The Space Between the Sights: Chapel's Story

Written by Sailor Dathomir

The tiny girl sat in the corner, her mouth full of the taste of tears. But she wouldn't cry. Only weak people cried. She stared up at the giant, cold woman screaming at her, black and gold eyes blinking rapidly, trying to prevent tears. She wouldn't cry. Deathdancers cried. Babies cried.

And she wasn't a baby. She had something none of them did. It let her see them as they were, like looking into puddle and seeing the reflection. This reflection, though, showed far more than a puddle. It showed what they thought. What they felt. What they wanted. What they desired above all. What they feared more than the Deathdancers at the Dying of the Torq.

And she could control that. Not much, but enough sometimes to cause others to fear her. They thought she didn't see them whispering, or that she couldn't hear their thoughts if they cast the spell for warding the speaking of the mind, but they were all foolish. The spells for warding the mind never worked. Not for her. Not ever. Their fear and anger ran through her mind and sang through her blood, like the stories of the ancient Witches raining doom upon the Turned Ones, the Nightsisters sang through her mind, making her six torq old body tremble with irrational fear and longing.

Seeing that the little girl wasn't going to be anymore trouble for the time being, the giant, desert-night woman left and the little girl scooted out of the corner and ran to her cliff. There was plenty of stone there and she'd built herself a windbreak to sit by. The wind off of the desert and the river got cold. She was always cold though, always. The other children shunned her for what she was, and the Apprentices ignored her, but the adults were the ones that feared her. Feared her with cold hard thoughts of death.

Today, though, she didn't sit and think on her lot in the great Torq of the Raido. She stood and faced the cold desert on the other side of the river her aunt's clan took their name from.

She stood there and faced the cold wind from the desert and the river, turning her back on the cold from the minds of her aunt's clan. "I am Chapel and I will not bow down!" The tiny girl defiantly yelled out into the bleak wastelands. The river beneath her was capping and the wind was picking up, as though the planet herself had heard the child and was laughing at her defiance. Chapel slumped, because she knew that she'd have to return to her aunt's home because she couldn't stay out here. The autumn storms were beginning, but perhaps she could stay out just long enough for her aunt to forget about her and her fear. At least temporarily.

Times change. People change. Dreams change. Some things, however, stay the same.

The impossibly tall teenage girl was backed into a corner, and every movement she made indicated her unhappiness at being forced into a corner like a panicked reichu. Her mouth wasn't full of the taste of tears like it had been when she was younger, but full of the taste of coppery blood from her cut cheek.

She wouldn't do it. Not this time. Every time she did it, she suffered later. Suffer now and cry, or do it, suffer later and not cry? Chapel took the only logical path. Reaching deep into her aunt's mind, she forced the woman to turn around and sit on the cold stone with imperious mental commands.

Making her escape was easier now than it had ever been. Her mind overcame the obstacles people put up with little more effort than breathing. The tall girl sat on her outgrown windbreak and stared at the cold desert beyond the raging river. It was the beginning of the autumn storms again. Eight torqs had passed since the planet had laughed at her defiance, and nothing had changed. Nothing but the people's fear. Chapel tongued the cut in her mouth gingerly. The people's fear and her aunt's fists.

"Good morning."

Chapel stood and whirled around, her long, dark brown vests and tunics twisting around her - the garb of the unApprenticed, of the Outsider-Who-Is-Not-Our-Enemy-But-Is, the Algiz. Her voice, like her mind, was something she hid away, choosing to stay away from those who feared and hated her, but something about this woman brought her defenses down, compelling her to use her unusually deep voice.

"Who are you?"

The woman behind her came to perhaps Chapel's ribs, but she had an aura of power and charisma that drew the tall teenager in.

"I am Alexandren Sing, the Senator Inferious." Her smile seemed genuine, but it didn't quite reach her startlingly pale eyes. "I was born here, but it's been some time since I came back. When I was quite young, my sister and I were sent to live with others in different clans. We, therefore, came to spend time with all of the clans." She smiled a bit wider, showing small even white teeth. "I am afraid I've startled you. Allow me to make amends. Who are you, and what clan?"

