Unfinished History
Created | Updated Aug 26, 2004
Part Four
There was an unusual kind of silence as they climbed into the flyer and prepared to depart. Arkyna was clearly exhausted and it had taken a great deal of effort from her brother and her parents to get her over the fallen trees to the flyer. Riik was clearly in awe of what his sister had done and treated her with a gentle tenderness. Zaya had turned pale, but helped her children with the instinctive protectiveness of motherhood. Ashlar said nothing at all.
As they lifted off the ground, Arkyna stirred in her seat and smiled.
'See what I did,' she said, gesturing out of the canopy at the clear patch she had blasted open in front of the cave. Riik leaned over and gave her a hug. Zaya grew paler. Ashlar's lips tightened. Riik observed the actions of his parents and frowned.
'You don't seem pleased,' he said. 'She saved my life.'
'You shouldn't have been out here in the first place. There was a space for you on the Tireless,' Ashlar said.
'I had to warn-'
'Your sister shouldn't have been out here either.'
'She didn't know about the storm. She would have died out here by herself!'
'That is highly unlikely.'
'And what's that supposed to mean?'
Ashlar set the flyer to hover and turned around in his seat to look at his children. Arkyna was regarding him with a wary expression on her face.
'Survival instinct,' he said. 'It is very rare for a natural phenomenon to kill a Psidar.'
There was silence, save for a gasp from Zaya. Uttering the word which had hung unspoken between them sent what felt like an electric shock through the air, although it affected each of the four occupants of the flyer in a different way. Arkyna was the one who eventually broke the silence.
'And what,' Arkyna said, 'do you know about Psidar?'
'Myths. Rumours. Stories of things that happened to the cousin of a friend of your friend's sister. Enough to know what you are.'
'The Alledari Encyclopaedia says I'm mythical.'
'The Alledari Encyclopaedia is produced by the Alledari government, who say that Psidar are mythical. That's the official line. Unofficially... there are enough stories, enough new ones, that it's difficult to think that the Psidar don't exist.'
'What kind of stories?'
'Many kinds of stories, but some of the most regular ones are the disappearances.'
'Disappearances?'
'Children about your age. Young adults, really. Occasionally a son or a daughter vanishes. Sometimes someone else in the family claims that people came and took the missing family member away with them to be trained as a Psidar.'
'But nobody knows?'
'Nobody ever knows for certain. The parents generally claim their child has run away. I assume that if they have been taken by the Psidar the parents are sworn to secrecy. It's even possible they truly believe that, rumour puts the manipulation of memory within the considerable capabilities of a Psidar.'
'I see.'
There was another long silence before Arkyna spoke again. 'So people don't actually like Psidar very much, do they?'
Ashlar gave her a long, steady look. His eyes were a vivid orange, patterned with darker streaks radiating from the small pupil at the centre out under the eyelids. They were a stark contrast to Arkyna's own, which displayed more of a pattern of concientric circles expanding from the pupil, dark rings in a forest green.
Looking into her father's eyes as she had grown up Arkyna had often thought they contained a great wisdom. Now they seemed only to contain a great sadness. In an instant of empathy such as she rarely had, but which were a staple of Riik's life, she saw that he was grieving for her.
'No,' he said. 'They don't.'
There was silence for a moment more, then Ashlar turned back to the controls and got the flyer moving again. They cruised over the battered landscape in silence broken only by the hum and whoosh of the flyer's engines and the wind over the canopy. Exhausted from the storm and the effort of digging a way out of the cave, Arkyna found herself dozing off and never even noticed as her father set the flyer gently down amidst the remains of the settlement.
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When Arkyna awoke, the sun had set again. She was surprised to find herself in her own bed, in her own room. It was dark, darker than she had ever known it to be in her room at night, but the room was familiar enough that she could recognise it just by the feel of the bed and a special quality in the air which she always associated with her own room, her sanctuary.
