Writing: Steampunk -- Ruusan and Novarr

    To start off a hopefully lengthy smattering of Original/Deviant/Steampunk Storyline scrawls and bits of writing, this scribble is of Ruusan and Novarr in the Steampunk.

    I can't remember if I mentioned it in my summary, but Sarris and Novarr never found each other in the Steampunk. Actually, Sarris died at some point, with just a random write-off because she wasn't convenient to the storyline any longer.
 
    (I know, writers are cruel and heartless.)

    The repercussions of her sudden death weren't too large, but of the three versions of Novarr I've worked with, the Steampunk is the one that breaks my heart. I don't know if you guys will be able to pick up on it, but it's almost like he knows Sarris isn't out there anymore. It's heart-wrenching, if a bit hard to see.

    At any rate, he still adopted Ruusan and brought her up, and she met Cameron in the hospital where she worked as a nurse, as you will soon read. Also, please note there isn't any set time during which this occurs in relation to the rest of the storyline. I won't keep you any longer.


    The child waits by the window, her blue eyes bright with excitement, because Daddy’s coming home. Her caretaker works in the background, cleaning the sitting room and not missing a speck of dust.
    She hears when the door open, and her socked feet are on the wooden floorboards a moment later as she races to greet him.
    He always looks older when he comes back, so grim and tired and it makes her want to cry because all she wants is for Daddy to be happy.
    And he is; for her.
    Ruu knows this because when she runs to him and he lifts her up in his arms, planting a kiss on her forehead, he smiles both on his mouth and in his eyes.
    That’s all Ruu could’ve asked for as she buries her face in Novarr’s shoulder, saying how much she’d missed him and can you stay a really long time now?
    The hunter tucks her close, wandering down the hall to their room, the hole in his heart filling now that he’s with her again. He assures her that he’ll stay as long as he can, and wishes silently that he could give her more than he does.
    But his time is barely his own. The rent is almost more than he can handle and he pays the establishment’s owner to watch over Ruusan while he’s away. Then she never stops growing it seems, always looking as if she’s gained a few centimeters of height while he’s away working.
    Novarr sits in the chair that’s in their room, playing with Ruu’s curls as she chatters to him about what she did that day. He slowly unwinds as she talks, muscles relaxing for the first time since he left.
    Hunger is present in the back of his mind, but he’s unwilling to move. As Ruu says every time he comes back to her, she misses him. And this is the least he can do for her if he has to be away working all the time.

~~*~~

    “Ah, Daddy, you’re back!”
    Thirteen years old now, and Novarr has to ask himself where the years went as he enters into their small, hole-in-the-wall home.     He is greeted with the smell of something cooking and Ruusan who hurries towards him with a bright smile on her face.
    “You missed Missus Tasha’s visit,” she informs him, arms going around his waist. Her blue eyes have never lost that bright shine they’ve had since she was a baby.
    “Is that so?” Nov murmurs, bending to kiss the top of her head.
    “Yes, and Jade said she has something work-related to talk to you about,” Ruu continues cheerily, pulling him along the short hallway by the hand, her destination the closet of a kitchen.
    He allows himself to be dragged to the alluring smells that have been lingering in the air since he walked in. “Well, they can wait, because I need to spend some time with my gorgeous girl.”
    Ruu laughs, dragging one of the two chairs out. “You always say that when you come home,” she says, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind once he’s seated.
    “Because it’s true,” Novarr insists, reaching back to ruffle her hair.
    She giggles again, then plants a kiss on his cheek and goes to the stove. The hunter watches her, heart aching that she has to be doing these things so young and with no technical mentor to teach her.
    But she’s never complained, not even in her eyes, about the work. And when he asks her about it, she says that it’s her part to do and she enjoys it.
    “I need you to take me out for groceries tomorrow, Daddy,” Ruu says as she sets a bowl of something steaming that smells like heaven before him.
    He nods distractedly, pulling open a nearby drawer to retrieve two spoons. His daughter settles across from him, tugging up the sleeves of her dress to remove them from her way, and the two spend the rest of the evening in quiet, but content, conversation.

