CHAPTER FIVE◄CHAPTER SIX►CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER ARTWORK

Talitha had slept through much of the afternoon, and upon awakening at dusk, Elkanah had finished setting up camp. That sleep that she had experienced, however, was unlike any other she’d slept through in her whole life. How could it not have been? Instinctively, she reached for her neck, thinking that the chain that would have normally been linked to her collar would have gotten tangled from tossing and turning throughout the night, but it wasn’t there. It seemed like such a change from the cruel routine that she had been accustomed to.

Turning her head over, she blinked a few times at the soft glow of a few holo-lamps that Elkanah had hung up throughout the cave to provide light in the descending dusk that was transforming into night. She was just barely able to make out the image of Elkanah kneeling over the two self-heating ration packs that he’d put together from his field kit. Talitha couldn’t even begin to tell what it could possibly be, having only subsisted on the bread, gruel, and water that Zeshom Noor fed his slaves. That, and the exceedingly rare scrap of meat. To the sergeant, it was the standard military slop that he’d grown so accustomed to eating as a member of the Crown Army, but for the slave girl, the aroma of the food now wafting through the small cave was as alien of a sensation as the lack of the chain no longer around her neck when she slept.

Elkanah overheard Talitha turning over, and he looked back behind him to see the golden furred Sivathi tiredly rubbing her eyes. He met her with a warm smile in an effort to remind her of his complete lack of hostility, and that she was finally safe under his guardianship. “You’re awake,” he said to her, lifting up the trays of food in his handpaws in a motion to show her that supper was ready. “Are you hungry?”

For a brief moment, Talitha still felt the lingering pain on her back, though it was now significantly numbed since the bandages and collagen spray had begun their work on healing her. Even so, that very sensation of pain was something that, like the chain, she had been accustomed to upon awakening. As such, she simply had to ask if everything that was transpiring wasn’t her just imagining things. She ignored the question that he originally asked her, countering with her own. “I… I haven’t been dreaming all of this up, have I?” she said, slowly pushing herself up with her arms and off her belly until she was sitting up. She had to look aroud several times, double checking to make sure there were no cruel overseers out and about coming to wake her up to begin her labor for the day.

Elkanah drooped his ears in sadness for her, realizing that all these things that were force of habit for Talitha were just a remnant of how horribly she’d actually been treated all her life. Nevertheless, he shook his head no, assuring her that everything was a reality. “It isn’t a dream, friend,” he said, emphasizing the last word so that she again knew that he held no ill intent. “And this is for us both.”

He stood up, gently trudging over to where Talitha was sitting up on the bedroll. He held forth one of the trays to her as he sat down cross-legged in front of her, and she hesitated for a moment. Elkanah then looked down at the consumables on the tray, feeling that an explanation was in order for what she was soon to be eating. “It’s Zuthari meat mixed with vegetables from the poles,” he said to her. “And Kethra—a fruit that’s also from the poles. Plenty of nutrition there. Although I’m not sure if the stuff they’re feeding us in the army these days is actually from the poles and isn’t just synthetically grown in the cities now that much the poles are out of the control of the Crown of Siva.”

Talitha didn’t care. What mattered was that it was finally something besides the gruel and monotony that she had only known. Grasping the utensils in her handpaws, she began to dig into the protein packed main course of the ration, hungrily consuming the stuff as the flavor exploded in her mouth. She practically had to slow herself in swallowing so fervently, as she needed to take care not to choke from wolfing down her food.

Naturally, Elkanah was in no rush to consume his; in fact, he hated the stuff. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. And even then, he knew that he should be grateful for it, for seeing how Talitha immediately began to consume it after his explanation of what it was just went to show how how good he actually had it as a free Sivathi. On top of that, he didn’t want to overstep his boundaries by asking so many of the questions that he had, but he was practically doing so already by continually staring at her golden fur. Why was somebody with the color of nobility under the ownership of Zeshom Noor? None of it made any sense.

