Heart of the Sun Ch. 01

His third girlfriend disappeared offworld like a ghost; he never knew what happened to her. One day she was sharing a bed with him, the next she was gone with all her stuff.

At some point, he stopped feeling bad about killing people. He learned fairly early on how to judge when to shoot for the head and when to kneecap someone. Which threats were actually life-threatening and which just needed to be warded off.

He worked a year of bodyguard contracts in the most unbearable Porosian social circle imaginable. Somewhere in Galactic Unity middle management for a telkei named Ridosi. Getting out of that line and into shipping duty was one of the luckiest job opportunities he had ever seen.

After shipping, he got a few VIP deployments that culminated in his last job, coming to Anoria with a very rich dockyard overseer for a Unity spaceport. Being assigned to a sex resort deployment sounded fun at first, but didn't quite pan out the way he thought it would. They came in, dropped their package for his extended vacation, spent one night aboard the ship waiting their turn to leave, and then attempted to leave.

In a less happy tone, Bakur recounted abandoning his comrades Marlin, Gen, and Beorn to their deaths above Anoria. He talked about his cowardice and the necessity of a survivor taking their proof of the event back to The Howl to clear themselves and Rex of wrongdoing and bring down the hammer of justice on Counter Corp's crew. Maybe even the company itself. Who knew?

After that was the abject terror of unguided, and then unaided reentry, barely surviving the ordeal, meeting her in the most bizarre fashion, and his thoughts on actually being alive. The last part was the most remarkable thing he had ever experienced. The Void had him dead to rights when he hit the ocean, but somehow he had slipped through its fingers and made it to shore.

When he finished, he realized that he and Nilim had downed the entire jug of juice and the window was full of sunlight. He blinked hard, rubbing his tired eyes gently. Sitting across from him with her legs crossed, Nilim was completely silent.

Bakur breathed a sigh of relief. "You know, I feel good talking about that last part. Feels good to get it out in the open, you know? Feels less shitty now somehow."

The tataion looked at her apprentice asleep at the desk. Apparently, some time during the night, she had managed to find a comfortable position and doze off despite the fervent explanations and questions nearby.

Nilim rubbed her face wearily. "I've never heard a story that full before. I don't know if I can see your name yet. It seems so...distant."

Bakur shrugged casually. "Well, that's all there is to me. Whatever you want to teach her from that, I guess."

"Sleep first," Nilim declared with a yawn. "Then I will reveal Yima's name. After her, I have more questions for you."

"Shit, you shine me again and I'll even tell you all my credit codes at TR. I haven't felt this good since that party I told you about where I single-handedly locked in a BKIR&M bid for Rex."

Nilim smiled with recognition. "Tomorrow, then. Questions tonight, shine tomorrow."

"Deal." Bakur made a show of standing up and stretching his unused back, getting a nice series of pops out of his vertebrae. He went back to his room after a half-hearted salute to Nilim and promptly lost consciousness as his head his the sheets.

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Bakur's vision blurred as he woke up. He sat up, bringing the bedsheet with him as it peeled off his face like a second skin. He wiped his face, finding it covered with drool. I haven't been shined out like that in years. Where did she get that stuff?

"Ah, you're awake," said someone from the doorway. He turned, rubbing both eyes with a yawn. Exhaustion was trying to rope him back into another three or four hours of sleep, but he had the strange feeling that he was supposed to be up already. Something noteworthy was awaiting him, but he couldn't remember what.

He watched Nilim wave a hand to him from the doorway. "Wake up; Yima and Tab are here. Yima agreed to let you watch me reveal her name."

"You sure that's okay?" he asked, swinging his legs to the side. The floor was pleasantly cool on his bare feet as he followed Nilim out and down the hall.

"You're a guest in my home. If I say you're allowed here, then that's that."

I meant about getting a front row seat to the once-in-a-lifetime ritual you're about to do, but I guess that was a moot point. "Anything you say, tataion," he teased mildly. They entered a room that appeared to have actual exposed machinery. Nilim grabbed something off a small cylinder and tossed it to Bakur.

"Here. I'll wash your pull garb." She pointed to his flight shorts.

