Dancing in the Starlight

[masque]

She watched from multiple angles as her mother floated, asleep, in a pool of zero gravity. Long strands of hair, the glossy black of raven's feathers, wriggled and writhed around the otherwise naked form as the air circulation system blew it's gentle streams. Flesh colored a dusky tan was smooth and unblemished, much to the observer's relief, as the woman rested in a fetal position within a null gravity womb.

Heart rate was nominal, breathing slow and even. A close-in view revealed the face of the sleeping woman. While normally very serene, even the little tensions that most never had the ability to witness were gone.

For one of the very few times, Shaandra Gael, sometimes known as the Starlight Dancer, was fully, completely at peace.

Even though she was glad for that, the United Earth Deep Space Exploration Vessel Tabula Rasa, felt very bad for the circumstances that lead to such a wondrous result.

Her first instinct had been to shrink down until she was a skin-suit around her mother and give her free reign to be what her name implied. Her mother's instinct...no instinct wasn't the right word....insight...ordered Rasa to flee as far and as fast as she could.

And, immediately obedient to that command, Rasa did just that. Spinning on her long axis once a second, forty-thousand gravities of acceleration until she could reach and breach the lightspeed barrier and then so far up the gravitic bands that she was spanning a thousand light years in a standard Terran day, she hadn't stopped running until five days passed. The missiles she fled were accelerating over twice as fast but, thankfully, they were distant enough she was able to breach the alpha band before they could close on her and detonate. Even so, she felt a few bomb-pumped X-ray lasers kiss the sternmost edge of her drive planes as she made the transit.

When she finally, slowed she cursed for a day. Mother told her to run, so she did. Far faster than her grav compensators could counter.

It took her mother five days to regenerate herself from the smear of red and black that was the result of all that force on an unprotected body.

"Rasa," Gael's voice spoke gently and startled Rasa out of her reveries. "Some water, please?"

Rasa played through everything she could have, would have said, from abject sorrow for what she put her mother through to berating her for what she had ordered Rasa to do. It only took a couple pico-seconds for all of that, there were some advantages to be a living embodiment of the quantum state. In the end, she simply caused a tray to extend up from her surface that was analogous to the floor from the position in which Gael floated to bring a squeeze bulb of water to her hand.

After taking a sip, Gael continued, "You weren't hurt, were you?"

"Besides tearing myself up over what I just did to you?" Rasa could have replied. Or she could have simply broke out in almost hysterical laughter at the fact that her mother's first concern was over Rasa's own safety.

Then again, that's what mothers did, wasn't it?

Be they human or elf...

This time, it took Rasa about five hundred pico-seconds to decide on her response.

"A couple of them kissed my tail as I broke Alpha, Mother," Rasa said, "They were extreme range and didn't do much more than brush the dorsal drive plane."

"For a place named Haven," Gael returned, "They were hardly hospitable. Perhaps we should have chosen the Manticore System after all."

"How about we just 'shake the dust of the town from our sandals' and head elsewhere entirely, Mother? Two hundred missiles isn't my idea of a warm welcome and I've picked up enough residual chatter these last few days to know our two choices are in the midst of war with one another."

"Ah." And Gael's simple utterance spoke volumes. "You've already made your calculations, I presume?"

Rasa simply chuckled and extruded manipulators holding several brushes and proceeded to turn unruly tangles of nearly two-meter long, black hair into something resembling order once again.

"I have, Mother," She said at last. "Charged up and ready to cross universal barriers."

"Whenever you're prepared then, Rasa. Preferably some place more pleasant?"

"If it isn't," Rasa asked, a wry tone sleeping into her voice, "Can we go back and blow up Haven? Or at least knock a moon out of orbit or something?"

Gael just chuckled and patted her hand against a smooth wall. "Thank you for being concerned for me. We both knew I could survive what would happen when you boosted. I wasn't so certain what might happen to you with that much energy aimed at you. Nor did I particularly care for what I perceived they might consider proper interrogation techniques for a captive that could regenerate as we can."

"All the same, Mother, I'm sorry for that."