Talitha could see him watching her, but it hadn’t come to her mind that somebody would be asking her about her fur color anytime soon when everybody under Zeshom Noor’s ownership—everybody she had interacted with, in essence—believed the story that had been given about it being a genetic mutation. Princess Aliya had been the first to beg the question and demand an answer. For now, she just continued to eat, too focused on nourishing herself to think of explaining herself.

But Elkanah’s curiosity would get the better of him. As he picked around at his food with his fork, the question he didn’t want to ask out of respect for her fragile state inevitably slipped out. The sheer fact that somebody with golden fur was enslaved was too much of an abnormality in Sivathi society for him not to say something. “Talitha,” he asked her, looking up with his eyes as he kept his head pointed towards his ration. “What was somebody of your status doing in the ownership of Zeshom Noor? Or perhaps the better question is, why were you enslaved at all?”

Far before Elkanah had even remotely started to actually consume his meal, Talitha had already consumed over half of hers when the question inevitably hit her. “You mean my fur color, don’t you?” she asked, pausing and breathing heavily as she took in the first semblance of a filled stomach in eternity.

There was no easy way of asking about it; that much was certain. Elkanah had been blunt with his question, but he was more inspired to ask it as it was because of all the words Zeshom Noor had spilled before he’d blown his head to pieces with his gauss rifle. If it hadn’t hadn’t been for that, he might have had more reservations about being so forthcoming. But the sheer immensity of all he’d said was pushing him to find an answer, though he doubted even Talitha knew. In response to her counter, he simply nodded his head, making it clear that an explanation for her golden fur was in order.

As if memorized, Talitha spouted off the details of what Zeshom Noor had pounded into her mind since childhood. It was the only truth she knew. “My mother was pregnant with me aboard a slave ship,” she started to explain. “Early enough into it to where I had hardly begun to develop. An unexpected wave of radiation from Zaket B hit the vessel while on approach to Siva and ruined almost the entire stock aboard. My mother was no exception to that outcome. But somehow by fate, I only sustained a slight discoloration in my fur; and developed otherwise unaffected. But my mother perished from radiation sickness not long after I was born. She’d been kept well enough to deliver me; Zeshom Noor at least wanted something unspoiled from the disaster that struck the ship.”

Though he was about to make another inquiry, Elkanah soon found himself cut off as Talitha continued explaining things. “And I was lucky to have sustained just that,” she said, habitually parroting the degrading words of her late master. “I could have ended up like Jophia with her crippled leg, or most of the parents who died from the radiation induced illnesses.”

Elkanah knew that to have lived in a state such as hers was anything but lucky. It was asinine to even think that. And Talitha herself wanted to believe differently, especially with Zeshom Noor’s dying words. I thank you—Princess—for your secret status… A title that should have been so different from pain and slavery. Nonetheless, her lowliness was still anchored deep within her mind, and it would be difficult to shake. If what he’d said was actually true, then everything she’d known about herself was a lie, plain and simple. The story about her mother, her own fur color—her entire existence was built on falsehoods. However, it was all she could offer Elkanah for the moment.

“But I don’t know any more,” she said, finally finishing her meal after she’d gobbled down the thing in a matter of minutes. She inhaled deeply with gratification, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of a full belly for once in her life. Setting down her plate before her, she set her handpaws down in her lap as she looked up to the white furred Sivathi. “Those are the only explanations that I know, and Zeshom Noor decried it all as a lie before he was killed. What is to say they weren’t just maniacal ravings?”

“I suppose anything is possible; the original explanation for your fur color could certainly be true,” Elkanah said, stabbing at the Kethra fruit with his fork with a bit more vigor now that he had finally shrugged off his anxiety about asking his questions, though still bored with the pickings on his plate. “But in all my life, on a planet as big as ours, and in this corner of the galaxy that we hold sway over, I’ve never once heard of a slave with the fur color of nobility. Not on Siva, not on the colonies. Nowhere. That being the case, if I was a betting man, I’d wager quite a few talir in saying that there’s something he wasn’t telling you. The circumstances surrounding you might have sufficed in a secluded backwater like Lathga Province, but anywhere else? I doubt it.”

