What May Come

Unprecedented

Nura could hear them talking on the other side of her bedroom's pressure hatch. They talked about her. She didn't want them here, these strangers she only knew as names spoken by her mother and father. She hated them, but she didn't have the will nor the power to make them leave. Her only solace was in being alone.

Alone, save for Canas. He was the other half of Nura's soul, always there, always a part of her life. Born together, a brother and sister were at the heart of what it was to be a Threshpanian. The one truth of this day that somehow made it bearable was that at least Canas was still here alongside her. Her twin, and the only friend a young child needed or was allowed.

Her brother sat at the desk in their shared room, reading one of his adventure stories while idly rubbing his thumb over the plastic starfighter in his hands. He and that toy spaceship were rarely apart. When it wasn't in his hands, it was in a pocket or in the place of honor as the centerpiece of his shelves.

Nura watched his furred thumb stroking the bubble of the starfighter's canopy. Again and again. Nura longed to have a relic such as that one, but a toy starfighter wasn't a suitable plaything for a girl child.

The apartment that was home to Nura and her immediate family was aboard the Fanthara. She was a bulk freighter belonging to the greater family's company, Ganlera Materiel. Aboard a vessel of the Nomadic Fleet, space always came at a premium. As such, living quarters were always small. The room Canas and Nura shared had barely enough room in it for them both to stand up at the same time.

Their bunks were recessed into the bulkheads, and even the desk they shared folded down from the wall. A few shelves for their personal treasures and a tiny closet space were the only other features of a small room that was part of their family unit's suite.

Canas set aside his starfighter to change the datacard in his reading pad. Nura kept her eyes on the toy. A part of her wanted to run down from her place on her bunk and snatch it, but she couldn't bring herself to do that to Canas. He would let her keep it, she was sure, but Nura didn't think she could ever love anything half so much as Canas loved that simple piece of molded plastic.

Nura felt tears well up in her eyes. She only wished she could have a relic of their father, too.

A child must revere the parent. That was the tradition, and tradition was more binding than law within the Nomadic Fleet. A son revered the father, and a daughter revered the mother. Canas would do as their father had done, become a pilot for the Fleet Combat Air Group before joining the family's company. Nura, like her mother, would become an astrogator in the Confederation Service.

She was to be a soldier.

Nura's mother had taken her aside when she was much younger and told her how important it was to continue the parental line. Threshpanians were far fewer in number now than before the exodus from Pa'shara. A balance had to be maintained.

If no children stood to inherit the roles of the parents, the Nomadic Fleet couldn't survive another generation. Even a family as large and influential as the Ganlera needed its successive generations to do as needed. Freedom to forge one's own path was a luxury a Threshpanian couldn't afford— that the Fleet couldn't afford.

"Nura?"

She felt a hand take hers. Nura looked up into Canas' eyes. They were the same sea-foam green as her own. With a start, Nura realized she'd been sobbing. She threw herself into her brother's arms and clung to him as her weeping returned. "I want to forget," she managed to say through her tears. "I don't want to see it anymore."

Canas had been there and would know precisely what it was that Nura wanted to forget. Mother and Father were to return home today. They were coming back to the Fleet aboard the same ship, and Canas and Nura had gone to the docking ring to greet them as they stepped through the hardseal. Nura shut her eyes tight against the memory, but it was burned into the backs of her eyelids.