(Personal Note:) I thought i would add this after reading _Ue_'s post that the RP seems to be running off course. I hope i am not contributing to that running off course, but will try to clarify where i am coming from.  

Basically, my character Teir, is a farm girl off of T'Lan in the T'imo system, with three worlds, the farthest out, an out world system on the rim of Trader space, the first worlds to be attacked by the Vasari as they enter the Trader worlds space.

As a refugee, with her mother fleeing the attack on T'Lan, Teir and her mother and the other escaping colonists are offered safe passage and harbor by the Advent. Who transport them all in converted shipping frigates to the Galan system, some eight weeks travel from T'Lan to Galan. Galan is an Advent colony system, with a single star, Galan Prime and a single world, Galan beta. Both are simply referred to as Galan and the world is largely a mechanized metropolis with traders, off worlders, immigrants and refugees and transients. The thrust of where i am headed is to get Teir onto the colony Advent world and to have her slowly come to know what the Advent and Unity culture is.

Eventually the faction that she joins is going to be called the Kin, a fundamentalist group that is trying to keep to the original roots of the Unity faith as it was originally formed on the Homeworld, in opposition to the various many off-shoots that have broken down into rebellion and self fullfilled prophets that have changed the Advent from what they were, into something else, many of them radical and fringe terrorist groups. The Kin are peaceful and devout, though strict in their beliefs.

What all of this is leading up to, is that eventually, Teir will be forced out of Trader space with a group of devout Kin devotionalists into DS space. It is at that time that i propose to make her the head of her faction. First, Pro-Tem, and then after the bloody battle with both Traders on one side and Vasari on the other, into the Empress of her faction, seen as the true form of what the Advent originally were. This will all take time, quite a bit of it, if i can tell it well, perhaps several months from now and perhaps several dozens of postings. Provided of course, no one gets bored with my story or feels i have taken the RP too far off course. 

Anyway, please let me know what you think, and if this seems reasonable. 

Take care,

-Teal

Part Three of Teir -

-Teal

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Teir-

The Convent –

The walls were white, the rooms stark and bare of all but the essentials. Windows only when necessary, beds, chairs, small washstands with ceramic bowls and pitchers, chipped and ancient, though still serviceable.  Plain gray or brown blankets and white or black dresses or shirts and kitren pants for the men, though they were seldom seen, as the genders were separated by wings.

 The first day was a whirlwind of getting down from the orbital dockyards, then through the city, a warren maze of ‘crete streets and store and house fronts to the edge of the glassteel concourses and rising superstructures to a garden of white elm and pine planted seemingly out of nowhere for the ten septacres on the grounds of the Convent proper, and then melding quickly back into ‘crete and glassteel again beyond the Convent.

It was a rush of glittering lights, blaring sounds and hawking vendors that lined not only the shopfronts but the walkways and the side streets as well. Not all of them looked to be honest in their trades, or their bargaining, even when they affected saddened frowns, or pursed their lips in seeming defeat at being out maneuvered in their sales.

The carts here were all steam carts, hydro –powered bouncing jalancies with buttoned up windows and glaring frontlights cutting the knife edge of the dim streets below the bright towers that rose around them.

A rush of people pushing and going here and there, most benevolently blind to the sisters in black that moved through the throng as they disembarked from the heaving machines still rumbling at the street edge, as they crossed the last mirrored walkway that led like a fairy bridge in a leap of height and span, seemingly unsupported by any structure other than its own form the last 100 yards from the edge of the city that crossed over into the strangely out of place garden and the convent of the advent beyond.

That bridge was white and the walkway that winnowed through the green of the grass like a sea beyond and the low buildings with the high walls and the single prayer tower in the center all white as well. It was a heaving  journey through the smoke and sound and civilized debris that struck Teir as they made their way, and then a calmness that came down, like a fine rain in the spring of D’selda back home. The dozen or more of the Advent, a lone Sister with an attendant and straggling 11 novices that came out from the steam carts and came across the white stone bridge, silent and walking in measured unhurried though unwavering in their journey to the white walls and the white single prayer tower of the convent.

