The Stars Would Have Burned!

Personal Log - The hour of understanding, the day of judgement

Once again I am in awe at my logs ability to show what I am thinking. Where, oh where to start? Where do I start talking? Where do I start understanding? Where do I start the realisation?

On one level, I can't remember a time when I didn't know Mizhara in one way or another. For me, personally, my voyage of discovery with the enigmatic woman began in the Horned Masquerade. That floating asteroid of hers, her home hidden in the stars in the Great Wildlands. Quite like my own, but mine is much smaller, less grande, less forbidding. To walk into the Masquerade was to walk out of reality and into fantasy. At least, that is what I thought back then. I was to come to an understanding then that what I thought was reality might not actually have been true. But then, she was trying to make me understand that my choices, namely becoming a slave willingly to a Holder was wrong. When so many of our people were slaves from birth, or taken as slaves, she wanted to show me the error of my ways. She wanted to save me.

Had I been less of a stubborn harridan, I dare say it would have worked, and.. it almost did. From that day, to which several people have remarked, I was bound to her. Not by ideology, or chains, simply by the fact that we were two of a kind. And, were I not by my own choice, the property of Ithiria, who is to say what our union would have created. I think the very stars would have burned.

The skein of my past has the three of us intertwined, Carmilla, Mizhara, and Ithiria. I mean, for so long the three of us were at each others throats. Mizhara teaching Ithiria, Ithiria ruling me, and me... looking at them both in wonder. It was like seeing two titans fighting. Always I was on my knees to one, then to both of them. Mizhara teaching me submission, Ithiria demanding obedience in her own particular way. The greatest torment being when Ithiria chose Mizhara over me.

That.... I think now looking back, was the crossroads. Oh, I fought for my Mistress, I fought and it may be seen that I won, but at what cost. I danced for them both as I could not have what I wanted. I gave myself to the fire. Felt it wash over me.

So how is it that I can think kindly upon this woman who literally tortured me to see her point of view? Who stole my wife and on more than one occasion threatened to kill me? Maybe because, now I can see that she was right. She planted in me that day a seed. That seed has now come to fulfillment.

I missed the great fight that took place at the Masquerade when the fleets clashed. When Ithiria triumphed. It was thought that Mizhara had died when the fusion reactor blew.

I knew better.

I was a survivor, so was Mizhara.

I asked for permission to go and aid an old friend. I was vague in my request as I know Kikia would have refused me to go. But I made sure there were safeguards and she acquiesced. And so I found her. It was a shock to say the least. I found her in the throne room, a place I had been before with such fear and loathing and admiration. Now I stood there watching her looking through a gaping hole in space, protected by a forcefield, looking at the star. There was no fear, which I think at the time surprised me. And so I stood there and watched with her. The slavers mark which was on her I had heard about, but never seen. And we stood and talked. She even remarked upon the irony of it all, the slave became the freedom fighter. The freedom fighter became the slaver.

And we reached another crossroads. Ever the path of my life has had Mizhara in it. But the path I chose, was to Kikia and the Teraa Matar.

I could have stayed there. In the ruins of her greatness, with the power dying and the radiation seeping down corridors dark and forbidding. With the two of us there, the air would have run out in a week and we would have died. To which I replied, At least you wouldn't die alone.

But I walked away, maybe for the last time. Eventually the air will run out, or the power will die, and she will.... die. And her clan will rejoice as her slaver mark is a sentence of death to them, and the people she betrayed. But I cannot look harshly upon her. I never have been able to, in reality, despite what people believe. Did I love her? Yes. Did I want to be hers? Yes. Was she a friend? Yes, I like to think so. No one else went looking for her, only me. But then, that is what I do. I find people.

And what would have happened if all those years ago I had stayed with her, in the Masquerade and become hers? The stars would have burned!

Carmilla pressed send and watched the datatablet update. She walked from the meditation dome back down to the kitchen and sat at the table. A cup of tea in her hand she waited and watched the stars. Somewhere nearby she could hear her corp members coming back from another successful mission. She turned, and with a smile saw her shaman, who also saw her and smiled. Another cup was poured and as she leant against Carm, Kikia sipped her tea. She looked up at Carmilla with her amber eyes.
"Hey, how'd your thing go?"
And she told her, told her everything. As she always had told her everything.