"My- oh, right. Thanks." He changed quickly while Nilim started loading the long strips of fabric that she and the other Anorians used as simple clothing. He handed her his shorts and she closed the lid of the cylinder after loading them and a small handful of powder into it. It chimed merrily.

They went to the kitchen area beside the pool room. Waiting for him there was another Anorian with stark black hair down to her knees. She smiled at him as he sat down, offering him a bowl of leafy greens, some kind of oily dressing, and soft cheese. He took it without question and started eating.

"You're Bakur?" she asked, brushing a few strands of hair out of her face in an endearingly-innocent way.

"I am. You're, uh...Yima?"

The tan woman looked pleased. "She told you about me?"

"More than just your name, in any case. Is this all happening now? Your naming?"

"Soon, when Nilim returns. She said you wanted to watch."

Bakur nodded. "If that's okay with you still. It's a big thing for you, right? New baby, new name, new you essentially."

At that, Yima let out a small laugh and covered her mouth to hide the amused smile sprouting there. "How simple you make it seem."

"We put a lot of meaning in simple things, I think. Point and case, your name. It's what you're called, but we make it out to be more than that in the end. It's more than just its function."

Nilim laid a hand on his shoulder to let him know it was time to move on from small talk. "Are you ready, Yima?"

"I am, tataion," the woman replied obediently.

"Under the light, then. Bakur will join us soon." The two Anorians disappeared into the courtyard as Bakur finished his breakfast. He scooped the last few bites into his mouth all at once and went to join them, not wanting to miss any of what was about to happen. He had never seen scarification tattoos before. Something told him it was going to be an event he'd tell people about once he got back to Rex.

In the courtyard, he found them seated in a shallow fountain basin about half way down the path to the pavilion. Yima sat on a stone dais with her back turned to Nilim, who in turn was seated in a simple fold-out stool. An empty cloth-bottomed stool like Nilim's is beside her, waiting for him. He sat down beside them without saying anything, watching Nilim's fingers direct the head of the tozian with complete focus.

On her left forefinger and thumb, she had two small caps for her fingertips, allowing her to remove the red-hot head of the tozian and drop it in the water at her feet with a fwish of boiling vapor. Each tozian head appeared to be different from the next, some rounded and some sharp like a razor. Two of them were pronged, given from what he could see of Nilim's tool set on the dais next to Yima.

She meticulously chose and used each different head, sometimes only for a few millimeters of flesh, cauterizing unblemished, perfect skin and creating an intricate network of weeping designs across Yima's body. It's looked like a cascade of yellow and red gore, like the woman had been on the receiving end of point blank shrapnel rounds and survived.

Yima glanced over at Bakur occasionally, holding her hair out of the way with delicate hands. She was patient, apparently in less pain than Bakur would have thought by the way she smiled to herself when Nilim made a long, elegant stroke across her flesh. Her skin stood up all over as Nilim directed her to lean one way and then took the tozian from the nape of Yima's neck, down her ribs, and then across the curve of her hip to her inner thigh.

Bakur didn't know how they remained silent through the entire ordeal. Nilim only looked away to retrieve discarded tozian heads from the clear water below, even when Tab and Malinka showed up and sat a respectable distance away on the pavilion steps. The whole scene seemed surreal.

Nilim declared the job finished by merely setting the tozian down, breathing a sigh of relief as she switched the device off and stood shakily.

"I will see you when you are ready, Yima."

The woman turned over off her side and gingerly stepped into the water. He could see the pain on her face just from moving, but she did her best to hide it. She embraced Nilim, eyes filling with tears. As Nilim's arms came up, she was outright weeping.

"Thank you, Nilim."

The tataion kissed Yima's untouched left cheek. "Go be with your daughter, Yima. Mother Sun see's you're grateful."

Despite the network of fresh wounds covering her entire body, Yima squeezed Nilim tightly. Tiy beads of blood ran down her arms and chest as she departed, crying and laughing in the same breath. Her grin was as wide as Bakur had ever seen one, even with the tears pouring down her face. Her exit was quiet and swift, holding none of the tension and import that the actual event had possessed. Over and done with, I guess.

Bakur found Nilim staring at him when he finally drew his attention elsewhere.

"Thank you for showing her respect."