Chapel forced her body to unstiffen and sat back down. The small lady was unfearful; strange, but still...more comforting than the other people. She did not fear. It felt...good not to be on the defense quite so much. "I am called Chapel and I live with my aunt who is of the Frenzied River clan." She looked down. "I was born outside of the clan, in the Major Ghost Asteri chuckwalla." Her throat and cheeks burned as she said it. She hated the compulsion to admit that she was an Unfortunate. That she was different. That she was hated. That she didn't belong. That she disturbed the Gebo - the harmony.

The Senator gave a soft sigh. "And you are compelled to admit that, am I correct?" She held up her hand to stop the expected answer. "No need to answer. Your face tells me I am correct..."

Chapel nodded dumbly. "The compulsion supposedly deters others like me, others who should have been killed instead of preserved," she whispered with her mind-voice.

Inside Alexandren's mind, bells rang - no, they clamoured. This was the one she'd been looking for - the one that the Ceremony of Nehima had destroyed and ruined. She hid her pleasure for later. There was business at hand. Dangerous business that involved too much to be destroyed now.

"I need to be getting to the Great Council, the ahn Wunjo, I believe it's called by the Frenzied River. Can you point me in the right direction? I'm afraid I've gotten a little confused. I regret to say I never liked asking questions of those in charge. They look down on you."

Chapel pointed to the south-west. "That way." The woman was wise not to ask questions of the Clan mothers these days. They were all testy, and irritable.

"Thank you. In return, I leave you this." She reached inside her largely ceremonial white Senate gown and tossed the cobalt-blue haired teenager a leather pouch. "One should always pay back as due for services rendered. Perhaps, if they don't think you'll contaminate me, a poor defenseless Minor Winterfat macrotis in Major Ghost Asteri chuckwalla, I'll see you after Council." The woman turned and strode off confidently, wanting to get as far away from the girl as possible. What was about to occur, she'd decided, was best done in isolation.

Chapel stared after her, puzzled as to how anyone who was a Major Ghost Asteri chuckwalla had survived, even with such a benevolent guardian as a Winterfat macrotis. But her fingers were automatically opening the small pouch. She had never been one to leave a gift alone for long - she recieved them so rarely. At Midwinter Festival and at the Dying of the Torq, she recieved gifts, but according to custom everyone recieved gifts or the entire clan would suffer.

Inside her strange little gift rested a pointed crystal depending from a plain, brown leather thong and a small yellow bag made from Deathdancer robes (she'd been punished enough as a child for touching her aunt's Deathdancer robes that she shuddered every time she saw them) containing a pair of perfectly round orange tinted spectacles.

"How odd," she whispered, her hand caressing the smooth crystal. Suddenly, her hand twitched for several moments and was still. The girl gave a small gasp, and then her entire body twitched, jumped and convulsed for a moment, then collapsed onto the hard, cold stone.

Five minutes passed, then ten. The girl lay prone on the stone, a bruise forming from where she'd hit her head.

Inside her body, however, there was a maelstrom of activity. Her body chemistry was radically re-altered, and in her brain, her entire way of thinking was redirected from passively defensive and loner to aggressively offensive and fiercely loyal. Old memories rose - a man? A blueish crystal dangled from his hand, glinting into her eyes. A woman, dark blackish-blue bruises across her face, screaming with a torch in her hand. Heavily robed Witches chanting, passing the blueish crystal over the woman who had been screaming, but was now calm and she had no bruises.

Memories kept rushing her mind, images of women in strange costumes in sacred colours, the Sowulo - the Bright Shining One destroying the blasphemers, the woman known as the Laguz - the Intuition, the first Guardian. Everything - the entire past of the planet, the entireity of the Great Torq of the Raido, everything - every life, every death, every pain and joy and truth and lie ever told upon the planet.

Twenty minutes of the maelstrom passed, and the girl woke, disoriented and alone, yet not alone.

The changed teenager stood wobbily and put the unfamiliar
familiar
crystal around her neck. It was important somehow, but she wasn't sure why. She had known why, but then it had slipped out of her grasp, like the image of the man with the hair and eyes like hers. Chapel reached inside the pouch again and pulled out the spectacles, dropping the yellow hide covering with distaste. They were cold in her hand, cold and somehow sinister. How spectacles could be sinister, she had no clue, but they were. Sinister like the image of the screaming woman, or the Laguz. Placing them back into the pouch, careful not to touch the yellow hide bag, Chapel shoved it into the large pocket on the inside of her ugly brown vest. She had something to do. Something important that the man had told her. The man that looked like her, but talked like the Laguz...or the Ghost Asteri chuckwalla, her guardian. The Trickster.

