Braq, radji Cradle ecologist
Date [standardised human time]: November 6th, 2117
(18 years, 10 months before the invasion of the radji Cradle).
Turin’s belly had started to show, and Braq was surprised by how much the sight filled him with both delight and dread. To see this family grow was a joy he had long ago given up on, and he was thrilled that Ki-yu would be able to spend time around another child. But on some level, he also was wary of that increased responsibility that raising a second child would bring. All worth it, he reminded himself, it’ll all be worth it.
Between the construction of another room and the increasing upkeep of the lodge, Braq’s trips into the city had become more frequent. His first child was becoming increasingly unruly in that regard, asking insistent questions about the world beyond the forest and the valley. Braq could not blame her for being curious, but he was worried her curiosity might one day get the better of her.
Braq exited the lodge to find Turin kneeling in the vegetable garden, plucking up roots. Her figure was erring towards plump now, a good sign. The morning air had a chill to it as summer started to wane. The leaves of rip-bark trees on the forests edge had started to yellow.
Ki-yu was walking along the wall of the garden bed, her scales now rapidly approaching the slate grey of an adult pyq. She was also no longer exactly small; sitting on her haunches her head sat a little above Braq’s knees. The wall was made of large, cobbled stone, and she was slowly growing more confident with balancing on her hindlimbs. She would pounce from one to another, and then, standing up on shaky limbs, would wobble in place, throwing her forearms and tail about.
As Braq approached them Ki-yu threw her arms too wildly and fell into the soft dirt Turin was digging in with an ‘Oof!’
“Ki-yu!” Turin cried out but sighed when she leapt up giggling. “Be careful darling.”
“Are you scaring your mother again?” Braq asked playfully. Ki-yu tittered.
“Sorry Mama,” she chorused. Shaking the dirt off herself, she looked up at Braq. “Are you going into the city again?”
“I’ve got some errands to run,” he told her, and she looked down at the dirt dejectedly. “How about you go and play with Boubou, hm?” he suggested, and she looked up happily. Ki-yu had been spending some time playing with the shadow monitors, supposedly she found them cute. Turin had thought it nice that she had someone to play with, and that maybe she might find friends in the little predators. He bent down and flicked some dirt off her nose, and she sneezed and giggled at the tickle. “Promise you’ll behave?”
“Nope!” she quipped with a grin. “Bye Baba.” She jumped out of the garden and ran off behind the lodge. He turned to his partner who offered him a look of parental schadenfreude. He smiled and shook his head.
“What’ll she teach the new one, eh?” Turin chuckled, standing and brushing the dirt from herself. Braq wrapped his arms around her.
“You seemed to sleep better last night. Weren’t kept awake?” he asked her. She shook her head.
“Seemed better, although I might have felt a kick at one point.”
“Really?” Braq said, pulling back a little. “Isn’t that a little early.” Turin shrugged.
“Dunno. Don’t know when it happened,” she said. She rolled her eyes at his worried expression and grabbed him playfully by the chin. “I’m not made of spun glass you know. Not that I don’t appreciate this big protective man in my bed. In me.” She dropped her paws over his wide shoulders, her gaze heating whatever she looked at in the cool morning air. She sobered a little. “And I’d tell you lover, immediately, if I thought something was wrong.” Braq let out a heated breath and nodded down at her. She briefly pulled him back again, and nuzzled against his cheek, before bending down to pick up the vegetables.
“Hurry on back,” she told him. “I’ll want your help with catching some stiplets, I think it’s time we introduced them to the predators.”
“All of them?” Braq asked, suddenly chilled again. Turin froze.
“I… we’ll see.”
~*~
Braq got in the vehicle and set off west down the trail. The dirt track would have shaken the wheels off a regular vehicle’s chassis, but the buggy was a tough old thing, and they had made a few modifications over the years. Eventually the dirt ran out and he met the main road, where he turned north towards Bendara city.
Goal one for today was to restock on predator kibble. Their supply was ample enough for now, but Ki-yu was still growing fast, and if the other predators did not fancy the stiplets, they would be in trouble come winter.
His other objective was far less palatable: he needed a gun. Braq abhorred violence, but something sinister was lurking in the Brackwood. Simply put, he needed to be able to defend his family. He had never bought a firearm before; neither of them had seen any use in one until now. Guns were heavily controlled on the Cradle, a practice Braq supported; he had always thought that the last thing you wanted in a stampede was uncontrolled gunfire. But technically being a government employee and working in what was technically the wilderness granted them the right to a rifle for self-defence. Together they had ordered a lever-action plasma bolt rifle. It was slow firing, but precise, and with a hell of a punch. Goal two of today was to collect it.