~~*~~

    When she’s eighteen, Ruusan tells him she wants to be a nurse someday.
    It takes them years to save enough money to put her through school, but her dream comes true four years later.
    Novarr thinks it was a mistake at first, as he’s suddenly the one taking care of her as she comes home day after day nearly dead on her feet.
    But slowly, she adjusts. She learns how to balance both her work in the hospital and at home. Tasha warns him at one point to make sure she doesn’t burn herself out, and he takes her advice to heart.
    He catches Ruusan before she passes out in bed one evening, and the two work out a schedule for shopping, cooking, and cleaning.
    Novarr sleeps better that night, feeling safer in the knowledge that he’s taking care of his little girl.
    And then comes Cameron and he’s thrown for a loop again. First, because he’s never imagined that he’d have to give Ruu away to someone else. Second, because even if he does put Ruu’s happiness in Cameron’s hands, it will return to his possession soon.
    Cameron is sick.
    It’s himself and the Vance’s at the small wedding two months later, and Novarr tries to push away the feeling that it won’t be long before those tears of joy in her eyes are tears of pain.
    The three of them live in the same small home that Ruu spent much of her childhood in. It’s a tight fit, but no one complains.  
   Ruusan still works at the hospital; Novarr is busy with his hunting. And it all functions much more smoothly then they’d expected.
    Ruu says she’s pregnant after only a few months, and Nov watches as she and Cameron laugh... then cry.
    Cameron passes on and Vivian is small and delicate at two weeks old, but her mother is the fragile one, the one who needs to be held and comforted. And Novarr is there for both of them, rocking the cradle with his foot in the midst of the night while Ruusan cries herself into an exhausted sleep in the circle of his arms.
    His heart feels like it’s breaking, and he can’t imagine the magnitude of pain that his little girl has to be going through right now.
    Novarr asks Tasha to come and watch over his daughter and granddaughter when he has to go work. Ruu doesn’t make a sound as he collects his gear, kisses her forehead, and says he will be back soon.
    Leaving the house that morning was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.


    It's rather short, I know. It looks like more on a Microsoft Word document.

    I'm going to continue poking through my documents involving the Schaefes and Vhanders and see what I come up with. There's been a lot of aimless scribbles over the past couple of years, some better than others, so we'll see how it goes.

    I hope that you all enjoyed this piece of work, even though it is a bit sad at the end there. Alright, a lot sad, but at least it's better than when I killed Jade, yes?

    Please feel free to leave feedback! I adore hearing from you amazing people.

    And one last thing: Thank you so very much to everyone who follows my blog. I woke up this morning to see a new follower and despite the blasted early hour, it made me grin like an idiot, as I have done with every person who has pressed the follow button for my blog. So, this is my huge kamsa-hamnida, aregato, danke-sehn, gracias, thank you, to Penny, Trinity, Hannah, Joy, Charissa, Mercia, and Ashley, who so kindly lit up my morning. I hope you all have an amazing day. <3

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

Writing: An (Original) Family Tree

    In the wake of my massive summary of the three alternate storylines Penny and I have in the Zephron Galaxy (see here), there was some confusion over the families, whose children were whose, and whose children were married to whose children, and who their subsequent children were.

    Even that confused you, didn't it?

    So I decided to take the suggestion of one of my faithful readers, Trinity, and put together a family tree graphic when I should've been doing schoolwork this evening.

    It took a lot longer than I expected, but both my sisters agreed it looked pretty good in the end, so I decided to go ahead and post it before I got back to work.

    Hopefully, this family tree will be helpful in sorting out the Schaefe-Vhander families.

    (Click on the photo for a larger, readable file.)



Note: All Vhanders are Penny's characters, everyone else is mine (Siani).

    Well, that's all from me for the moment. I would like to get some stuff up sometime soon, but schoolwork is eating my life, so we'll see how it goes.