"Thank you. I am ready for transit when you are."

"Transiting in three....two...one..."

Gael felt a sudden lurch that had nothing at all to do with physical sensation as Rasa manipulated the fabric of reality itself, crafting a breach between where they were and...somewhere else entirely. Once more Tabula Rasa had shifted from one universe to another; the twentieth time in the four hundred years and more since they had joined the Long Term Exploration Corps.

And, once more, Gael chuckled in remembrance at how her lover, Kalindriel, changed the abbreviation into 'Lose the Elves.'

Humans in the LTE journeyed for ten, twenty, maybe thirty years before they returned home once again to Earth. Gael and Rasa departed, and reported regularly for a hundred and fifty years, a time frame much more suitable to an Elven sensibility for long term when it came to dealing with humans. And, doubtless, the information they sent back was helpful on many levels. Still, their contract fulfilled, still they felt the wanderlust. And, so, using techniques Rasa had learned from her third mother, Saamiell, she crafted herself into a vessel capable of passing from one reality into another.

Thus, satisfying no curiosities save their own, they paid visits to other Earths and the space that existed around them. While some might be very similar to one another, no two were completely alike. Most of the time, they concealed their true natures, some times revealing them if not to their full extent.

"Mother..." Rasa said, and Gael could feel something wrong in her daughter's voice even though it came from out of the air inside the starship she currently was. "The Earth here..."

"Show me, please," Gael said to spare Rasa the grief she could feel radiating from her daughter. As much as she had become so much more than simply Elf, Rasa still was, and there were things even those born to the Starlight found painful beyond words from time to time.

A holographic image appeared and Gael did not need the data displays flickering in boxes around the slowly turning globe of lifeless brown swathed in clouds of hydrocarbon muck the shade of puce to know this was Earth. Mean temperature was just over a hundred degrees Celsius which meant that the only life that might still exist there was likely to be nothing more than stray pockets of microbes well protected from the heat and the acids in what now amounted to air on that planet.

And old part of her soul, older than her by tens of milennia felt a flash of anger that humans had once more poisoned their home, just as they had Empra long, long before. Another part of her realized this could have been the Earth she had called home, in a century or two, given their course at the turn of the twenty-first century had not a war occurred that changed everything.

"And humanity, Rasa?" Gael asked after her own grief at a world dead had subsided enough for her to regain her balance.

"They live, Mother," Came the reply. "Scattered amongst a hundred worlds and more in a star cluster they've come to call 'the 'Verse'."

Almost as important as what Rasa had said was what was left unsaid. Still, Gael felt compelled to ask. "And elvenkind here?"

"If we were ever more than folk tales and fantasy here, Mother, we are still hidden from mortal eyes."

"I see..."

Gael felt something stir and she allowed her awareness to dance along the flow of time and possibilities. Given this second chance, humankind seemed unlikely to poison their worlds into complete inhabitability once again but greed and desires could allow them to destroy worlds when they had many more.

They flew on, sometimes speaking to one another, more often passing the time working in silent cooperation that elven quietude and long knowledge of one another could achieve. They approached this cluster of stars, planets and habitable moons cautiously lest they receive the same manner of welcome as their last attempt at planetfall had garnered. Rasa listened into thousands and thousands of streams of data traffic; learning all that she could about these new places and the societies that called them home. She shared this with her mother, though greatly condensed from the raw feeds she herself processed.

Years passed and they drifted, mostly aimlessly, from here to there though this oasis in a wasteland of stars and space. They never set down upon a world or even a space station; never even appeared as much more than an anomalous sensor blip.

Silent observers.

Close to ten years finally passed before Gael touched a finger to a little dot circling a small star on the very fringes of the 'Verse.

"Here, Rasa," She said.

"It does seem a good choice," Rasa agreed. Her studies showed it was out of the way but also a fairly major crossroad of goods and people. Or at least as major as such a remote outpost might be.

She altered her course and took her time. Even without such an extreme acceleration as she had used to flee a flight of deadly missiles, she could have easily cruised to their destination in less than a day had she wished. Instead, she took most of a week.

