Keyed, a sainmonet.
There was a cracking boom, and the soil shook under her feet. Belongings tumbled to the ground, smashing and scattering; the cube’s blue glow flickered out as it struck the floor, throwing the room into darkness. Screams and the sound of cracking wood resounded outside the tent. Myra put her pencil down and, journal tucked under her arm, went to the entrance of the tent to look outside. At the scene before her, she felt her heart turn to ice and drop from her chest, echoing through her empty insides.
In the streets of the camp, chaos reigned. Burning debris tumbled heavily down among the wailing throngs of people fleeing by, their terrified faces half-illuminated, shadows thrown into sharp relief against a brilliant yellow-orange glow. The air was thick with foul, black smoke, reflecting the orange light and reeking of burning flesh and charred canvas.
Rishda appeared from the crowd, her clothing torn, sleeves hanging from her wrists. Her face was scratched and sooty, brightness of her one blue eye luminous against the filth and smoke. Detachedly, surreally, Myra saw for the first time how old her sister had become, saw in detail the lines etched into her face, the hardness of her eyes.
“What’s happening?” But she knew, of course. Bombs. Attack. Over her sister’s shoulder, she could see the makeshift hospital burning, flames towering over them, its walls and ceiling littering the ground. And among the debris, there were-
“We need to go.”
Rishda was terse, icy, gripping Myra’s shoulder and starting to turn her away from the scene, but Myra saw the bodies scattered on the ground, some only partially together, some nearly unrecognizable. One made her heart begin to beat, throbbing so loudly that nothing else made it through. A young woman lay face down, her curly, shoulder-length blond hair matted with blood.
“Emily!” Myra’s voice tore at her throat, lost among the others crying out for their loved ones. She clutched at Rishda, too stunned to be devastated, feeling her own knees buckle as the other woman’s stayed straight and stiff. Her sister’s face was unmoved and brutal, the twisted line of her clenched jaw reminiscent of the murderous child she had once been. She hauled Myra to her feet. “It isn’t her. Come on.”
The woman’s body disappeared from sight as Myra was hauled into the crazed, rioting crowd. It stretched on endlessly; Myra could see no end to the maze of twisting bodies, bobbing heads. Between screaming faces she saw some sainmonet herding the crowd forward, gnashing teeth and flashing fans at those who lagged behind, making sure no one ran into side allies. Some of them carried injured Terrans on their backs. Rishda pulled her past swiftly, too swiftly to see whether Caval or Keyed was among them, and Myra’s stomach flipped at the thought that they might be lost for good.
Minou flashed by, closely followed by the other c’nujti, shoving their way back through the crowd to the burning buildings, and too late, Myra remembered that Ianji had been in the hospital, par injuries too great to stand. Something wet slid down her cheek at the thought that this was her future. Even if somehow, miraculously, they won, people, her friends, were going to die. The idea that they could win with no casualities had been chasing its tail, half-formed, in her mind and she had never stopped to consider it. She fell against Rishda, who had her back to Myra as she forced her way to the front of the crowd. For the first time, Myra found the mental wherewithall to wonder where all these people where going to flee to. This had been their last refuge.
“Where are we going?” She shouted in Rishda’s ear. Rishda turned her head halfway to look at her just as the fire behind the flared. Myra recoiled. Her half-sister’s expression was terrifying; her teeth bared over a taut jaw, eyes white and wild and sharp in her dark, bloody face. Myra saw again for an instant the vicious animal of Rishda’s youth resurfaced, before the older woman’s eyes dulled, narrowing, her lips closing and thinning into a grim line. “To war,” she said.
~~~~~
Just a quick little spoiler. I know it’s morbid, sorry.
There was a cracking boom, and the soil shook under her feet. Belongings tumbled to the ground, smashing, and the cube’s blue glow flickered out as it struck the floor, throwing the room into darkness. Screams and crashings resounded outside the tent. Myra put her pencil down and, journal tucked under her arm, went to the entrance of the tent to look outside. She felt her heart turn to ice and drop from her chest.
