a glimpse of the likely future -
(The Star-Scarred Navigator says little and expresses less, prone to cold, efficient violence even when a few words might do the trick. They could be anywhere from twenty to thirty, any possible age-lines concealed behind the scars that break their skin; and don’t you have better things to worry about than their age, anyways?
Like - the fact they’re a navigator, and not just a navigator but a Navigator, but - they’re blind, aren’t they? Or might as well be, with that blindfold on. Not even the Captain can name what’s wrong with their eyes, only that something shouldn’t be about them; like they looked straight into a star and came out different - so, star-scarred. There’s the scar ringed round their neck, deep, like some immense blade cut through flesh and gristle and bone; and if you ask them if they lost their head once, they only laugh and say in a dream, maybe.
And they don’t die. But up here in the High Wilderness, amongst all these oddities -- is someone whose flickering, unexistent soul carries a place of honor amongst the Judgements in a dream-that-was-real, in the three possible/true realities that their not-existence is tethered to -- are they really that strange? Are they really that unusual?
Very few Seekers ever made it out of the Neath. But some survived, after what Lilac did to them; they survived the Nadir and they survived the dream-that-was-real, too stubborn to not-die, and the parallel of them cool-cold diamond flame/flickering bright/half-loyal agent of a true star keeps them tethered to the world against all odds forevermore.)
