The Disillusion Mountains

Chapter 8

    "I get why you don't want me to be involved in the case but I would feel better if I could just meet this Nova woman." Nimma and Selmmie were sitting on the balcony of Nimma's home. Eridani was spending the night with a friend and Selmmie was going to spend the night at Nimma's.       

    "I'll consider it if you come back alive." Selmmie half joked. It was the evening of Morik 18. Tomorrow Nimma's quest would begin and out of worry, or maybe an attempt to try and talk her out of it, Selmmie kept making dark jokes.  

    Nimma rolled her eyes and took another sip of beer.  

    "Are you and Grant a thing?" Nimma changed the subject.

    Selmmie swirled her wine. "Not yet. We've kinda been dancing around the subject for a while."

    "It's not like you to hesitate when you want something."

    "Yeah," Selmmie said the word slowly. "It's that this thing between us doesn't just need to be a good thing for us. We need to consider our children too."

    "I've never thought about it like that. What do you like about him anyway?"

    "Are you saying you don't like him?" Nimma gave a noncommittal shrug that annoyed her friend. "He reminds me of you sometimes before-." Selmmie cut herself off.

    "Before I went to war."    

    "Yeah."

    Nimma drained her beer in three gulps. "I don't know if I'll ever be that person again, Selm. The more I saw the more of me I left there."

"I think you should consider counseling. It works you know it does. Or you could tell me more."

    Nimma stared hard into the distance. "It was different back then. I know I needed it. I'm grateful your parents made me go it really did help after mine died."

After her parents had died the Asters had taken her in without hesitation. Nimma's parents were the godparents of Selmmie and the same was true in reverse for her. Nimma was fifteen when it happened. Her parents were interviewing for separate professor positions at Myrasian University, the most prestigious institution of higher learning in the country. Her father was a math professor and her mother a literary one at a smaller college, and were happy with their jobs, but when these opportunities came their way they jumped on them.

It was the middle of autumn and a terrible rain storm had hit. On their way up the hill that led to the university a semi-truck was coming down. The brakes of the semi failed and the rest was history. To add insult to injury the truck was one of many in the fleet owned by the Towers' that supplied Towers' businesses with their products. As much as Nimma hated that family she had to realize that was a coincidence. The Towers owned over half the businesses in Star City so their stores and restaurants and many other establishments needed resupplying regularly.              

    "Then why are you so against it now?"

    "I don't like revisiting a lot of it. I spent years witnessing the absolute worst of humanity. Those rebels want to pull the country down and remake it into some anarchist utopia and they don't care what they have to do to make it that way. I wish I was still ther-" Now Nimma stopped herself.

    Selmmie and her parents had always been supportive of Nimma's decision to join the military. After high school Nimma didn't know what it was she wanted to do with her life, so while she was still in high school she made a commitment to the military. Selmmie was twenty two at the time and already going to college for law. As an only child her parents had been able to set aside a large amount of money for Selmmie to go to college. It wasn't enough for her whole education. Although by the time the money had run out Selmmie secured two different scholarships that took care of the rest.

    The Asters were very kind people and devoted parents but they didn't come from wealth. Neither had Nimma's parents; the small amount of savings they left after their deaths, though it would have seemed large to a child such as Nimma had been at the time, really wasn't enough for her to even begin college. Nimma knew the Asters were worried and felt slightly guilty they couldn't provide that same opportunity for her.

Nimma vowed to find a way for that worry to be lifted from their shoulders and the only way she could do it was through the military. Nimma had signed up for the Air Force and made cultural studies her major, with special focus on the languages from the countries she studied, and the Air Force paid for it all. In addition to her pilot training she served as a translator.                   

    Nimma already spoke two languages by the time she reached high school so her choice in major seemed natural. Nimma spoke Myrasian, of course, but she also spoke Logosese. Logos had been Regina's original country and her family through two hundred years and all those generations felt it was important to remember that. For all that time they taught the next generation to be fluent in Logosese.

The country of Logos no longer existed for it had lost the war Regina fled from and was then absorbed into its invader Draconia. The language however did; it was widely spoken in the region that still bore the name Logos, though now it was just a province within a large country. Nimma also gained fluency in Draconian along with three other languages and spoke an additional two conversationally.

    After her original contract expired Nimma signed up for another five years thinking that she was going to be a lifer. Not long after that civil war broke out in Draconia. Nimma was one of the first deployed to aid the Royalist forces. She saw plenty of active combat not only in the air but also on the ground. Three years in came what Nimma thought of as the day her life had been irrevocably changed in more ways than one.

It was the day she was shot down while trying to deliver humanitarian aid supplies to towns that had been hardest hit by the rebels. It wasn't the first time Nimma had been injured during the war, it wasn't even the first time she'd been in an aircraft that was shot down, but this time was different. Not only with how severely injured she was but also how she was shot down.          

    Nimma had originally been reported as dead because no one else who'd been in the plane survived. The news that she was supposedly dead had gotten back to Selmmie, Eridani, and Selmmie's parents rather quickly. Even though they hadn't located her body the amount of blood and state of the plane when it was found left little doubt she could have survived. Selmmie often said that was the worst week of her life.

    Once she'd been found the medical team determined that she would no longer be fit for service if she survived. Survive she did against all odds and expectations. Nimma found herself at twenty–seven back where she started with no idea what to do with her life anymore and very jaded. Here she was two years later wishing she was still in. Those words were something she tried not to say in front of any of the Asters. The hell they'd gone through worrying about her and then believing her to be dead was something she tried not to reopen by saying she'd rather still be in a war zone than at home.

It wasn't because Nimma loved to fight more than she loved the Asters. She had been sent to protect people and squash a rebellion that made no damn sense. She couldn't argue with the military doctors that the nerve damage in her hands, which occasionally made them shaky and numb, was something that she could overcome while piloting. It would only take one split second for that to go wrong whether she was in a cockpit or pulling the trigger on a rifle. They were right to send her home with honors. Though the feeling that she had left an important job undone gnawed at her like a big savage beast.