The trip to Bendara city was a long one, and Braq preferred to leave early so that he might return by midday. It was also unbearably dull. A long stretch of uninterrupted road with a great expanse of crops to the east, and sheer cliffs into the sea to the west. The crops varied occasionally, but Braq knew them all by now. Green ripweed, then blue-green yarpa. The white-grey stalks of anuana next, then the sun-orange dominar. But some plantations covered many hectares, so changes like that were rare. In the distance, Bendara City’s towers stood on the horizon, spires that seemed to grow far too slowly. Sometimes it felt like he was not moving at all.
The highway eventually gave way to suburbia, the land dipping down into a plateau as Bendara’s tall spires punched up higher. Rows and rows of radji homes and apartments sat here. Some were better off than others, but almost all of them occupied. Few had anything resembling a garden, the odd decorative potted plant here or there. Young radji milled about the streets and parks, running and playing about in the idle joy of youth. A few loitering around a schools barred gates looked up at him as he went by and shared a quiet joke between themselves. Braq kept driving.
The closer to the city he got, the more it seemed to swallow him up. Bendara was tall, so tall that it seemed to claw down the sky, cover up the horizon. The locals had a saying, “From the top of Bendara you can see the whole world, from the bottom you can see nothing at all.” But Braq did not need to go right into the city centre, just to the lower sections of the outer districts. The traffic started to build as he passed over Mariner’s Bridge, the westernmost crossing spanning The Tears. The twin river system was so named as they resembled the tracks left by a goddess’s sorrow. The cars pressed together around him, commuters trying to get in before the rush. Braq turned off before he reached the city proper, heading down to the undercity. At the northern edge of The Tears was his destination, and the sun shone down on a crowd of a great many people gathering in the market. Braq found a spot to park the buggy near the edge of the stalls.
The marketplace was a large circular structure that in some ancient day had been an amphitheatre. No one knew the culture that had created it, the histories all said they were gone when Bendara was first built. But none could deny the skill of those primeval architects. Running the spine of the great bowl, down towards the stage, was a wide path. The amphitheatre’s great steps, deep enough that four radji could sit before one another, arced in smooth rounding lines outwards from it. This created terraces overlooking the lower levels, worn by design or time Braq could not say. In some places these overhangs had given way whilst others still stood, and modern stalls sold food and confectionery on them. Filled to the edges of the steps large fabric tarps covered tables, stands, and the sight of people in eager bargaining. Many goods were sold there; foods and grain were always profitable, and the smell of rich spices was powerful in the air. Pretty young men and women haggled over paw-crafted adornments, glittering jewellery, quill varnishes, and sashes of beautiful fabrics, and their wizened old sellers delighted in the spar. Wooden, plush, and scrap metal toys, books, and paints, these were the coveted desires of radji children that dashed away from their parents to run and play across the cracked mosaic tiles of the market. To Braq it felt like something to be treasured, that the living could inhabit a dead thing, and in doing so make it live again.
But the new world loomed up around the old, great solid skyscrapers of shining silver and gold metals; windows scattering Kay-ut’s light like water at the dawn. It had crept into the stands too; tablets, computing, technology, these were the most lucrative goods here. All noble crafts, Braq thought, but their profit strangles those who need these markets most. At the markets centre, the harmonics of the decaying stage allowed businesses to best peddle their merchandise, and so competition over it was fierce. It was there that the most profitable had fortified themselves to sell their goods.
“COME ALL! THE LATEST IN NET CONNECTION!”
“HOVER CARS, GROUND CARS! THE BEST PRICES ON THE CRADLE!”
Putting his keys in his satchel, Braq made his way past the confectionery and into the crowds. The odd extra-terrestrial would wander about the market, a few iridians, a stray v’rstatin. Such interlopers were rare in Bendara, the nearest spaceport being Caiyu further north, closer to the equator. Yet another vagrant… Braq thought, his mind, as ever, on Ki-yu.
Pressing through the crush, he made his way to a simple stall placed on one of the lower terraces. Sitting towards the edge, in a modest but favourable position, Goranuut made his living. The old radji’s fur was a light and ragged grey, his chin tufts pulling down to a lengthy point of braided fur. About him sat cages containing a myriad of popular animals, a display cycling through images of various cute looking companions, each with a price. The old man looked up warmly as Braq approached, his paws resting gently on a gnarled and well-loved walking stick.