Parts of her were slipping away, and she didn't know how to stop it. Important parts, parts that told her this was wrong and that was right, parts that stopped hurt and kept things orderly.

Chapel didn't have the power of the Lifeforce that some of the Witches did, but she have knowledge that had been hidden from her and now returned. Knowledge that would save enough of her now to protect her later. "The Ghost Asteri chuckwalla is resourceful," she said grimly. Resourceful enough to destroy everything to keep something dark from happening.

All the heros were of the Ghost Asteri chuckwalla - her guardian would protect her. But at what expense? She didn't have time for such reflection. Impetuousness was in her blood - she could no more deny it than the moons not rise.

Gripping the unfamilar
familiar
crystal, she scatched her palm and began forcing the last vestiges of her 'self' into it, making it hold the memories in - the ones that had overwhelmed her. As she did, she fell from the effort and passed out again, hearing high pitched laughter...and seeing a shape that chilled her.

It was the legend of the Ghost Asteri chuckwalla that if one promised it a soul, luck and prosperity would follow until the time came to pay. Nobody knew the shape or appearance of the guardian, but it was feared and it was never carved, nor even sung about. Her last thought before total blackness eclipsed her mind was that her soul was gone, sold to the Ghost Asteri chuckwalla in the shape of the woman in white.

When she finally came to, it was starting to get dark and the chill of the rapidly-cooling desert reached her on her cliff. Chapel stood and carefully spat out the dried blood from her aunt's fist- her aunt. That was a sure note of unpleasantness. A loud, discordant note. One she intended to take care of - take care of properly, as one called Tabes should take care of discordant notes. Tabes. From tabeishe. Decay. A wisp of though trailed through her mind, touching off synapses that had been hastily formed, sparking and fizzing. Several misfired, leaving the girl with only a few complete thoughts, but as the thought circled, building and changing, faulty synapses burned out, leaving only the crystal clear thought of vengance. The slow, inevitable vengance of atropy and decay.

Tikirah sighed and placed the last dish into the small stone basin to soak. Her wayward niece was too much like her father Gaeitra had been. Careless, dangerous to anger and too prone to reckless actions. Granted, Gaeitra's family held the heart of the planet and protected her, and such a burden protected the Gebo - the harmony of the planet and her children. Still, she had wondered when Chirrah had disappeared and Gaeitra's body had been found - and a bone bracelet of a Deathwatch dancer ground into the mud near his body. Was such a burden on Chirrah what had caused Chapel's...strangeness? Or had Chirrah given her soul to protect her Algiz daughter?

"Hello, Aunt Tikirah." A voice like night wind off the desert, cold and endless entered her mind and echoed endlessly, finally trailing off.

"Hello, Chapel. You're late, you know? You were supposed to be at-" Tikirah never finished what she meant to say, but Chapel didn't mind. It wasn't not like she ever said anything important anyway - she was merely the sister of Chirrah, the Algiz-bearer, while Chapel was the Guardian now, the sole Laguz.

Alexandren sat serenely in the cockpit of the senatorial transport as the young pilot began the process of take off from the wretched planet. Under the serene outlook, her mind was clicking along, moving from one task to the next. She always hated coming back here. So many eyes to poke out, but never enough time to even begin the process. She wondered if it would annoy Carnelian if she let loose one of her 'pets' upon the planet and watched as it ravaged every single wretched person on the filthy planet. Ren finally decided that it would, sadly, be entirely too much annoyance for such a simple pleasure. Perhaps one day.

"No, lady-of-destruction." The voice was strained, an unfamilar mouth twisting around familar words.

Ren turned to face the young man. He could barely say good morning in coherant Basic, much less her title in Dathomiri. The pilot's face was contorted into a grim parody of a smile and outside the plastisteel view port stood Chapel Tabes, her own new pet. One she hoped to loose upon an unsuspecting galaxy. Sometimes, she conceded, the wretched planet did produce a natural wonder.

"If you plan to kill the pilot, Chapel, might I suggest otherwise?" Alexandren was, after her initial surprise, quite pleased. The girl certainly held promise. That is, if she didn't also hold the traits her ancestry was famous for - quicksilver changes of loyalty, fierce tempers, tendency for insanity at the sign of stress.