Talitha reached up at the collar still fastened to her neck, running a few fingers of the text etched into the steel. The inscription of her first initial, Zeshom Noor’s initials, and the numerical code that identified her in the planetary slave registry said otherwise about her origins. There was absolutely no way that a Sivathi mixed with royal and slave blood would ever have been permitted to remain alive after birth. That was just the way things were. It had been pretty self explanatory when she’d seen the revulsion in Princess Aliya’s face upon seeing her, completely stupefied as to why somebody with a shade of gold in their fur was laboring away as a slave in Zeshom Noor’s mud pits.

Yet, here she was after the revelation that Zeshom Noor had spewed forth before dying. What was she to believe? How could somebody like her—marked, battered, broken—ever be befitting of royalty? Nothing made sense! She tugged at the steel around her neck, knowing that it was a futile effort to try and remove it, but she felt compelled to try with her newfound freedom. She thought back to the skirmish she’d witnessed in the night sky days ago that had brought this entire series of events to a climax and led her to the present moment. Talitha had hoped that her longing for something greater would come to fruition one day, and time after time she’d been dragged back down to reality upon the dawn of new days in Zeshom Noor’s possession. Now, the cycle was broken. This was the first chance in all her life that she could believe in something more for herself, and if that meant pursuing the truth of her heritage, then that was what she would do, even if the steel ensnaring her couldn’t physically be taken away right now.

“After all you told me when you were healing me earlier,” Talitha said, reaching back and tenderly poking at her lash marks that had been bandaged. Pulling the digicam poncho that Elkanah had lent her over her tightly, trying to ward off the dropping temperatures of the descending desert night, she continued. “I still don’t understand why you wanted to help me. None have felt compelled to do so before. How does one from the Crown Army feel any sympathy for the plight of slaves and commoners?” It was only natural that she raised this question, as years of suffering had taught her to be wary of promises and good intentions, especially if they were from ones wearing the colors of her oppressors. “You said that in your youth that you should have taken action against the Crown, and you didn’t. Why now? Why wait to cross paths with somebody like me to try and atone?”

Elkanah halfway had his fork in his mouth, stopping his consumption of his meal as he was caught off guard by the question that he already thought he’d answered once before. In being asked this, he found painful memories of his childhood unlocked after he had done his best to compartmentalize the ways in which he’d mistreated slaves as a young Sivathi. Growing up in the middle class, with a father who was a renowned architect, it was practically expected that he hold those beneath him in contempt. But there had been more than one occasion—and one in particular—that had made him question everything he knew and how Sivathi society was structured. The face of one girl whom he’d tormented resurfaced in his mind with Talitha’s question; one he hadn’t thought of in years after he had finally tried to put the guilt behind him.

“I won’t lie to you, Talitha,” Elkanah said, becoming uninterested in his meal and setting the plate down on the ground before him. Something gravely emotional had been triggered inside him. “There was much I did as a youngster that I regret and that I’m not proud of. One particular instance that I haven’t thought about in years comes to the forefront of my mind, now that you’ve inquired. But I suppose I was just waiting for the opportunity to do something to help where I had a chance to escape what I’d gotten into—the Crown Army—and be able to get away with my actions of rebellion. The battle in Zeshom Noor’s estate provided the chance to do that. I acted in the spur of the moment, seeing you. And I knew it to be right. But maybe I would have treaded down this path far sooner had I not felt the pressures of my family and friends in my youth. If I wasn’t my father’s son, if I wasn’t expected to be something great and prestigious, worthy of the middle class of Sivathi, or better yet, excelling into the upper caste and gaining favor with the nobility, then perhaps I would hadn’t have feared to do something sooner.”

