CrossRoads Part 2

[Pan]

Kealya listens closely to his word and nodes her head. "So he might make a change? Well I can only hope that he does for my people sake..." She then gets a little twitchy and looks away from Mikaki pulling at some of her hair. "Mikaki can I ask you... About your people? In that regard I know very little about you..."

[Seven]

Mikaki looked away from his hand back to the petite girl. "Ask away," he said simply. Responding to questions was easier than a soliloquy.

[Pan]

Kealya was surprised at this, ay had been like pulling teeth before when she tried to ask him about anything having to deal with him. It a strange way it made her smile. Was he starting to trust her a bit? She paused and thought not sure where to begin. "Well... Tell me about your people's culture. Was it run by one person? Was their gender roles?" There was a lot more question starting to fill her head but she would begin with the basics.

[Seven]

"here wasn't just one leader, there were no gender roles, and..." He paused. He could answer her questions one by one, but he realized, it'd make no difference. There was no way to really explain it without starting from the beginning. He gave a haggard sigh. Drudging up old memories. After all this time, it could no longer inspire feelings of passions, such as sorrow or hatred, but it left him now with a sort of numbed and tired feelings. "Our culture..." He shook his head. "It is complex, despite the barbaric anarchy we were known for living in. It begins with a story of perfection--paradise, to us--lost."

[Pan]

"Perfection?" Kealya looked away from him now as sh blinked a few times. "Mikaki where your people a perfected from of hum---what ever you are." Humanity would have been a poor choice of words on Kealya's part but that what she was used to saying, nothing like angel or demon, but the thought of a perfected being puzzled the girl. She knew even here it couldn't be done Isis was one of the only God's left who was a child of the seven creator Gods and she wasn't even perfect.

[Seven]

"Yes and no, really. That goes back even further, to Daemon's father, the Morning Star, brightest of all in the sky--as we called him. He was shunned from the heavens and fell from the sky, losing his grace, and his supposed 'perfection.' When he became god of the darkness, he sought to recreate his fall from grace in a special group of beings he created.

"They were the first of the Soul-Eaters. It was an act of pride and rebellion against the true god. They were the most beautiful of people, born of fire and His blood, tall and serene, with shimmering red eyes. Red, like deep pools of blood... and then red like fire, when they took their secondary form." He paused here, remembering himself, and looked to Kealya once more. "They had a secondary form," he began to explain. "It was a monstrous form. If their first form was beautiful and full of grace, like that of angels', then the second was horrific and terrifying, meant to inspire fear, like that of a demon's. It was homage to the Morning Star's fall. And more so, it was a taunt. He had created an immortal, powerful, cannibalistic species, meant to feast on the true god's creations, and his creations most sacred of gifts: their soul."

He paused once more. "But a species as perfect as the first generation of Soul-Eaters could not be replicated in such a base fashion as sexual reproduction. They soon found that their offspring were not as beautiful, powerful, or frightful as they were or ever would be. They were vain, narcissistic, and their pride would not permit them to nurture a lesser creature, even their own children. And so, we, children of the first Soul-Eaters, became a separate peoples. We were called Nazatika--in our tongue--the Abandoned Ones."

It was only the first part of an introduction. He figured to pause here to see her reaction.

[Pan]

Kealya sat there staring up at him with a look of shock and curiosity. She had never heard of something like this of people being made to mock another god. That would be unheard of here for there where many gods and to mock the others would be a deceleration of war. She moved around on her pillow to make herself more comfortable know this would be a long story. "So then your mother and father where one of those first people? To think they didn't even raise their own children just because they weren't like them... I can't wrap my head around that my Mother has always tried to be there for me and when she couldn't it was Isis and Shiku that took care of me. So then what happened? If you became the abandoned ones."

[Seven]

Mikaki shook his head as he continued his recollection. "Imperfect as we were, we were still powerful. We were nasty little creatures that you would never wish even your worst enemy to meet in his nightmares. We grew with incredible speed; in just our first hours, we could walk, and defend ourselves. We did not need any nurturing, a good thing since none was provided. Most instrumental to our growth was that, unlike our mothers and fathers, we could derive nourishment from food other than souls. It meant that we could scavenge soulless bodies, and then hunt when we were older. And we could still eat souls--in fact, nothing else felt quite like it once we had. It was everything we needed and wanted, for it was written into our DNA. But...

"We were just...off. Where they were tall and beautiful, we were tall and lanky, all angles and no shape. Misshapen, by their judgement. Even as infants, we just looked sort of like golemns. We became their sort of subspecies... That didn't matter though. We worshiped them. Though we were not given names, we named ourselves. Our names were all derivatives of the first in our line. Boys were names after their male forefather, girls after their foremother. Even for 3rd, and beyond generations, immediate parentage accounted for nothing--only our ancestors mattered. They were the true parents.

"It was because, like them, we too had their same pride and narcissism, albeit skewed. We adored their perfection. We wanted to become like them, and we had our hopes. We passed lore from one another, myths that our hopes could become reality. Our priestesses foretold that there would be a great one--a Messiah amongst us--who could manage the feat of transformation to become like our mothers and fathers, and that through him or her, the rest would be shown the way."