This one, however, seemed stable enough for now, following the First Guardian in the fondness for killing and wearing blood as body decoration. And everyone who had grown up here had learned that the ultimate in stability was the First Guardian.

Ren stood at the view port, and Chapel stared back, her eerily golden eyes burning with the fires of a broken, lost soul. A broken mind. Perfect for shaping the galaxy with.

"Take me away from here and I will follow you unto the ends of the universe."

The Senator reached over to the button and switch laden control panel and flipped the airlock control, allowing the girl entrance, but the moment she walked on board, the tiny senator swung a previously concealed electospanner that connected with thick skull with a solid crack.

"I don't want the wise woman discovering her replacement gone and corrupted. That would put a crimp in my plans. Not to mention I would have to work even harder to keep it quiet. Mmm, the death of the wise woman..." She gave the thought serious consideration, watching the thin trickle of blood drip onto the clean durasteel plates of the ship's floor. "Perhaps sooner than I thought..."

The endless night ended and Chapel returned to a state of consciousness.

Voices surrounded her, but no faces could be seen.

"You shouldn't have hit her, Alexandren." Male voice. Chapel couldn't understand the words, but the tone was clear. Someone wasn't happy.

"What choice did I have? Mmm, let's see. I could hit the girl and make it off-planet with no trouble, or I could be all joy and light and feed her tea and biscuits and watch my ship and life be destroyed. I think I'll take the choice behind door number one, thank you very much, you idiot." Alexandren. Sarcasm. Thick sarcasm, but still unintelligable words.

"As much as I disapprove of your methods, Ren, there was probably no other choice besides killing the wise woman. Eriks, do not argue with Alexandren." Female. Authoritative. The only word understandable was Alexandren.

"Believe me, Lian, it was a serious consideration. Did you not read the report on the girl? This is the Algiz of Frenzied River, the one of Gaeitra and Chirrah." Alexandren.

"This one?" Authoritative female again.

Chapel opened her eyes, finally curious enough to risk it. Tricolored eyes behind lightly tinted spectacles met hers. Silver, green and violet swirled and she closed her eyes again. When she opened them again, the eyes were gone, replaced by her orange spectacles being placed over her eyes and a peach and tan mottled face.

"Where am I?"

The face answered in the unfamilar tongue she had heard earlier. "Coruscant."

That was a word she knew. It was the centre of everything. "Who are you?"

"Eriks Chekov." The face moved back and Chapel saw two Alexandrens, one in grey and the other in white. She was highly confused. What had he said? She'd understood Coruscant, but after that it was gibberish. But there was something even more confusing.

"Why do I see two?"

The one in grey answered in fluid Dathomiri. "I am Carnelian Sing and you have already met Alexandren Sing, my twin." She gestured towards the young man Chapel had woken up to. "This is Eriks Chekov. We will leave him to explain." The one in grey walked through the dark doorway but before the one in white followed her, she turned and spoke, using the Dathomiri peculiar to the Frenzied River clan.

"You belong to us."

Eriks frowned at the woman who had just said something in a strange dialect he didn't recognize as she closed the door behind her. "I feel left out. What did she say?"

Chapel grimaced. Eriks Chekov. That was the male's name."I don't speak whatever it is you speak. Speak in Dathomiri. Or, if you're a male witch, which I doubt highly," her tone was mocking and cold, "then cast the spell for speaking of the mind."

Eriks grinned ruefully. "Don't speak much Dathomir, and I'm definately not a male witch, whatever that is...I'm guessing Ren found herself a telepath." But he complied with her request with grace.

Chapel frowned. "You wanted to know what She said." Eriks nodded.

"She said I belong to Them." She sat up and lifted her hand. "Blood." She growled at the sour smell. It was one thing to be covered in the thick red liquid, but another entirely to smell of old blood. "Where am I supposed to live?"

Eriks grinned and gestured to a door. "Two doors down."

The tall teenager slid off of the wooden chair and wobbily made it to the door Eriks had pointed out to her. The girl slid inside, she made her way to the second door and collapsed on the bed against one of the walls of the room.

"Good night, Chapel Tabes. May the rest of your experience be less...strange."

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