---Absence---
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
I stand beside my lifemate in the lift… bound for a deck I rarely have cause to visit.
Qorak cradles Tcakak in his wings, her nestling against the white, gossamer silk sash across his chest.
The door opens, revealing the cavernous bowels of the ship, used predominately as an onboard warehouse.
Here and there, I see other members of my crew making their way to the same place as the three of us.
Among the nonTerrans… some have chosen to wear white, others have chosen to wear their own people’s mourning colours, yet others have adorned themselves with different markers of grief, loss or respect.
Sha’anza and her wife walk with their trunks raised.
Kwijj and Jjop are scrupulously maintaining their skin in a matte grey, rather than the kaleidoscopic display their species usually have when not speaking.
Igthan Glark and W’ham B’ham… are something of a sight as they walk together!
Our collective destination isn’t actually on this deck… nor is it even aboard this ship…
We make our way to the open hatch, on the far wall, and steadily process down the rigid umbilical between the Bright Plume and the large, self sustaining, environmental habitat that was attached beneath us, in orbit around Citadel.
In discussion with Emiko and the Ambassadors about the arrangements for the observation of this ceremony, it was agreed that holding it aboard what is to become the Embassy to the new planet, rather than in the Canteen or anywhere else, was most appropriate.
Twila is currently maintaining the ship, stationary in space, at a point where we are able to receive the broadcast.
We enter a large hall with many different configurations of chair, temporarily arranged facing the far wall.
There is a solid phalanx of seated Terrans, all in immaculate white clothes, toward the front of the space.
Qorak and I quickly find our perch and mount it.
My hearts sink and my fury rises as I see the still empty perch, across the room from ours.
I do my best to put the absence out of my mind as the feed begins.
On the wall is displayed an outdoor stage in a sunny park.
There are hundreds of people visible in the shot, overwhelmingly dressed in the same bright white as most here.
Terrans certainly make up the majority of the attendees but the audience is also heavily attended by notable nonTerrans.
I see the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Parliament as well as many numerous Representatives of other species.
At the centre of the stage is a man… a man I met briefly at the sending off party… hours before his husband was killed.
Beside him is a girl, whose head reaches his shoulder with them both sat down.
On his other side is a boy, shorter still. He looks to be maybe half the age that Victor was when first I met him.
Beside them is the slender, towering frame of Ndum ‘Lemur’ Rain, the new head of the ODR and Terran Representative to Parliament, his wife, Nirina ‘Orchid’ Rain, and daughter, Vahatra ‘Purple’ Rain.
To the left of the stage is a box… around [50cm] tall, [65cm] wide and [2m] long, made of white wood and raised to around a [metre] from the ground.
Chhay ‘Amok’ Sok rises and approaches a podium, standing at the stage’s dead centre.
“When I first met my husband…” he begins, gesturing to the coffin “…I was a nurse in the Humanitarian corps… picking small pieces of metal out of his cheek… He seemed like a superhero to me!”
He pauses here to take a deep breath through his nose before continuing.
“He quickly disabused me of that notion(!)”
There is a polite chuckle, both from those on screen and those in the room.
“No… he wasn’t a superhero… just a man who was endlessly intelligent… endlessly kind… and tireless in his pursuit of a better world!…”
The man seems, here, to choke on nothing at all and takes a few moments to right himself.
“…So often, I would feel that I simply didn’t measure up to him!… That such a man as this couldn’t have come from our mundane world and simply must have descended from some heavenly realm!… Then he would stub his toe and ask me to kiss it better… reminding me of both his fallibility and mortality(!)”
There is another subdued chuckle.
“…And, now… he’s given me one final reminder that, however he seemed, he was just a man…”
No one chuckles at that.
Tears appear in the man’s eyes as he stares into the camera, a defiant expression on his face “To the one who took my husband from me and the organisation behind him… You probably think I hate you… You who robbed my children of a father and me of the love of my life… But you are wrong… ‘hatred’ is a respect you have not earned… ‘Pity’ is closer to what I owe you but, I regret to say, I’m not as big a man as my husband was… I’m not big enough to pity you…”
I assume he speaks metaphorically here since, having seen him stood side by side with his husband, I know he was much larger, physically… I also don’t know exactly what physical size would have to do with one’s ability to pity?