Then into the buildings themselves, built like concentric circles that encompassed each other and the hallways between. Plain wooden shutters lined open windows and the hallways themselves were a hive of activity as the novices and Sisters alike glided quickly by carrying blankets or boxes of foodstuffs that were either being brought in, or carried out to the more normal yeet-pulled carriages in the outer courtyard in front of the domed buildings.

They were taken to the dining hall, a largish room as plain and white as the rest, though filled with a hundred tables that could easily sit five or six. Benches lined most of these, though some held chairs and table clothes with silverware already set. Evidently for the Sisters, as most of the tables at which still sat any diners, were all benches lined with novices in their gray or white skirts and white blouses. They sat with their hoods draped across their backs eating quietly, though here a there a few peeked at the newcomers that came into the hall carrying their bags and boxes in their arms or strapped across their backs with rope.

“Oh my!”  Teir said in a hush as she came into the large hall. It was easily as large as the barn at home which has housed over a hundred of the animals, yeets and N’hel alike.   

Several of the novices giggled at her sudden voice in the silent room. The older black clad Sister that had offered them sanctuary here merely smiled, but said nothing.

It was a strange homecoming, a place like and unlike home. It was a peaceful refuge in a crowded and too strange city among people strangely dressed and strangely speaking.  And yet there were all the novices, tall and short and slender or heavy girls with curls or long hair wrapped or pulled back in white ties with thin faces or plump cheeks, small mouths or impish ones with grins and bright eyes or dull, or calculating. Just like girls anywhere in any place, like any of the farm girls from home, from the school houses where she had grown up.

She and her mother ate with the novices and Sisters and then were led away in small groups with their bags and boxes to their spare and bare rooms with white walls and slender wooden framed beds with  heavy mattresses with brown blankets and thin pillows. Her mother gave a weak and tired smile and undressed, laying her clothes over the back of the one chair in the room and kissed Teir on the forehead and climbed into her bed and closing her eyes was quickly asleep. It had been a long day. An eventful day of disembarking and finding their way, and all the strangeness and newness to absorb, Teir was glad her mother was able to rest.

But though she was exhausted, she couldn’t sleep. She sat in the chair, feeling the smoothness of her mother’s clothes against her back, she wished she could sleep, but there were still so many questions, so many things running through her mind, that she wondered if she would be able to sleep at all for days until she had them all answered.

Would they come and wake them in the morning? At what time and would they expect her mother and her to wear the gray or white that all the novices wore? Could they stay? And if so what did they expect in return? Would she have a job here, in the convent? Cleaning laundry or cleaning dishes or scrubbing floors? Did the Sister expect her to join the Unity?

 And though she remembered those on the crossing that had seemed touched by that joining, what did it mean? Did you lose yourself and become something else? Something less?  Too many questions, too many questions…

And without realizing, she fell asleep in the chair, leaning back against the softness of her mother’s clothes, without any of her questions answered. But perhaps for now, that was not as important, as having found a place. A safe and green place, a peaceful place in the midst of an alien world, some place to rest and think, and work, and find a bit of that peace and put off bit by bit the strangeness, the tiredness and the fears that had come to be so large since she and her mother had left T’Lan.

She fell asleep, and did not even dream. But it was restful. And in that sleep with the smell of her mother’s clothes against her back, she relaxed for the first time for what seemed months.

And night came down out in the world, and even the docks in orbit quieted, and the cables for the elevators slowed and stopped and those long glassine hallways of that place grew quiet and still.

Part Five of  Teir -

-Teal

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Teir-

Work –

For five days after the incident in the dining hall, Teir and her mother’s days were filled with simply sitting in their room. She worried over her mother, who was mostly silent, offering a word here and there only occasionally. Her voice had been soft, but reserved, as if the breath was barely there in her. It worried Teir constantly.

