it struck her against her forehead, shoulders, back, stomach. But she trusted him, she had been waiting for him. He would not harm her.

But perhaps he would. Perhaps the stars were not gentle. Perhaps they were cruel as the thing that was not a star had been. Her back purpled between her shoulder blades where the tree had caught her. Blisters were already forming on her knuckles where they were not cut. Who was to say he was no kinder? She could not feel him, could not know what he thought or felt or knew. But she trusted him, believed in him so fully that she thought he could be nothing other than what she knew him to be. This man, her star, he told her nothing, but she had dreamt of him every day, even if it was a silver woman, and not an ash and bone man she saw each night. And yet, and yet, even in the language she did not know, it was not an answer for the questions she had, and she had a thousand thousand. But there was one Kshana had to know now. One she had to ask, above all others.

Sorrow filled her lips and coating her words as they passed. "Why are you so quiet?"

A Thousand Thousand

Supposedly, the war was over, but Tristan was still fighting. In his head, every time he closed his eyes. In his dreams. He never used to dream before the war, but these days he kept waking up thinking he was back in a cell on the Saurian ship or on a battlefield somewhere across half the galaxy.

And fighting his own ship, apparently.

He’d woken up with the screams of soldiers - human soldiers; if the Saurians were even capable of screaming, he’d never heard it - echoing in his ears. It’d taken him a few seconds to sort that out from the very real beeping of the shuttle’s maintenance alarm. He’d been trained to recognise the sound in case of emergency, but that was years ago (at least he was pretty sure it was years), and the Saurian shuttle sounded different. More muted. Which made sense, he supposed, for a species with superior hearing. It was inconvenient for a human passenger, though.

He’d woken up from a dream where he was dying to a reality that didn’t look much better. Busted fuel circuit meant no ability to control his direction, which meant there was nothing he could do about the gravity of whatever planet that was in front of him. HD1543, the computer told him. Five minutes to impact.

He did the math in his head. Logically, there was about a ninety-five percent chance he was going to die, and nothing he could do about it - no possible way he could even attempt to go out there and repair the ship without burning up in the atmosphere himself. Nothing he could do but strap in and hold on and hope.

But that didn’t stop him from looking for a way out anyway. Animal instinct, the part of his brain that was still working properly informed him. Just like the caged bird in that poem Father had been so amused with when Tristan was a kid.

It took him two minutes of messing around with the circuitry and getting nowhere to get control of himself. Two minutes of shaking hands and just barely holding himself back from ripping the circuitboard out of the wall and throwing it across the cabin. As stupid and illogical as it was, he didn’t want to die.

He was a soldier, though. A human being, not a Saurian. If he was going to die, he could at least do it calmly. So he made his way back to the cockpit, the safest place on the shuttle, and strapped himself in, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. He willed his hands to stop shaking. He was probably going to die on an alien planet - really, if the impact didn’t kill him, the atmosphere or the wildlife would probably do it, or he’d just starve - and no one would ever know what had happened to him, and he’d just have to be okay with that.

He really was okay with that, he decided as the ship hit the atmosphere with a sickening jolt.

His eyes stayed closed as he fell with the ship, down through the atmosphere. To keep himself from counting down the seconds, he thought about Olivia. His sister. He wondered whether she’d made it through the war, whether she was doing her residency at a hospital by now, or whether she’d been called to the front as a military doctor. They’d been in desperate need of those when the war started. But he hoped she’d stayed far away from all of it, that the worst thing she’d ever see was her patients’ insides when she cut them open for surgery.

And then he stopped thinking, because with a rending groan, the shuttle hit hard ground and skidded what felt like two miles, and jolted him so hard he was sure he was going to be one big bruise if he got out of this alive. It was too hot, like the inside of a furnace, and there was smoke everywhere, choking him, blinding him.

Well, he thought just before everything went black. Not dead yet.

#a thousand thousand #this got realllly rambly here's hoping it makes sense to someone who isn't me

The impact sent her careening backwards. Kshana was thrown against a tree, feeling her skin heat up from the blast. She was lucky. She was far enough away that it would not hurt her too badly, only burn a bit and be gone when it was over. Still, her back would be bruised for a week, and it would go unnoticed only by Kshana herself until she tried to lie down. But that will be later. Here and now, she was sore and curious and afraid. Whatever had fallen from the sky, it had landed only a little ways away.

It was impossible to tell whether its coming had hurt the forest, or if the hurting has caused it to come. But it was here, and there was pain filling her mind, her eyes, filling her from the bottom up until the fear shook her hands and she convinced herself it was the star. This is why she feared its coming, not because she worried it was hurt. But because of the sheer number of trees begging for her to hear. Kshana put her hands over her heart so she wouldn't know if it was them or her own fear that filled her chest until it was impossible to breathe.

Mother, I am so small.

