Episode X Dark Hunter

The Graves

The late afternoon sun dipped below the western ravine of the valley, making its shadow to extend beyond the graves that we had visited earlier. Its reach extended further another fifty meters into the center of the valley. The darkness was coming to this hemisphere and to our heroine. Videsse stood over the graves in the dark umbrage of the cliff, as silent as the dead: a wordless harbinger of the future, though. Videsse was never known for her wordlessness.

She broke the silence. "If you were there," she began and then stopped to take a breath as if in pain. "The Vigilance, the shelter. . . Peezee."

She massaged the back of her neck trying to undo some of the tension. Videsse then pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest.

"If you were there, this wouldn't have happened!" The air seemed to shake. She closed her eyes as her voice painfully echoed in her skull.

The graves made no reply, each helmet seeming to look slightly away from her emotionlessly. Would they have responded if they could? The wind blowing around them made it almost look as if they at that moment turned toward her.

"Well," Videsse continued. "Now what am I to do? I don't even know who they were? Whatever." She shook her head and kicked some dust with her foot, then ceased as if a thought dawned on her.

"Donal," she whispered. "If they found me, that means they got to Donal."

Her fists clenched and fire rose in her eyes. She could almost hear the voice of her mother trying to dissuade the growing drive. "Don't get involved. Survive."

Videsse shook her head. "I know what you would say, Mother." She turned to look at Boba's helmet hanging from the post above his grave.

"And you, what would you say?" Her voice was full of disapprobation.

The wind seemed to move his helmet again as if it nodded ever so slightly. So slightly that we might even say that it did not move.

"I thought so," Videsse said to the air. She clenched her teeth, lowered her arms, and remade two tight fists. "Sorry, Mother. Boba's right on this. Someone's gotta pay."

Was she really speaking to the spirits? An absurdity, I assure you, however, I am aware that you may have thought as much, it being likely that you have been told such stories before. Or was she beginning to lose her mind? That is far more likely, but also incorrect. Must I ask this question? Yet, with just a slight effort of thought, I realize that I must: Have you never spoken to yourself, to the wind, to the dead? Is it so strange that she would do so? And have you not at a time of loss and despair found yourself speaking to the great abyss even more, hoping even that someone, something from the invisible realm might speak back? And is it so foreign to you that at a moment like that, one might suspect that one had actually gotten a reply? So let us give our heroine some grace in this, for we have often extended that same grace to ourselves without question.

Videsse, then, finishing her conversation, turned to limp back to the harvester with one more comment. "Don't worry. I don't need either of you. I'll do it myself." The helmets remained behind, watching the harvester start up then move slowly across the valley to a distant slope that would take it up; up out of the valley, to the Eyrie where a new destiny awaited.