Alike

Dedicated to anyone who has stuck around!

Suckling wards were hot, steaming chambers choked with the warbling cries of newborns and the similarly petty schemes of their conniving wetnurses. They were not places that an yautja of her stature would normally deign to visit, but there had been a curious rumor circulating. One that the arbitrator had heard from across the black expanse.

Deep and defined were the rifts of the arbitrator's sculpted muscles and midnight-dark was her mottled flesh. She moved with a strong, exacting stride that sent others scuttling and bowing out of her path even before they dared look up into the sharp glint of her gilt mask. The eyes were icy blue, textured like honeycomb. The wrought wings unfurling across the strong cheekbones could cut from afar. Androk'tonnes moved freely through the suckling ward as wetnurses bowed away from her, murmuring respect and finding other routes through the rows of metal bassinet-like pods.

Their leader, the head wetnurse, was called Umbrago. She was on the far side of the ward with her back to Androk'tonnes.

"Umbrago," Tresses said.

Umbrago turned. Cradled in her arms was a suckling. To Androk'tonnes, it looked like a silly fat green thing rather than the offspring of this ship's clan leader.

Tresses continued. "You did not receive me at the door, as was your duty to one of my rank. I can't imagine you were too busy with that thing in your arms. Any more of your attention and his bloodhunters will have to roll him in pursuit of his prey."

Umbrago's brow wrinkled in a show of false contrition. "My apologies, exalted Androk'tonnes," she simpered. "Your arrival was not brought to my attention." She snapped her tusks hard at a stooped junior wetnurse and she retreated.

"Never mind," Tresses said. "You know why I'm here." The rumor had pulled her and Shikarr away from their most recent hunt and all the way onto this clanship. Such a journey out of their way should not be met with so much apathy from Umbrago. The affair of an orphaned offspring, especially that of such an esteemed sire, was no trifling matter. Shikarr awaited her conclusion just outside - males were not permitted into the suckling wards, full of the heirs of their competitors. "My mate Shikarr's littermate - his brother-of-the-womb. He took a female before his fated last hunt. Is his heir here, as I've heard?"

"A disgraceful mother," Umbrago said, shaking her head in disgust. "Cetanu will exile her from the motherhood for perishing in birth. The offspring she bore was unworthy of its late sire. We should cast the suckling into the black."

A low growl started in Tresses's throat. "Show me the infant."

Umbrago's tusk flexed in annoyance. She handed the fat green suckling off to another female and gestured for Androk'tonnes to follow.

"A disappointment," Umbrago said, stopping at one pod. "Not worth the air he breathes."

Tresses looked down into the pod. In it was a male suckling, leaner than the fat green one Umbrago had been nursing. He was pale and discolored from neglect. A clammy sweat painted his dulled scales. He was lying in his own defecation, a mess many days in the making. But most curiously, one of his arms was missing. The limb ended before the elbow and was twisted like a diseased root near the stump.

Umbrago let out of hiss of disdain and reached into the pod as if to give the suckling a hard swat. Before she could make contact, Tresses had seized her around the arm and twisted so hard the lead wetnurse shrieked. Tresses' claws made deep dimples in Umbrago's flesh; green blood beaded and ran, hitting the floor between them.

"This is the offspring of the late Ru'chian. The blood nephew of my lifemate," Tresses seethed. "And mine, now. If you lay hands on this suckling, I will unburden you of them."

"He's a weakling," Umbrago said through a pained yowl. Tresses let go of her and Umbrago stood up straight, her full height a direct challenge. "He will not live to see the moon of his first hunt, let alone his first chiva."

"I will see that he does," Tresses snarled.

Umbrago heaved loud, agitated breaths. But Tresses stood taller, wore on her body countless trophies she'd ripped from her quarries herself. To challenge her was a death sentence. So Umbrago let the air go out of her.

"It's a cruelty," she said, turning her back on Tresses so she could resume her wetnurse duties. She accepted the fat clanleader's heir back to her breast. "He will be killed by these superior heirs at play."

