1
Brother and Sister

Tact looked twenty. He wasn’t, really, and it was refreshing to him that nobody on Latuar took him at face value. But, of course, they gave him the opposite problem. Because he was one of the long lived Aerlo, canine-human stock, he was usually figured to be centuries old.

In truth, he had only seen a few decades, but those thirty-so years had been fairly harsh ones.

He was looking for his sister. In the damnably dense forests of Latuar, he was looking for one little curly-haired red fox-Aerlo. Granted she was distinctive and famous farther than anywhere he had ever traveled, but Latuar was a big world, and the continent where she usually went to live during her long rests from soldiering was the smallest one on the planet, with a particularly low human population. Which meant there were only a few, very small towns, farms, settlements.

Finding her was next to impossible, so he had done his best to see that she might have a way of finding him instead. He spread it around the few towns he had passed through, left what few pack-signs he knew in areas where it looked like a lot of Aerlo congregated in the forests. The messages were always simple. Tact Chaucer Veyka was seeking his older half-sister, Honor “Webs” Tainn Istas Bavalle Raisa.

And she was famous enough that the word would get to her eventually. It might have been smarter to stay in one place so she could come to him more easily…if she would come at all. But after passing on his message, it didn’t pay to stick around. Not with everyone watching him, asking questions. You know Webs Raisa? You’re her brother?

He snorted. Their relation was loose, to put it as politely as possible. They had the same mother, different fathers. In fact, it was because Honor hated Tact’s father that she had never once laid eyes on her sibling. He couldn’t blame her, really, not being able to stand the man much himself. Cohn Veyka was as hard and cold as they came.

But that wasn’t why Honor hated him. No, it was because it was Cohn’s fault her father, Malakhi Chaucer, was dead.

Tact sighed, throwing down his rucksack and sitting atop it with little regard for items inside. He’d heard the story many times. Never from either of his parents, but from others in the pack who had only heard the story second-to-third hand. Cohn Veyka and Malakhi Chaucer had been rivals forever. Cohn had the virtue of being Aerlo. A wolf-Aerlo, very noble, very respected. He sported his fangs and his long silver tail with pride, and was as equally proud of becoming leader of his all-wolf pack at such a young age.

But Malakhi was human. Very human. And not only this, but he was from off-planet, raised on Neo’Merica. He was also Aerialing, but those were human-based beings, so they didn’t count as another race. At least, not in the eyes of Aerlo.

And Darr Raisa, three parts human, one part fox-Aerlo, was the only daughter of Loyal Raisa, fox-Aerlo and the alpha of a misfit and ragtag pack made of mostly of mutts and half-breeds that couldn’t find acceptance anywhere else. His direct family line was known for naming their children after sentiments and virtues, a tradition that had managed to continue on to Tact…which may have been why his father had never once said his name since the day he was born. He was always “my son” or “the pup”. Even when he was no longer young enough to be considered a pup.

Tact was dark-headed, kept his hair short. It curled only a little. His eyes were green, and his canine teeth were strong. He’d lost his tail in a childhood accident that involved snow, a homemade sled, and a hill with a lot of trees, but he didn’t miss it much. Its loss allowed him to pass for human when he was off-planet.

Never something Cohn was pleased with, but…what could he do about it now?

Tact scowled. He’d not regretted the last ten years being cast out from the pack, nor the six he’d spent working on the little merchant freighter that moved along the solar system, but there was still that sharp sting of not belonging anywhere.

Why the hell was he looking for his sister, anyway? It wasn’t like she might accept him as he was, sired by the fool that had caused her father’s death and then went and married her mother.

But Tact wasn’t so sure she had reason to be quite as upset as everyone said she was. It wasn’t like she was raised by either of her parents. She’d been adopted into a human family nearly four hundred years ago, or so he’d been told. It was said she was never was quite the same after they all died of old age, but he couldn’t blame her for that. It was always very hard when an Aerialing loved a human. They withered and died. So did Aerlo, but never as soon. And Aerialings, well…they were demi-immortals. They died of things like disease or trauma, but never of old age.

Something dropped in front of him and he jumped. He blinked at it, a bloody slice of meat wrapped in a wide, flat leaf. An appetizing thing to a wolf, to say the least, but disconcerting to his human half that there were suddenly meals falling out of the trees.

He looked up and saw her there.

He thought he might be surprised, but he wasn’t. Not really. In fact, he now had the vague notion that she might have been following him for a little while. A little stab of annoyance with the idea, but it was better, he knew, than wandering around the continent just hoping he’d run into her.