In the streets of the camp, chaos reigned as debris rained down among the wailing throngs of people fleeing by. Their terrified faces were half-illuminated, shadows thrown into sharp relief against a brilliant yellow-orange glow. The air was thick with foul, black smoke, reflecting the orange light and reeking of burning flesh.
Rishda appeared from the crowd, her clothing torn, sleeves hanging from her wrists. Her face was scratched and sooty, the whites of her eyes and grimacing teeth luminous against the filth and smoke. Detachedly, surreally, Myra saw for the first time how old her sister had become, saw in detail the lines etched into her face, the hardness of her eyes.
“What’s happening?” But she knew, of course. Bombs. Attack. Over her sister’s shoulder, she could see the makeshift hospital burning, flames towering over them, the debris littering the ground. And among the debris, there were-
“We need to go.”
Rishda was terse, icy, gripping Myra’s shoulder and starting to turn her away from the scene, but Myra saw the bodies scattered on the ground, some only partially together, some nearly unrecognizable. But one made her go numb. A young woman lay face down, her shoulder-length blond hair matted with blood.
“Emily!” Myra’s voice tore at her throat, lost among the others crying out for their loved ones. She clutched at Rishda, too stunned to be devastated, feeling her own knees buckle as the other woman’s stayed straight and stiff. Her sister’s face was unmoved and at the same time brutal, reminiscent of the murderous child she had once been. She hauled Myra to her feet. “It isn’t her. Come on.”
The woman’s body disappeared from sight as Myra was hauled into the crazed crowd. It stretched on endlessly; Myra could see no end to the maze of twisting bodies, bobbing heads. Between screaming faces she saw some Sainmonet herding the crowd forward, making sure no one ran into side allies and were lost. Some of them carried injured Terrans on their backs. Rishda pulled her past swiftly, too swiftly to see whether Caval or Keyed was among them, and Myra’s stomach flipped at the thought that they might be lost.
Minou flashed by, closely followed by the other c’nujti shoving their way back through the crowd to the burning buildings, and too late, Myra remembered that Ianji had been in the hospital. She felt tears slide down her cheeks as she realized that this was only the beginning. She fell against Rishda, who had her back to Myra as she forced her way to the front of the crowd. For the first time, Myra wondered where all these people where going to go.
“Where are we going?” She shouted in Rishda’s ear. Rishda turned her head halfway to look at her just as the fire behind the flared. Myra recoiled for her sister’s expression was terrifying, her teeth bared over a taut jaw, eyes white and wild and sharp in her dark, bloody face. Myra saw again for an instant the vicious animal of Rishda’s youth resurfaced, before the older woman’s eyes narrowed, her lips closing and thinning into a grim line.
“To war,” she said.
The dust was intolerable. It pushed down on your shoulder like wet velvet, coated your tongue and lungs and throat with its fine grit, made breathing nearly impossible and thirst a constant shadow, peering over the shoulder and whispering its dryness into your mind. In the day it hung in wavering red curtains, clogging nostrils and ears, and stinging eyes; it made it’s way into the brain and influenced that too. Animals were dull and stupid, insects in trapped in honey. The tall grasses waved lazily, bowed, weighed down with choking filth. Strong winds stirred the muddy air into eddies and whirls that blinded and threw the landscape into a confusion of red shapes and shadows, making a paranoia in the back of the consciousness.
Caval clambered up on a flat boulder, the slitted nostrils of her nearly flat nose flaring in another futile attempt to catch a scent. Her eyes, solidly dark, curled slants in a filthy beige face narrowed against a gust of dirt. She pinched her lipless mouth shut and snapped the flaps on her ears down, not wanting to feel or taste more of what already thoroughly coated her from head to toe. She leaped down again and sat in the relative shade of base of the boulder offered. Her mouth was sore, from sand and dust and thirst, but for another reason as well.