It wasn't the same as usual though. As she lay with her eyes open, in the very faint light seeping into the room she could just make out the wall rising up from the side of the bed, although the ceiling was in darkness, but it wasn't seeing the wall as one would usually see it. The wall wasn't solid, the solidity was an illusion made by billions upon billions upon billions of atoms, all vibrating slightly in the overall structure of the wall. She could see through the paint's atoms to those of the smooth wall panels behind it and the structural beams behind those. It was still her room, very much her room, but she saw so much more of it than before.
Something wasn't entirely right with the room. With that realisation the other vision faded and was gone, leaving her firmly back in the mundane world again. It was disorienting; the brief glance into the atomic scale had made her appreciate reality in a whole new way and, just as the insight was starting to make sense, it was gone.
She sat up, reaching out automatically for the light, but the panel which should have illuminated the room did nothing when she touched it. It wasn't really surprising that the power would be down after the storm. She took her hand away from the light switch and held it palm up. Slowing her breathing she reached into herself and found the calmness her power had flowed from before. It took her seven measured breaths to find it then, with the gentlest of touches, she drew it forth and, as she exhaled, a point of bluewhite light appeared above her palm.
She let it grow brighter, feeling the warmth of Psi flowing through her into the world, feeling the slight rush as it toppled over the limits she had set upon it, Psi changing to light, one kind of energy to another. With the room illuminated she could see that it hadn't escaped the storm entirely undamaged. There were cracks in the wall which divided her room from the bathroom and the cracks spread across the ceiling as well. Those cracks were what made the room feel different - some of them were wide enough to let air flow through from the bathroom and it felt like outside air.
Her wardrobe, on the opposite wall which bordered Riik's room, was intact and contained several sturdy, nondescript outfits. She chose a pair of trousers and a top and changed into them, noting with a faint sense of surprise that someone had managed to get her into her nightclothes without waking her up. She must have really been exhausted.
Once dressed she emerged from her room and found that the living room was occupied. Riik sat in a chair, poking at a handheld computer by the light of a portable lantern. He looked up as Arkyna approached, and smiled at her. It was a broad smile, warm and welcoming.
'Slept enough yet?' he asked.
'Just about. How long have I been asleep?'
'Most of a day and night. It's only an hour or so until dawn.'
'Where are mother and father?'
'Father's out helping get the backup generators running. They've got one working so far, but most of that's going to power the medical centre. The wind farm didn't survive the storm, although I understand all the solar collectors need is digging out from underneath the pile of broken trees and mud that ended up on top of them and reconnecting to the power grid. Needless to say, none of the overhead wires survived.'
Riik turned to one side and produced a bag from the side of the chair. 'Here, have something to eat. You must be ravenous.'
Arkyna realised as he mentioned it that she was, in fact, terribly hungry and took the bag from him eagerly. It contained some wild fruit, and biscuit-like things which had to have come out of emergency supplies. They were bland, but the fruit made up for the flavour, and she was hungry enough that she would have eaten just about anything. When she finished, Riik picked up the lantern and gestured toward the door.
'People will be expecting to see us,' he said. He looked meaningfully at Arkyna's ball of light. 'Father hasn't told anybody you're a Psidar,' he said. 'I think maybe you shouldn't show off to people for now.'
Arkyna let the light die.
'I think you're right,' she said. 'We need to have a proper talk with him and mother as well. Before I decide what to do.'
Riik nodded. 'That seems sensible,' he said. 'Come on, people will want to see that you're alright. I've already had to send Delar away once, he's determined to point that scanner of his at you. Might as well give him the opportunity so he can go and attend to someone who actually needs his help.'
'I'm sure he only wants to make sure I'm okay. We did spend a night in a cave in the middle of the storm after all and he doesn't know we had an unconventional advantage.'
'Unconventional advantage! I like it.' Riik opened the door and stepped out into the night. 'Come on. If we're lucky, there'll be some more food about.'
Smiling, Arkyna the Psidar followed her brother out into the remains of the settlement.
