Star Side

Chapter 65

"So? I hope he dies."

"Gilrack," she snapped. "Honestly, I thought you didn't want to be chief."

"He'll do it to try and woo my mate."

"You're paranoid," she waved her hand to flip it off. "Point is, I need you to be serious about taking the throne. It is best for Jolene, as you can sufficiently protect her as chief. We talked of this before, so I suggest you do some training with your fathers to prepare for if your brother returns."

"I don't need you to tell me to do that, I already was before he left." Gilrack curled about me to half hide me with his wings and took up the comb again. "I'll go when I'm good and ready."

"They're down in the training cave now. Stop acting like a child."

"A child you have a right to command. Mother, please, not today."

She gave a grumpy growl in her throat and stomped forward nonetheless, tail stiff.

"I'll finish helping her with her hair. You, go train. This is for your own good."

Gilrack's hackles raised. I felt the back of my neck raise with it.

I sighed and put a hand on the one of his that had wrapped about my stomach.

"It's not good to make people who are trying to help you wait, Gilrack. Just go, we have plenty of time. I'll be waiting for you."

He looked down at me, his hourglass pupils shivering, then hefted a heavy sigh and slapped the comb into his mother's outheld hand. We could both hear his throaty grumbles as he crawled out of the nest and slumped towards the curtains. I almost feared he'd tear at them in his displeasure about going through them. Only after there was a fwoosh of Gilrack's wings catching air as he sunk down the tunnel did Shatit elegantly take her place behind me and started combing my damp hair.

"I can do this myself," I said, even if I didn't quite know how to work the jewel beads. It wasn't like I needed such flash.

"Oh, we know, but this is an honor. It means I am family, which makes me happy. Please allow me."

Well, no need to pull my arm. The affection deprived me was not going to turn down being doted upon. It made me feel a little narcissistic, but hey, shoot me, it made me happy. If I could I would have purred like they did, so I settled for hoping she could sense how fuzzy I felt and went on with my new favorite pastime: hugging warm eggs.

When I told her that we'd felt movement, she immediately reached around me to try and feel too, but after a few minutes pulled away and disappointment.

"The first movement is always so magical," she said. "Oh, if only I could still have eggs."

"You can't?"

"No. I am too old. Any eggs I have now would not be healthy, or empty. But there are grandbabies so it's not too bad."

Except there was a tinge of sadness in her mind waves when she said that. As she and Gilrack had stated before, she wasn't all that close to her children out of choice, thinking it was best for them. All that withheld babying she now gushed on me and my eggs, since I was technically not hers or even of her people, though she also told me she tried to do the same with her daughter-in-laws but it was always awkward and reluctant on their part. She, after all, was chieftess. It wasn't like they could refuse her if they wanted to.

Me, on the other hand, for some reason, didn't feel such pressure or reluctance. Perhaps it was my own hunger for affection that made me readily accept the sometimes overbearing affection of the chieftess. Or perhaps it was for humans to build connections than the cautious people of Vetas, who could more readily kill each other over a trespass of instinct and it be seen as normal, even acceptable, if not a happy occurrence.

I picked up the gold comb that Gilrack had cast aside and shifted it in my hold so I could watch the light reflect off it. It really was a beautiful thing. Its weight made me think that, perhaps, it was real gold, though I knew this planet had to have only traces of it. One of the minerals the planet was scanned for as a potential for mining was gold, and little enough of it had been found for Vetas to be signed off. Gold had been precious back on Earth, which had an abundance compared to Vetas, so just how precious could this comb be?

"It...it's not bad for me to accept this...is it?"

Shatit gave a soft prrbt in comfort.

"Not at all. It merely shows Hochek's sincerity. A good relationship with the future mate of the chief and the first divine being is very important. He was wise."

"But...this has to be really, really..." I didn't know the word for 'expensive' or 'priceless.'

"Yes. There is none other like it." She paused. "He is a good son, if a little silly. He would delight to have you as a mate."

I flinched. "Gilrack is my mate."

"Yes, of course," but the way she said it, and the sour mindwaves, spoke of some innate anxiety.

I turned my head to look at her, disrupting the beginning of another braid.

"Are you worried about something?"

I could see the hesitation in her gold eyes in the way her pupils shrank just a tad.

"I...I have avoided conflict among my children this long, but...for no longer." She ran a pair of short claws feather-light through my hair. "There...there will be deaths. And Rikek is not the only one with royal blood."

I frowned. "But the purple..."

"Is for our kingdom. Green is for the lava dwellers far to the east. If Hochek wanted it enough, he could also try his chance for wings and make a challenge for a throne. Gilrack was right to be displeased."

"But what does that have to do with me?"

She chattered, and for the first time I felt like I had failed some sort of test.

"Little mother," she chided. "Did we not tell you? Royal blood, the wings, comes from the divine beings in ancient time. The right to lead and fly come from heaven."

That did not make me feel reassured. I'd just learned their word 'divine' which I had always interpreted as 'heavenly' wasn't quite accurate and now felt uncomfortable whenever I heard reference to humans being 'divine beings.'

"Uh, chieftess, I don't think...your 'divine beings' are the exact same as my people."

But she shushed me and patted my head, emitting the comforting feelings of a mother to an uneasy child.

"You came from the sky, yes?"

"Yes, but we weren't always there—like, always above your world."

"Correct. They once lived on the ground, a people who reached the heavens through their intelligence and determination."

"But we don't have wings, or tails, or..." I flipped my hands around helplessly.

"I can see that." And she smiled even as she made a show of looking me up and down. "It was never specified that they had wings. It was their intelligence that gave them flight, not wings. But their actions moved the strongest of our ancestors to grow wings and reach for the stars as well, just as you are moving my children now to do so. History is repeating itself."

I twisted my hands in the silks nonetheless, sweaty and unsettled.

"I'm not royal." Best to get to the core of the problem. "I'm not powerful."

"I know." She pet my head, crooning through her words. "But you brought some of your...tools with you. How is that not proof? Do not worry about a history you were not alive for. This was in the distant past. These things will happen naturally, not because of a religious belief. You already are who you are."

I don't know if I understood what she was saying, or even if I agreed with what I did understand, but I didn't know what else to say. I could only hope that me being here didn't start some sort of blood bath.

I'd run away before that happened. Like heck was I going to be some Helen of Troy.