Bakur waved the notion off with one hand. "No need to thank me. It seemed like the thing to do."

"Are you hungry?"

He thought for a moment. "Very, now that you say it."

"As am I," came the stoic reply. Nilim turned to the younger two Anorians still seated on the pavilion steps. "You two, make food. If you're going to stay, you're going to make yourselves useful."

"Ah, we were actually just leaving, Nilim," Malinka explained. "I'll be back with Tab in two days to reveal her name."

"Two days?" The tataion's brow arched alongside her question.

Malinka replied sheepishly, "I want to be sure."

After a tense few seconds, Nilim just sighed in resignation. Resigned to what, Bakur couldn't tell, but she didn't seem disappointed. "I'll see you in two days; both of you. Mother Sun within."

"Mother Sun without," they echoed in unison. Tab and Malinka left, seeing themselves out as Bakur followed his host into the kitchen. She slid a wall panel aside and picked an armful of vegetables off two refrigerated shelves, letting everything roll out of her curled arm as she turned around. She looked exhausted.

"You want me to cook this time?" the mercenary asked.

She raised a brow questioningly. "Can you?"

He chuckled. "I can grill vegetables well enough with a fully-stocked kitchen. Besides, you look like you're pretty slated right now. Sit down and relax for a minute."

"It would be rude to make my guest cook for me."

He shrugged in response, grabbing something that looked like a potato and tossing it into the geometric sink basin. "Call us even for letting me watch you work on Yima, then."

"If you really insist," she finally relented. They traded places and Bakur got to work carving up vegetables and getting a large pan hot on the heating element. He threw on some meat to go with it, much to Nilim's approval. He made a simple stir fry, and after being shown how to use the rice machine, laid down a bed of egg rice for it.

He dumped a ring of chunked vegetables around the mound of rice on each plate and presented one to Nilim in an exaggerated way, bowing low across the countertop. She gave an approving smile and then an approving grunt when she started eating.

Bakur picked at his own food, ruminating over whether or not he should ask to talk with her again tonight. His suit still had probably a day or two left to charge fully, so there was a little more time to kill. It didn't necessarily have to be tonight, but...

She beat him to it. "If you'd like, I want to talk with you more tonight."

"About what?"

"You," she stated plainly.

"What else you wanna know? I'm an open book; just flip to the page you want." He made a gesture like he was flipping pages across his face, jerking his head to the side with every imaginary turn.

"I want to read it all."

Bakur offered an out for good measure. She seemed fairly tired already from the ordeal of scarring a woman's entire body with what equated to a religious rite. "We can do the entirety of last night over again if you want, but don't you need to sleep for your thing tomorrow?"

"Not anymore," she explained. "Tab and Malinka will be back in two days. There is nothing tomorrow anymore."

"You sure you don't want to spend it catching up on sleep?"

Nilim gave him a flat look. "I want to spend it how I want to spend it."

"Fair enough," he said with both hands up in surrender.

They finished eating and Nilim produced two doses of Tinbenk, handing him one as she downed the other. He set it down on the counter as Nilim took a hefty swig of her juice, giving him a curious look as he just watched.

"Do you not want to talk?"

He cracked a grin. "I want to listen this time."

"To me?" She looked utterly confused.

He stuck a finger out at her. "Yeah, you. You said you wanted to talk about everything, right? If you just listen to me, that's only half of everything at the table."

"But I..." She still didn't have her bearings. She had just strapped herself to the rainbow and they both knew that it was only up from here.

"You...?"

Nilim threw a hand up to call the answer out of the Void. "You don't know how to find my name."

"And I don't intend to," the impish response pierced. "Nilim's a good enough name as-is. I just want to hear your story."

"Mine is very mundane. Yours was truly magnificent. It was grand. It spanned the stars. You had lovers and enemies. Even your birth was an event that inspired me to listen."

As her head went down, he reached out and put two fingers to her chin, tilting it back up to face him. "I still want to listen to it."

Nilim looked away. "Alright. You are my guest, after all."

"Great." He sat back and gave a glance to her pupils starting to expand. "So where does Nilim start?"

