Ravens of Eternity

Chapter 53

53 Destiny Interrupted

Amal had spent a great deal of time ruminating about applying for citizenship at the Federation. She had become distrustful and disillusioned of offers such as those.

In her old life, she and her family had been offered asylum by a few governments, but she had learned that there were ulterior motives behind them. Some of her friends and acquaintances who had gone to those other countries and experienced those tragedies had warned her.

They often used the refugees as political leverage, and this never bode well in the long term. After all, once their usefulness had run out, there was no longer a need to continue supporting them.

Many found themselves living in abject poverty, having been forgotten and abandoned by their new hosts.

Although Amal had been lucky with the country she chose to settle in, most of those she knew were not. Some, she never heard from again.

“Get your head out of the clouds!” yelled Dareon.

Amal quickly snapped back to the present, and saw that they were on a collision course with one of the barns.

She quickly yanked the yoke and maximised her rudder. The lumbering tractor had built up a great amount of speed, and was sluggish to say the least. It barely moved despite Amal’s maneuver.

However it was just enough, and the tractor had just barely clipped the barn. The tractor’s belly scraped along the edge of an awning, caught the very end of it with an intake vent, and tore the thing right off the side of the building.

.....

The awning abruptly fell down to the ground with a resounding crash as Amal punched the throttle to escape the scene of the crime.

Not that it went anywhere at great speed – they were still in view when those who heard the commotion decided to investigate the matter.

“Guess I’m gonna be paying for that one,” Amal muttered.

“D-don’t sweat it too much,” said Dareon.

He had never been a thrills and chills kind of person, and that near-collision had his heart thumping madly in his chest. He nervously rubbed at the back of his neck as Amal leveled out the craft and slowed down.

Although the vehicle was a bit slow and cumbersome, it became difficult to control once it gathered up enough speed. He knew well enough that once it got rolling, there was little in the way of stopping it.

If it was him behind the yoke, he was sure that he would have crashed through the barn. Might even have killed himself in the process. Or someone else. He shuddered at the thought.

And yet somehow, she had recovered quickly enough and avoided a total disaster.

“Sorry ’bout that,” she said sheepishly. “I’ve a lot on my mind lately, and spaced out for a moment there.”

Dareon didn’t get angry or blame her, but he was a bit panicked and his voice was a little elevated and spoke rather nervously.

“Just, hey, look, when you get behind the yoke on this thing, can you, you know, clear your mind a bit? Not tryin’ to be rude, yeah?”

She thought he was being way too polite, considering she had almost royally messed up. She allowed her thoughts to wander and get distracted, which nearly resulted in a much more painful lesson.

“I will, from now on,” she replied. “I’ll do my thinking on my own time. I promise.”

After she had normalized their speed and taken full control of the tractor, she quickly took to its controls. Though it was a bit of a heavy beast, she still managed to maneuver it relatively smoothly.

And unlike space-bound spaceships, the tractor had transparent metal surrounding its cockpit. It gave the pilot and technician ample visibility all around the craft. Because of this, she was easily able to get a sense for its dimensions.

“You’re incredible at this,” he said. “First time behind the yoke, and it’s as though you’ve been flyin’ it for years.”

She blushed at his comment, but the darkness of her skin hid most of it.

“I’ve sorta been flying for years,” she replied. “Just not with tractors.”

He nodded. Someone had told him that many of the refugees had also been pilots. He had even heard that a handful of them were basically prodigious with their skills.

Dareon looked over at her, curiosity in his eyes. He wondered if she was one of those refugees, and if she was one of those genius prodigies.

“And nothing quite this real,” she continued. “But otherwise, I’ve mostly flown fighters. A few mecha. Coupla’ frigates. And uh...”

She had caught his stare from the corner of her eye, and realized that he wasn’t just looking at her, but rather studying her.

Her face turned redder than before, this time more visibly so. She wasn’t used to being watched, being seen. At least, not with kind eyes.

...His eyes.

“Ah!” Dareon said. “Are you alright? Do you need water or something?”

He immediately dug into his supplies to find his canteen, as she tried her best to keep her mind on the tractor. Both blundered at their tasks.

He had somehow come to the conclusion that her flushed face was the result of some sort of malady.

And perhaps it was an ailment, the kind that pierced right into her core with insufferable ease.

She put the tractor into a full stop, which caused the whole thing to shudder to a halt. They idled in mid-air, roughly a dozen feet above a field of bright red crops.

The sun was setting, and the horizon looked as though it was on fire. Its blazing orange was cooled only by the deepest violet of open space.

Amal turned to Dareon and looked him straight in the eye.

“I’m gonna accept citizenship,” she declared. “I think that I need to do it, for my future.”

He slowly placed a canteen in her hand absentmindedly, as his mind processed what she had told him. His eyes brightened quickly, however.

“That’s great! You can get your pilot’s license real quicklike and go travel anywhere you wanted to. Where are you gonna go first?”

She shook her head quickly.

“I’m not getting it so I can be a pilot and fly all over the galaxy,” she replied. “It’s so I can stay here and... be part of the family. It’ll be a lot easier for me to help out if I was a citizen – it’d be a lot less paperwork for your mother. I could do a little offworld flying, too, to shuffle stuff around the system and whatnot.”

He furrowed his brows and frowned at her.

