122: Generations
Chapter 122: Generations
CROWN
When I materialized near Sena, I did the usual thing I’d been doing of late. Instead of popping in right next to her, I put myself into the world some distance from her new home and walked the rest of the way like a normal person.
It was safer, this way. Especially when I was visiting off-schedule like this time.
The cottage that Sena lived in was almost idyllic, and resembled so much one of the cottages I would have expected to see on Earth. The brickwork was an odd pink color instead of red, and the roof was curved at the top instead of sharply peaked, but the plaster and wooden framing were all quite familiar to my idea of a cottage.
It was quaint and quiet, a good place for someone like Sena to retire to.
Of course, the grass wasn’t mowed, and instead animals grazed it to somewhat reasonable length. It also wasn’t grass like anything on Earth or Upside, but ‘longish plant stalks that were not readily edible’ was close enough to grass for me. The dirt footpath leading up to the cottage was pretty normal, too.
What was different from usual was the voss grazing near the cottage. It looked much like a cross between a horse and a deer, but for Chall it was functionally similar to a horse, even if they had yet to perfect breeding them. Domestication was possible, and that’s all that mattered.
“Uncle Kenta!”
Much more expected was the small girl waving at me from near the voss. The nice thing about accelerating time is that it was easy to remember her age, since for me my last visit had been only a few days ago. For her, it had been… eight months or so, by my reckoning. The vaskan had settled on a ten-month year, so it had been more like seven of their month-equivalents. Whatever the counting, this meant she was nine now.
“Hello there, Asha!” I called out to her with a smile, returning the wave. The small girl was already scampering toward me, and I laughed as the old man sitting near the voss yelled at her to stop and wait instead.
Asha was not like most of the vaskan in Chall. It was always possible to end up ‘breeding true’ when two vaskan with the same Totem bred, but it was rare even if the Totems matched. Asha was still well before puberty, when the ability to process a core matured, but she already had the clawed feet and hands, the tail, and the ears of her mother. Considering Sena’s Totem was already very rare, she surely drew a lot of eyes.
I imagined this was how Sena might have appeared as a child, if she’d had the same carryover. Asha looked like Sena in miniature, like a perfect clone of the old spymaster.
Which made sense, because she was an exact genetic clone.
It didn’t take long for me to get there. This body was getting old – because I kept bumping the age up to match Sena – but it was in excellent health. My normal walking pace was leisurely, not slow. But kids, well… they’re impatient about anything.
As soon as I’d passed some imaginary demarcation, Asha zipped up to me and bounced on her toes. She didn’t hug – her mother wasn’t a hugger, and despite Asha’s much more enthusiastic nature, neither was she – but she did walk alongside me the rest of the way to the cottage.
“You’re here early! Did you bring me anything? Are you staying the night? Can we play?” The rapid barrage of questions was cute, and much more confident than the last time I’d visited.
I chuckled. “No, no, yes.” I ruffled her hair lightly, causing her tail to flick and the girl to squirm away. “I need to talk to your mother about some things, first, but I can stay a while to play if you want. Is she around? Can you go get her for me?”
The pout was brief before the little vaskan nodded and darted off, zipping around the house with an energy only the youth can muster. I, of course, knew exactly where Sena was, and could have appeared to her directly. Truth was, I kind of liked Asha. I couldn’t stand her in large quantities – the immaturity started to grate on me – but it was fun being the ‘mysterious uncle’ for a kid sometimes.
She hadn’t bothered to introduce me to the old man with the deep brown eyes watching me, but she didn’t need to. I knew who he was, and I wasn’t surprised that he knew who I was, as well.
“So you’re the infamous Kenta,” Genth chuckled. He didn’t rise from his chair, and I didn’t expect him to. The man was getting pretty old… though if he’d ridden here on a voss, he couldn’t have been as infirm as he pretended.
“I’d prefer ‘mysterious’ to infamous,” I replied lightly. “Since the number of men Sena would trust to watch her daughter can be counted on two fingers, I’m going to guess you’re Genth. Nice to meet you at last.”
He nodded back to me. “The same. Two men, eh?” He glanced after where Asha had vanished. “Her father isn’t one of them?”
Crap. I’d spoken without thinking about whatever cover story Sena might have given the sharp old coot. I tried to play it cool and just smiled at him. “Sena’s relationship with Asha’s father is her business to tell, not mine.”
Genth chuckled and didn’t press, which made sense. Sena wouldn’t trust this man if he pried too much into her business. Instead he pivoted to… me.
“For a while I thought if anyone could do it, it’d be you… provided she didn’t kill you first.” He had a smile on his face, but I could tell Genth was testing me. This man wasn’t as rambling as he pretended, and he’d matched wits with Sena for years. I wasn’t sure what he was prying for, but for once I wasn’t worried about letting anything important slip.
“We’ve never had that sort of relationship,” I admitted, spreading my hands. “About as far as it got was I thought she was cute, but you’re also right about that dichotomy. We’ve always been about testing one another just as much as we were interested. There aren’t many in this world that I could call friend, but eventually I think that’s where we ended up.”