“No… all I can give you is my contempt… You who, rather than letting suffering teach you compassion, have decided to respond to your pain by making certain everyone else is hurt as much or worse than you were… You who think yourselves avengers are, in fact, pitiable, pathetic, contemptible weaklings… Cowards!… My husband was a thousand times the man any of you will ever be! He was a man who knew that it takes more strength to reconcile with your enemies than to smite them… but that reconciling was, nonetheless, the right thing to do… He was a man who understood that it is harder to heal than to kill but that healing was, nonetheless, the right thing to do! He was a man who understood where the cycle of violence, the never ending wheel of retribution, the hatred and division of thinking feeling beings from one another, lead!… Peace never had such a friend as Zurab ‘Peacemaker’ Mudaliar… We are all poorer for his loss!… For that reason, you have my contempt…”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
All those in the room and on the screen have a unique mix of emotions arranged across their faces.
Most of all, my eyes are drawn to the men’s children… their faces are heartsbreaking!
“There are many people here who have asked to speak about my husband and all of them will have their say… First though, the members of the ODR Choir and Orchestra will perform one of his favourite songs for us… Thank you for your tireless rehearsal these past two weeks…”
With that, the chief mourner sits and the camera pans to the right, revealing a stand with many Terrans and almost as many nonTerrans, some with instruments, some without.
Notable is a gigantic Threndian, sticks held in each of his four strong arms, a set of variously sized drums arranged on stands around him with an enormous, wide, deep drum between his legs, the sticks in his lower arms hovering over it.
Two Terrans step forward to the microphone, a male and a female, both with electric, stringed instruments slung across their fronts.
The man holds up a right hand, a plectrum held between his fingers.
Bows are raised to the strings of every one of the smaller stringed instruments in the stand.
The Threndian percussionist raises his sticks and looks to the Terran.
The hand sweeps down and passes across the strings three times, producing a powerful, twangy *DANNANNAN*
In perfect synchrony, the Threndian strikes the large drum between his knees producing a *boom boom boom* and all the bows begin moving, slowly and lightly, across their strings, producing a steady, continuous, quiet harmony with eachother.
Only the bowed instruments can be heard for five seconds until the [guitar] and drum sound again.
More percussion is engaged as the Threndian mobilises his upper arms to tap out a beat.
The Terran woman begins to play her [guitar] which sounds very different and much bassier than the man’s.
Around twenty seconds from the start of the song, all instruments bar the [guitars] cease for a few seconds as the choir sing *Woahohohohooooah*
The drums sound and there is a triumphal swell of deep, booming brass instruments.
The [guitarist] leans into the mic and sings.
ff♫ I get the same old dreams
Same time every night
Fall to the ground and I wake up
So I get out of bed
Put on my shoes and in my head
Thoughts fly back to the breakup!♫ff
---Waqa’arc’s perspective---
I’m working in my quarters, my lifemate perched nearby, when a tone sounds from the door.
“Shall I…?”
“No, no… I’ll get it, darling!” I beam at Akrat.
I walk to the door and wave.
The instant the door is open, a mechanical, clawed appendage shoots forward and closes around my throat!
Its momentum is such that I am knocked backwards, off my feet, and slammed into the ground by my assailant!
Pinned down by the impossibly strong robotic limb, I stare up into the two cold, bionic eyes, mounted into a chilling face.
“You. weren’t. there!” growls the attacker, seething.
“No…!” cries Akrat “…let her go!… Get off of her!”
Appearing to Tcakqaal’s right, my left, he levels visibly feeble looking kicks against her ribs… which barely move her.
She is a woman… even if not any great physical specimen, she’s still nearly twice my lifemate’s mass and probably three times his strength, not including the strength of her bionic!
She scarcely even seems to notice his valiant but insufficient attempts to remove her from me!
Her mutilated face stares directly down at me, beak held open in threat.
Her wings are spread wide above me.
Her crown plumes are fanned out to an extent I’ve only ever seen on actresses in fictitious stories!
She’s clearly furious!
“Akrat… darling…” I choke out, my voice strained and constricted “…it’s… alright… please wait… in the Commonroom… Tcakqaal and I just need… to have a little… woman talk, together!”