He stopped for a second. How did one relate the entirety of a people's being down to one conversation? It might be best to keep it as simple as possible. There had been so many intricacies... and still, he wondered how much Kealya truly grasped, given that she couldn't be familiar with the vast majority of his lingo. Angels and Demons. "And then the unthinkable happened to the Nazatika... Our beloved 'parents' were wiped off the map, permanently. Extinguished like a flame beneath the wind. But not us. We were devastated. The Morning Star had destroyed them all. It was said that our parents were so perfect, that He had come to fear them; that one day, they would truly reenact His Fall by turning against Him, and that they would succeed. Only that thought gave strength to the Nazatika, knowing that our blood had been so strong, it could frighten a God. That the Nazatika were only spared because he saw us as no threat as of yet.

"In my old age, I have wondered if that belief was right. It was a narcissistic explanation, perhaps putting more credit where credit was due. It could just have been that He had created us in boredom, and destroyed them likewise. That they were expendable, tiny creatures, that he could always make more of later. In any case, our subjective truths never really matter. Only the results. All of a sudden, we were all that were left. The humans of that planet, who once only lived to be sport and food, all of a sudden were braver. They found ways to fight us, now that our perfect parents were gone. They forged weapons to harm us, and tamed spirits. But in this bleak situation, the desire to replace our parentage had never been stronger."

[Pan]

The smaller girl listen very closely to his story and it was clear on her face that she was fallowing it as well as could be expected. Her face showed many types of emotion while she listen to the story, wounder and amazement then it slowly turned to sorrow. This was so hard for her to comprehend but she was grasping it. All she knew is that Mikaki came from a far different word and she was glad that she had never had to know something like that. When he got to the end she looked back up at him. "The people you are talking about that... That would be my fathers people right?" It seemed like some ironic twist that the people they hunted for food at some point hunted them.

[Seven]

Mikaki nods. "Yes, your father's people. I suppose, even for being humans, with mortal lives, humans cannot be discredited. They were a crafty, ingenious people. I was going to say despite their limited resources and harsh climate of survival, but when I think of it truly, 'despite' should be because. Even so, I don't believe they ever really opposed the first Soul-Eaters. The first Soul-Eaters, were considered to be of a higher order all together. They had, greater intellect, and supposedly, they fashioned cities from their magic unlike the world had ever seen or would ever see again. Magnificent, towering Babylons, floating isles, and painted skies. The Nazatika never had that. I know because once they gone, their cities of magic crumbled with them, and we were left on rather equal footing to the humans. We were both primitive, tribe-like societies with comparatively crude technology to what I have seen in my long life. And once they had technology enough to fight us... well, life was always a bit of an ongoing war, as I recall.

"But I say this all this about the True Soul-Eaters with a slight tone of speculation because, you see, Kealya, I was the very last child of the second generation before the first generation were wiped out. I never truly had a chance to see them, in all their glory and wonder, for myself."

[Pan]

Kealya nodes her head taking it all in. It was also odd to hear about her fathers people, she never knew him he passed while she was still young but her thought moved away from that as Mikaki kept talking. "So then what was it like for you growing up in that kind of world if I may ask?" There was a lot about him that she didn't know and she was happy that she was finding things out about his past. The past that kept haunting him and maybe if she understood it more she would then see why it was he was so addiment that she wouldn't want to be with him.

[Seven]

Mikaki grimaced. "I really couldn't tell you." He looked somewhat... grumpy, for lack of a better word. His arms had crossed, and he had very abruptly sat down, legs crossing in turn. It gave him a look of a sort of annoyance, perhaps resentment. And though it was assuredly the wrong thing to think, childish petulance.

"My existence was considered a bad omen from the very beginning. Beginning with being the last child born to the True Soul-Eaters before they were all murdered. The second, more ominous factor, was my voice. I was born with a very rare ability, which was considered an even greater deviation from 'perfection,' or in another words, another malformation. When I spoke, the sound of my voice would break things and cause mayhem. The louder the noise, the more damage. And though it was a powerful gift, possessing it, a child was considered a living incarnation of blight. We were superstitious, and it was a very, very bad thing to have. Any child born with it was without fail taken to killed. I was the only exception, but still, I was held in high contempt, and was considered untouchable and polluted."

[Pan]

Well Kealya wasn't expecting that at all as she looks away from him feeling a bit guilty now that she had asked. "I'm... Sorry to hear that Mikaki I couldn't even begin to imagine what that must have been like for you...So you where the outcast among outcast..." She reached up and stated to play with her hair feeling a bit odd now. He didn't look happy and she knew it was her fault for prying. "I'm sorry that I upset you with that question...."

[Seven]

His expression softened at the soft tone of her words, even though he wasn't looking at her. Instead, he released a soft sigh he hadn't realized he had been withholding. "Do not apologize. You have done nothing wrong, and I am not upset. All of this was long ago, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that Time numbs all pains."

[Pan]

She nodes her head and moves to sitting on her knees now with her hands on her lap. "All right...humm.." She looked away from him again and thought for a moment and then looked back at him cocking her head to the side. "If I can ask one for thing from you Mikaki can you tell me why... Why was it that you where the exception? If they killed others like you then why did they spare your life?"