“Ah-ho! Heya young man, how are ya?” he greeted Braq warmly. “How’s life treating ya’ll in the wilds?” Braq grinned at the old codger, as friendly a man Braq had never known. Goranuut seemed to get on with everyone and had a friend everywhere one could want one.
“Well enough, my friend, well enough,” he told him.
“Must be, must be. This is the second time I’ve seen you this month, those little monsters of yours must be growing fierce!” Braq chuckled wryly.
“You have no idea.”
“The usual then?” the old man said using the stick to stand.
“Yes, thanks,” Braq said. The man bent over behind his stall and shifted out two buckets of predator kibble, subtly stored in unmarked containers. “What about you, are you staying out of the way?” The old-timer chuckled and placed the two buckets on the counter.
“Nobody bothers me, you know, I’m too well known. It’s the newcomers to the trade I worry about,” he said. As they made the transaction, he nodded to an extermination officer milling between some of the stalls towards the back of the market. “They’re suspect of anyone who spends time with anything that can hurt you now, Protector knows why. Before long they’ll be ‘exterminating’ hovercars.” Braq shook his head.
“I mean, I can get why they wouldn’t like us,” Braq said gesturing to himself, “but who hates pets?”
“Exactly,” Goranuut said, his great fuzzy face nodding emphatically. “It’s about bringing a little joy to the family.” Family…
“Have you seen Dirk recently?” Braq asked, trying to seem casual. The old man sucked air through his teeth.
“No…” he said. “Which in and of itself isn’t unusual, but…” He looked around conspiratorially and gestured for Braq to lean closer. “Last I heard he was out near some of the abandoned colony worlds for some reason. Nasty place, far too close to those grey friends of ours for anyone’s liking, but he kept goin’ on about good salvage. But then recently a buddy of mine told me something strange. One of the outposts in the colony’s neighbouring sector picked up some unclear comm-scatter, and then a few weeks later a sub-light escape pod from a Turok-class escort came zipping on by.”
“Turok-class? Dirk flew a Turok…”
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“Aye,” Goranuut nodded. “No one in it, and the black box recorded no issues prior to ejection.” The man lent back again and shrugged. “Now, maybe it’s all one big coinkidink. A big technical hoo-ha, and any day now Dirk will drop out of the sky, and we can all have a laugh and a drink about it.” He ran a paw through his grey tufty chin. “But between you and me, I think Dirk was always greasing too many quills, and might have finally flown too close to the pulsar.”
Braq nodded, and thanked Goranuut.
“Say hi to that pretty wife of yours!” he called out as Braq left. As he trudged through the crowds, Braq had a bad feeling in his stomach.
Braq was almost back to the buggy when he choked on a gasp. A dark, slender, reptilian arm was slowly reaching out from the backseat of the buggy. KI-YU?! Oh shit! He began walking faster.
With a start he realised she was reaching for a jar of sylphberries sitting on the edge of the nearby food stand. The owner was facing the other way, talking to a customer. She was leaning out as far as her shoulder, and it was a minor miracle that no one had apparently noticed her yet.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” he muttered under his breath.
Braq was almost to them when the store owner started to turn. In one quick motion he swatted Ki-yu’s paw away—a quiet “Ouch!” coming from the buggy as she withdrew the limb—and plucked up the jar just as the woman turned around.
“Oh!” she said jovially, “I didn’t see you there.”
“How much for the berries?” Braq asked casually.
~*~
Braq tried to maintain his casual air as he sat in the buggy and set off towards the lower district. I still have to get the damn gun, he reminded himself. Once he was in motion, he spared a glance at the back seat and found it to be seemingly empty. Stopping at some signal lights, he gave it a more thorough inspection. The spare buckets he kept on the seats were empty, and far too small to hold her. She certainly was not in the back compartment, that was where he had stored the predator feed. Suddenly worried that she had slipped out back at the market, Braq started poking around in the footwell.
“Ow!” came her muffled voice. Ki-yu had hidden herself under a thick blanket and curled up beneath the seats. Braq let out a sigh of relief, glad for the moment that he had not lost her.
“Serves you right,” he told her as he started driving again. “What’re you thinking?! Haven’t you listened to anything we’ve told you?!” He heard her uncurl a little more, and her long snout shrouded by the blanket slipped forwards between the seats.