    Thanks for reading!

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

A Summary of Storylines

   This post is going to be entirely dedicated to the explaining of three storylines that myself and my best friend, Penny Kearney, have developed over the past six years of our lives. Well, one of them is six years old; the other two are under one.

   There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.

   Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.

  ...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.

    One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.


   Original Storyline:

   Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.

   General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
    Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
    After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
    Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
     There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
     Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
    Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
    Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
    So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
    Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)


   Steampunk Storyline:

   Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.

    General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
     Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
    To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
    A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
   Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
   Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
    After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.


   Deviant Storyline:

   Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.

   General Summary:
   Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
   For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
   Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
   While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
   Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
   While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
   After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
   Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
   In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
   Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
   Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
    For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
    Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
   (Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
   The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
    And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.


   And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.

   To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)

    Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.

   And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.

   Ad astra per aspera.
   To the stars, through difficulties.

Writing: Aftermath

    ...to Jaydn's death.

    I'm making up for my lack of posting, see? Two posts. Maybe three, if I can hang onto consciousness long enough to work on the next thing I've got in mind.

    These are just my scrawls for the aftermath of Jade's death. Truth be told, while I didn't shed a tear writing the actual death scene, I cried writing these. (I suppose the time at which I wrote it might've been part of that. It was either really later, or really early. One of the two. Somewhere between 12 AM and 2 AM, how about that?)

    Other notes to keep in mind:
    -- Charro ki sotan -- Gogamian, an apology.
    -- Charro shik -- Gogamian, I love you.
    Jay equates to Jhidek Vhander, Ruu's (epic) hubby who she loves to bits.
    Charles is Jade's contact who is amazing and originally from the steampunk alternate reality.


    Novarr held Sarris by the shoulders, his voice shaking as he told her, “Don’t blame yourself for this, Sar. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
    She shook her head, grabbing his forearms, but the Warrior couldn’t force his hands away. She drew in shuddering breaths as she continued to shake her head, over and over and over, unable to stop, because this could not be happening.
    Dear God, don’t do this to me, Sarris begged silently as Novarr pulled her close, dropping his head to her shoulder.
 

    Ruu’s grip tightened on the comm. and her voice was so very quiet. “You’re lying to me.”
    “I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry. I wish I were, but I’m not.” Novarr said to her, sounding as unstable as her heart was beginning to feel.
    “No, Dad, you have to be lying to me. Jade can’t be—be—“ She couldn’t finish, couldn’t think of her little sister – her precious little sister – and imagine never being able to see her brown eyes again. “Please, Daddy, don’t tell me this,” Ruu pleaded, her voice catching in her throat as the first tear slid down her cheek. “Please, Daddy.”
    “I’m sorry, Ruu. I’m sorry.”
    She crossed her free arm over her stomach, a sob breaking from her throat. “How, Daddy? Who took her away from us?”
    It took a moment for him to answer, voice rough as well and Ruusan tried to remember if she’d ever seen her father cry. “Her ship was shot down by space pirates, Ruu. Charles tracked her down a couple of days ago.”
    “Was anyone there? Please tell me she wasn’t alone, at the very least, Daddy.” Where was Jay?
    “She wasn’t. A local found her before she— before she was gone,” the Hunter explained to his remaining daughter, fighting the urge to breakdown again. “He said... he said that she had things she wanted to tell us through him.”
    Ruu clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs, desperate for someone to hold her, but Jay had gone to his parents for a bit to talk with Raina and his dad.
    “She said she loved us, Ruu. All of us. And that—“ he halted to try and regain his composure. “Charro ki sotan and charro shik. He said those were her last words to us, Ruu.”
    The woman nodded, unable to speak, unable to get the words from her closed throat, because Jaydn was gone. Jaydn was dead.