“A particular instance, you said?” Talitha said, wincing a little as she touched her bandaged back, the pain resurging a slight bit in spite of the numbing effects of the nanite dressings. She lay herself back down on her belly, trying to get comfortable and turning her head as she laid it to rest, listening to Elkanah. She’d given the beginnings of her own story, or what little she knew beyond what Zeshom Noor had told her, and now she felt it was high time that her rescuer open up to her as well.

“My whole family was on the cusp of being part of the upper class,” Elkanah explained, leaning his cheek into his handpaw as he first looked at the soft light of the holo-lamp before turning his gaze to the mouth of the cave, looking out into the darkness of the desert where the light of Gefo shined down upon the sands. “We might as well have carried ourselves as such, but the money was never quite there to thrust us into that standard of living. But we still lived relatively comfortably—myself, my father, my mother, brother, and two sisters. My father was an architect, and engineered many of the civic projects of many cities and had a hand in a whole slew of construction of noble estates. My older brother had already grown up and learned the trade from my father by the time I was entering grade school, and my father often took me to the work sites in the hopes of getting me involved in learning the trade also. But I was never quite academically inclined and always took to the worksites with my friends, getting out and exploring the construction and meddling in places we didn’t belong. Stuff typical of kids, I guess.”

Talitha wouldn’t know what was “typical” of Sivathi children. Having been confined to the mud pits all her life, who was she to judge whether or not Elkanah’s commentary was accurate? Nonetheless, she continued to listen intently to what he had to tell her.

“I couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven; I can’t really remember with any certainty. But I was out on the worksite of a noble’s palace refurbishment project in Gibeora Province—on the whole other hemisphere of the planet—with two of my friends from school on a weekend, when we didn’t have much else to do. We’d all had our eye on this one particular slave girl the whole day while we played around, weaving through the laboring gangs of workers and the overseers watching them. She’d been struggling all day long to get this quota met of fine ceramic tiles stacked in several batches; then she had to carry the heavy loads on her poor back several hundred yards at a time from where the supply depot was and to the actual site where this noble’s palace was being refurbished. And we all saw just how exhausted she was, sweat and grime all over her jet black fur. We thought it would be a hilarious thing to get her into trouble. To children of the middle class such as us, we just saw her as sub-Sivathi, lower than a beast, and had been put there for us to taunt and torment. So we did.”

Talitha felt her stomach churn in discomfort at hearing the recounting of his story. Though she was no stranger to cruelty, it was disheartening to her to hear the beginnings of a tale that she had been a witness too so many times before. To hear something out of the confines of Zeshom Noor’s mud pits made it even worse, showcasing just how far the misery of Sivathi slaves and some commoners extended past the backwater she’d been stuck in all her life.

“My friend Onaiya took the lead on our prank,” Elkanah continued. “When the slave girl wasn’t looking, she snuck up and weakened one of the straps on the crate she was using to transport with her claws, cutting through the already weakened leather to the point where only a tiny strand was holding it together. We went and hid, and sooner had the girl slung the crate full of ceramic tiling over her back, the strap gave way, and the whole thing came crashing to the ground. The whole batch of tiling was shattered into hundreds of pieces.

“After we’d sprung our trap, we came out of our hiding spot from where we’d been watching her just to scoff and laugh at her as she frantically tried to scrape up the pieces,” Elkanah said, closing his eyes as if he were remembering things like they were yesterday. For how long he’d put this experience out of his mind, he was recalling all the details with the utmost precision. “We’d pulled pranks like this many times before, but for me, something seemed different. This girl we’d set up to fail was probably your age, not a child like we were. Most of what we’d done in the past had been limited to slaves our own age, and the overseers were a little more lenient in the punishments they dished out to them. And as I saw her there on her knees, her handpaws bloodied as she desperately tried to clean up the mess she’d made, something in my heart didn’t set right as I joined my friends in their laughter while we stood over her. I’d never seen true fear in the eyes of another up until that moment, but even so I continued mocking her just to fit in with my friends.

