Both of you are my problems now, which means I have to protect you.

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Lost in the Stars
Current Date: November 25, 4023

Character: Yarden Von Marquis
Race: Human
Age: 25
Current residence: Aeriasea, Borealis Continent, Inera
 

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I haven’t had a dream—a nightmare, maybe—about my childhood once we got off the ship in, well, ever. I remember having a few nightmares after I brought my brother and Kavi both back here; I saw the carnage though I missed it happening, but it was enough to warrant my share of nightmares. I can only imagine how so much worse it was for Aleister and Kavi; there were days when I felt as though I was failing them though I was doing my best.

My younger years, once we came to this planet, were spent roaming the jungle. It was spent discovering things but, just the same, it was spent trying to not get bullied and left behind in places that weren’t safe for me. I remember seeing wild animals that would have eaten me whole if they’d felt like it, and yet, somehow, they never did.

The dream was strange in the fact that the person in it, acting out what felt like the main role, was a person I had never gotten along with. He lived in the village we spent a lot of our time in, and he clearly hated me from the get-go. Between the glowering he would do any time I wandered near him, to the fact that he wasn’t beyond throwing rocks at me, at times. All in all, not a fun time for a child, as is.

He was a good decade older than I was and, now that I can think about it from a different perspective, I feel as though he acted that way towards me because I was just so different from what he’d known all of his life. I was this pale-skinned, white-haired kid who stood out like a sore thumb everywhere and while I didn’t speak the language at first, I did eventually learn it, but I must have had an accent of sorts that still would have marked me as not truly belonging.

In the dream—I saw myself more than I was in that role—I was that kid again. We’d only just landed possibly a few months back and I was just so young. My eyes were so bright and innocent, and it was strange to see myself from that perspective. I was roaming the jungle, being mindful of where I stepped, but out of nowhere, there was the man who had loathed me from the get-go. Not that I knew that in the dream itself, but now that I’m awake, I can understand these little details.

Dream-me stared wide-eyed as he looked at me—and another young boy that came up behind me that hadn’t been there just a minute ago—glowered and muttered something about how we both were his problems now, which meant he had to protect us. At least, that’s the gist that I understood; it’s been years since I’ve been on that side of the planet, and I’ve lost some of the understanding I had of their languages.

That part of the dream wasn’t so bad, not really. It’s the second part of it, where the other kid whose name I have no idea about gets mauled by a wild animal, and then I have to run like my life depends on it because the man blames me for it all, is where things went sour and sort of turned it from a dream to a nightmare.

I woke up just about around the time when kid-me in the dream ended up at a cliffside with two options. Face the desperately angry man who looked like he wanted to rip kid-me to pieces or jump and neither option looked interesting. The jump would have killed me even as an adult, sure, there was plenty of foliage down there, but no water to fall into and who knows what I would have hit on my way down.

I’ve been trying to figure out what might have triggered the nightmare, but I have no idea. I didn’t eat anything I hadn’t eaten before, I had nothing new to drink. I had a fairly okay day at work and all in all, my life has been on its regular track. So, I’m baffled as to why; not that I think I’ll be able to figure that out; at this point, I’m just better off trying to forget it happened altogether and move on.

After all, what good does it do me to cling to a dream like that? It’s all in my past and I never even saw the man again after I went back to get my brother and Kavi away from the carnage.

Final Word Count: 775

Why do you always say things you never mean?

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Lost in the Stars
Characters: Yarden Von Marquis
Race: Human
Age: 24
Current residence: Aeriasea, Borealis Continent, Inera
Final Word Count: 938 words
 

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You’d think that after almost five years, I would be able to move up in this stupid dog-eat-dog world, but no. I’m still almost completely at the bottom. In a way, I’m not all that surprised. There are a lot of us—more than I thought there could be, but we’re scattered through several locations on the continent. In this particular metropolis, our building is the only one and my floor alone—an open floor plan with craptastic cubicles—is nothing but techs that are on my level.