“Why? It’s boring here! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the fam and all, but I’d rather be out there, you know? There’s so much to see, so much to do! An uncle of mine’s a bigtime private pilot. Shuttles VIPs all over the galaxy. He’s seen all sorts of stuff.. And I wanna see them, too.”

Amal sighed. He grew up at this farm, and it was the only thing that he knew. She understood his wanderlust, and his desire to see what was beyond. She had even felt similarly, at least before the war.

Her family had owned a little shop in the capital’s souq, which was the largest and most prestigious commercial district in the entire country. The souq had been built in the 18th century, and encompassed nearly ten thousand square meters.

Every inch of the bazaar was geared towards the beautiful dance of trade. It was lined with hundreds of shops, stalls, and parlors. Each of them were home to various merchants, craftsmen, entertainers, chefs, bankers, and moneylenders.

Amal’s family store sold fine, handmade jewelry. Her mother often crafted the delicate little treasures while her father sold them. They had planned for her to take over, once they were too old and needed to retire.

She was never keen on that, and insisted on instead going to Qatar to attend university – she was ultimately destined for Paris, Barcelona, or Berlin. Her passion had been art, and she wanted to be at the very center of it.

She and her parents fought many times over it, their dreams clashed against each other until she couldn’t take it any longer. Amal had hit the point of simply leaving without her parent’s approval, but violence suddenly swept across their country.

The day that the artillery shells started dropping on the capital was the very same day that all their dreams had crumbled.

Amal bit her lip as Dareon bared his wishes to leave Venus. She couldn’t find the heart to dampen his desires. But at the same time, what he was giving up to chase those dreams was monumental.

Sure, the universe was vast, but sometimes the best treasures were found back where one started – home.

“What about your family?” she asked. “They need you. The family business needs you. You’re basically the heir to the throne!”

He looked away for a moment as the guilt had eaten away at him for some time.

It felt wrong that he wanted to leave, especially since his family was counting on him to continue the legacy.

And of course he wanted to help his family. He had basically been groomed since birth to take over. The responsibility for the growth of the Laertidus family rested on him. But it wasn’t just filial duty to him. He felt that he could actually do very well at the head of the house.

Regardless, it was a great deal for him to bear, no matter how ready he felt nor how much he had been prepared.

Most critically, everytime he looked up at the stars, his heart couldn’t help but skip a beat.

“I know I gotta stay here,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a fool’s dream, you know? Maybe... maybe I hoped you’d leave, so I’d have some reason to go after you. Like in the classic holos, you know?”

He laughed lightly at his own words.

He definitely liked Amal, and sort of hoped that she would help save him from his destiny, even if it was inadvertent. He hoped that he could ignore his duties and run far away.

It was clearly unrealistic of him to think that way, and she had opined as much.

But she was caught a little off-guard by what he had said. He said that he hoped to chase her across the stars, that it was his way to find his own dreams.

She imagined dashing across the stars with him, and witnessing all that the universe had to offer. It sounded incredibly romantic, and she felt warmth radiating from her core.

Like him, she saw the allure of that dream, and her heart thumped at the potential.

She decided that it didn’t matter what he decided to do, or where he wanted to go. So she gathered up as much of her courage as she could, and spoke before her nerves got to the better of her.

“Truth is,” she said, “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a citizen at all. I never did trust any deal that was that good in the first place. But you showed me something that I wanted to be a part of. You showed me your family, what you all are doing.”

Her hands shook as she spoke. She was filled with anxiety as she revealed the contents of her heart to him.

“And I,” she continued, “I was gonna stay because you’re... because I want to be with you.”

Her face had flushed yet again as her words left her tongue.

It didn’t matter if they were racing from star to star, or sitting in an old tractor watching the sunset on the horizon. Sitting next to him was what mattered to her most.

Her world had been filled with terrible power-hungry men, and now that she had come across one of the kindest she had ever met... Well, she couldn’t just let go, could she?

Dareon blinked at her. They both had pretty much felt their attraction towards each other. If not right from the beginning, then at least rather close to it.

He fell into a soft smile and looked at her with eyes aglow.

“Well if you’re gonna stay by my side,” he said, “maybe life won’t be so bad on the farm after all. Maybe I don’t need all those stars that’re out there.”

She quickly took his hand in hers, and they intertwined their fingers into each other.

“It’s not like we’d be stuck here forever,” she said. “Right?”

.....

“I wouldn’t mind if we were,” he said.

They had spent the better part of the month together, and they had grown rather fond of each other.

And they were a great match – both were hardworking, loyal people. Both loved their families very much. Both understood what it meant to live for others.

They peered into each other’s eyes as moments passed. Just as he thought to lean in and kiss her, an explosion erupted from somewhere on the farm.

The two of them were jolted back to reality, and Amal swung the tractor towards the commotion.

“There!” said Dareon.

He pointed a finger at one of the farm’s high-tech facilities – a textile mill – thousands of meters away. A hole had blown out from its side. Black smoke billowed out of it, and split the beautiful purple sky.

Amal cranked the throttle towards the mill, and the tractor lurched forward in response. It sped up as the moments racked up, but it only made Dareon all the more nervous.

“Come on, you pile of scrap! Get a move on!”

But no matter what he did, the tub didn’t move any faster. And as they moved closer, Amal’s ears perked up.

“Hold on,” she said, “I think I hear gunfire.”