Prime of Life - 47 chapter Space Opera novel

Chapter 1

Marisssa's boldness grew with each clip of the scissor. One lock after another fell to the floor. Finishing the job with electric shears, she ran her fingers over the blue springy mat that remained. A single spiral of hair dangled on her forehead, hinting of a former self, a former life.

Her mirror reflected a well-contoured head, and her skin, white as the recent sparse snow outside, added luminance through the blue. Judgments, she knew, would soon be made within her father's circles. B'eft, boyish. Frivolous. Perhaps b'esssat among the sons. Daring. Provocative.

Carus, a furry brown and white ball on his high perch, chittered audibly. Her brain translated his mentation as the wry thought that he had always considered her hair too long.

"No," she replied laughing, the spoken words for her own benefit. "You've never told me that before."

She turned to watch the two moons through the open window. Palus trailed Rimon past the stars. Palus' veil was lovely in the clear night sky above the snow-salted leaves of the bannock tree. Its thin atmosphere refracted a bluish fringe, kindred to her hair, and its yellow face echoed her intermingled golden strands.

Excitement flooded her body. Her face flushed lightly. She moved to see again her new defiance in the mirror. The remake was striking, yet trivial against the changes in her life that would come with the Rendezvous.

Carus unfolded and glided on stretched furry skin. He landed with a bounce on the bed. Marisssa sensed his mind, translating his inner purr as "Daddy won't like it!" Carus had little care for time or responsibility, but Marisssa's subconscious often added her own special overtones to his more visceral transmissions. Oh Father, she thought, what is so precious that you had no room for me? The Greater Jusssen, she mused, might well have replied, "Why Marisssa, I have always given you everything."

"Yes, Father, greed is your answer," she said aloud. The power-broker diplomat was near the summit of a pyramid of authority, supported by eager and envious men below him. That he was not quite at the pinnacle made his hunger the more intense. Now, in the face of the Rendezvous, her childish credulity had vanished like a caldaar's exhalation. No tears moistened the bedclothes at the thought of leaving her family--forever?

"And Mother?" or something like it, came from Carus. "Don't forget Mother."

Mother, cunning primary paramother, can you be forgiven?

For what? she answered in her mind, for her mother.

Then aloud, as if facing the matriarch: "Did you ever interfere? Had you no doubts? Can it be that a daughter might not want what you and Father want?" Carus chittered, amused by the spirited monologue. Marisssa strutted and gestured for his benefit. "Oh yes, that's what we all want, to be the wives of influence, directing the virility of our men, so that we can imagine ourselves the rudders of society. Fah! On with your promiscuous sleep, Mother."

Her face flushed again, embarrassed she'd played her father's game so long. Shamed that she might have kept playing, had fate not intervened. With no siblings to draw paternal umbrage, circumscribed adolescence would surely have matured into fiercely bleak adulthood--if not for Carus and her own mind talent. And thus the Rendezvous.

Marisssa as a child had been given a pet, Simmi. Odd, thinking back, that her father allowed it. Kept her out of his hair no doubt. Simmi was a fat little kevil and Marisssa had loved him, had felt his emotions inside herself. Carus, jealous of her thoughts, purred for Marisssa to lift him to her shoulder.