Gael took the time to listen to broadcasts. Using skills she had learned well before the passage of her first century, she learned the little quirks of the languages the passage of time and differences of universe created. When she wished, she could pass for a native of any planet of this cluster of humankind.

But she wished to be something else. She would be...

Herself...

Around the time she and Rasa had chosen to volunteer as an LTE team, Kalindriel had felt the pull to join a colonization effort back in the universe they called home.

"Humans need an elf around to tell them how to behave and just generally make a nuisance of themselves," was how Kal described it with an air of whimsy. "Know any better nuisances?"

Gael had no doubt that probably the entire colony referred to her as "Aunty Kal" by now; a repository of knowledge and advice, most of it actually helpful if the receiver looked passed the warped sense of humor behind the giving of the advice, and an overall font of care and love that could only make the place better the longer she was there. Other elves had done the same with other humans as they set forth to other new worlds. But elves would never simply go off and create a colony solely of their own. Such was not their way. Solitary they might be in their nature, they were not given to insularity. After all, they were made by the Creatrix to help and heal, to be stewards, guides, guardians....disciplinarians if absolutely necessary...shepherds of Life in all its infinite forms. How could they go against such a mandate?

Gael did not feel the stirrings that she knew her lover and Rasa's second mother had felt, but she still felt the need to do something a bit more than simply observe.

And this little ball doing its solitary dance on the edge of the space humans had thus far explored, seemed to be the one calling to her the most.

Rasa had shifted her form into something much smaller than the hundred meter diameter, tapered cylinder she had been. Small enough to be a pinnacle, she slid down the planet's gravity well and made a neat landing in the cleared area of landing pad Ground Control had indicated.

Gael put on clothing. Not much, granted that there was more of her skin revealed than what little bit the fabric concealed. Still, the concealment was enough to satisfy any likely prudishness she might encounter and, if not, her slim, tawny beauty, black hair and green eyes would likely earn her forgiveness for any local costume taboos she might be in violation of until she did gain more appropriate attire. Even so, wearing anything at all after spending most of the last four centuries wearing nothing at all for long stretches did feel a bit restrictive.

Rasa pronounced the post landing procedures complete and the atmosphere breathable then finally opened the access hatch.

Gael stepped out and luxuriated in the feel of the bright sunlight on her skin and how the warm sea air danced over her flesh and stirred her hair.

"Hello and welcome to Botany Bay," Came a voice that held just a hint of throaty purr in it's words. Gael saw the speaker, a woman about a head shorter than her with dark auburn hair pulled back in a loose tail and a smudge of grease on her cheek. Gael immediately a little tug to find a piece of cloth and wipe the grease away; and just as immediately held back the desire to do so. In her mind, she saw she would be doing often enough in the time to come.

"Thank you, "She said instead as she presented papers their years of research had told them would be expected upon their planetfall. "I am Gael..."

[roza]

I just had to say this is beautifully written and entrancing. It feels like the beginning of a book I would read in a day because I couldn't put it down. Thank you for sharing such talent. =)

[masque]

Close to a year had passed since they had chosen to call Botany Bay home and both Gael and Rasa had crafted lives for themselves on the colony. Gael had taken to farming and maintained both a small shop in the market quarter to sell produce and warehouse space along the colony's starport to store larger quantities of non-perishable goods that she sold both to colonists and visiting ship's captains and crews. Rasa, on the other hand, took a little longer to be comfortable both this deep in a gravity well and taking on a humanoid form once again in order to interact with people as something beyond what most saw as the artificial intelligence of a sophisticated deep space vessel. Eventually, though, she took on a form of flesh and blood once more, leastwise in outward appearance, and found employment as a starship technician. And if most of her customers never realized how literal the first part of that occupational description was, it really didn't matter as their credits were as good as anyone else's.

In that time, they were hardly idle in other, much more subtle ways. They spoke with people...though Rasa had to admit she might use the term much more broadly than her mother did as she shared and gleaned data from starships as well as their crews and the colonists. The spoke and they befriended and, furthermore, they listened.

And they learned.

