You Can See Them If You Try
His family had always known the spirits.Â
That was what his grandmother had told him. The spirits had helped guide them through hardship, through their encounters with the Dominion, through the constant running. They were there to soften a nasty blow, to give them strength when they needed it, to guide them through life.Â
His grandmother had been taught to see them by her mother, who had been shown the spirits by her parents in turn.
"You will see them too if you look hard enough," his grandmother told him. It was one of his earliest memories, and he took it to heart. He looked as hard as he could.
--
His grandmother saw the spirits often. "There is Toma," she would say, "the spirit of growth. He watches over the children, the animals, the plants. He had prevented many a scraped knee for you, you know, when you were first learning to walk."
Baxter believed her, though he couldn't recall ever seeing Toma. Sometimes he would trip on purpose just to see if Toma would catch him, but it never seemed to work.
--
When he was older, his grandmother made him help her ministrations in the clinic. One day his grandmother pulled him aside, and gestured towards the still form of a young man on a bed.Â
"There is Mala, the spirit of passing," she told him, in hushed tones. "There is nothing more we can do for him, and so Mala wipes his heated brow and eases his aching muscles. She will carry him off gently into the dawn."
Baxter thought maybe he could see something, if he squinted hard enough, but soon the blur of tears obscured whatever might have been there.Â
--
He had asked her once if other people saw the spirits.Â
"No, no," she had told him. "If you do not believe and in the spirits, you cannot see them. But they are still there, guiding everyone. They ask for nothing in return."
At night, when his grandmother soothed him off to sleep, she would tell him stories from long past. Stories of how the spirits had helped her own mother, through hardship and good times.Â
"People would say she was crazy. But we know the truth, little Baxter. Some people will never be open to the spirits, and that is okay," she whispered. "Keep quiet about them, and do your best to help others so they may see some kindness as we do."
Baxter had nodded, and promised that he would.
He never told her he couldn't see them either.Â
--
Baxter often wondered if he just wasn't believing hard enough. He had never had any reason to doubt what his grandmother had told him; things really did seem to go well for the two of them even when it shouldn't. Â
Sometimes they even seemed to be helping him-- he once flipped a coin eighteen times and it landed on the side he predicted every time. (When he got over the shock, and tried to show someone, it didn't work anymore.)
But that was the problem with the spirits: so often they could be chalked up to coincidence, or hidden strength they had always possessed. Who was to say that Mala really made a dying man feel better? Who was to say that Awato, spirit of the hearth, really did find their lost things, and that they hadn't just remembered where they'd left them?
He had been tinkering with bots ever since he was a little boy, and his grandmother would often look over his work approvingly, and tell him that Kopelli, the spirit of crafting, was working hard through him.Â
He didn't think that was true, but his bots nearly always came out exactly the way he had envisioned.
--
They both grew older. After his grandmother retired from the clinic work, she began to see the spirits more often. She said they were strengthening her, helping her old bones to do young things. She would talk about the spirits openly now, and others pulled away, frightened by her ravings; she didn't seem to care.
But despite the help of the spirits, she grew frailer. Baxter put his robotics work aside for a time to look after her, to make food and clean the house and give her her medicine.Â
And one night, when he helped her into bed, she looked past his shoulder and told him that Mala was there.Â
"It's not Mala, grandmother," he told her. "You're not sick."
But for a horrifying moment, he thought he could see her. A woman clad in white, her long dark hair bleeding into the shadows in the room.
His grandmother passed away in her sleep.
--
Baxter threw himself back into his work. He started a shop on Nexus, and then partnered with Toller to make realistic androids. Toller would marvel over his work, telling him that they were the most lifelike things she had ever seen.Â
"Kopelli''s watching over me," he would try to joke, but it didn't feel like a joke.
He worked very, very hard, and he never saw the spirits again.
