The Ascension

1: Everything, from the top

(AN: I don't know if y'all do ANs on wattpad, but I will say this: welcome to MSQ, my personal hell, there will be 26 chapters.

HOWEVER, to allow for easier reading, I've broken my longer chapters into parts- this is why some chapters have numbers in front of them. They represent the start of a new chapter. It's a bit confusing, but makes things easier, I swear.)

The story of her birth and the story of her planet's birth were achingly similar.

But, like any good myth, the latter tale was archetypical enough to theoretically apply to most births. So there were parallels, yes, but they in no way meant that she was destined for greatness.

For her, there was a mother and a father. For the planet, there was the earth and the sea. The two fought and fought until they created new life, and then the earth left to create peaks where the sea could not reach her. And the sea was left to lap at her shores, creating worn grains of sand- repeated phrases he could not move past. In the legends, this is when the sky came in to watch the earth and the sea, and force them to live in harmony, protecting the fragile earth below them.

In her tale, there wasn't a sky until she was four years old.

And unfortunately, this is where the legend and her story begin to cross- ever so worryingly- into one.

Her name was supposed to be Ixai, but her father thought it was too formal. Then it was going to be Xalai, but her father thought it was too religious. Then it was Kixlei. Then Axiis. Then Xigh. Her parents knew two things- they wanted her to have an X in her name, and for her name to end with a strong 'I' sound. In a way, they were sort of hyping the poor child, or really fetus at this time, into something more than she was. An X for the crossroads she represented. An I for the sky god, the overseer of the land and sea.

Her father was named Linson. Her mother was named Kala. And back then they did not get along, in so many different ways. If their daughter had grown up properly, she would have almost been jealous of their classic love story- enemies, falling in love despite the odds and having a child as they ushered in a new era. Except, well, they never really stopped being enemies. They just had a kid, and that was one more thing to fight over.

The girl's name, it might as well be said, ended up being Aster. But before that, it was Tai.

Tai was named Tai until she was four years old, but she barely knew it. Her mother liked to call her Tala, and her father never met her. She was raised in the Kout mountains with little real influence of her mother's Stemalian heritage- in fact, she had only been to the nearby city of Haveninkout twice. Her life was simple, really. She played in the cold hills around her. Her mother would paint more than she would talk, so Tai grew to be mostly silent as well- perhaps because she never learned what words to speak.

Her mother tried to kill her when she was four, and it happened really quite unannounced and gathered the attention of absolutely no one. If Tai had been properly self aware at this age, she would have learned this: her mother was very unhappy to have a child, and very reluctant to give that child up to the father. So she was at a sort of standstill that lasted four years.

There was no tipping point, presumably because there never had been- Kala had been long, long gone. She took her daughter to the sea one day- the first time the girl had ever seen it- and threw her off a cliff.

And then. Well. Then there's a sort of pause. A gap. Tai didn't end up dying, of course. But there is a sort of question about how she survived- and what she became after she did. And that question can be solved in two different ways- an examination of the planet-wide mythology, or by skipping ahead five years to a Tai that has learned to speak and has finally reached that wonderful time in her life when she can't shut up.