He knew her on sight because it was impossible to mistake her. She was curly-headed as he had been told, a long, mixed mass of dark brown rings and spirals bouncing loose around her face and down her shoulders and back. She was small, an Aerialing who’d grown to the physical image of a ten-year-old and then had never gotten any older. Someday, she might undertake the Ascention and gain an adult form, but he’d heard that she was in little hurry to do so. She wore jeans that had been cut off around her knees, a little slip of leather--something like a tube top--was wrapped around her chest and under her arms, and she was barefoot. No surprise there. Most people living on Latuar didn’t wear shoes. Humans believed that they were unhygienic and made the feet weak. Aerlo didn’t wear them because one could run faster and climb trees more easily without. Even Tact didn’t wear shoes, not even when he was working on the freighter, choosing the compromise of sandals instead.

She also had an artificial arm, the sunlight reflecting off the ivory build of the intricately-jointed limb joined her body at just beyond the shoulder. No one had ever been able to tell him how Honor had lost her left arm. His mother knew, but she refused to speak of it, only saying that it had to do with the man who raised her. So much a mystery, his sister.

“Ho, Honor,” he said.

She stared down at him for another moment, and the wind blew back her hair somewhat.

There was a tattoo on her left cheek, and the sight of it made his eyes widen in new respect. They were simple deep red, tapered stripes, three of them. A high, high Aerlo honor, the highest rank of warrior that he had no idea that an Everchild who was three-quarters human could ever achieve.

She jumped from the tree, landing soundlessly on the grass, her long, brushy red fox tail held high for balance. He smiled slightly to see it, still somewhat surprised he didn’t miss his own lost appendage, though it had been a nuisance having to learn how to walk and jump and fight again without it.

He got another surprise when she moved over to him and have him a gentle hug, pressing her tattooed cheek against his. “Ho, Brother,” she murmured.

After a moment, he returned the hug, relief flooding through him. She didn’t reject him.

Small foxes were affectionate, so the hug lasted several seconds, followed by another leisurely nuzzle before she pulled back to look at him.

Her deep brown eyes traced his face, and she smiled slightly, one corner of her mouth drawing up. “You have the look of Darr. That’s good.”

Good that he didn’t look like Cohn? He would agree to that readily enough.

“Why are you looking for me?”

“I…” He wished she hadn’t asked that question so soon. “I…don’t know. I just… I guess I just wanted to meet you.”

“I see. How is Darr?”

“Mother is fine,” he said slowly.

“She lives with wolves.”

Tact stared back at sister a moment, wondering what she meant by that, exactly. That Darr wasn’t fine because she lived with wolves was most obvious, since foxes seldom got along with wolves, but still…

She turned away from him, her movements slow and fluid, so unlike that of a true ten-year-old. The artificial arm, a beautiful piece of technology that moved as naturally as her real arm, gestured at the meat wrapped in the leaf. “Bring that along, Brother. We’ll go home to talk.”

Home?

He blinked once, surprised that Honor had a home. Or the implication that “home” was a stationary place, and that she didn’t just rove around like one with a pack mentality usually did…

But then, Honor was fox and not wolf. She did not have a pack mentality.

Curious, he took up the meat and followed her.

Honor’s home was yet another surprise. He had imagination enough to see that it had once been a grand homestead, with a large stone house, very, very old. The columns of a stone fence that had once protected squares of gardens once had wooden elements that had rotted away, but Honor had made an attempt to keep the house in repair.

It was clean inside too, dusted and aired out. A new-woven carpet was in the main chamber, the fireplace scrubbed out and stacked with fresh, unburned wood. A few pieces of sturdy wooden furniture were still in the otherwise empty room, except for a broken-down rocking chair, which seemed to have a place of honor before the hearth.

He’d seen the kitchen, ancient and primitive even by an Aerlo’s nomadic standards, with a cast-iron stove that had to exist even before Honor was born.

Gazing around, he knew, just knew, that this was the home where that human family had raised his sister centuries ago. He wondered how many meals they had made for her in that kitchen, how many times she had been rocked to sleep in that lovingly-placed, rotted old rocking chair. He wondered if she had been trained to fight in these very fields.

He couldn’t think of much to say to her as he watched her prepare a meal for them with the meat and vegetables pulled from a wild garden in the backyard.

“Are you here all by yourself?”

“My master and the others are still here,” she said, not looking up from her meal.

“Wh-what?”

She pointed at a window, old threadbare curtains floating on either side with the breeze. He followed her finger to a small hill, at the base of which were eight graves with an explosive scattering of flowers planted across their graves.

He got up from the table, food forgotten, and wandered to the window. The stones were new, he could see, but the upraised names and dates stated that the ones buried there had been dead for a very long time.

Teague Raisa
Acacia Tainn Raisa
Jeremiah Bavalle
Aelan Tainn Bavalle
Micah Istas
Alix Sorcha Istas
Jayden Raisa
Teigh Raisa

“My family,” she said, surprising him with her sudden nearness.