“Sorry Baba,” she whispered. “I couldn’t help it…”
“And not just to sneak along, but to reach out like that! You realise you were almost caught right? If I hadn’t come back in time, you’d have triggered a stampede! And then– oh, and then…” Coming to a stop again, he rested his head on the wheel not daring to imagine the consequences of that terrible possibility. Looking down at her, he saw her shaking, her dark eyes were little points of light beneath the blanket. “I’m sorry sweetheart. I don’t want to be angry with you. I– I’m scared is all, you get that right?” She nodded at him.
“I’m sorry Baba…” she said again. He offered her his paw, which she took gratefully. They drove in silence for a few moments.
“Well… what do you think of the city?” he asked. Ki-yu, keeping her head low looked up at the great buildings and overpasses. The shining metal of the new world, overlaying the brick and clay of the old. LEDs and holo projections displayed advertisements and bulletins high above them, whilst bright ribbons and banners decorated below.
“It’s… noisy. And… I miss the trees. But… I liked where we were before. All those people… too many to know, but all people. And such smells too! Oh Baba, if only you could smell that!”
“The smell of those spices are strong, aren’t they?” he said, smiling despite himself. He was angry but unwilling to lose this moment.
“More than that!” she said, covering herself as the blanket slipped slightly. “There were other people there, right? Not-radji, like me…”
“A few… the kind that would still fear you, Ki-yu,” he reminded her. She nodded again.
“Were… the little people… other children?” she asked quietly. Braq looked down at her sadly. A child needs friends, as he knew all too well. He patted her on the side of the head.
“One day, Ki-yu. We’ll find a way, I swear,” he promised her. “Now hide up again.”
Braq brought the vehicle to a stop outside the gun shop, a subtle little store with a little neon sign of a pistol sitting over the disembodied head of a pyq. Braq’s skin crawled at the image, and he looked about. The exterminators head offices were located a few blocks away he knew, but the street seemed deserted. Let’s do this as quickly as possible.
“Listen,” he whispered to Ki-yu in the footwell. “You’re not to move, not to peek out, not to make any noise whatsoever. No matter what. I’ll be back pretty quickly, so just stay hidden, okay?”
“Okay,” Ki-yu whispered back.
“Good girl.”
Braq got out, locked the vehicle, and entered the shop. More weaponry and ammunition Braq had not seen in his entire life. A ragged, but massive nauret sat reading a comically small magazine behind a counter which barely concealed his bulk. His short, brassy fur was patchy along his sloping back. He had small, diminutive eyes for someone with a head twice as big as radji’s, and craned over his long, thick neck to examine this new customer. Nauret were all capitalist creatures, Braq knew, always attempting to out manoeuvre one another. Just how this one had ended up in Bendara so far from its house was a mystery to Braq.
“Morning,” Braq said.
“Browsing or picking up?” the nauret grunted, one ear twitching.
“Picking up, under the name Braq.” Sighing, he set down his magazine. The small stool he squatted on groaned as he stood, knuckle-walking on his proportionally-longer arms off into the backroom. A few moments later he returned carrying the rifle in its carry case, looking decidedly more interested. It’s smaller than I thought.
“All your backgrounds checked out. This’s a beaut’, technically military or officer tech, so ya better know how to handle her,” he said, setting it down and opening the case. The rifle was about the same length as Braq’s arm, most of which was dominated by the long, thin, triangular prism of a barrel. The stock was solid and padded, a metal lever sitting before the handle. A large scope was sat in the case. The store owner pulled out a large box of ammunition and showed him a small cylindrical magazine.
“This is your ammo,” he said, holding up the metal rack. It had a hole through its centre, and Braq could see the muted grey ball-shaped projectiles inside. “Before you ask, the amount you have to fire is kind of a hard question, more like how much can I fire this way or that. C’mon I’ll show ya.” With a quick glance out of the window to ensure the Ki-yu was not leaning out of the buggy again, Braq followed him through the backroom to the shooting range. Wooden pyq stood grinning menacingly at the end of the gallery.
The store owner pressed a release on the rifle with his massive thumb, and the side slid open with a hiss. The magazine was loaded onto a spoke, and the chamber closed with a clunk.
