29. Her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes. (Blake's 7, Cally) @bunn1cula
Sometimes Cally wondered what her people would think of her, if they could see her now. There had been no time on Saurian Major to mourn for what she had left behind, for the home she had turned her back on, the family, the history—and then when there was time to mourn for her own losses, she was too consumed with rage. She had been unable to join her fellow fighters in death, so she would find companions to die with her.
And so she had, though not precisely in the way she had expected.
She liked Avon the most of her new crewmates; she believed in Blake and she trusted them all to have her back in a crisis, but Avon was the one she simply liked. He was the same as her—an outsider among his own people, as she had been among hers. She could not exactly say that she confided in Avon, but they talked, sometimes, as they were working on the engines or the communications systems.
And he listened. Even when he was making a show of ignoring her, Cally knew he was hearing every word she said. Cataloging information for his own purposes, to use later. He didn’t entirely trust her, she knew, because she was an alien, but then, he didn’t trust anyone else on the ship, human or otherwise, so she didn’t take that lack personally. It wasn’t important. He listened.
“I wonder, sometimes, what my twin and my other sisters would think of my life now.”
Avon didn’t look up from the diagnostic read-outs. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. It’s not as though I can go back to Auron and ask them.” Cally passed him the laser probe in response to his unspoken request; they had fallen very quickly into an understanding of one another’s body language. It wasn’t mind-reading, but it was good to be able to communicate with Avon without the need for speaking aloud. Bodies were less imperfect than words. “And after all, they would hardly understand. ”
“That is the nature of families. And of isolationist societies.” He reached over her arm for another tool; his presence in her space was like a physical impact, but for all that, not offensive. He never overstayed his welcome, and she was careful to always do the same. He met her eyes briefly as he drew back. He frowned as he studied her, and Cally wondered what it was that he was looking for, or seeing. “There’s no context, among such people, for what it’s like to be an alien among aliens.”
Avon was right, of course. He frequently was (although not nearly as often as he thought he was). Even if she had been able to communicate with her people across such vast distances, either via the ship or her own telepathic powers, who could she have spoken to? And what could she have said?
She lay in her cabin during her assigned rest periods and wondered, debated, longed for home, if only for the chance to state her case before the elders again as to why she should be allowed back, why Auron should not stand idly by. When she slept, or even sometimes when she was awake, visions came to her of her parents (who raised her) and her foremothers (from whom she had been cloned over countless generations. And they asked her, What are you fighting for? Why?
Cally always had the same answer for them. But she never quite remembered it, when she was alone.
