FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #43

"Cut my hair too, Eyu."

He picked up a thick lock of my hair, burying his face in it. "It is so sleek and pretty. Are you sure about this?"

"Eyuran, if it comes to losing my life, I'd rather lose my hair. It's going to be in the way, it's got to go."

He nodded eventually, agreeing.

Upon our return to the hiding place I kept thinking of many things. And I had to admit, he was right. Parting with my hair, even temporarily, saddened me.

Straight and thick, I got my hair from Mom. But I had my father's eyes, the color of dark amber, while Mom's were bright azure and piercing, like the sky you'd see on a very clear day high in the mountains.

My mother's beauty is stunning, and my father's features are extremely rough, raw and masculine—to those who don't know him he always seems too aggressive or domineering (he's not!), and paradoxically attractive at the same time. I think he is gorgeous. And I have what people call a 'commanding face', the fierce, thermonuclear mix of my parents' traits.

Father and Uncle Orewen frequently called me a little 'heart-eater'. Both had a habit of scaring some of the neighbors' whining boys I had occasional fights with, saying, "Don't come crying to me when she eats your heart!"

Every day we had our healthy dose of training, fun and games. Then there were rare days of mayhem, the reasons varied. Boys and girls, sometimes they challenged me, sometimes I challenged them. Sometimes it was a matter of proving things right. Sometimes one-on-one fights escalated to household versus household battles with the support of siblings, cousins and other relatives. I didn't have siblings or cousins other than Eyuran, but having him by my side was more than enough. The bravest kids called him creepy, yet no one dared to say it to his face. However, he's not scary or weird, just not vocal about personal things, unless you ask him directly. He will think about it and tell you, not necessarily immediately. But underneath the quiet façade intense passion is raging, his blood is longing for action. I could feel it when we touched. Even subconsciously, Eyuran took every chance to invade and dominate my body space, and when things got too overwhelming for me, to block everything else out. I always had to be within his reach, within his grasp. Yet it also allowed me to inhabit his personal space. Still, his dad was the only one who could bring Eyuran's boisterous side out. Massive household 'wars' could get brutal and bloody—there wasn't anyone whose nose hadn't bled at least once (Orewen always kept ice pads in enormous quantities because there were a lot of us in the neighborhood), but those never led to lost friendships. Bonds became even stronger after a good strategic punching and new friendly ties arose. Weapons, even as simple as sticks, were forbidden by our mutual Code of Conduct.

Orewen's home was a large biomedical research and healthcare facility. Alongside his work in the Rescue Force, he and his colleagues had been treating locals, seeing to their injuries and other health necessities. If I wasn't involved in a fight, I suspected boys simply needed a valid reason to visit our house and 'accidentally' bump into me in the urgent care room to show off, because the frequency of this happening was rather unnatural. I was not obliged to be nice and respond to their persistent-to-the-point-of-being-rude advances to gain my attention to make feel them better about themselves. So I kindly asked Eyuran to assist Uncle Orewen instead, since he was the last person they wanted to meet and they freaked out every time he appeared. Not that my cousin refused my requests—quite on the contrary. And of all the girls I was always the first one he was helping to treat.

Unconditionally, we were always special to each other. Aunt Rifa often said that anyone who wanted to separate Eyuran and me had a death wish. His mom never 'hovered' over her child, allowing Eyu to be himself and fully accepted his communication style. To outsiders they might have seemed detached from each other, but it was not so at all and they have always loved each other deeply. She also knew well how protective her son was, so Uncle's 'threats' of sending Eyuran to check up on her usually worked miracles.

Sometimes we both returned home all scratched and bruised, but happy. All anger was forgotten and never kept in our hearts. Most bruises would heal on the same day; fighting with words lasts longer and scars deeper than fighting with fists. So everyone would rather duke it out and get it over with than carry it on for days. But if we were to resolve a conflict by a matter of words, we'd better choose them wisely.

Parents rarely intervened in our matters. We could handle them ourselves. However, when Mom was home, those were the days of truce. The most energetic ones who broke this rule would be cleaning and polishing Mom's gearbots manually for a whole week or two. And she always had a full hangar of them... Those actually belonged to the Rescue Force; her engineering facility only provided maintenance and repairs.

And then, that fight happened, changing Eyuran's and Orewen's lives forever.

Most soma types regenerate this kind of injury pretty fast, and there are no safe ways to determine which one a young person has—except for the Eater, those can be identified from the start. So no one noticed my difference then, when I found out myself. Father and Mom weren't home at the time. Orewen was busy stopping Eyuran from savagely beating up our neighbor—a guy twice his size. Eyuran was in a state of blind rage without a clear understanding of anything, as if my injury was fatal... Still, that moment was the only time when Grandfather could have figured it out, since he was tending to my fractured knee. And he didn't tell anyone either. Maybe he thought I was too young for the responsibility that comes with Falaighnn. Or, maybe it was he who told my father about it and they both kept quiet.

But it's not true; I have never eaten even a single heart!

I tried to look this up in our archive and the Danna do have an avid meat-eating history, but nothing in particular had been said there about us eating hearts...

I looked at the long copper locks on the floor that were no longer attached to me. Goodbye, hair.

I felt naked.