    Neither Sarris nor Novarr slept that night. Her grief came in the tears that traced her face, not a noise passing from her lips, but Novarr’s chest heaved for air as he cried for his lost daughter.
    The apartment was so black that night, so empty and lonely and Novarr clung to Sarris, clung to his wife, because he didn’t know how to handle this.
    He couldn’t handle this. His Jaydn, his baby girl who held his hand so very tightly that first day even though she hadn’t known a lick of Galactic. So he clung to Sarris and tried not to think, tried not to realize she was gone forever.


    And since that all looks like such a puny amount, I'm going to go find my initial scrawl for when Novarr brought Jaydn home in the very beginning, when she's five and Ruu is seven, I believe.
    Additional notes:
    -- Ey, Ji -- Gogamian, yes and no.
    Galactic equates to English.
    And Novarr is a bounty hunter. Have I mentioned that before?


    “Sar, you around?” Novarr called, leading Jaydn into the apartment by the hand.
    The five-year old studied her new surroundings with quiet interest, and looked up at him with a bit of question in her gaze.
    “Hang on a sec,” he said, ruffling her hair and heading farther into the space.
    Jaydn trailed along at his heels as Sarris appeared with a basket of clothes on her hip and Ruusan hanging onto her arm, in the midst of asking something.
    His wife and daughter both paused at his small shadow.
    “Say, Sar, how much of your Gogamian can you recall?” Novarr asked with a congenial grin.
    “...Why?” She said, setting her basket on the ground, gray eyes on Jaydn.
    “Because this little lady doesn’t seem to speak a lick of Galactic,” the man explained, guiding the child forward with a hand on her head. “It was a very quiet trip home, to say the least.”
    Sarris crouched down to Jaydn’s level, meeting the girl’s brown gaze with a calculating look. It was a moment before she spoke, and Novarr didn’t understand a word of what she said.
    But Jaydn seemed to perk up and she replied to whatever Sarris had said with a simple, “Ji.”
    Sar glanced up at him. “Where are her parents?”
    “Dead.” He said, settling down on the floor as well. “Gogamian pirate ship, and she was the only one left after all was said and done. I wasn’t sure what they were going to do with her, so I decided to take responsibility.”
    His wife nodded and returned her attention to Jaydn. The five-year-old voiced what seemed to be a question.
    Sarris glanced over her shoulder at Ruusan, whose blue eyes portrayed her confusion with the situation.
    Novarr smiled at his daughter and held out an arm for her while Sarris answered Jaydn’s inquiry.
    “What’s she saying?” Ruu asked, hugging his waist.
    “She wants to know if you’re our daughter, because your eyes are so bright and your hair is so curly,” Sarris said, without looking away from Jaydn.
    Novarr reached out to tap the child on the shoulder, bringing her gaze around. He pointed to his chest and said, “Novarr.”
    Accustomed to this game, Jaydn pointed to herself and dutifully repeated, “Jaydn.”
    He tapped Ruu’s nose. “Ruusan.”
    Jaydn blinked. “Ruusan?”
    “Ey,” Sarris broke in, then continued with a sentence that included Ruusan’s name and her own.
    “Sar, you need to ask her if she wants to be part of our family,” Novarr murmured after a few minutes of interchange in Gogamian between Sarris and Jaydn.
    Gray eyes flicked to him, and he caught the hopeful light in her eyes as she nodded.
    Jaydn waited patiently for them to finish talking, looking around the apartment with now-undisguised curiosity.


    ...You have no idea how many little red lines I've got in this bit, as Sar, Novarr, Ruusan, and Jaydn, are all not included in the dictionary and thus get marked as spelled wrong.

    At any rate, that shall be all for this post.

    I hope you maybe enjoyed it, despite the initial depressing stuff and then the subsequent heavy-weighting of Jaydn's death, and thank you, as always, for reading. You have no idea how much it means to me to know that somebody actually enjoys reading the little scribbles I come up with.

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

Writing: "The End" (Jaydn's Death)

    Man, its been a while, again. Which I apologize for, profusely.

    Life has been life, I have been me, and writing had been predominantly with my bestie, Penny. We've been working on that deviant storyline I mentioned... a long time ago. If I've mentioned it at all. I can't actually remember right now.