Even for the size of the metropolis and the sheer number of people on this continent as a whole, I’m always baffled by how many techs there are. What I guess I tend to forget, because these calls go to higher techs than my level, is that we actually get calls from off-planet. Only when they’re in the range of our equipment but that’s still a thing. I think that, maybe in a year or two more, I might get promoted there but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve given my name often enough when there were mentions of potential group changes, but I’m always overlooked. So, until one of my supervisors decides that I’m worth the promotion, I’m stuck here.

Now, the job isn’t terrible. I mostly help people with visual techs. Screens, arm-bands, holo-tech, general stuff in the long run, though at times it’s not just general stuff.

During the quiet times between calls, because it does happen, I read up on old technology. It comes from everywhere in the universe, nothing was created quite at the same pace, but I think that, at this point, the tech we have is a mishmash of several different things that were finally put together in a way that made it work at its best.

From what I’ve read of old earth technology—which is maybe half of the source for what we have here as other places were more advanced—is that the most common answer to things back then still is something we turn to now, as necessary. Have you turned it off and on again? It makes me smile when I think about that. How we’ve come so far, it seems, and yet the easiest of fix-up still comes from when things started thousands of years ago.

Now, with the cubicle setup—which, you know, you don’t have an assigned spot. When you clock in, you get an ID tag, and it tells you which cubicle you’re expected in—you can mostly hear everyone around you. By the fact that we don’t have assigned cubicles, you never really know who you might be working around when you clock in, but as most of my shifts seem to be around the same as my usual group, I tend to be around the same people. I suppose I’m at least somewhat thankful, it makes the short breaks we have a little more bearable.

I mean, the cubicles rotation happens so much that we actually have to log out when we go on our meal break, take what little you have with you that belongs to you and ping the system because, by the time you come back from your lunch, you’ll be assigned to another desk. It’s impossible to decorate a cubicle as your own. The only upside is that when you first come in, you’re set to a sort of model cubicle, and you’re allowed to set it up so that you’re comfortable. So, chair setup, screen setup, headphones, it’s all registered to your tag, so by the time you make it to your assigned cubicle, at least these things are the way they should be for you, it’s in the system.

I’ve heard of other places where the techs work in pods, hell, I think the guys upstairs do. That seems like it would be such a sweet sort of setup. You’d be in near full virtual reality setup, and you can see what the client sees so you can help onsite, so to speak. It seems like it would be pretty cool.

In my usual group of workers, there’s this one girl who is somehow constantly getting in trouble and yet, she’s still working with us. I don’t see her half as often as I used to, and her breaks are always spent in conversations with whoever is at the other end of her calls via her wrist comm. She has buds in, so we only hear her half of it and she’s not quiet about it. Most of us tend to just roll our eyes when we see her move off to the end of the table where we’re eating so she can have some sort of fake privacy to make her call. She’s been told to use one of the booths set up just for that time and again, but she refuses to. It’s as though it doesn’t register to her that we can all hear her outbursts possibly with her significant other. She’s often complaining about how they’re always saying things they just never mean. She’s in tears more often than not.

I really don’t know why she’s still working here. She can never focus after the meal hour and she ends up getting so many negative reviews that it makes no sense as to why they keep her unless she’s doing who knows what with whichever supervisor she has. I just don’t want to know. I don’t use my own buds for music in case one of my co-workers wants to talk to me, which is rare, but it happens, but yeah. It just sucks.

If I’m being honest, I think I’d sort of almost prefer to be on call with Kellen during my lunch, than have to listen to her. I don’t really know what we’d talk about but, you know, it’d still be better than this.

You’re still here, by my side. I think that says a lot about our friendship, considering how much complaining you do.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Lost in the Stars
Characters: Yarden Von Marquis
Race: Human
Age: 23
Final Word Count: 724 words
 

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Where do I start? The last few months were hellish. Between the deaths, my unchallenged discussion to bring the other two back with me here, my brother wasting away, unable to sleep because of constant nightmares and his need to control his words, Kavi’s wanderings into the red light district for needs that are beyond his control. Xavier and Wolfe were understanding, they gave the pair time.

