2023-06-18: Xenolith
- Cutscene: Xenolith
- Cast: Loren Voss
- Where: Voss Family Home
- Date: June 18th 2023
- Summary: Loren, at home, finds something unexpected.
BGM: (Sunless Skies ~ Maribeth Solomon & Brent Barkman - Of the Captain's Making) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t33k2xi7QZs
He supposes he ought to be grateful. The younger medics seemed to think he would be.
They'd actually said goodbye to him. As if, he doesn't know -- almost as if they didn't mind having him around.
Maybe he ought to be grateful. But then, they were the ones who wanted to go back home. They won't get it -- not yet, at any rate. They're not so low in the hierarchy that they're down on the surface at Command's pleasure alone. Still, he's the one who got what they're waiting for.
He stares at the ceiling of his old bedroom. It was his once, wasn't it? It feels like a lifetime ago.
His father had even been present, the first few nights. He hadn't been certain if he would have shown -- if his work would keep him away -- but surprise, he'd had a few somewhat awkward family dinners.
Just like always, his father had tried to convince him to leave Gebler behind -- with his background, he could even waive some of the usual requirements. Enter into a position in medical research, work his way up to something -- whatever a Voss could aspire to. It'd be better suited to his talents. And it'd be safer.
He'd thought about it.
He'd never see the surface again. Normal people in Etrenank have no reason to travel to the benighted world of Filgaia, or other worlds beyond the horizon.
He really had thought about it. He could withdraw from the life no one in his family thought he should have pursued and settle into the place that suited him. In time, perhaps he could even take a wife, have the expected children, achieve a sort of respect, and then--
Loren sits up suddenly, swinging his legs over the side of his bed.
He could do all that. But he already knows the answer. He's not going to change his way in this life. He can't even put the reason why into words. He's not doing this to atone for his brother's sins anymore. It's not about family pride. He's never going to be a hero in this conflict. He's not going to accomplish anything.
He can't put it into words but he knows its shape. He's been cursed, he supposes, rising to his feet at long last. That's why there's no contact between Etrenank and the surface.
Once you've set foot there, you'll end up cursed.
He hasn't seen his father in a few days. A project had come up at work. His father had expressed his apologies, but perhaps tomorrow, he'd be present at dinner. It'll be the same argument, one more time. He knows his father.
And he knows his mother. She isn't here -- probably isn't going to be here.. She'd tried. But he'd expected that. It's always easier for him to visit her than the reverse.
No one is here but him and Mirza. Mirza, who, no matter what happens, smiles that same smile. When he was younger, he thought it was genuine. He'd known the truth after a fashion by the time he'd first left the house for Jugend, but he hadn't really appreciated what it meant until later -- much, much later.
Loren had passed on Lan's words to her. After that... it was easier not to be around her. If he thinks about it too hard, it makes something in him twist. He's kept to his room, gone out when he's felt able. Not that there's much for him to go to. Not that there's much for him to do. Always, he feels like they're looking at him-- surviving son of the disgraced Voss family. In his early twenties and still unmarried.
Approaching his desk, he starts to pull away, only to pause, his hand still on the chairback. So this is already the pattern he's settled into again. Just like when he was at Jugend: when he was at home, he'd stay in his room.
It's what he does even on base, when he's not forced elsewhere -- when there aren't other things stealing his attention away. Once upon a time, he would have shaken his head and thought, 'so what', but...
Loren can't shake it aside so easily now. With a sigh, he leaves the chair and in short order, leaves his room. He needs to go... somewhere else, he settles on, standing there just outside the door to his room. Outside? Maybe he should take a walk. Maybe--
His gaze has settled on the door to the room opposite his. When he was younger -- old enough to have been at Jugend a few months, of course, but still younger than he is now -- his gaze would avoid it out of reflex. Now he's staring right at it. Like a possessed person, he approaches the door to his brother's room and slowly opens the door.
The last time he'd been in here had been to get Lan out of here. Other than her, other than Mirza, he's sure no one has been in here since... since, well.
That.
It's his brother's shrine, Lan had said. The air in here is crisp: here a citrus' leaves shift faintly in the breeze of the ventilation ducts. There, a hibiscus showcases a bud that will bloom in a few days. Engil had loved plants, and how fortunate he had been to have been born into a class that would permit him keep the real thing. Their father had sighed about it and mother had been inscrutable on the matter as usual, but this garden had remained as his brother had left it. Did they tell Mirza to take care of the plants, or was that something she decided for herself...?
He remembers after a moment more that he needs to breathe -- breathe regularly, at least. There's the ghost of that old panic, there again: trying to rise up his spinal column. --But he can acknowledge it now, can't he? Once you can name the demon, it becomes easier to banish. Allegedly, anyway.
It's because of the last time he'd been in here, after Engil had died, but before Lan had forced him to acknowledge the door and the room beyond it. Crouching before a potted apple tree, he reaches out and touches its trunk.
...Yeah. He remembers asking his brother if it would make fruit. Engil had laughed and said, probably not. Something about light and darkness. About pollinators. Other trees.
He'd come in here a while after Engil had died and he had broken. Right down the middle, to continue the figure of speech, and after a time, he'd put himself back together as best he could. That's... what had happened. That's all it was.
"You'd have made fun of me," he tells the tree, patting the bark once before moving his hand away. "I think, anyway." Loren sighs and, grimacing, shakes his head. "I don't know. I'm not you. But..."
He drops back, onto his haunches. "...sometimes I still wish I could be. Or-- wish I knew what I should do." With an even weightier sigh, he leans back, falling heavily against the foot of his brother's bed. It, in turn, thumps against the wall as he turns his head towards the ceiling and the ceiling vent there.
...Odd, Loren thinks, after staring at it for a long moment. It's almost as if something is partially--
He scrambles to his feet after. It takes standing on the bed and some precarious balancing to reach the vent, but then, Engil had been taller, too.
It's a thin volume notebook, and that already sends alarm bells ringing in some part of Loren's mind. There are only two real reasons someone would write on paper in Etrenank, and Engil hadn't been an aficionado of primitive communication forms. The other reason is because...
...it's easier to keep hidden what the system, by definition, never sees you write down.
The notebook shakes in his hands as he parts the pages and skims the contents. In a way, he already knew what he was about to find.
It still doesn't make the discovery any easier.
"Oh no, you didn't..."