“The indicator on the handle should light up when you use the lever here,” he told Braq, pushing it forwards and back. “That should only take a half-second, but if she’s been sitting there for a while that could take a wee bit longer.” The indicator lit up. “See. That means that the first chamber in the magazine has been converted to plasma. Each mag has six chambers. Now here’s the tricky and the neat part: each chamber will have six shots in it, fired as a pellet spread before the half-second cycle, then you can fire again.” Shouldering the rifle and flicking off the safety he fired twice at the nearest wooden pyq. Each discharge was punctuated by a ker-CUNK! as she primed the lever. A zhoO! sound dopplered with the motion of the projectiles, white-blue streaks of plasma moving so fast they looked more like tiny light blue flashes as they impacted their target. Coin-sized craters burned in the wooden torso, glowing a light blue before cooling to a warm red.
“You can do that six times, so thirty-six shots in a mag, make sense?” Braq nodded, trying to keep track of the numbers. “But,” the alien continued, grinning toothily, “you can overcharge each chamber, using this trigger next to the grip here, and fire each chamber as one massive round.” There was a whirring sound as she primed the weapon—ker-CUNK!—, and then fired once.
KRA-KOW!
The wooden pyq wobbled, a white-hot paw-sized hole where it’s grinning face used to be.
“Two-second cycle in that firing mode, and obviously only six shots, but hot damn if it ain’t dead by then there’s no point shootin’ it. Want a go?” he asked Braq. He did not.
Having collected the wretched weapon, Braq exited the shop only to find that a radji was standing by the buggy. He was looking down into the interior.
“Can I help you?” Braq called out. The man turned, and Braq’s stomach squirmed. Teraka looked equally surprised to see him.
“Oh! Uh- Braq… I- I thought I recognised the buggy. Y-you’re a long way from home,” he said nervously. For the briefest moment, his pelt bristled. Teraka’s eyes passed over the gun case in Braq’s paw, and then at the gun shop behind him.
“As are you,” Braq observed. “You seemed to be looking in my buggy. Why’s that?”
“Oh- uh- no, like I said, I thought I recognised it is all.” He gestured to the firearm. “Didn’t take you for the shooting type.”
“I’m not,” Braq said coolly. “Not usually.” He regarded the man carefully. Ah hell, be direct. “What’re you in the city for? You live further out than us.”
“Oh, uh…” he nodded to himself with a sad smile. “Funeral, would you believe it?”
“My condolences,” Braq offered, not believing it. He walked past him and put the firearm on the passenger seat. “The anuana was quite nice,” he lied.
“Oh, thank you.” Teraka looked up at the gun shop, and then back to Braq. “Did you solve your security issues?”
“I believe we have,” Braq said, getting into the vehicle. Teraka smiled down at him from the curb.
“That’s good, that’s good. Well, I suspect I’m late for my funeral anyway, it-“
“Your funeral?” Braq cut in. The man laughed awkwardly.
“Aha, the funeral. It was nice seeing you, my friend. Do stay safe.” And with that he turned away, walking down the street. Braq waited until he was out of earshot before he peaked beneath the blanket. Ki-yu still sat there, wrapped around herself, and shaking nervously. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave her a pat as he keyed the ignition.
~*~
They did not speak until Braq was gunning it south back on the main road beyond the suburbs, certain that no one was behind him. Past the crumbling orange cliffs to the west Braq could smell the salt spray of the sea, hear it thundering beneath the roar of the engine. To the east suburbia had long ago given way to rolling fields of sun-yellow crops; feed for a planet as far as the eye could see. A great rolling sea of the same, he mused. An ocean homogeneous.
“Are you alright?” he asked the blanket in the footwell. “Did he see you?” The blanket moved and Ki-yu looked up shakily.
“N-no, I don’t think h-he did. B-but he was looking. He was looking in the buckets.”
“The empty ones?” Braq asked. If he got in the kibble…
“Uh-huh,” she said with a nod, and Braq calmed a little.
“How long was he standing there?”
“Don’t know. Not long, only a few seconds,” she told him. Braq sighed behind the wheel. Two close calls… the city is far too dangerous. “Sorry Baba,” Ki-yu whispered. “I won’t do it again.”
“It’s okay. We got away with it.”
They drove in silence for a short while, neither sure of what else to say. In the distance the road branched off and veered back north. The sign told him it led to a lookout on the cliffs. Well… he thought, if she’s not likely to get the opportunity again any time soon… fuck it. Braq turned up the road back north. The trail narrowed considerably, a sheer rocky drop to the west terminated against the sea, vast and indomitable. The trail seemed abandoned for now.