I was grateful for that.

Then, I guess things changed, then. Wolfe and Lachland seem inseparable. Falcon has taken over Wolfe’s… spot to help Kavi; Jet seems to be good for my brother though I was worried at first. I can’t speak for Xavier on how he’s handling all these new people, what I do know is that Kellen isn’t such a bad person but I’m still not sure what to think about him.

I know Wolfe and Xavier grew up together, I learned that during the almost four years I spent here before I went back out there. I know that they tease one another a lot, complaining about one another playfully but they’re such close friends, I don’t know that they’ll ever really go their separate ways.

You could say that I do a lot of people watching. I was a little worried about how Xavier would take to Wolfe spending so much time with Lachland. I guess I was wrong in assuming that it wouldn’t be taken well but I admit that while I spent three years with them, they were doing their own thing and I was doing my own. I do know them but I don’t know them as well as they know one another. Even just recently, Wolfe teased Xavier about how they were still at each other’s side despite the bitching constantly being done.

I wish I’d had that kind of friend while growing up. It wasn’t really a possibility. My younger years were spent in space with my brother, Cou’ and the crew but I never really felt like I belonged. Aleister tried to be a friend while we were out there but Cou’ seemed to be constantly wanting his presence and attention so I felt left behind a bit.

I’m not going to lie; I felt a little bitter during the first or so year that I stayed with these guys. It was clear they were close and I longed for something a bit like that. The friends I made out here, at first, weren’t great. There were two that I liked spending time with, but the other guy that was constantly joining us was always taking on a bossy role and kept us from actually enjoying ourselves.

So I don’t know that I really have happy childhood memories. I wasn’t beaten; I wasn’t tortured. I was just abandoned by my parents, put into a cryo-pod and shipped off. At least they left my hair alone, though it had always been slow to grow, unlike my brother and the weed he calls hair. I think he has to snip at least an inch or so every month because it grows like nobody’s business and he keeps it to his waist at this point.

I’m over it all now, though. I don’t mind the fact that I don’t really have anyone I can call a close friend. I have my brother, he’s family. I have Kavi, he’s as close to family as he’ll get because he was around while I was growing up and when he and Cade weren’t busy, he was usually always nice to me.

I just focus on work day in and day out, I keep an eye on my brother—he’s been smiling a little more but he still is just so quiet. He sleeps better, though, and I can’t even begin to thank Jet enough for that. It’s only thanks to him that. Well, him and Falcon. I think that saving someone’s life is what helped him move on from being a bit of a blank and empty robot. He’d been holding on to the memory of the fact that they’d all died but him and Kavi, it’s what haunted him. I think it still partially haunts him but nowhere as bad as it used to.

There’s no way for me to just show how grateful I am about it all, there just isn’t.

You’re all dead to me. Go away and let me suffer here in peace.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Lost in the Stars
Characters: Yarden Von Marquis
Race: Human
Age: 21
Final Word Count: 591 words
 

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The laughter outside his door did nothing to soothe his ruffled feathers. He huffed and shook his head, aware that he was being overly dramatic but he didn’t care. This day should have been special and they’d ruined it all.

Yarden knew that, in half an hour or so, he’d see the reasoning behind their actions but for now, he felt like being a petulant child and that was the only thing that truly interested him.

The day had started out well. He’d met up with some of the friends he’d finally managed to make, they’d been out and about with plans on what to do for the rest of their day and for the night but those plans were hijacked by someone else he didn’t care to spend that much time with. Someone who always took over and didn’t even let them decide a single thing.

Yarden didn’t know why they let him hang out with them; the jerk was just that, a jerk. He had a feeling, however, that he was probably the only one who thought that way, the other seemed to enjoy having a ‘boss’ to lead them around.