Tresses ignored her, bending low over the bassinet to examine the nephew of Shikarr. She gathered him to her, ignoring the way his mess sullied her armor, and gently pressed her mask to his brow. He cooed and clung to her, his stump limb held out for contact as though he knew not what he lacked.

Tresses' voice was low and heavy with her vow. "You are the heir of Ru'chian. You're the nephew of the honorable Shikarr, who I have taken for life. You will put all who oppose you to shame. You are my strong one, my Ru'tiek."

###

Peals of laughter wound their way around jutting rubble and bombed-out buildings. A pack of children clambered over slabs of concrete torn asunder by shells from the night before, careful in their bare feet to avoid shattered glass and sharp rebar. One girl at the front took a slope too fast and lost her footing, skinning both knees as the others overtook her. She coughed, red dirt rising in clouds, and shook dark curls out of her face. One fist was cupped protectively to her front. Though she'd lost her lead, she was up and after them immediately, laughing and shrieking and calling out goodbyes as one by one each child broke off from the pack to return home.

The girl clambered down a stone staircase that had once been part of an interior but now was exposed to the outdoors ever since bombs had taken out the building above. She ducked under a sheet, for the door was hanging from crippled hinges, and called out, "Jadda! Jadda!"

It was a basement lit poorly by flickering recessed lights in the ceiling. Wire bunks, some with thin mattresses but many bare, crowded one half of the room. In the other half, women folded laundered blankets and mended ripped clothing, with just enough space between them for the child to slip through, though she did upset baskets of sewing as she did. They snapped fabric at her but she was already past.

In this side room, there was no need for lighting, as half of the ceiling was missing so the blue sky above could be seen. In its corner, an aged woman stood in front of a camp stove with an enormous pot heating on the burner. She turned. The stirring spoon she held was still steaming.

"Nasira!" she chided. She made to swat the child with the spoon but the girl was too fast, dancing deftly out of reach, still holding her hand to her front. The girl grinned.

"Guess what, Jadda. Grandmother. Guess what we did today."

"Something foolish, by the looks of those knees." Jadda said this without needing to look in Nasira's direction for long. The woman, thought not Nasira's jadda by blood, was still by now very accustomed to the child's comings and goings. At seven, she had more scrapes and bruises than clear skin.

Nasira thrust out her hand for Jadda's inspection. Jadda took it and flipped it. Apart from the layer of dust and grime, there was a red bead welling on Nasira's fingertip.

Jadda's face turned down in horror. "Ah, child, you did not!"

But Nasira only giggled. "I'm going to the stars! To see them up close!"

Jadda bent low to look Nasira in the eyes, holding her steady so she could not wriggle away. "You should not have done that. If chosen, you will go away forever. Is that what you want?"

"Amir, Issa, Hafiz, all the others, they got zapped too!"

Jadda shook her head. "The skyward ones, they will only take one who has passed their test. Amir and Issa and Hafiz will never go with you."

Nasira frowned at that. She wiggled her bloody finger. Then brightened. "The skyward ones will be my new friends."

Jadda sighed. She could not begin to share all the things that weighed on her. How the skyward ones were regarded with disdain, how any who ventured to join their ranks would earn the same treatment. Even here, with shells falling nightly, it was not a future to which she could give her blessing.

But it turned out that Jadda had little say.

When it was revealed that Nasira would be the one plucked from the skin of the earth in this ragged, war-torn place, Jadda only had one boon to grant her before they came to take her away. Tucked in a chest Jadda kept hidden from view under her bunk was a bolt of ornamented fabric. It was dark blue with a gentle glamor and spun helices of purple silken thread.

"This belonged to your mother," she said to Nasira. "You should keep it with you." There were other things she could have said, of course, about this scarf being the reason for so much conflict in their part of the world, a small reason for the shells that fell and the shards of their life that had been blown to smithereens. But where Nasira was going, she would come to understand that on her own. It was inescapable. And it was just the beginning.

Can't say for certain whether there will be a continuation of this.

also I made a vine compilation "but its alkaline/goldilocks/whatever" idk if I can paste links nowadays but here it is also check my author bio watch?v=pVJzPkMO0EY