“‘Please,’ I remember her saying, her voice cracking like she was on the verge of tears. ‘Please don’t tell anybody. I can fix this. I can fix this.’ But my friends wouldn’t have any of it. Sharis, my other friend, immediately screamed at the top of his lungs that she’d broken an expensive crate full of ceramic tiling, getting the attention of the nearest overseer. He came barreling over there with his whip in his handpaw. That girl practically threw her whole body over the shattered tiling, trying to hide her mistake that we had actually caused. The overseer didn’t buy it. He took her by the arm and dragged her to her feet while my friends and I cheered, thrilled at what we were seeing. And even while I did, that girl looked at me with a gaze that has never left me. I thought I had suppressed it for a while now, and I haven’t thought about her in quite some time, but everything that’s happened over these last few days, and seeing you lashed to the grindstone has brought it back.”

Elkanah stopped for a moment, opening his eyes once again and turning to meet Talitha’s eyes. “I digress,” he apologized. “Forgive me. As I was saying, the overseer took her by the arm, dragging her away to a series of hot boxes a few hundred yards away from the supply depot. He stripped her naked before throwing her in that hot steel enclosure buried in the ground, with just a tiny slit at the top for her to breathe through. That was her punishment for breaking that expensive tiling. I can still hear her screams piercing my ears as she was roasted in there under the Zaket suns, left to suffer for a crime that my friends and I had actually committed. Onaiya and Sharis couldn’t stop laughing about it on our way home, saying how she deserved it for being so clumsy, and patting me on the back as if congratulating me for participating. I had done things like this so many times before with them both; I don’t know why this particular time struck a chord in my heart. But I had to mask it the whole way home, trying to play along with my friends who still saw that slave girl as nothing more than a plaything for their amusement.”

Elkanah paused once again, reaching for his water canteen that had partially replenished itself with the miniscule moisture of the air. He unscrewed the cap, taking a swig of the stuff for himself before offering it to Talitha. She took it with her paw, drinking as she continued to listen to his tale.

“I couldn’t sleep that entire night. I was tossing and turning, utterly ashamed over what I’d done, but I was too afraid to ask somebody to set things straight. I couldn’t approach my father or my mother about it, because they thought the exact same way my friends did, thinking that any misfortune that befell that girl wasn’t worth their time. So in the middle of that evening, I snuck out with a canteen of water,” he said, gazing at Talitha as she drank thirstily, practically reliving the experience as he witnessed her. “And I set off to the worksite in the dead of night to try and help her.

“I wasn’t even sure if she was still alive with how hot it had been that day. And the fact that I was going out to help her at all was contrary to everything I’d been raised to believe. I shouldn’t have been going out of my way to help her, let alone feel sorry for her misery. But knowing that I had played a part in her suffering, and that gaze of her eyes that pierced me… I just couldn’t shrug it off. And I repeat, I thought I had finally done so, but over the last few days and seeing you, it’s haunted me again. It was even worse the second time I saw her that night. She was still alive, just barely. I knelt down at the top of the hot box, which had been engineered to retain its punishing heat even in the night.”

Once again Elkanah closed his eyes, but this time a small trickle of tears spilled out of the corners. Everything was coming back to him, showing just how much strongly this single event had affected him as a boy. “I saw the same look she gave me again as I peered through the small slit that was her only connection to the outside world. I still remember how desperately she held forth her handpaws, practically begging for the water I’d brought. And I cried, as I do now, Talitha. I cried because I knew my friends and I had put her in there. All my life I didn’t know what it was like to be truly helpless and hopeless, to have a name but never be called it, just known by the numbers on your collar, no identity, no worth beyond what someone else decided. That night, I finally saw it in its most primal form. She drank like her life depended on it, and I felt ashamed that I couldn’t help her more than I had after the canteen was empty. I owed it to her to give her more than the small, pitiful relief I had snuck out there for. And I couldn’t.

