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The Lacunaverse

Faith

“Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to.”

- Toralii proverb

Kael’jax Internment Camp, Kaater Mountains

Toralii Homeworld of Evarel

Three hundred and four years ago

“I know my mother’s dead.”

Simple words spoken by a simple child. Tami looked up to the priest, the rags the Neralanese charitably labelled clothing dangled limply off her, white fur thinning and falling out. The flesh of her toes, visible through what was left of her pelt, were blue and black from too many winter nights with too few blankets and no shoes.

The Toralii priest, his features falling at the proclamation, placed his emaciated paw between the girl’s fuzzy ears gave her a comforting pat.

“You’re only nine,” Guardian Antani Silari chided. “You don’t have an understanding of these things. Cubs don’t know what happens when people go to the Gods. As a matter of fact, most adults don’t either. It’s something that takes a lifetime of wisdom to understand and a complete picture is only obtained when you, yourself, pass.”

The girl tilted her head. She, unlike most children, didn’t mind when people touched between her ears. It was comforting, an echo of her past, something to remind her of her family and life before the camp.

There wasn’t much to remember. A few flashes of memories, a handful of words and phrases spoken by people she barely remembered. Words of courage as the energy mortars fell around them, words of comfort for loved ones as countless Autiellan women and men went out to fight the Neralanese and never returned, words of strength when the dark times seemed entirely endless.

“I know what happens when you go to the Gods,” Tami replied, sincere but flat as though she were reciting some fact in her school’s textbook. “The Neralanese take you and throw you in the incinerator they have in the middle of the camp.” Another pause. “Is the incinerator some kind of portal to the Gods?”

Antani’s hand fell away from the child’s head, his voice quietening. “Who told you that?”

Tami blinked a few times, her face scrunching up as she tried to understand why what she said was wrong. “Nobody told me,” she answered, “I saw Zumarl and Izkadi throw Mother’s body in there this afternoon. So I know what happens when you go. It’s nothing like the stories you tell.”

Antani shook his head. He took two paws, cupping them together to form a ball. “The journey to the Gods is... only a metaphor, child. The body is but a shell,” he said, moving his paws apart as though revealing something within. “Just a container for the soul. When a Toralii dies, if they have been honest and true throughout their lives, their soul departs the body and flies up towards the Sky Gods. There, it’s reunited with the mighty forces who created it, to live forever amongst the stars.”

“Oh.”

It was a simple answer, but simply and precisely articulated Tami’s feelings on the matter.

Antani turned his gaze upwards and pointed with a thin finger, his paw making a sweeping gesture across the twilight sky dotted with pinpricks of light struggling to be seen through the harsh floodlights of the camp. “Look to the heavens, child. See all the stars?”

Tami nodded. From somewhere else in the camp there was a shout, then a shriek, followed by the high pitched crack of a Toralii slugthrower. Then silence. Searchlights illuminated the far corner of the camp—another escape attempt. The Neralanese guards, their forms highlighted in the spotlight’s glare, picked up the woman’s body and began dragging it towards the central incinerator. Tami and the priest carried on as though nothing had happened.

When Antani spoke, his voice was soft. “Those stars are the balconies of the Sky God’s palace. From there our ancestors, and our friends who knew us in life, can look down on Evarel and see all that we do. That’s how they know if we’ve been righteous in our lives so when we pass, we too may go to the Gods and join them.”

Tami canted her head, looking upwards. “So my mother’s up there watching me? Watching me right now?”

Antani smiled, nodding his gray-furred head. “I suspect that she is,” he said. “At least, if the balconies are not too crowded this evening.”

The girl stared up at the sky, focusing on the brightest star she could find. She imagined it as a faint, shimmering balcony, so far away she could not make out the details. “Do you think they have a lot of food up there? Fresh water? Big, thick, fuzzy blankets?”

Both had become accustomed to the hunger, the thirst, the cold, but had memories of better times. Imagining the biggest, warmest blanket she could, the girl drew comfort from the thought—it didn’t stop her little body from trembling, though, but she had become used to it. Every night was cold, some more than most, but her thoughts on the matter were quite simple. They either survived or they died. Talking helped keep her warm.

“I’d imagine that they have everything their hearts desire,” Antani replied, his tail wrapping around himself for additional heat. “Food, water, warmth and shelter...”

There was another pause.

“Are there Neralanese in the Sky God’s Palace?”

The Toralii priest did not immediately answer, carefully phrasing his words, speaking slowly and deliberately. “The Palace allows access only to those who are good of heart,” he explained, “So... it’s not impossible for there to be a goodly Neralanese or two up there. But I’d imagine there aren’t many. And I’d imagine that there are fewer still drawn from those who... ‘share’... our lands.”

“Are there camp guards up there?”

This the priest sounded certain of. “No, child.”

Tami nodded her head, seeming pleased. “That’s good. I hope none of the other Neralanese up there turn into guards. I want my mother to get her food from the crops, or from a store, or a market... not from guards she has sex with.”

Antani stared in bewilderment at the young child, his tail twitching in surprise. “T-Tami, where did you hear that? Did your mother tell you what she was doing...?”