Occasionally driven by her restlessness to do anything, she would walk the halls, filled with novices running about their chores or duties or errands. They would look away when she came close and grow quiet, until she passed and then they would whisper. The halls were too full for her, the looks and then the downcast eyes as she passed too despairing, and to escape she would wind the outside hall to the inner garden that held a single tree, old and gnarled and weathered, rooted in the center of the garden surrounded by a small pond of water that fed in a loop, down over stones and across the soft grass and dirt mud banks and then back around to a cistern that rose half the height of the tree and then fell from a rocky sprouted edge in a small waterfall to the pond again.

Here she could relax for a moment in the quiet without looks or whispers, here she could feel the breeze of a cool wind and hear the rustle of branches leaves and not have to think, for just a brief moment, of her mother’s silence and her dull voice.

She had always been so happy before.

Teir could see it in her eyes when her father came home and her mother would look at him. The soft smile on her mother’s lips, the quick laugh when her father would tell some silly joke to set them at ease after a day of hard work in the fields, and especially when the warships of the Vasari had entered orbit, just before the S’verkin walkers came down in their steel and gleaming spider legged machines.

She was lost in thought when the Elder Sister approached. She hadn’t heard her, but somehow she knew when the Sister had come out from the building, though it was over a hundred meters from the edge of the pond and the base of the great tree where Teir stood.

She didn’t turn around, but spoke as the woman came up to her.

“We have done nothing, six days now and we have sat in our room and I have tried to help my mother, but she is my Mother… what can any child tell their Mother that she does not already know?”

The Sister pursed her lips, as if in thought for a moment and then said quietly,

“Each person finds their own way. Each person finds their own time. How can I ask when you are not ready? How can I know what you will feel, or think? When silence and letting you have your time is what you most need. Not our words?”

“Will you throw me out then? My mother and me over a talk with a girl in the dining hall?”

“You will not be asked to leave. You may only leave when you have chosen to, and where you choose.”

“How can you support us, I know we are only two people, but surely you can’t just feed us and clothe us and let us be for days or weeks or months?”

The Sister smiled then, her white eyes blank, but soft.

“We feed this entire world, we clothe the world and our ships take them where they need and from where they need to escape. We have done this for over a century here now. Do you think we can do less for two people who stay at the Convent to protect them from the city outside? Not all come here. Some many feel more at home in that steel city than here. It doesn’t matter where they choose, or why. We are not diminished more by two here than any of the other billion that live and work and breathe out in the rest of the world.”

“I will work then.” Teir said almost defiantly. She felt angry for being angry when the woman seemed so reasonable. “And perhaps we can find something for my mother that will help her.”

The woman simply replied, “Yes.”

“And I am not to be reprimanded for speaking to the girl about names?”

“No.” it was a simple word. Unadorned without comment or explanation.

“Will they be punished? For my asking, for my asking her name?”

“No.” again unadorned.

Tier could feel the anger swell in her chest. She felt angry for being angry, for being taken care of and not having to do anything for it. For the Sister’s easy acceptance of her questions and her feelings, when she knew, she KNEW that the novices told the truth. That the Unity had no names, there was no place for them as individuals in that Unity. It was a soothing balm against anger and hurt and pain. Even madness, but there appeared to be a price for it.

A price Teir felt was too high.

She rounded on the elder Sister then, standing there with her eyes flashing, her hands on her hips facing the woman with the blank white eyes. Her voice rose.

“Why? Why am I not to be punished? Why are the girls not to be punished when the Unity takes their names away? Why!”

“Why is it alright to not be an Advent and to say no to their rules?!”

The elder Sister stepped back for a moment as if stunned, but then looked at Teir, her blank white eyes focusing on her, and her mouth opened, but she said nothing for a moment.

“Be… because…” she started, but then stopped, as if unable to recall the words she had just been about to say.

“Because…” she simply stood there.

“Because… you…” and then she stopped again, as if that were enough to say. As if it explained everything.

Teir stood there angry, eyes wet with tears for her mother’s fears, for her father’s conviction, for the strangeness in the world and the people in it, the anger at the Vasari and the loss of her homeworld. Of the small smile and troubling answer when Gelle had told her, her name.

“Because.” Teir said flatly,  her voice still angry, still wanting to strike out at something, and this woman and her Unity and their no names made her want to strike something!