All technically true statements.
Before Genth could interrogate me more, Sena and Asha returned, with the latter running up to lean on my leg and peer at me. “How long will this take?”
I heard a sigh from beside me as Sena, now sporting some grey hairs at her temples, watched the whole thing. “I swear I wasn’t nearly this impatient when I was a child.”
I ignored Genth’s smirk to ruffle Asha’s hair again. “It won’t take long at all. Go back to brushing the voss, I’ll chat with your mother and come back here to play some games, all right?”
“Okay!” Asha was excitable, but from what I’d seen she was a good kid. She didn’t argue or continue to pout, she just dashed off to go back to Genth’s voss, leaving the old soldier shaking his head and chuckling.
Sena and I took a short walk around the cottage, heading toward her vegetable garden in the back where she’d likely been working when I’d arrived. She didn’t speak until we’d gotten well away from Genth.
“You’re very early. Something must have happened.”
I sighed and absently wished I’d given myself a tail for situations like this. They were good for idle fidgeting.
“My daughter was taking her time with confessing her feelings, so I accidentally let it slip for her.” I grimaced. “My own fault. I know my kind tend to lose track of time, but I thought in nine years she’d have gotten around to it. But that isn’t the real problem I came to talk to you about. I need advice for my situation.”
Sena gave me a look askance. “Yet another time that you and your kind seek assistance from a ‘mortal’ like me. With Akasha I can understand, her relationship is with another mortal. What could I possibly help you with?”
I frowned and surveyed the garden as we turned the corner of the cottage. It was a nice garden, and I was glad that Sena had retired to a place away from the politics she had been steeped in. I wondered if that ever came back to haunt her… but then focused again.
“There is someone above me, I suppose you could call them my superior.” I glanced aside, but Sena didn’t seem surprised by that. “I found out earlier that she – or it, technically – only came into the position through breaking what is considered an important rule for the security of everyone.”
With a sigh, I stepped closer and leaned over the wooden fence separating me from the garden, observing the rows of potato-like plants beneath.
“The problem is, the one who actually broke the rules for her is… absent, and she has been doing their job. She’s not qualified, but no one else is either. She’s also very against Akasha’s relationship with Reyth, and is technically my superior. It’s become a complicated situation, because she’s barely holding on as things are.”
I didn’t really need the advice, actually. I’d already decided what to do. The only problem was, things had been getting so wildly out of control with this situation that the new revelations left me with no one to talk to. This was the sort of thing Duck couldn’t help with. She was great at focusing my attention on logical problems, but emotional beats weren’t great for her.
Apparently my ‘muted emotions’ didn’t completely eliminate this kind of problem. Or perhaps I’d been spending too much time in flesh and blood bodies, and the emotional turmoil was the result. I had been warned about that possibility.
Sena didn’t need me to explain this. She smiled faintly and leaned against the cottage wall, her arms crossed. If anything, she looked amused.
“What you are dealing with is the reality of an imperfect world, with imperfect people.” She shook her head. “Perhaps your superior was placed there by corruption or the like, but it sounds as if she’s paying the price already. Without an alternative, do you really have a choice but to support her?”
“Mm,” I mumbled. I knew this, but hearing someone else say it was important.
The tail thumping against the wall brought my eyes back to Sena as she smiled. “You are a very strange being, to this day. You created this world, but you want so badly for everything to be fair and even. Life is not fair and even… and it shouldn’t be. Plenty of people who deserve misery live free and in opulence, while the most loving and caring die in anonymity. It isn’t fair, but that is what makes us want.”
I chuckled. “As I recall, you sometimes took it upon yourself to make it more fair.”
“Sometimes,” she agreed with a fidgeting glance of discomfort. “And sometimes I did horrible things in the name of keeping the rest safe. Was I wrong to do that? Was it the right call because of who it helped?”
The elderly vaskan tsked. “I can’t say, and I think you can’t either. So… do what you must. If that means propping up someone who stole their position, so that you can live, do that. If it means pushing them aside, that is the harder, braver choice… but keep in mind who may be hurt by it aside from yourself.”
Advice to ‘do what I felt I needed to do’ wasn’t helpful for making a decision, but it allow me to think. I just nodded slowly, then chuckled again. “You must not think too highly of us ‘superior beings’ now, hmm?”
“I’ve had a more interesting life by far than anyone else I know,” Sena pointed out. “Even compared to the dungeoneers, I’d say my life was full of momentous events. And in the end, I have a quiet life in a stable country, with a daughter I never expected but that I’d die to protect. It doesn’t matter that you have doubts, or that you make mistakes.”
She hesitated, eyes going unfocused in thought… then reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. “After all I’ve done, and all the costs, you’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Then her lips twisted into a grin. “Now we’d better get back before Asha decides to teach herself how to ride a voss. I don’t know where she gets her fearlessness from.”
I laughed as I straightened up to return to the front.
“From her mother, I’d guess.”