“She’s going to kill you!” he answers, incredulously.
“She’s not… She’s angry, not stupid… Please go… I’ll be fine…”
Akrat hesitates… then does as I instructed.
The door closes behind him, leaving me alone with the woman pinning me to the ground with her deathworld limb.
“Could you let me up?” I ask, coolly.
Her response is to tighten her grip and press me into the floor with yet more force.
“Why should I?!” she hisses “Why should I show you the respect of an equal after what you did!?”
“I… didn’t… do… anything!”
“EXACTLY…!!!” she shrieks “…It would have cost you almost NOTHING to come to watch the funeral with us and you DIDN’T!!! Your smug, selfrighteous, haughty PRIDE couldn’t allow you to come and commiserate with your fellow sapients for even an hour!”
“Why… should I care… about deathworlders… killing deathworlders!?” I defy.
I’m lifted from the ground before being slammed back down.
“Because your ABSENCE was NOTICED!” she screams “Because, by choosing not to appear, you may have permanently burned any bridge that might have been built with the Terrans! Because, by showing such DISGRACEFUL disrespect, you have shamed me, shamed yourself, shamed our clan, our planet, our SPECIES!… Do you think you can bring Qrawi’a back by causing enough anguish to Terrans… or WHAT!?”
My crown plumes fan out and my beak opens, mirroring the woman pinning me down.
“You keep my daughter’s name out of your mouth, Tcakqaal!”
Cruelty, malice and spite burn in the woman’s two remaining eyes as she stops shouting to taunt “Oh…? You mean the daughter you refused to recognise due to her father’s lack of pedigree?… The clanless daughter you encouraged to enlist in the fighter force and win glory so that you could finally have her inducted? The girl who died trying to fulfil the conditions of a motherly acceptance that should have been unconditional? The girl who you blame the Terrans for taking from you because it’s easier than blaming yourself!?… Qrawi’a?… Is that whose name I’m to keep out of my mouth?”
I aim a hard kick at the front of her ribcage, throwing her off of me, around 30cm into the air.
Thankfully, she releases my throat before too much of the momentum of my kick is transferred into my neck.
No longer pinned down, I flap to my feet and stare down the woman, my wings now spread like hers.
“She wasn’t clan but she was MINE!…” I shriek.
Tcakqaal is significantly smaller than me… but I’m not so delusional as to think myself a match for a former military woman with a deathworld prosthetic, in a groundborne fight!
Right now, though, it doesn’t matter! I’m so angry that I might attack her regardless!
“…She was my flesh and blood and they took her from me!… You expect me to give a damn when terroristic Terrans kill Terran politicians!? Because I don’t! I can’t! I WON’T!… As far as I’m concerned, that’s their business and nothing to do with me!”
My opponent, here, falters.
With a visible force of will, she brings in her wings, flattens her crown plumes, closes her beak and stands up straight.
“I apologise…” she states with composure “…I let my anger get the better of me and spoke of your daughter in a way she did not deserve… I know you loved her, Waqa’arc… even if you felt you couldn’t acknowledge her, as a child borne out of lifebond with a man with no clan lineage behind him…”
“I tried… I tried to give her all the advantages she wouldn’t otherwise get… I gave her father money to support them… I pulled strings to get her a proper education… I thought… if she came home a warhero, I could finally stand before Raarakot and proudly proclaim that she was my daughter and I wanted her inducted into the clan… I shouldn’t have been so vain…” I say, regret hanging from my every word.
“Waqa’arc… I am going to ask something of you… Not order, ask…” says my Clansister.
“What?” I answer, irritably.
“Watch the funeral… the whole thing should be very easy to find on the galnet… If you’re too embarrassed to do so in front of Akrat, I’ll ask Qorak to invite him for a male bonding activity for a few hours, to give you privacy…”
“Why?… Watching it on my own will ingratiate me to precisely no one… why would you care that I see it?” I respond, suspiciously.
“I just… I think you might see a little of yourself in it, is all… Of course, if that scares you…!”
I snarl “I’m sure I’ll see nothing of the sort!… I accept your challenge!”
“Good… I’ll have my lifemate get in touch with yours…” she says, soberly, as she turns her back to me and leaves my room.