“Hey, sweetheart, come sit in the front,” he called back. Ki-yu’s head slowly lifted between the seats again.
“But… shouldn’t I stay hidden?” she asked.
“There’s nobody about, and you can still duck into the footwell if there is. Besides, you’ll want to see this.”
Cautiously Ki-yu climbed forwards and paced in a circle the front seat. She stretched beneath the blanket, clearly the confines of the footwell had been uncomfortable. She sniffed at the wind as she looked out west.
“Woah… Is that all…?”
“Water,” Braq nodded. “It’s called the ocean. It’s like a big puddle.” He laughed at the inept analogy and shook his head. “Well, something like that.”
“It’s so…” she mimicked the motion of the waves with a wobbling paw.
“They’re called waves, darling. They come from the pull of the moons about the Cradle, Ki-ra and Ki-yu.”
“You… named me after a moon?” Ki-yu asked.
“No,” her father replied. “I named you after a promise.”
When they reached the vantage point, they saw that it overlooked the entire plateau. Braq was pleased to see they were the only ones here, especially given that the view was spectacular.
From this distance they could appreciate that Bendara had built up more than it had built out. The tallest skyscrapers may have only just been shorter than the city was wide. The great structures reflected and warped the midday sun, and the whole city seemed to glow and shine like a great crystal. Moving about the skyline in lazy motions were transports, hovercars flying about the rich and influential. Occasionally a sub-orbit craft shot for the heavens from some high point, all headed north towards the equator. Some were big heavy haulers, others sleek pristine yachts, all were silent at this distance save for a slight supersonic boom.
All around the city’s base were sprawling homes and apartments with the odd green space, unnatural in their regularity and construction. To the west the harbour was lined with various seacraft, dredgers and mariners working under brutal conditions; sent out to harvest oceanic plantations and dredge up scrap from wrecks both nautical and spaceborne. A few boats meandered across the Tears. A population of millions lived beneath them, all ignorant of the young predator sitting beside him.
Ki-yu was silent as she tried to process this new world of metal and mortar. In her dark eyes Braq could still see the same keen intelligence, the same desperate curiosity he had come to adore. He placed a paw on her shoulder, and she looked up at him.
“Ki-yu… you’re a child. It’s only natural that you’re curious. It’s one of your most endearing qualities and harnessed right it’ll be the fire that warms you through some of your coldest nights.” He shook her slightly. “But you must learn to temper it. To use it, not let it use you, understand?” She nodded and looked back to the city.
“So many people…” Ki-yu wondered aloud. “And they’d all fear me?” Braq shook his head.
“I… don’t know sweetheart. I do believe that if they knew you, then many would come to love you. But many others… I’m sorry.”
“Then… what can we do? I like the woods. I like you and Mama. But…” she gestured out to the city, and the sea, and the sky above. “These people would fear me!” She pointed herself. "And my people are too dangerous. But I must be someone, do something. I can’t hide from it all forever!”
“No… you can’t,” Braq said and knew it in his heart for the first time. “But there’s time enough for that later. For now, you must learn, and grow, so that one day you may be ready.” She nodded again; her eyes veiled in thought. “Today’s lesson,” he said, “is an important one. One not everybody learns. All those people you saw going about their lives, all those children playing, those merchants selling, are all in many ways just like you. Some of them would disagree, point to all our differences real or imagined. But they live full lives, daughter, as complex and vibrant as your own. They sing and cry, experience love and loss. So, you want to meet them one day? Want them to accept you?” She nodded eagerly. “Then the most important lesson you can learn is to be kind to them.”
“Be kind?” she said. “Isn’t that easy?” Braq smiled sadly at her and cupped her paws between his.
“Sometimes, sweet child, it is the hardest thing of all. No matter what they may say to you, however they might try to hurt you, tear you down. Protect yourself, but never be cruel. Even when the tunnel seems to crash down around you, always be kind. Say it.”
“I will protect myself, but never be cruel,” she promised. “I will always be kind.”
“Good,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers. “Good.”
A sub-orbit cruiser rumbled overhead, its sleek silver bulk like some great flying javelin cutting through the light blue sky. Ki-yu watched its flight towards the city.
“It’s pretty,” she said, “but I miss the trees. I miss Mama.” Braq started the buggy.
“C’mon, let’s start back. We’re needed, and there’s a long road ahead.”
---
“Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”
– James Baldwin. 1970.