“I still remember just barely being able to see her collar,” he said, putting his handpaws over his face as if to hide the tears from Talitha. “She didn’t even have a master or mistress. Just ‘CP’ where her owner’s initials would have been. ‘Crown Property’. One of Phaziah Ishigar’s endless droves of slaves that he could personally rent out to nobles and their projects. She wasn’t an individual, Talitha, but the gaze she gave me insisted that she was. And I took that from her and crushed it. No amount of trying to help her could ever undo what I did to her. Time might have pushed it out of my mind until now.”

Talitha was dumbfounded, her heart feeling torn just as much as Elkanah’s, though she held back her own tears, for stories such as this were something she’d been a witness to many times over. One thing was clear, however, and that was that Elkanah was truly demonstrating how much he was committed to putting things back on the right track. Maybe he had been truthful and honest in his reasons for wanting to help her, because he wanted to right the wrongs of all he’d done; of all he’d participated in.

“Did you ever see her after that?” Talitha asked, setting the canteen aside.

“Yes,” Elkanah said, still not pulling his face up and away from his handpaws. “After I left and went back home, I thought I’d gone through with my excursion without anybody seeing. But I was wrong. My father came to me the next morning, furious. The work sites were laden with cameras and drones to monitor everything that went on, and in my childish ignorance I had completely disregarded them, blinded by my desire to want to make right what I’d done. The foremen of the worksite had reviewed the footage from the evening and informed my father about it. So he took me to the worksite that day with something ‘special’ planned for me.”

“What happened?” Talitha said, almost scared to ask.

“He took me in through the entrance to the worksite, nearest to the hot boxes,” he said, finally removing his paws from his face and revealing the tears he had spilled in recounting everything. “Up until that point I had tried denying everything, playing stupid, like I didn’t know what my father was talking about. But I couldn’t help but look over at where the slave girl had been held prisoner the day before. ‘Your little friend isn’t there,’ my father said. And still, I continued denying everything as he took me over to the Zuthari pen for the worksite.”

Talitha had a dreadful sense of what was coming next. As soon as Elkanah had mentioned the Zuthari pen, she could only surmise where the story was going. She’d seen Zeshom Noor kill off useless or ill slaves in the pen before.

“She was there, still naked, being held over the edge of the pen by two overseers,” Elkanah said. “‘Do you still want to save her, boy?’ one of them said. ‘Go on, tell us how much you care about her.’" Before I could even do anything, my father was already holding my cheek, forcing me to watch so that I couldn’t turn away. He told me that this was what happened when a free Sivathi like me forgot his place. And then he commanded the overseers to drop her in. I begged my father to stop it all, to get her out. I didn’t care that I was sympathizing with her suffering in my father’s face, embarrassing him by showing pity for a slave. I just wanted it to stop. But he let it continue. I watched as the Zuthari trampled and gored her dozens of times. And the whole time, she still looked at me with the eyes that had set my change of heart in motion. I don’t know what she was conveying. Maybe she was still scared. Maybe she was still pleading for her life. Maybe she was trying to give me thanks for the small token of assistance I had given her the night before.

“But it didn’t matter. She was killed within minutes. The whole time, my father continued to tell me that he was doing this because he loved me. ‘No child of mine is ever going to be weak and sympathize with sub-Sivathi,’ he told me. As just a child, I could barely hold myself together after witnessing what had just happened, but my father had no such reservations. He simply put his paw on my shoulder firmly, telling me that this was how things were supposed to be. That the system of master and slave, oppressor and oppressed, noble and commoner—all of it had been what brought our people out of the warring desert tribes of ancient times and into the proud species that we are today. He told me how the enslaved only existed to serve us, and that they weren’t like me. I was free. They were not. And if that we didn’t keep them in place, then the order of Siva that was so carefully built over many millenniums would crumble. Everything we had—our technology, our cities, our ships that soar through the stars—all of it was built on the backs of those who knew their place. They were the foundation of our strength. Without them, without the order we imposed, we would never have reached beyond our planet, never have touched the stars.”