The elder Sister backed away another step, but then stopped, peering again at Teir with those white and empty eyes as if she could see her perfectly.

“Yes.” She said to the slim, dark braided haired girl standing in her brown skirt and blouse, “Yes, that is why.”

Part Seven of  Teir -

-Teal

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Teir-

What is in a Name? –

“Come.” The Mother said.

The dark paneled door opened slowly.

<Rewind>

The Hallways were dark, still dark.

<Rewind>

Dawn’s first light came up, slowly, the edge of the waking world falling into darkness, falling asleep.

The light of first light comes up, slowly, the edge of the sleeping world waking from darkness, into day.

The Hallways were dark, still dark.

The Elder Sister glided down the white tiled hallways, clutching the note from the Mother Superior in her hand. She moved it to a pocket in her cloak, afraid she would dampen it with her nervousness. A child, the girl was still a child, how could she…? It was true she was an immigrant, newly arrived only some few months past, but still. All who came here, the thousands, the hundreds of thousands from ruined Tec worlds; from this “Thing” that now appeared at the edge of the galaxy, the rim worlds falling under some new and brutal heel. Of all those thousands on thousands, the Mother never interfered. Never called.

It was of course her privilege. She was the Mother.

But in all the years the Unity had been here, found a place, a haven to raise and nurture and provide, as was the original intent, never had the Mother called an outsider. The girl was not even an initiate. Why?

The Elder Sister’s steps echoed on the floor tiles. Black and white, black and white, the choices we all make every single day of our lives. Black and white, choices…

Why now?

Why this outsider girl?

She recalled speaking with her in the garden, and remembered the anger in the girl, her tone. How could she? And yet…

She hadn’t responded as she had intended. The words fell from her mind as she was about to speak them. How could that be?

She remembered the dining hall and the girl speaking with one of the novices and the mention of names. NAMES! And she had looked at the girl, AND SAID NOTHING! How could that be, that she said nothing?

And yet…

The girl…

She stepped across the floor tiles, black and white… choices…

Until she came to the door of the girl child, first light was coming up. The girl had already risen, was already standing at the washbasin washing her face. Already she had wakened her mother and was dressing her. The Elder Sister stood before the dark paneled door and tried to regain her breathing, her calm. How could this be?

She knocked once, and it took the girl child a moment before the door opened and she stood there, dark haired, her hair pulled back and tied with a single white ribbon. Her eyes were bright, and there was no anger in her. Her mouth soft, not hard with her cheeks pulled tight, her jaws clenched. Her voice was soft.

“Yes?”

“The Mother Superior wishes to see you child.” The Elder Sister said. Her voice was soft as well. It surprised her. She hadn’t wanted to be angry, or even disturbed. She hadn’t wanted it to be flat. But with a certain firmness to it, of course, but it hadn’t been any of those things at all. Instead it had been soft. Why?

“Yes, of course.” The girl child replied, and even smiled, though there was a hesitation in her voice, a weakness, a small fear? That also surprised the Elder Sister. The girl child wasn’t what she expected when she expected anything at all. When she expected compliance, she was not. When she expected fear, the girl was not. When she expected anger …  the girl was not.

She waited while the girl finished dressing her mother, finished smoothing her mother’s cheek’s and hair with the palm of her hand. Her gesture was soft. She smiled at the mother as if the Elder Sister did not exist at all.

“Love you mother.” The girl child said, and the Elder Sister turned and walked through the thin dark paneled door. The girl child closed it behind them.

The Elder Sister took the note from her cloak pocket and gave it to the child. The paper was still crisp, not damp at all. She breathed deep, though slowly, she didn’t want the child to know she was uncertain. In doubt, that she was nervous. She WAS NOT NERVOUS.

She breathed again.

“It’s all right.” The girl child said.

How?

Why?

“What is…?” The Elder Sister kept walking, though her voice stopped. The black and white tiles of the hallway spread out before them, the ramp to the floors below. To the dining hall – WHERE – NO! She pulled her mind back from that. Toward the office of the Mother Superior, past the garden – WHERE – NO! She pulled her mind back from that.