She thought for a moment, licking her teeth absentmindedly. "I was born on the trailing shadow of a complete planetary eclipse, in the olive grove outside. My mother told me it was a sign of Mother Sun's favor, to have the very first light of the new Cycle preside over my birth." She smiled, eyes far away in time. "I miss her. She was a remarkable woman."

Nilim's childhood was a fond memory. Her mother took her to everyone in the village and presented the baby Anorian like she was the planet's greatest treasure. Nilim's earliest memories involved stories about Mother Sun's doings on Anoria. Bringing the Galactic Unity to Anoria with her cunning. Devising a way for visitors to give them a future. Blessing the Anorians with great strength and vitality.

As a child, her interest in listening to stories came from the Nakator's three tataioni, her eventual teachers. They had been her closest friends, aside from her mother, and taken her across the planet with their tales. Nilim had been told of the land where Mother Sun never looked away long before she ever saw it. As a result, she didn't mesh well with other children, as her thoughts were mostly on the future and what it held for an Anorian's body and what stories they would bring with them.

She grew up stronger than most of the women around her age because of her mother's notable size, towering nearly a head higher than almost all her peers. She had been a favorite among visitors to Anoria, entertaining as much as receiving gifts from them. Despite her active participation in the Great Quarter, she only had one child. She told Nilim that one was enough for her, that Mother Sun had granted her everything she desired in life and she wanting nothing more.

She died nine cycles ago with Nilim at her side, telling the younger woman that she would ask Mother Sun's heart to look over her. Nilim went to visit her occasionally for guidance. Her cairn was always covered in moss, vibrant and easy to find, as its owner was in life.

Most of Nilim's scars came from hunting ventures to collect trophies for a major cultural event that occurred every three Cycles called Atanki. There, thousands of Anorians from across the planet competed in ritualistic games and competitions on a vast plain so far north that the sun never set there. Anorians brought trophies as offerings to Mother Sun: antlers, horns, scrimshawed bones, skulls, tusks, anything remarkable they could obtain on a hunt. A few had even brought hunting trophies won by visitors on other worlds, which were met with great interest and pleasure for all attending.

At the Atanki three Cycles ago, Nilim had been selected from the Nakator and competed in wrestling. She came in second after days of matches. Her offering stayed on the field with the others after the games ended to thank Mother Sun for her blessing. The two scars running up the left side of her ribs were from the boar whose tusks she offered.

That was seven years ago. She wanted to compete again eventually, knowing that she was an excellent runner, even among the Nakator. Her mother's strength was still fresh in her blood.

After the Atanki, the rest of her life consisted of being the last remaining tataion of the Nakator. Even within those seven years, the vast majority of it was spent in her villa, attending to her duties. She spent several years trying to find an apprentice, eventually finding two, of which Malinka was ready to begin revealing names.

Nilim worried about her sometimes. She knew Malinka had the skill to see names, but her hands weren't confident. She still had so much doubt in her body, in the artifice of her nimble fingers, in the smoothness of every sweep and curve. She would find her talent with Tab though, Nilim was confident.

The day came where Nilim sat eating peaches in her lounge and watched something hurl itself out of the sun toward the sea. It shed its shell, and split into pieces, one landing in the hillside past the olive grove and the other in the sea. When she investigated what had become of it, she found Bakur lying on the beach.

She thought it very strange that the event he called reentry sounded so violent and destructive compared to the beautiful slipstream of fire that descended from the sky. She laughed at that thought. Bakur cracked a grin himself.

"You know," he started. "I was promised a mundane story when I sat down to listen. Instead, I got an odyssey that started with a baby born under Mother Sun's eye and ended with a literal fireball descending into the sea at half the speed of light. Sounds pretty magnificent to me. You even told me about half the tribe, too."

Nilim struggled not to bite her lip and pressed an inarticulate smile back to speak. "That's because I have heard every story and revealed every name of the Nakator for seven years. I could talk about the other Nakator for days."

"Yeah, you said almost as much about them as you did yourself."

"There isn't much to say about me alone; my life involves the wants of the tribe every day as its tataion."

Bakur held one finger up. "Ah, every day but tomorrow." He waited for a response, but Nilim's eager-to-return smile faded. She grew quiet and thoughtful for a while. He joked, "Thinking about what you want instead of the entire tribe for once?"