    In light of that, I've decided to post a bit I wrote for Jaydn, Ruusan's sister and my most troubling character, in the original storyline, where she is... not who I wish she'd turned out to be.

    Things may be a bit jumbled, as I haven't posted anything with Jaydn prior to now, but, to be blunt, this scrawl is the one I wrote the night I decided that Jade would die. I know that it's kind of heartless to put it that way, but it wasn't looking like Jade was ever going to change her way. While her actions weren't exactly bad, they still hurt, both herself and her family.

    (After this, I think I'm going to write out a summary-ish something for the three different storylines involving Penny and I's characters, to help you keep them straight as I inevitably post a some stuff that I've had tucked into my back pocket.)

    Jaydn is Gogamian, which is the language that she speaks throughout the scrawl. I shall provide a translation, so you can understand her last words:
     -- Shak -- A curse, which she shouldn't be saying, but does anyways.
     -- Charro ki sotan -- A very sincere apology
     -- Charro shik -- I love you.

    (There's a reason they both start with charro, but I'm too lazy to go look up the document explaining it all.)

     Alright, I won't keep you any longer.


    “I’ll be back sometime soon,” Jaydn promised, on the doorstep of Ruusan and Jhidek’s apartment, bag over her shoulder.
    Vivian clung to her legs stubbornly, but Ruu smiled, Ellora in the sling on her front.
    “You’d better be back, Jade, or you will be in serious trouble,” her elder sister warned, dragging her into a hug.
    “Yes, Ruu,” she said obediently, embracing her sister in return.
    “I love you, Jaydn. Be safe, alright? I want to see you back in one piece.” Ruu’s voice was serious next to her ear, but it drew a partial smile from Jaydn.
     “Love you too, sis,” she murmured, drawing away and ruffling her niece’s hair in parting.

~~*~~

    Jaydn leaned back in the seat, holding the comm. to her ear as she watched stars slip by out the viewport. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m going to be back in town by next week, then we can do something. Dinner, maybe.”
    “You know I worry about you?” Novarr questioned over the link.
    An amused smile tugged at her mouth. “Yes, but you really don’t need to. I’m fine, truly.”
    His sigh was lengthy. “You said that the day you nearly died, Jaydn.”
    Jade’s good humor fled in a heartbeat, and she didn’t say anything in reply, struggling with the pain that rose up in her chest.
    “We want to see you in a week, Jade, and no later or I’ll have your mother send out all her little minions to find you and so we can bring you back.”
    “Mom doesn’t have minions, Dad,” Jaydn reminded quietly, pushing her fingers into her pant pockets.
    “You know what I mean.”
    If she could have seen him, she knew he would’ve been shrugging in that offhand way he always did.
    “I love you, Jade. You my favorite Jaydn in the whole galaxy.”
    “I’m the only Jaydn you’ve got, so I hope I’m your favorite,” Jade said, unable to resist the urge to poke some halfhearted humor back at him.
    “Exactly,” Novarr murmured. “The only one I’ve got, so be careful and give your mom a call. She worries a lot about you.”
    “I’ve got it, Dad.”
    It was only after he bid her farewell and she closed the link between them that she realized she’d forgotten to tell him I love you in return. Well, she could do it when she got home. Filing that memo away, she keyed in Charles' comm. number to find out where they were meeting the next day.

~~*~~

    The only thing Jaydn could process when she regained consciousness was that pain was burning, tearing, and ripping its way through her. It was like fire in her veins and she couldn’t keep from screaming. Over and over, until she had no breath left in her lungs to continue crying out.
    Heat surrounded her, but when Jade tried to open her eyes to see why, she couldn’t, and she couldn’t move either.
    It took one experimental twitch of her legs to realize why, and to make agony take over her mind again. She couldn’t feel her toes, but not because her legs were numb, but because there was nothing to feel from her knees downward.
    Jaydn drew in a ragged breath, reaching out, scrabbling for something to try and pull herself upright. Pain was overwhelming her to the point of being unable to function though and she collapsed back onto the metal floor beneath her.
    Coherency drifted and Jade didn’t see the way blood pooled beneath her body from her severed legs, its edges spreading by the moment.