Caval spat a tooth onto the soft ground beside her. A new layer was making itself known behind the old. She examined the old tooth. It was yellowed and full of holes, worn to a blunted nub from the grit that pervaded everything. Useless, even as an arrow or spear top. She threw it down again.
She was hungry.
Her tail, which should have been fat and heavy, was a thin, whiplike affair that lashed at her legs. Everything was scarce, insects and small animals were all well and good for a crunch between heavy meals, but they were fleeting summer treats and would be completely gone soon. Her stomach no longer rumbled—only ached.
The last chance she’d had for a good meal had been weeks ago, when she had come across some particularly stupid hatchlings. They had been fat and clumsy and delectable, and squeaked in terror at even the small buzzing lizards Caval could not for her life catch. She had passed them by, lovely as they smelled. Something in her internal hard drive of instincts had pinged with alarm at the thought of eating them.
Besides, you never knew if they were yours.
Caval’s retracted fans rippled in disgust. The thought was enough to force her back to her feet and she bared her teeth at the indentation where she had sat, before kicking dust into it with her foot. She set off again through the dust, her strange legs carrying her along in long loping steps. Her legs more closely resemble a raptor’s than anything else, muscular calves curving back into long ankles and dinosaurian feet with a claw on the heel and three clawed toes. Her hands had two long digits and a thumb, surrounding an inflexible bone spike. She flexed and unflexed the long digits now, impatiently, growling softly to herself.
Caval did not know how to read or write, or, for that matter, much to do with language at all. Any thoughts she had registered as ideas or vague notions, with few words. She was intelligent enough, in her own way, and her lack of language harmed her little.
She was hardly alone in her illiteracy, either. Higher Sain left most of the reading and writing to Lower Sain, those that scurried through the tunnels, in the dark. To Caval, the idea of living in the dark was unbearable. She longed to be under the intensity of the sun, and feel it’s wamth soaking into her bones. She despised the pale light of the moon. Under it she was sluggish and dull, thoughts chasing each other nonsensically through her head as she plodded along.
Against her will her legs carried her to the very edge of her territory, the thick, triangular wedge of rock that was the tallest thing for miles around. It was nearly twenty feet tall at its highest point, equally long, and certainly the biggest thing she’d ever seen in her life, except for perhaps the tunnel cities, where the rcrude buildings rose and disappeared into purplish gloom, and the smaller, paler Lower Sain scurried in and out of sight.
From here, during the night when the dust was at it’s lowest point and the sky had cleared, Caval could see the sky spikes, the stitchings that held the sky to the world. Small, dark points, low on the horizon, they fascinated her in a way that sent her inner alarms to pinging again.
She wondered how big they were. She’d thought they must be only as big as the Rock, which meant they weren’t that far away. But trying to reach them had proved useless. She’d traveled out of her territory for days once, trying to reach them, but long after she should have reached them, they were still as tiny and far away at nightfall as they’d been in the daytime.
She had little concept of religion, but she had a notion that there might be bigger things than her out there. Big. Bigger than me—danger. She knew that smaller things feared her, and so she in turn lived in healthy fear of anything larger than her. If the sky spikes were noticable when they were so far away, they were certainly bigger than her, and to be avoided. The idea of something so huge was incomprehensible, and her mind failed at picturing it. But the lack of easy imagining was what intrigued her when she should have left well alone. She never saw other Sain going in that direction.
No food. Useless, dangerous, was her initial thought, but now here was just as useless. Maybe no others there. Easy to hunt. But now—sleep.
The sun would begin to set soon. She would sleep half of the long night, before waking hours before dawn to search fruitlessly again.
Curled like a cat at the base of the Rock, she slept facing the mountains.
***
When she woke, it was to shake off the dirt that covered her, inches thick. She coughed and spat more out onto the sand, along with more teeth. Her mouth barely twinged anymore. She staggered to her feet, sleep still clouding her mind. More dirt fell in waves from her hip wrap, pooling around her feet.