Both of them felt like their hearts were sinking as the story was recounted. “I cried the whole way home,” Elkanah explained, approaching the end of his tale that he was doing his best to remain composed with. “And I immediately ran to my room once we arrived, slamming the door shut and sinking my face into my pillow. I can guess that it didn’t take my father long to explain to my mother what had happened, because she came in only a few minutes later trying to console me. And what she said only made it hurt even worse.”

Elkanah clenched his fist as he began to elaborate on his mother’s words. “She told me that I shouldn’t sob for slaves, because they didn’t feel emotions in the same way that free Sivathi do; that they wept and cried out in pain like a wounded animal would. That they did so out of reflex, not because they were actually scared of frightened. That they used the tears and cries of pain in a way to take advantage of young, vulnerable Sivathi to make them feel pity for them. She said all those things and equated them to cattle, under the guise of a mother’s love for her son.”


Elkanah finally finished, inhaling deeply as he tried to compose himself. He looked Talitha square in the eyes, blinking a few times to get rid of the tears that blurred his vision. “It was because of instances like this that I chose to act and help you,” he said. “That is why I’ve deserted. I enlisted in the Crown Army only to appease my parents, thinking that maybe I could make a difference and change things from the inside out. But I couldn’t. Not unless I did something drastic. And that chance came to me outside Zeshom Noor’s estate, Talitha. I wasn’t going to let another life be snuffed out because of me when I saw your master with that gun under your chin.”

Talitha didn’t know what to say at first in response to Elkanah’s story. His actions as a child seemed so typical for those of the middle and upper class; that was nothing new to her. Sivathi like Zeshom Noor and Princess Aliya had been the best examples of such behavior. But they’d never shown regret. Elkanah did. She could tell it in his eyes, the way his sorrow poured forth, wishing he could take back every sin he’d ever committed. It was the gaze of empathy and compassion that she’d seen other slaves or the few commoners she’d come across that desired to help her, but couldn’t for fear of the retribution it would involve. The sergeant who had deserted his post, however, could help her more than anybody else ever could have. And after everything Zeshom Noor had spilled out before dying, she wasn’t about to let the chance to be assisted pass her by.

After a long period of silence, Talitha finally responded, watching as Elkanah gathered up the trays on which they’d been dining, setting them aside before booting up his holographic readout and map of the planet, projected from a device on his wrist that was part of his equipment. “You really mean that, don’t you?” Talitha said, the last of her doubts about Elkanah’s intentions finally being driven away as he observed him trying to go about business nonchalantly, like the story he’d been ashamed to tell hadn’t even been spoken. “You’re willing to risk everything—your reputation, your family ties, your place in society—to help me? All to make amends for your past sins?”

Elkanah pinched his fingers together and then spread them out over the holographic map of the planet, zooming in on their present location in Lathga Province to try and get a bearing on where they were. Though he was trying to appear preoccupied to downplay the shame of the story he’d recounted, he did have a reason for what he was doing, for he needed to start devising a plan of where to go once Talitha had healed. Nonetheless, he answered Talitha’s question in earnest. “Not just to make up for what I did in the past,” he said. “It’s the right thing. What will the rest of the universe think of us in the centuries to come if our race was known for nothing but its cruelty towards one another? I refuse to participate in that, Talitha. And if what Zeshom Noor said is the truth, then maybe you’re the key to a new dawn for Siva and its realms.”

“I am?” she said in reply, still not fully sold on the validity of Zeshom Noor’s ravings.