Tami smiled, a sad, proud smile that belied a complex mix of emotions, and shook her head. “Oh, no, I figured it out on my own. I’m not stupid. Children don’t get separate rations, they’re supposed to share their parents’, but I’m nine now. I eat a lot.” Her voice softened as she recounted her memories. “I tried to eat as little as I could, but I get really hungry... and I know Mum had to be finding food somehow, since we somehow got extra whenever we needed it and there’s not many ways you can get it around here. Mister Belaran told me that’s how he got the extra rations for his sister, so I figured Mum was doing the same thing.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I knew what she was doing right away. She would often come back to our cell late, with bruises in places where people usually don’t get bruises, and when she thought I wasn’t looking she’d cry a lot. It’s a good thing Dad’s dead, or he might be sad.”

The little child smiled again, expecting the Toralii Guardian to be proud of her cleverness. “So, yeah. I figured it out on my own.” She shuffled closer to the male, trying to draw some warmth from the thin pelt covering his body. “I think Mum did it so they would leave me alone...”

Antani drew the girl to him, holding her gently since he knew his fingers were bony and gaunt. The child was nine, yet knew so much about the dark place in which they had found themselves... far too much for a child of her age. “I can say this, Tami... nobody has any harm come to them in the Palace.”

“It sounds nice,” said Tami, wistfully staring up at the sky.

Antani nodded his sincere agreement. “It is. It’s a paradise. Your mother has everything she ever wanted up there.”

“Not everything.” Tami’s voice was quiet, mournful even. “My mother doesn’t have me. I know that she would want me over any food in the galaxy, any amount of water to drink or warm blankets to cover her... Mum would want me over the biggest, most softest blanket that the northerners could make. She told me so herself.”

“I know she would. And, in time, you’ll see her again.”

Tami nodded thoughtfully.

*****

The pounding on the metal grew louder. Tami could hear it from where she was – a solid metal container, nearly four meters cubed, the floor covered in ash.

“Blast it open! Hurry, curse you!” came a voice.

Tami, for a brief moment, thought she recognised it as Antani’s. She smiled and pressed her face against the soot-covered glass, looking at the mix of Toralii faces staring back at her, searching for the Toralii’s grey face.

One of the Neralanese guards raised his voice in reply. “No. That’s Neralanese property... if you damage the furnace it will be out of action for weeks—Warbringer K’sess will have all of our heads.”

“Tami! Tami, open the door this instant!” The original voice again, its owner thumping on the metal with weak, starved paws.

It WAS Antani. She could see the Toralii was trying to pry open the furnace door with his bare paws, his fingers missing their claws, broken and bleeding. “I want you to open this door right now!”

The energy inside the furnace began to build and build, just as Tami knew that it would. The whine of the power buildup was much louder from inside but its pitch remained the same. “It’s okay,” she said, smiling at them all. They looked so very frightened, angry, alarmed, but she felt perfectly at peace with everything. “I’m going to see my mother.”

Antani pressed his face against the glass. “It’s not your time, Tami. You’re just a cub!”

Tami shook her head, giggling at the adult’s foolishness. “No, it’s okay. Mother misses me—I’m going to see her. Don’t worry. It’s like you said, the body is just a container. Up there, there’s food, there’s water...” she looked up at the charred metal roof of the furnace, imagining the bright pinpricks of light beyond. “There’s blankets and warmth and everything I could ever want. And she’s there, she wants me to come...”

The timer she had set ticked down. Already she felt the growing heat beneath her body. She wiggled her partially frostbitten toes. It was the first time they had been really warm in months.

“You’re going to die! Turn off the timer!”

Tami smiled, closing her eyes and leaning back against the metal shell of the furnace. “I won’t die, I’ll go to the Gods. That’s what they told me—that’s what YOU told me—and I believe it.”

A pause, now, as the energy buildup reached a crescendo.

“I have faith.”

*****

She opened her eyes. It was surprisingly cool and white as air rushed past her—rushed through her. She felt herself fly through the atmosphere of Evarel, floating gracefully up into the night sky. She could see a bright pinpoint of light, the ignited furnace, far below her but she paid it no heed. Such mortal trivialities were behind her now.

Tami drifted up through the planet's upper atmosphere and gasped in wonder at all the things around her, things she hadn't seen before, things nobody alive had seen. A pale white trails of souls headed away from the surface, joining and merging with others, forming a great river which flowed towards the welcoming gates of the Sky God's Palace. Dark black streaks of the Harvesters floated around in space like birds over a trout stream, plucking the wicked departing souls—those unworthy of entering the Palace—out of the ghostly stream and tearing them to shreds with their fierce talons.

None came close to her, however.

The faces of the departed watched, smiling, from the field of stars which ever so much resembled the balconies of a house. They called her across the gulf by name, crying happily, beckoning her towards the light.

Then the doors of the Palace opened and Tami saw the outline of her mother, hands outstretched, urging her onward.

“I have faith,” she repeated, throwing herself into her beaming mother's welcoming arms.

The Lacunaverse

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Story

The Lacunaverse