On the First Day
a Farscape story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
PG-13
Disclaimer: Kemper and Henson own the toys. I'm just playing Barbies.
Summary: How a beast became a priest. Written for suenix in the Zhaanathon.
It is morning, or as close to morning as she can find in this enclosed prison. Zhaan wakes without opening her eyes, stretching her muscles one at a time under her skin, breathing in and out slowly with each stretch. Morning devotions revolve around the renewal of the body after dormancy, and she takes her time. An inhale, she flexes the muscles in her toes, she exhales in praise of the Goddess, she inhales again and tenses and relaxes a muscle in her leg, she prays.
After her devotions are complete, Zhaan opens her eyes. The cell is exactly the same as it was when she went to sleep.
She is a ninth level Pa'u and still she cannot restrain her sigh of disappointment. She knows the difference between dreams and waking, but the visions tempted and taunted her. Instead, she is a captive aboard a ship, itself imprisoned, taking her to the penal colony where she will live out her days.
The Peacekeeper who guards this particular section of cells throws her plate of food to the floor outside her cell. The cell beside her holds a Luxan, a fierce beast of a creature who growls in his chains as his own food is tossed down without ceremony. Zhaan waits until the Peacekeeper is gone then approaches the tray. Early in her confinement, she refused food, found it thrust regardless into her body through needles, through tubes down her throat. Zhaan eats her food now, as much as she can make herself swallow.
After food, she meditates. There is little enough to do on this ship otherwise. In her last prison, she wove fabric for use as bedding, clothing, whatever the Peacekeepers needed. In the prison she is heading towards, there will be the hard labor of moving rocks and soil, and her own private duties of bidding the Goddess' grace on those who die from their exertions. This prison has no labor, merely existence, so she is trapped like an insect in sap, neither buzzing in activity nor feeding a predator to rotate herself back through the cycle of life. She simply is.
"Zotoh?"
Zhaan's eyes are closed in her meditations.
"Zotohria?"
She will not stir from this position, will not extend a single digit, will barely breathe.
"Where are you hiding, my darling girl?"
Zhaan becomes the memory.
"Here, Mother!" She bursts from her hiding place and dashes on slender legs to where her mother stands in the doorway, plunging her face into the robes at her mother's thighs. A gentle hand smooths the fine white fuzz on her head, sending tendrils of affection into her. She is her mother's Zotohria, her little seedling, and she is loved.
"How was the day, my child?" "Father and I spent all day in the atrium until he got tired."
Zhaan can feel the warmth of Delvia's two suns spilling over her head; centuries later the memory still fills her with joy.
"Are you staying for dinner?"
"No, child. I am only here to bathe and to change. Evening services ... " "You always have evening services. Or morning services." She pulls away from her mother, feeling disappointment cloud over her inner suns. Her mother's gentle azure features draw into concern. "It is my calling, my love." But Zhaan does not go back to her mother's arms and she pouts until her father tucks her into bed.
She is too old to cry for this, for anything. Her mother has been dead for seven hundred cycles, taken swiftly from her by illness. Her memories are full of her father's face, his smile and kindness. His mate worked in the temple, and he in their lovely home open to the air and sky. When her mother was gone, his smiles dwindled and faded by degrees for an hundred cycles before they bloomed full upon his face again.
She has not seen his smile in too many cycles, will never see it again.
Zhaan steadies herself. For an arn, she focuses on her breathing. Her eyes open to her cell and she allows this reality also to become a part of her. Accepts it into her as she might accept the sunlight on a lost world.
Broken and angry and lonely beyond all words, she has been cast upon her knees by her gaolers once again for fomenting rebellion among her fellow prisoners. The Peacekeeper she attempted to seduce for his access codes took his pleasure from her then informed his superiors of her plans. Beaten and half-starved (for they miserly portion out the food in this jail) she lies upon the stone floor, covered in filth and burning in rage.
She wants to kill them, wants to hurt them as deeply as she aches. She wants to gnaw their bones. She wants to die.
This is not what she wants to remember, not the pain, not his stinking breath, the way he laughed. But it is part of all. She turns her head aside, allows her vision to focus elsewhere. The Luxan has eaten, is reposing. She has spoken to him only once since he was brought onto the ship. He does not stare at her when she disrobes. He seems to live inside his own head as much as she does, and she suspects he will be one of the first she buries on their new world.
She decides she will speak with him again when she is finished her meditation. She must have something to say about him at his funeral.
Zhaan closes her eyes.
She wants to die and she cannot. She cannot will herself loose the bonds of spirit to flesh, and while they feed her a pittance, the Peacekeepers insist she eat it all. She can fight, try to die fighting, and they throw her into her cell and they laugh.
He laughed. "Please," she says to no one. No one can hear her. "Please." "Zotoh ... " "Please," she begs the darkness. Begs for death, begs for life, she does not know which. "Zotohria ... " Warmth around her, not from rage, but from complete love, complete acceptance. She is in the presence of the Goddess. Zhaan shudders inside and hides her unworthy face. She is nothing. She is dirty and abused and there is blood on her hands, blood in her mind. "Come to me, my darling girl." The voice is rich and full and entreats her. "You are worthy to me." And Zhaan lifts herself from the floor, and looks upon Kah'leen's face, and she already knows what face She will wear as Zhaan buries her shamed and tearful face in Her ethereal robes. There is peace.
Her meditation ends. Zhaan rises to her feet, draws her clothes upon her body once more.
It is time to start the day.
The End