The moon was high, bleaching the world of color and plating it with silver. The air was clear and cold, and a starless sky stretched on forever, brushed by black grasses where it fell to meet the ground. Above Caval, the Rock was an accusatory finger, stabbing the heavens as if they were to blame for her discomfort.
WIP—WILL BE CONTINUED.
Caval’s development sheet. 
She was very close to being called Keyed (kay-ed), but then Keyed became his own character.
Caval is a Sainmonet, of the Subclass Higher Sain.
**I SHOULD MENTION : Caval is FEMALE. HOWEVER, Sainmonet don’t have any er….upper anatomy, as they don’t breastfeed.
WHY RISHDA DOES NOT HAVE A TALK-SHOW.
I’m not even going ot get into how bad this is.
Poor Myra. She has no luck. And Caval…..is clueless, really.
YES, that’s Tash floating around in the back there. 
Damn scanner messed up par eye.
Aenki likes to dress a bit more form-flatteringly.
You’ll also notice that Ze has a different face structure than Ian. Ze is considered much more attractive than Ianji, and par features are the standard for beauty amongst the Telo. Large eyes, and high-set, tilted features (like somebody yanked upwards really hard on their hairline), adn a blueish caste to the skin. Feathery hair is also envied, the whiter the better.
Par ear spool has three rings in it, signifying that ze is the third member of the Triumverate. Ianji’s has two rings in it, Jenjua’s has one. Commoners have NO rings in their ear spool.
Ianji’ellinc’kaie — age c.28Still working on making them less human-looking.
Yes one has is behind par back. It’s holding darts. Shuttup.
Notes on anatomy:
-they have four ears, 2 on each side. One points forwards, one points backwards.
-they have three knees on each leg, they’re marked on the diagram.
-their thumbs are the same length and dexterity as their other three (yes, three) fingers. Basically it’s not really a thumb at all, other than it’s location
-eyes are shadowed with makeup, according to tradition. They do still have irises, which are normally bright colors like orange or yellow, but hunter-eyes are too dilated to see except when much too close for comfort.
-They have no nostrils, and no sense of smell.
-As all Telo are hermaphroditic, they have only one breast in the center of their chest (they nurse their young).
Some further notes on Telo:
**Three main groups., Protectors(army/guards), Providers(hunters), and Protected(civilians). Each is led by one person: A Political runs the Protected, and the other two are the High Provider/Protector. These three run the city in an oligarchic-type government. They are equals amongst each other, and each run their sections without interference from the other two. At least, in theory. The current leaders are:
Jenjua - Political
Aenki - High Protector
Ianji - High Provider
**I’ve finally found pronouns for them!
Ze - He/She
Par - her/his
Rishda and Tash AbuBakr — age 19
Fraternal twins and step-siblings to Myra. They refused to take the Codex two years in a row and have been denied adulthood. A G.U.A.R.D. is bribed to quietly arrest them, but in the process is murdered by Rishda. Tash and Myra are indicted as accomplices and are expelled from the dome for five years. Rishda is expelled for life.
Myra AbuBakr —age 18
Recently adult, Myra lived in one of the Terran Domes on Mirage until she was expelled along with her step-brother Tash for a murder his twin committed. She serves now as an indentured servant to the household of ‘Kaie in Shupiluliuma.
It was a confusion of ideas between him
And one of the lions he was hunting
That had caused Spottsworth to make the obituary column.
He thought the
Lion was dead,
And the lion
Thought it wasn’t.
—- P. G. Wodehouse
Hi. This looks like a pretty good place to roost for a bit, maybe even build a nest and settle down eventually.
This will be a storage place for any art or snippets of my story, Mirage, until I get everything situated in a rough draft.
Feel free to ask questions, and critique me to pieces. I need it. Just don’t ask me to email you more of the story. What you see here is what you get until I have it published. Plagiarism sucks, yanno?
—LEB