He looked down at her. Her curly head barely came up to his middle, but he was suddenly profoundly aware of just how much older she was than he. The gentle child’s face with the warrior tattoo held eyes that gazed on the graves with strong love mingled with powerful sadness. She returned to her homeworld often, cared for her childhood home, replaced these headstones as weather and time wore them down.

She looked up, eyes twinkling some though she knew what he was thinking.

“Honor Tainn Istas Bavalle Raisa,” he said softly. “You took all of their names.”

“They gave them to me,” she said, a trace of pride in her voice. A voice that was slightly too deep and less pure than a true child’s.

She walked away from the window, bare feet making no sound on the stone floor as she made her way back to the table.

He hesitated as he watched her climb back into her chair. “Honor…how long will you be here?”

She was silent for several seconds, tapping the wooden table surface with her fork as she considered. The she shrugged inconclusively. “I don’t know. A while.”

“Mother…Mother doesn’t believe it’s good for you to be alone so much.” He hesitated to pass along motherly sentiments from Darr because he did know that the last time the two of them saw each other, they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. Not in the wake of Darr and Cohn’s wedding.

“Darr is only twenty years older than I am,” his sister said, as if that explained everything. As if that explained anything.

Then she added, “I’m not alone here. The place is full of ghosts. Memories. It…comforts me.”

He sat down at the table again, but in the seat next to her instead of at his plate staring intently into her face. “It’s not good for you to be alone so much. You’re so…disconnected.”

He was referring to her slow speech, a voice rusty with disuse, the listlessness of her movements, the lack of childlike energy Everchildren were famous for, the bare attempts at a smile.

She gave another of these weak smiles, this one deep enough that dimples showed in her cheeks. “We all get like this sometimes. We all get tired. But we bounce back. Perk up.” Her eyes strayed to the window, where the headstones could clearly be seen. “I was raised to follow the path of the warrior. I’ve fought more wars than I’ve lived years. I wear out sometimes. But I’m enduring. I have to be, don’t I?”

He hesitated again. “Mother is…worried about you.”

“Are you here because of her?”

“No, I’m here for myself. But she talks about you often.”

“Does she?” Honor smiled again. “My master used to tell me of when he met her. He said he only knew her for a day, but she was very sad and cried a lot. Imagine his surprise when he woke up the next morning after sharing her camp to find she had abandoned her day-old baby girl with him.”

“Well…well…” Tact fumbled, not knowing the story well enough to have a way to come to his mother’s defense. He tried anyway. “The man…your master, he was raised by our grandfather, wasn’t he? By Mother’s father.”

“Grandpa brought Master Teague up by hand in his pack and gave him his name, yes,” Honor agreed. “But it was hardly grounds for my master and our mother to consider each other siblings, don’t you think?”

Tact didn’t think so. “You and I don’t know each other, and we’re still brother and sister.”

“And I of all people know where blood does and doesn’t matter where family is concerned.” She smiled humorlessly. “But Master Teague and Darr never had a connection of any sort. It doesn’t matter, though. I was happier with my master than I would have been with our mother. She just put him quite a position. He was only fifteen at the time, you know.”

Tact raised an eyebrow. “No, I didn’t know…”

“Well, our mother was very foolish.”

“Sister, please don’t say such things about our--”

She wave a metal hand, somewhat impatiently. “No disrespected intended; but it was a shaky decision, leaving a child with another child. But it turned out very well, so I suppose the point is moot anyway.”

They left it at that a moment, silence falling between them as they watched the dusk gathering in the sky over the graves of Honor Raisa’s human family.

“Tell me,” he whispered finally, watching the last of the sunlight crawl over Teague Raisa’s gravestone. His was in the middle, the tallest. Tact's sister obviously took the most care with his. He could see shadows and whorls of designs that he couldn’t make out at this distance, but he could see that the borders of the gravestone were in the shape of a long staff with blades on each end--a nocere--the weapon Teague had trained his daughter-student to use. “Tell me about him. About them. Make me know you.”

“Why do you want to know me, Tact Veyka?”

He had not expected the question and his answer was weak. “I…just want to know you… You’re my sister.”

She met his gaze with those old, tired eyes. Considering.

“Someone has to know you,” he entreated.

Even their mother didn’t know her. Many, many people knew of her, but she was a truthful legend that not many every laid eyes on, a mighty force that preferred to keep hidden until she was needed.

“Did you know that there used to be a town around this house?” she said.

He relaxed, smiling his gratitude. He recognized the voice of one who was about to begin a long tale. “No. No, I can’t tell there ever was.”

“A very long time ago,” she said, a little dreamily. “This house was owned by the Tainns, a soap-making family. And the town was called Eulo…”

Tact sat back, listening.