The Səçane

The Tragedy of the One Who Left

Dedicated to Nikita Mechtchanskiy

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A Folktale from Kensa Country.
Translated from Kensa Speech to English by Iridescent Phoenix.
Source: Kensa Stories from Old Times

Long ago, on the Northernmost corner of Kensa Country, a boy was born to two farmers. A year later, a girl was born to them. Ikita and Taña, they were named. They grew up together, played together, fought together, but always loved each other. From the time she learned to crawl, Taña followed her brother everywhere he went, and Ikita would keep her by his side always as they grew older. They were inseparable.

As they grew up, their parents soon discovered that both of their children were very gifted. Ikita became very interested in astronomy, and every night, he would stargaze for hours, sitting outside his home, peering into the sky with a self-built telescope Taña was, of course, always there with him, though she did not quite understand his passion for things so far away from the world, detached from everyday life (except, of course, his own). She, on the other hand, developed a strong passion for mathematics. She quickly surpassed the education level of her parents, and learned to see mathematics in everything. She helped her brother to calculate the movements of stars, and together, they created a map of the night sky.

When the villagers of the nearby village noticed the siblings' unique intellectual abilities, they were astounded. "Your children are wonders!" they would say to their parents. "You must send them to get an education!"

And so, when they were youths, they journeyed to the City of Knowledge, in the land of First Chromia to the West. Upon their arrival, Ikita enrolled at the Academy of Astronomy, and Taña enrolled at the Academy of Advanced Mathematical Studies*. They became scholars in their respective fields, and quickly rose to the top of their schools. Still, they spent every waking moment, when they were not in school, together, exploring the city. Eventually, the two completed their schooling, and returned home to Kensa Country.

One day, as Ikita was stargazing with a new pair of highly power binoculars that he had received from his Academy, he noticed something very interesting in a certain part of the sky. A planet... that was green and blue, like his own. Surely, he thought to himself, such colors only come from the presence of plants. The presence of life!

Suddenly, Taña noticed a shift in her brother's focus. Gone were the days of making charts of the sky. He had a goal now. He had to learn as much as he could about this green and blue planet, far far away. He became obsessed with it. He augmented his binoculars in an attempt to get a closer look, and he managed to draw a rough picture of the land and sea of the planet, before his augmentation started to blur the lenses of his binoculars.

One day, Ikita approached Taña, with a serious look on his face. "Taña-tsi," he started. "I need your help for something very big."

"What is it, Brother?" Taña asked.

"I want to go there," he replied. "I want to go to the planet."

"But how?" she asked, slightly shocked. "It is so far away!"

"This is why I need you, Taña-tsi. I need you to help me to build a craft that can take me there. I know you can do it," he told her. She looked into his eyes, and saw the longing, the need of satisfaction lingering behind them. And so, she agreed.

Over the following months, the two toiled away, building a highly sophisticated spacecraft. Taña's mathematical genius proved to be especially helpful, and oftentimes Ikita found that the only contribution he was making was the manual labor itself.

But, as they continued working, Taña was thinking. About space. About time. About distance. And she realized something. Something that scared her more than anything she knew.
"Brother," she said one day. "I do not wish to continue building this. I do not want you to go, Brother."