Rock Bottom: Season Two

Genesis

Season Two: Dueling on a blimp.

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Sixteen years ago...

"I love you, my children," the dying woman whispered as she lay on her death bed, a ghostly smile on her face. "Rishid, protect your brother and sister."

"I will," her adoptive son promised with a nod, trying not to cry. He could sense what was about to happen.

"Ishizu," she whispered, calling the attention of her dark-haired daughter. "Tell Marik that I love him."

"Is that the baby's name, Mother?" the little girl asked, but she didn't get an answer. "Mother? Mother?" Ishizu reached out to her mother's still-warm body, but Rishid grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the fresh corpse. As his sister started to cry, Rishid pulled her close and hushed her. He was crying too, though, and his tears were not at all assuaged when their father returned to the room, his newborn son cradled in his arms.

"She's gone, Father. She's gone." Rishid tried to speak steadily, but he was only a child witnessing death for the first time. Their patriarch shook his head disapprovingly, then turned to hand the wailing infant to a young woman standing behind him, his younger sister in law. He walked forward to pull the sheet covering his wife over her face to cover her completely. Meanwhile, Ishizu wept inconsolably with grief.

What was she supposed to do without a mother?

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Ten years ago...

Ishizu waited for her father to leave the room before lifting her face from the floor. She wiped at her wet eyes with a dirty hand and started gathering the pieces of the crudely fashioned wax tablet she'd made for herself. She wanted to read and write, and if her father wasn't going to teach her, then she was going to teach herself.

That was still her desire, even though her father had destroyed her tool for doing so and instructed her to dissemble it and put its parts to a practical use. She wouldn't have made it if she'd known that he would be so angry. The broken shards were cradled in her arm as she used her other hand to grab the edge of her bed and pull herself to her feet.

He'd never punished her so harshly before.

As she sat on the edge of her hard bed, she winced. Just the act of sitting down hurt. What she didn't yet know was that her father's blows had been strong enough to bruise her rear.

She would obey him, of course. She always obeyed her father as best she could. Every now and then, she fell short of his expectations and he would discipline her as he saw fit, but she never tried to disappoint him or go behind is back. She had gotten curious about the images and symbols that her little brother was being taught to draw and understand, so she decided to pursue education on her own.

Now she understood that had been a mistake.

After hours spent (over the course of several days) siphoning off candle wax and scrounging together bits of wood just the right size and shape for the frame, then making wooden pegs and finding a piece of slate on which she could spread the wax, then finally piecing them all together with her limited skills—it felt like all of her hard work had gone to waste, which, functionally, was true. She wiped her dusty hands on the skirt of her tunic before using them to brush away the tears that threatened to fall. It wasn't enough, though, so she stopped fighting the urge to cry. She stood again and set the pieces in a shallow basket on the floor, one of the ones she'd woven that very day.