    “—otta wake up!!” A voice yelled above her.
    Jaydn cracked her eyes open, almost unable to do so because of a stinging sensation that she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for. Why am I so cold?
    A hazy, blurry face hovered overhead, with a shock of blond hair and blue eyes that made her think of Ruu.
    I’m not seeing her again, am I?
    “My dad’s coming,” the boy said, his words too loud for her taste. “He’ll know what to do. You’re gonna be okay.”
    Shak, I forget to tell Dad I loved him when we talked...and I never called Mom like I said I would...
    “Hey, are you awake? You need to try and stay conscious, okay?”
    Charles is going to be waiting at the rendezvous point...
    “Oi, don’t close your eyes,” he said urgently, and Jaydn felt a light touch on her forehead.
    “I need...” she started but her voice wouldn’t come out.
    Jade blinked her eyes open again, staring upwards, at the gray roof above her, swallowing to try and make the words come out. The boy was there, a frown on his fair face.
    “I need...” and she heard the cracking words sound this time, and nearly closed her eyes again, in relief this time. “I need...”
    “Hey, you shouldn’t talk. Everything’s gonna be okay, I promise.”
    The woman would’ve shaken her head if it didn’t hurt so much. The coldness was spreading; she could feel it in her chest now, creeping closer and closer to her heart.
    “You have to tell them...” Jaydn managed, every sound that left her tongue burning her throat. “You tell them that I love them.”
    “Who?” He asked before he could stop himself. “Wait, no, you’re going to tell them yourself. You’re gonna be okay.”
    A ghost of a smile pulled at her lips. Jade wondered if the moist feeling on them was blood. “I’m not.”
    “Yes, you are.” Blue eyes were fierce with determination. “You’re gonna go home to your family and you’re gonna be okay.”
    “I’m bleeding out, buddy,” Jaydn said faintly, vision blurring again from the extended effort to focus. “I just want you... to tell them... that I love them.”
    There was a long silence from above her, then an uneven voice said, “Okay. I’ll tell them, but only if you can’t.”
    Sadness tugged at her consciousness and Jade lifted one arm, fingers outspread. At least, she thought they were. The coldness had long since penetrated her hands. “Hold my hand?” She requested, closing her eyes.
    A hand wrapped around her, warm and rough and alive. “You’ve gotta be okay.”
   Jaydn shook her head absently, holding tight to him, to that last bit of life. Pain had all but faded now. Physical pain, that was. Not the pain in her heart.
    “Tell Ruu that I love her...” she whispered. “Tell Momma that I love her... Tell Daddy that...I love him...”
    The words were coming out quieter, but Jade refused to let them fail her now.
    “Charro ki sotan. Tell them... charro ki sotan... and... charro shik...”
    The hand around hers tightened. “I’ve got it. I’ll tell them. I promise you, I will tell them. I won’t forget.”
    “Thank you,” Jaydn said, and drew in a last breath, then the coldness reached her heart...
     And made it stop beating.


   With that pleasant note, let me inform you that, after Cameron dies, Ruu moves to Norsha'acite to get away from the memories and ends up falling in love with Jhidek Vhander a couple of years later. Ellora is their first daughter. And Charles is an awesome side character who works with Jaydn occasionally as her contact. He originated in the alternate Steampunk storyline that Penny and I did, but I love him so much that I drag him along to other realities.

    Also, I'm going to double-check this, but if there are any glaring errors, please blame it on the fact that I wrote this out while sitting in a moving van on a highway in Korea. Tends to do funny things to your spelling quality.

    I feel like I'm a roll, so don't be too surprised if there is a post or two stacked on top of this. I have some aftermath that I wrote that I'll probably put up.