“I need to find better friends…” he mumbled the words as he turned and buried his head into his pillow, groaning out his frustration for a few moments before he let it go. Instead, he turned and stretched out on his back, staring at the darkness of his ceiling and picking out the stars he knew so well. Maybe it was time for him to go back down to the tribe.

When he’d turned eighteen, Aleister had given him a choice. He could stay with them and still study and learn more from their host—though they’d been there for years at this point—or he could explore the planet a little more. Yarden had opted for exploring though he hadn’t gone far. He’d known exactly where he’d wanted to go. The planet seemed a little bit like the one he’d seen mentioned as ‘Earth’ in his history lessons. There were parts of it that were highly technological and some other parts were not.

So for three years now, he’d been living in a highly technological city that was part of a whole continent-like area that was as highly technological. From his digging into the place’s history, they weren’t really aware of the others who lived on the planet, as though somehow they hadn’t explored past their own boundaries. The whole thing made no sense to him and he’d briefly wondered if it wasn’t kept out of the books so that the technology didn’t reach that far and destroy what was a completely different way of life.

Not that it really mattered at this point, seeing as he was considering going right back to that ‘backward’ way of life. He knew there were other people that were a little more advanced some hours away from where he and his brother had first landed but they were closer to what earth’s history books called the medieval times, from what he’d found out.

None of it really did matter though, did it? His life was currently in this city and this was the one time too many, however, that their plans were ruined for him to overlook it anymore. It was just too much and something was going to have to change. Did he really want to abandon the life he had now, to go back to the nature and his brother and the others? He just didn’t know.

Getting lost in a maze with you was a nightmare that I can only hope to never experience again.

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Not of This World
Characters: Yarden Von Marquis
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 558 words

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The words would have stung if they’d been new but Yarden was used to hearing them. It was his role in things and he knew the maze by heart. He could have navigated through it with his eyes closed and he did now and again when there was no one else around for him to turn around in that very maze.

It wasn’t that the maze itself was very complicated, quite the opposite, it was as simple as could be but the maze was a living, breathing thing and could change as it willed and wanted. Yarden wasn’t sure how it really worked, not in a botanical sense. What he knew is that the maze was a natural protection against intruders who might wish harm to what was at the other end of the maze and somehow it could sense that and change itself around so that those intruders would get lost and confused, only able to find their way back out—exactly where they’d started—some hours later when the maze sensed that they had more or less given up.

He still recalled one particular traveller; he wasn’t sure where she had come from. Her features were different, a little more angular; her skin tone had had a little purple undertone to it. She clearly hadn’t been from their planet and she hadn’t given up easily. She’d spent almost two weeks in the maze before it had spit her back out at the entryway. She’d been well equipped with food and water though she hadn’t really eaten or drank much; she’d slept plenty, however.

Now and again, the maze would call to him—as it had done with the purple-woman—and he stepped within, first offering help to get them through but only working to get them even more hopelessly lost. So really, he was used to people turning their anger to him, pissed and mad that they were right back where they had started and no closer to the discovery of a lifetime. Only those whose purpose was pure only ever could get through and it tended to take them little more than fifteen minutes.

Yarden liked the maze. It wasn’t made with large hedges and cleanly trimmed doorways like he’d seen in books, no. It was all nature and jungle, trees and lianas and vines and comfortably humid heat that he knew he was the only one to actually find comfortable. Its changes were always subtle and he could detect them easily but explorers seemed to miss out on those signs altogether. The bare little shift of two lianas, just enough for someone to slip through? So easily overlooked by those who are too eager.

He’s lived in the area near the maze for years at this point, his family—his older brother, his mate and the human-like android—who all lived and discovered new things still from the priestess and their world, had settled there more than a decade ago. He had been afraid, terrified, really, at first. It had all been so strange and new but he wasn’t really interested in digging up old scrolls to find out more about ancestry, discovering nature was closer to his own likes and once he’d been old enough, his brother had mostly stopped worrying and Yarden had, unofficially, become the guardian of the maze.