Facing The Sun

We Need A Medic!

Ivis watched as this new person landed, and took a step back. Scars wrapped up and down their arms, and a blindfold was tied over their eyes.

"Hello there." She said, smiling at Ivis. She spoke in the 'common' tongue that Ivis only ever used with her Mother, and it unnerved Ivis. "My name is Hlondis, it's lovely to meet you."

Despite the cloth over her eyes, she looked exactly at Ivis—or at least in her direction. Ivis didn't like it.

"Why are you blindfolded?" She asked, taking another step back. She was taught to be cynical of the world, and to any of its abnormalities. Her Mother said they were a friend, but Ivis wanted to deem that for herself, too.

Hlondis laughed, and her Mother shook her head. "Because I'm blind." She answered, still laughing. "I think you'd prefer it stayed on, too."

~ * ~

For the first time in a long while, Ivis was alone.

It was far from being abnormal to her, yet now, it felt odd. Ever since she left Neurothon, someone was either accompanying her or nearby. Well... in this case she supposed someone was nearby, but she wasn't sure where they would be—if she knew them at all.

Vedrith had been in the shipyard most of the time these past few days, working on her ship. They would eat together in the mornings, but after that they went their separate ways until 'night' fell (which was determined solely by a clock, since they were in a space station.)

It left Ivis with a lot of free time on her hands, but nothing to do. No transmitter to work on, no game to hunt, no threat to defeat. She wouldn't say she wanted to do any of that, but boredom was starting to get to her.

So, out of that boredom, she roamed the halls, wearing the new clothes that Vedrith had given her (to earn less glances.) The few people she passed by paid her no mind, as if she wasn't there at all. Ivis certainly noticed all of them, though—as each looked different in some way or another from the last.

Ivis wished her Mother could have seen it all. Everything that Ivis had encountered so far and so much more. And it made her feel bitter—because it turned out she could have.

Ivis had spent so much time wondering if she could've changed her Mother's fate while the real person who could've was living her dream—leaving the both of them to suffer as Ivis saw it.

She needed answers, and Vedrith's ship needed to be fixed in order to get them. Ivis just had to wait... wait, and either do nothing, or find something to do. But with no idea where to start, Ivis could only walk around until she found it. Which, to her (now minimal) surprise, no one had reprimanded her for doing so.

So far, Vedrith's words held true. Not one person here was hostile in the slightest—except Vedrith, and maybe Whitlock (both of whom she still didn't understand).

One thing Ivis had been doing was thinking. She had done a lot of thinking—what else was there to fill time?

Among those thoughts were Vedrith, Whitlock, and even her own blasted father (and by proximity, her Mother). Sometime's other people, too—just not as much. Tsara, Dia, Clodi, and Yael consisted of the more minor folk she thought of.

Everyone around Ivis had called Vedrith a bad person, but Ivis couldn't fully understand why. On Neurothon, people were so much worse—compared to them, Vedrith wasn't bad at all.

But no one else has really acted that way since then. That's compared to some of the worst people I've met—it feels almost too generous.

Sure, maybe Ivis hadn't been treated the best for the majority of her life—but Vedrith didn't seem too bad. Well... if she compared her to the rest of those she met, she might be, which also might mean it was just that Ivis had low standards.