    Thank you so much for reading and putting up with my highly erratic posting schedule! And sorry for putting up this up right after Valentine's Day.

   Actually, how was your Valentine's? Hopefully, it went really well and maybe you even got some chocolate. I got a bothersome stitch out of my mouth, a freebie flower at the commissary,  and then went to the airport to meet our cousins' grandparents who had a layover here in Seoul.

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

Writing: Marks and Kells

    Man, sorry, my awesome readers. Said all that stuff about being on a writing roll and I have practically nothing to show for it.

    Granted, its been a busy couple of weeks, with illness running through the house and having an oral operation thing this past Thursday that I really didn't enjoy. Bleah. Nothing like getting stitches in your mouth, eh?

    Anyways, I said I had some more of Sergeant Marks and Kelsey and I finally sat down to scrawl out a page and a half of them this afternoon. (I am totally not avoiding the mound of catch-up schoolwork I have to do.)

    It didn't go as far as I'd wanted it to, as my brain kind of puttered out, but it's better than nothing, and I won't hold you up any longer.

 

    Kelsey put her back to the door to get it to close, the rusting hinges complaining loudly against the motion which only caused her pounding headache to spike. After a fourteen-hour long shift in the hospital during which she’d cleaned like the possessed with other nurses, she was more than ready to see her husband and collapse for a few hours.
   But the dark interior to their small set of rooms was telling and her shoulders sagged even further.
   So much for that plan… He was probably still out on patrol, having left an hour or so before she had with nothing but a brief kiss to her forehead in farewell.
   Dropping her bag on the floor, Kelsey slowly undid her hair from its braid, kicking off her boots and plodding to their room to shower. She’d worked through the night, so now sickly sunlight came through their shaded windows, the light much diminished by the rain that had started early that morning.
   Walking home had been quite the long and dismal adventure. Kelsey was glad that the hospital had an emergency stock of rain boots so her good, work shoes hadn’t been soaked. That didn’t apply to the rest of her though.
   Umbrellas were a thing of dreams in any bases forward of the Delta Division, which was only two-thirds of all their bases. A lot of things were only dreamed about nowadays.
   Kelsey flipped the light switch up and waited wearily for the overhead fixture to flicker into existence before she meandered to the dresser to find a change of clothes.
   From there, she worked mostly on autopilot, taking her standard, two-minute shower to save water for Alexander, whenever he returned. She made sure her hair was mostly dry before exiting the steam-filled bathroom, as their miniscule apartment couldn’t retain heat at all. The concrete walls provided for an excellent protection from mortars and the such, but it made their living conditions a good deal chillier.
   The bed didn’t look inviting without the promise of another body there to fill in as a heater, so Kelsey decided to go sit on the couch instead, determined to try and wait at least a little while to see if Marks would return.
   She succumbed to her exhaustion quickly though, despite the hard, worn couch that could promise an aching neck. Lying down, the woman put her head between her arms to block out the meager lighting and drifted off within minutes, her work-worn body surrendering to the need to rest and taking her mind along with it.
   If her husband did return, chances were that the door would wake her anyways.
   With that final thought, Kelsey lost herself in the black oblivion of sleep.