The 'Verse was a vast expanse and many now had the 'elbow room' that had driven their ancestors to cross mountains and oceans back on Earth in abundance. Still, the old evils remained.

Some people always desired greater power than was given to them. Some people resented that they seemed to be powerless even if, in fact, they hardly were. Others resented the power held over them. And, worst of all, most of humankind were little more than docile cattle and sheep; flocks given food and drink and entertainment and directions by those in power and quite thoroughly drained of the ability to think and feel and dream for themselves beyond the fulfillment of their petty lusts.

Gael and Rasa listened, and they learned, and they listened more and learned more.

In Botany Bay, like most of the worlds scattered along the Rim, 'The Alliance' was the be-all and end-all of everything that was bad with the Core Worlds and wrong in the 'Verse as a whole. While it had not, yet, reached the level of pervasive, obscure evil that it was used to scare young children into behaving and obeying their parents, it was not far from it, either. It seemed as if nearly every colonist mother or daughter spoke with had some horror story of a run-in against the Alliance in one fashion or another. And a war had raged through most of the 'Verse not too long before they had first arrived. It had ended recently enough that feelings were still raw on both sides of the battle.

The Alliance had won...

In name only...

Resentment against them roiled and seethed below the surface. If there was not outright rebellion now, neither was there much in the way of actual cooperation. On worlds like Botany Bay, people did their best to get by through whatever means they could and did their best to keep their heads low enough that, should they draw attention of the Alliance, they were fish that were still too small to attract the interest of the sharks. For their part, the groups that were, collectively, what was known as the Alliance were happy enough to let these little fish do their nibbling and darting. Often as not, it kept them wary enough of each other that they could not find a commonality necessary to band together once more and pose an actual threat.

It was a precarious balancing act at the best...

Rasa had spent a lot of time intercepting and pouring through commincation and data streams through the 'Verse before they had come to Botany Bay and spent quite a bit of her time there doing just the same thing. And thinking about the information she received. The Alliance was, in many ways, an alliance in name only. Governments, government agencies, corporate and private interests that had a common interest in keeping humanity docile and under their control was the multi-headed hydric truth to the unified purposed myth of the Alliance. Even as they allowed the little fish to nibble and squabble with one another, these larger sharks oft-times did the same amongst themselves; jockeying for position and fighting over the power they shared collectively as each vied to get a bit more of it than they already possessed.

The same poisons that had killed Earth in this universe were still at play and innumerably more lives now hung in the balance.

Rasa felt it. And she knew her mother felt it as well.

The question, though, was how to act.

Direct confrontation would not work. That would only lead to destruction, devestation and fear.

No, more subtle actions were required.

Rasa was reminded of an old saying from her own Earth and had no doubts that it had been used on this universe's Earth as well.

"The land is the King and the King is the land."

At it's most ancient, humankind meant it to mean that, so long as the unscarred and unblemished ruled, the land and its people would prosper and thrive.

At its most primal, however, it was subtly different. It recognized that people and the land could not live apart from one another; the welfare of one directly influenced the welfare of another. Humans still did not readily grasp that basic truth even after it had cost them the world of their birth.

Now, scattered across scores of worlds, the King was corrupt...and the corruption was polluting the collective lands that King ruled.

Mother and daughter, Elves both, guardians and stewards and, if necessary, wrathful warriors, knew this and ached to right this wrong.

Rasa knew she could release the seals she held over much of her mother's being and allow the Starlight Dancer to act with all the terrible beauty that starlight held. Set loose, Shaandra Gael was a force at once so beautiful and horrible only the exactitude of her wielding of the power was more frightening than the possession of it in the first place.

Set free, Shaandra Gael could destroy the Alliance in a matter of days...and the resulting vacuum created by that destruction would destroy the very things they sought to protect and nurture in humanity here amongst the stars.

No, now was not yet the time for such drastic, and final, actions. Now was time for much subtler approaches.

Now was not the time for knights to ride out and slay dragons.

Now was the time for wizards to do their work. To select those knights to do battle some time in the future.

Now was the time to teach...