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.