   It was a combination of the door and distant sirens that woke her an hour later. Her body resisted being pulled from its reviving sleep and Kelsey struggled to sit upright and simultaneously keep her eyes from crossing as she looked towards the entrance to the dim apartment.
   Alexander was there, pulling off his helmet, his green uniform damp with rain that made the fabric appear darker than it actually was. She focused on his face, and wondered why he looked so grim.
   “Get up, Kells,” he said, voice marked with uncharacteristic urgency. “You’ve gotta go.”
   She rubbed away the sleep that blurred her vision and frowned, asking blearily, “What’s going on, Alexander?”
   The soldier didn’t bother to remove his boots, moving to their bedroom and leaving muddy boot-prints in his wake. Getting to her feet, Kelsey trailed after him, avoiding the mess.
   He had already pulled her duffle bag out of the corner and was rifling through her drawers, pulling clothing out and tossing it into the bag.
   “Alexander?” Uncertainty tinged her voice as her state of awareness grew. Was he throwing her out?
   His dark eyes glanced up at her briefly before refocusing on his task. “Here, change.” He set aside a pair of dark pants and a matching shirt, neither of which were part of her regular attire.
   Kelsey moved to obey automatically, and was about to question his actions again when Marks spoke again, his words brief and to-the-point.
   “We received intel half an hour ago of a series of planned attacks on all Alpha Division bases and several Beta Division bases, this one included, set for six hours from now. The base commander has called for all non-essential personnel to evacuate in three waves over the next three hours.”
   In the middle of pulling on the heavy-weight pants, Kelsey looked at him, face draining of color. “That means—“
   “You’re leaving with the first contingent in half an hour. I have ten to get you ready and on one of the trucks before I need to report for duty.” Alexander finished packing her bag, having included her small collection of personal items as well, and turned to help her finish changing.

   Any other time, Kelsey might’ve felt heat pooling inside her as her husband grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it up and off, but there was no time for those thoughts this time. In true form as the soldier he was, Marks remained detached as he picked up the other, long-sleeved t-shirt lying on their bed and tugged it down over her head.
   “What about you?” She asked, feeling numb as she pushed her arms into the sleeves.
   Alexander put her duffle over his shoulder and then put his hand between her shoulder blade to steer her back out to the living room. He retrieved her regular work shoes and set them beside the couch, a silent request for her to put them on.
   Kelsey didn’t think he was going to answer her as he went to the closet and got out his only extra outer jacket, a big, bulky garment that had a sole purpose of protecting the wearer from the elements.
   It was dropped on the couch beside her then the soldier crouched at in front of her, taking over putting her shoes on.
   “The majority of the soldiers have orders to remain here,” Alexander replied at last, voice deep and quiet. “All the women and children, regardless of position, are leaving. We’re retaining most of the male doctors and medics to deal with the wounded during the skirmish, but those unable to fight due to injuries are leaving as well.”
   “Alexander—“ Kelsey couldn’t hide the panic that closed her throat as reality began to sink in.

   I can’t leave him; I can’t lose him, not like I lost my family.   

   He anticipated the direction of her thoughts and, finishing tying her other boot, took her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his steady gaze. “You are getting on that truck, Kelsey. You don’t have a choice and I know you’re scared, but you’re going to be okay.”
   “I’m not worried about me,” the woman whispered, grasping his forearm with a shaking hold.
   “I know, but I can’t promise you I’ll be okay, Kells, nor that I’ll see you on the other end of this. And if I don’t come back, my parents are back in the city. You can go to them if you need to.”
   The icy, paralyzing feeling was slowly taking over her body as he spoke and she couldn’t find words to reject his statements.
   Marks stood, his hands sliding down to her elbows so he could pull her up as well. His outer jacket was wrapped around her and then zipped up.
   “Here, Kells, take your bag. I’ll carry you so you don’t soak your boots, okay?” He murmured, putting the strap to the bag that contained all her worldly possessions into her hand.
   She took it, staring up at him, not sure what she was looking for but not finding it either.

    Blargh. I dislike it when the formatting doesn't like to work on this Blogger thing. I tried something new today, taking it directly from my Microsoft Word document, but it freaked out over that, and I had to completely remove all formatting and go back through it. Very irksome. Will stick to the Notepad route in the future.

    That's about all I've got for the moment, though you might look for a sudden influx of random scribbles and bits pertaining to Sarris, Novarr, Ruusan, and Jaydn, in either the original or deviant storylines. Depends on what I decide is fit for viewing without too much editing.

    Once again, many thanks to all you amazing people for reading my stuff and putting up with my stop-go-stop-again writing/posting schedule. I love hearing from you all, so if you've got any comments, feel free to drop them below.

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulties.

    (Did I get that right? I can't remember...)