The Elder Sister closed her eyes for a moment… She was one with the Unity… She was one with the Unity… She was one with the Unity… How could this be? She felt adrift. Adrift. She had not felt this way in over fifty years, since she had stood as an initiate in the courtyard outside the Convent and waited the audience with a Sister, to join…

“It’s all right,” The girl child said. “ I am afraid too. I don’t know why.”

The Elder Sister opened her eyes and stopped.

Standing on the floor tiles, black and white… black and white…

Choices.

She breathed and it came normal, no fear.

Why?

She wanted to not be afraid, but why was she afraid at all? She didn’t want to be afraid. But she wasn’t. And she didn’t understand.

The girl child smiled.

She didn’t understand any more than the Sister.

And now she wasn’t afraid.

But it was all right to not understand why. Suddenly, it was all right not to understand why.

She swallowed and reached out slowly, adjusting the girl child’s collar on her plain gray blouse. She had never had a daughter, never had a man, or a family, or a small house anywhere where there was nothing more to think about than what she was going to cook for supper, or whether or not she would have time to water the garden. Or walk to the market in heavy farmer’s boots and feel the sunshine on her face and the dusty wind and the far off sound of birds that she could not see. Or crickets in the grass close by, but hidden, the smell of dirt after a rain and wild flowers that lined the dirt road into town.

“It will be all right,” She told the girl child, “She is the Mother, of course,” she gave a weak smile as if not intimidated by the title, “But she is after all, only a woman, like you and me.”

She straightened the girl’s collar and then gave a stronger smile, even if she didn’t understand why she had said what she just had said. But understanding didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“Now go now, and see what all this means.”

The girl child turned then and knocked on the dark paneled door.

*

*

*

“Come.” Came the voice beyond.

Teir pushed the door open slowly and walked inside.

She closed the door behind her.

 “Come child, sit.” The Mother said.

“My name is Teir.” The girl child said slowly. Her voice was soft.

The Mother turned from the window slowly and came around her desk. From the window the courtyard fell below. The wide window wrapped around the office and from the other side, the garden fell, the pond, the great tree, gnarled and old stood.

The Mother pursed her lips a moment, then stopped. Why was she?

“Please sit Teir.” The Mother sat as well, slowly, the expanse of the desk before her. “You…” she began.

Then stopped again.

How?

“It has come to our atten-“ she stopped again.

Her hands began to shake for a moment. She gripped one hand in the other and set them in her lap, below the desk.

“We are the first fragment. Our Convent is founded on the original premises of our faith. We are true to what we all once were.” Why was she explaining?

“You wanted to see me Mother?” the girl child said.

“Yes, we wished to ask-“ She stopped again.

How was she-?

“It is in the tradition of our oldest precepts that the Unity is all… That –“

“Is it not the people of the Unity that are more important than precepts?” The girl child asked.

“Well, it is…” The Mother Superior faltered, suddenly there were no words in her mind, suddenly there was no remembrance of what she had just been about to say.

“The names?” Teir asked, her voice was soft, she looked at the Mother Superior and was no longer afraid. What was there to be afraid of? This woman, great and gray, older perhaps than even Teir’s entire village on T’Lan, was just a woman. Just flesh and blood, kin to the same desires and heartbreaks, the same doubts, the same fears like any other. Where was the magic she had seen aboard the frigate that had brought her here?

Where was the certainty?

The benevolence?

It was all, just as her father had once said, when she was young and afraid of the darkness, of growing up, of the boys in school that would tease her, of the Teacher’s stare when her grades were lower than she knew they should be… “Look unafraid… and you will feel unafraid. It is a trick you see. That our minds believe what we tell it. If you tell yourself you are afraid, then you will be. But if you pretend, that you are not…” He had smiled then. “Then you won’t be.” He had kissed her forehead then and tucked her into bed, and left the light on, even though he said it was not because she had said she was afraid of the dark. He had left it on, just in case, she needed a glass of water in the night, so that she could see.