“Perhaps,” Elkanah said, scrolling over the planetary projection hanging over his wrist to the nearest settlement that could offer them assistance. “Do you know what you could do if you really are the child of Phaziah Ishigar, the High King himself? You wouldn’t just be some pretender to the throne, Talitha. Your connection to his bloodline, irrespective of its purity, gives you a right to rule, however small. And as of now, the High King has no children of his own with his wife. There’s been a lot of talk of infertility amongst the upper classes and nobles, but it’s speculation. At any rate, it’s something that you’re entitled to pursue. Though it would be a hard fought struggle to get past the nobility who’d never dream of having a Sivathi with mixed blood sitting upon the throne.”

The enormity of what Elkanah was even suggesting hit Talitha like a bomb going off. The sheer idea of somebody with impure blood sitting upon the throne of Siva was ludicrous, even if it was true that she had noble heritage. “Do you realize what you’re saying?” she said. “I’m nobody, Elkanah. Even if I really am his child, somebody has done a damn good job of making sure I was put as far away from that life as possible. Where would I even start?”

“Well, you won’t find your answers in Lathga Province, I assure you,” Elkanah said, zooming in further towards the southern polar region of Siva where the landscapes were lush and the Confederacy of Liberation held more control, especially since the Crown Army’s Halaj Fronts had been routed from the province. “But if we go further south, we might just have a chance of getting a better shot at reaching an end goal. Look here.”

Elkanah got up from his spot, shifting over and sitting down beside Talitha as she continued laying down. He held his wrist down to show the section of Siva he had zoomed in on; Halaj Province and its provincial capital of Sarat. Like Lathga Province, it was located in the southern hemisphere of the planet, and it was the nearest friendly area that sympathized with the Confederacy. Even then, it was still thousands upon thousands of miles away. Going by foot would be suicide, for it was impossible to even carry the amount of supplies needed to get that far, not to mention the ridiculous amount of time it would take and the elements that would surely kill them not long into their journey.

“Believe it or not, Lathga Province, as vast as it is, borders the Halaj Province—a region sympathetic to the Confederate cause,” Elkanah explained. “So the immediate place to go for safe haven would be there. It’s just a matter of getting from our current location to Halaj Province. The map readout shows that there really isn’t much in the way between here and there. The nearest settlement is Lathga Province’s capital, north of here.”

“Not only is that place staunchly loyal to the Crown of Siva, but I’m sure it would be in an uproar with Princess Aliya being killed in the troop transport crashing down on Zeshom Noor’s estate,” Talitha said. “So it’s probably not the best place to go to secure a chance at getting out of here and into a friendly territory.”

“But I see little other choice,” Elkanah said, scrolling this way and that on the holographic map, trying desperately to see if there was some settlement in the midst of the wasteland, only to find nothing in a southern direction; where they needed to go. The only place to replenish their supplies was in settlements nearer to Zeshom Noor’s estate in the north or towards the provincial capital. Going there as a deserter, and with a runaway slave in tow, was just asking for a death sentence.

“If we can’t go north into the settlements or capital, and we can’t go south towards the pole because of the sheer immensity of the wasteland or running into the Crown Army in retreat, then where are we supposed to go?” Talitha said with concern. Though grateful for the rescue from Zeshom Noor’s clutches, Elkanah’s actions in the heat of the moment really had left them without a set in stone plan for what to do next. Perhaps they were now trapped in a situation more desperate than what either of them had been in before!

Sighing to himself, Elkanah shut down his holographic map, gently placing a handpaw on Talitha’s shoulder in reassurance before standing up to make his way towards the other side of the cave, where he planned to sleep. “We won’t be going anywhere until you’re in better health,” he said, clutching his gauss rifle in his handpaws as he took an upright seat against the cave wall. He was far too tired to keep watch—not that he felt like he needed to in the abandonment of the wastelands—but holding on to the weapon as he slept at least gave him a sense of security and the means to respond quickly should a threat arise. “We’ll figure something out in the coming days, don’t worry. I may have descended into rescuing you with a headstrong attitude, but I swear by the Zaket suns that we’ll find a way to safe ground, Talitha. I promise.”