It took so long to reach where it had landed that Kshana had been able to convince herself that others would believe her, that it was a star, that it was a beautiful, beautiful woman come to kiss the heel of her palm and stop this screaming in her heart. She knew what she would say.

What should I do if words fail me?

She liked to think they would believe her, as quiet as she spoke, as humble as she stood. Kshana was no great woman among her tribe. But perhaps she was not without influence. They had to take the star in. Even if they had never been host to a star before, there was no denying a servant in the skies, the beautiful and silver people who lit up the dark so that the humble could see at night.

Even now, it glowed. A thing so bright and hot in the center of the forest, a great and glowing...thing. Something akin to stage fright washed over Kshana, though she did not know it by that name. She made so many excuses in her head for why it was not like her dream, why it felt so different, so...wrong. Perhaps it was not night, and she was not at a like, like she always was in her dreams, and perhaps this was not the star she had seen in her dreams, but surely this was her star. It had to be.

Will she comfort me?

But it was all wrong. There was no beauty here, no serenity, no gentle caress, Kshana was afraid, and the forest was dying here. But she could feel something moving. Something inside the glowing, smoking, dying thing that could not be her star because it was not beautiful and kind. Perhaps it was a sort of pot. And it had to be opened.

Her heart rammed itself against the inside of her chest as she approached the thing that was not her star. It was reflective like water, but this was no water. It smoked, like a fire, but it was not fire because it was sharp. She imagined that, if she touched it, it would be hard and solid, like shale perhaps, but not quite. She picked up a rock, thinking to break it, hoping it would shatter like pottery. Unlikely, she guessed, but Kshana hoped for it nonetheless.

She was close enough that it burned to be near, turned her fingers red and raw when she struck it with a stone. But if it opened, perhaps she could save the star.

Must I be the one to comfort her?

She could do it. Kshana could comfort. She rarely knew the words to say, but she could kiss away the fear, and she could hold her star's heart in her own until there was nothing but calmness between them both. There was a star in there, after all, Kshana told herself as she beat the thing that was not a star with her rock and burnt her fingers over and over again. There was one, and the only reason she could not feel it was because it was stuck inside, and stars could not show their emotions when they were trapped. It was how it was. At least, that's what Kshana told herself.

A Thousand Thousand

The forest went on forever. There were clearings here and there, or prairies or mountains, but mostly, there were trees, dotted by camps set up by tribes hundreds of miles apart - a distinct one spotted easily due to the smoke rising from their fires and, on occasion, a brown head poking up from the canopy, with long brown hair and curious brown eyes, glinting in the sunlight as she observed the sky.

It was a quiet day. The potter sculpted his clay, and the tanner refined the hides, but there was no loud dancing, no great music or shouts. A musician played quietly for his daughters, the son still too young to dance and suckling at the breast of one of his mothers. Among them was not Kshana, the youngest of the women. Old enough to be allowed out on her own, but too young to join the others as they care for the children. And so she sat at the top of the trees with the wind running its fingers through her hair.

Mother, she thinks. I dreamt again of the stars.

If she thinks loud enough, then it would reach them. The stars. Her mother. It had to, because no-one else would listen. No-one else was her mother.

She dreamt of the stars so often that Kshana began believing that they formed pictures in the sky, images from stories long forgotten so that no-one knew how they ended or began. Even the middle had been lost to time. And yet they were there. Stories lived in the stars with dreams and memories and lost ones who watched over the children before they were born. In her dream, Kshana met a woman from the stars. They were always women, though never the same, and never her mother. But they were always a beautiful woman who came down slowly, with silver skin and golden hair and eyes as dark as the night sky. And she would stand before Kshana and kiss the hearline on the heel of her palm, for that was where her fear resided, for why else would hands shake? And the stars kissed it away.

Why am I afraid when I meet them?

There were always some stars in the sky, pinpricks of light despite the sun's best attempts to overpower them. It was these stars Kshana clung to. These stars she watched closely, for they never moved across the sky, neither for seasons nor for hours nor anything else. Sentries of old, guarding the people Kshana knew and had known before she was born, and the people who came before and who will come after. Like the leaves never fail to bend between her fingers, feeling their love for a gentle touch, so too would the stars always do what they must.

She counted them, one-two-three, until she reached eight, but there was one more star to be counted. Nine. Nine spots of light in the sky, and the last one moved. Grew larger as it went across the sky. Kshana watched it, wondering if it was fleeing.

Do they fear me?

It fell lower in the sky, and she feared for the star now. Was she injured? Was she in pain? On the horizon, Kshana saw the star fall, and the forest turned red. A thousand thousand threads wrapped around her heart and every tree in the world pulled all at once and drove her forward, down to the ground and between the trees, towards the spot the star had chosen to rest.

Mother?

Her hands shook with the fear, and Kshana knew this was the reason she feared the star, though she ran towards it, faster and faster.

Why does the forest cry out in pain?