Here now, was this woman, a good woman, a great woman by all accounts who had called her. But she was only a woman, as prone to self-doubt and self-aggrandizement as any other. Why had she called her?

“The names?” The Mother said.

“People should have names.” Teir said slowly. For a moment the anger swelled in her, though she was grateful for the kindness of the Mistress of the Kitchens, for the friendships of some of the novices. As time had gone by more of them had come to her, smiled and told her their names. As if she was the repository of their true self. As if she would remember for them, when they could not.

The anger fell away in her.

Here was a woman, who had a name once. Still had a name in fact, even though she never used it.

She wanted to be kind. But she was kind in the way that followed rules without understanding them.

You didn’t leave your sleds, full of snow in the hallway in the house, simply because you must. You left them in the hallway, because to leave them outside meant they would break from the cold. You brought them in to protect them. Because you knew that if you did not, that you would lose them. You knew. It wasn't simply following something blindly that you didn't know why you followed.

It was certainly the same with names.

She wasn’t Advent, had never even set eyes on an Advent before T’Lan was under siege. And Teir knew none of their beliefs, other than what she knew from hearsay, most of it false. And only from what she had seen in those here after she had come to Galan.

But she knew, knew with a certainty she could not explain.

If she were Advent, she would have a name.

It would remind her of what she was.

And where she came from.

What her heritage had been, and all the line of women and men that stood in a line back as far as memory could recall, both the good and the not good, the selfish and the not selfish, the flawed and those who struggled to be more than the sum of their faults.

If she were Advent she knew it would be important, no matter the technology, or the faith. That they stand as they had been made, flawed but standing, and with names given in love from the fathers and mothers that had borne them.

“Yes, the names.” She said, her voice still soft, the anger gone now. How was it possible to be angry with a woman who only wanted to do her best?

“You wanted to do your best.” Teir said.

“Yes… I- we-“

“It is all right to have a name Mother. It is all right. It is proper and it is God’s gift of our individuality when we were first made.”

“I-“ The Mother twisted her hands in her lap in a panic. She made to stand, but half way out of her chair she stopped, halted by her doubt. What was she?

“It is all right Mother, everything is all right.” Teir said and rose to stand and walk around the desk to help the woman.

She herself had struggled with all the doubts of what the world meant, still did. But there were times, when all that uncertainty fell away, and there was only clarity. And calmness. Even though not understood, there was a calmness.

As Teir stepped around the desk, The Mother pulled away and cried out. The door burst open and the Mother fell to her knees on the floor. The black and white tiles of the floor.

Black and white.

Black and white.

The Elder Sister stood in the doorway staring, then crossed over quickly the small distance and moved around Teir. “What-?” The Elder Sister began.

The Mother Superior sat on the floor in her black robe, the hood pulled forward, the white collar at her neck, her head bowed. She was crying, sobbing.

“I was Dellana… I was dellana… once. So long ago I thought I had forgotten, but you never do, none of us ever do…” She whispered.

The Elder Sister stopped, and turned her face to Teir slowly, “Please…” her voice begged, “please… leave.”

Teir turned away.

But the Mother raised her head, her eyes wet, tears still streaming. “Don’t go…” she said. “please stay.”

Teir settled into the chair across from the desk slowly. She wanted to cry as well. She didn’t understand.

Even in the clarity, she didn’t understand.

But it was all right, not to understand right now.

What mattered was that people had names. They needed names. It reminded them of who they were. And what they were.

And where they came from.

And what they hoped to be.

That is what mattered.

The Mother Superior cried and the Elder Sister helped her up and she sat at her desk and held the Sister’s hands as if she was her own dear sister.

“I was once Dellana,” she said to the Elder Sister, who looked shocked to see her Mother Superior still crying, though her voice grew firmer.

“What was your name?” she asked the Elder Sister, who almost fell back with shock, though was steadied by the Mother Superior’s hands linked in hers.

“I-“ The Elder Sister began.

“I …was… Elleen” She said slowly.

And then she smiled.

And the Mother Superior smiled as well.

Teir wanted to cry and laugh and jump up for joy.

But she sat in her chair and smiled and was happy.

***