Chapter 874: Those Who Carry On

Chapter 874: Those Who Carry On

"Those who are lost, can be found. Those who are injured, can be healed. Those who are forlorn, can be loved again. Those who are reviled, can be forgiven if they truly wish it. All it takes is reaching out in care to one another." - Armored Matthias the Younger, Reflections Upon My Brother's Forgiveness.

Kweetna was almost forty-five years old. She had lived through the three wars, staying in the shelters each time. She had given birth to five children before and during the wars. She had given birth two four others, one pregnancy, since then. Her youngest children were a quadruplet boys, to everyone's celebration. Four two year olds.

Her oldest was eighty-two.

She reflected on it as she made breakfast by hand. The miraculous food-forge could have put out the hashbrowns that everyone loved for breakfast in seconds, but she had always loved cooking. It was such an orderly chaos and it appealed to her.

During her time in the shelters she worked in the vast kitchens that fed the tens of thousands of refugees in the huge multi-level redoubts.

She had often worried about her oldest daughter during the last few years, since the end of the Third Defense of Hesstla. Her daughter had joined the Terran Confederate Army, becoming a medic, and had deployed off-planet less than a year after the fighting had ended.

Sometimes the family would receive packets of letters. Months worth the letters being delivered less than a week after the last batch of letters. Some disjointed and scrawled as if by a maniac, others long, plodding, almost empty feeling letters.

She had watched part of her daughter fade in the letters.

Not her devotion to helping others. Not her determination to do her part.

Now she was home. Had been home for three days.

Kweetna had listened as her daughter had wept that the Confederate Army had 'thrown her out' and 'thrown her away' and 'made her leave' after she repeatedly failed the psychological evaluation and either did not or could not respond to in-theater or military treatment.

Her daughter, her beautiful, intelligent, and sociable Melinvae, had wept furious tears at being 'abandoned' by the very organization she had devoted over sixty years of her life to.

Yesterday, Melinvae had laid in bed all day in a dark room, staring at the ceiling. One of her baby brothers had called her 'grandma' and she had stood up from the breakfast table and went to bed. Her answers to questions were terse, often single syllable. Melinvae had rolled over and faced the wall rather than talk last night, had gone without food. She had only gotten up to quietly shuffle to the bathroom, wrapped in her blanket, before shuffling back to her room.

Kweenta, not one to sit idly by, had spent all day yesterday reading pamphlets and watching videos with titles like "Dealing with a family member who was a victim of temporal recursion" and "So, your child is older than you" and "Living with family members with post traumatic stress disorder" and "Dealing with PTSD induced addictions".

It had stressed the need for structure, for medication and therapy, for routines, for coping mechanisms.

With her brother and her husband, Kweenta had gone through the house and made sure that the pictures being shown, no longer pictures in 4K digital frames, were of happier times.

Personally, Kweenta was grateful to the BobCo Home Products Nanoforge.

Melinvae had left a meter and a half tall at the tips of her ears.

She had returned two meters at the top of her head.

None of the clothing in her closet would have fit her any longer.

The BobCo Home Products Nanoforge had a small laser scanner on an orb and while Melinvae was asleep Kweenta had pulled back the covers and scanned her daughter before taking the measurements back to the nanoforge.

Her husband had held her as cried over the markings covering her beautiful daughter's body. It wasn't that she wasn't beautiful still.

It's that Kweenta knew that every mark had inflicted pain on her baby.

The BobCo Home Products Nanoforge had printed what Kweenta had asked. She had been surprised to see massive, deep discounts on the clothing with veteran codes attached. The clothing was sitting on the couch, neatly folded or laid out on hangers.

She heard footsteps and turned around, smiling.

Melinvae stood there, awkwardly, in a pair of running shorts, with a tank top, and a pair running shoes with socks.

"Going for a run, dear?" Kweenta asked. She made sure there was no note of disapproval or disappointment in it, just a normal question for a normal day.

Melinvae shook her head. "No. I didn't want to wear my uniform to breakfast."

"There's new clothing for you on the couch. Everything, including your modesty clothing," Kweenta said, smiling. "I wasn't sure what patterns you liked, so I just ran off cream and dusty brown edging."

Melinvae just drifted into the other room.

Kweenta went back to cooking breakfast, turning down the heat slightly.

Melinvae went down the hallway and into the guest bathroom.

Kweenta heard the fresher turn on.

Her younger children came in, her husband and her brother each carrying two of the quadruplets.

"Of course I do. Even when you came home covered in mud and scraped up from athletics and got my freshly mopped floor muddy, I still loved you," she gave her another squeeze. "I will still love you for who I know you are, even when it is my turn to be old and gray," she paused. "You always have to do everything first and better, don't you?"

There was silence for a second.

Melinvae snorted. Then laughed. She straightened up, laughing softly, covering her mouth, snorting slightly in between laughs.

Once Melinvae had calmed down, the videos and pamphlets had warned Kweenta that moments of giddiness never lasted, Kweenta stood up and touched her daughter's shoulder.

"Get dressed. We'll go to the jewelry store in the mall and pick you out some gaudy jewelry and knee high laced boots," Kweenta smiled.

Melinvae held her mother's hand and got up.

"Might as well buy some jewelry to hand down to you," Melinvae said seriously, then laughed when she couldn't hold the serious face any longer.

Kweenta laughed too.

-----

The chairs squeaked as she shifted them back into the circle. She spritzed cleaner on the seats and the backs of the chairs then wiped them down. She made sure there was not only enough chairs for the people she knew would be there, but four others, just in case new people showed up.

That done, she moved over to the table.

The snacks had been decimated. The coffee pots were all out but the decaf. She cleaned up the snack boxes, poured out the coffee, then got more nibbles from the food-forge and set the boxes down on the table.

She started new pots of coffee for the next meeting.

The smell of fresh kaff washed over her and she smiled.

Satisfied that the preperations were done, Dambree turned and looked over the small meeting room.

It was nothing special to look at. Some folded up tables and folded up chairs in an extra room at the Community Interaction Center. Wide windows that were polarized to let dim light through but not allow anyone to see inside. Comfortable lighting and the temperature set to comfortable for the average Hesstlan.

Nothing special to look at.

But Dambree knew the truth. That the little circle of chairs, the place to go, the safe space to speak, was important.

It was more than mutual support, in a way, it served as a confessional.

Dambree had learned during her time in the convent that sometimes confessional and the feeling of understanding, maybe even forgiveness for one's perceived transgressions, was more potent than any drug being abused to numb the pain.

The door opened and Dambree touched her veil to make sure it was in place before she turned around.

It was an older Hesstlan female. Gray on her ears, which were slightly droopy, the cartilage succumbing to age and gravity. Gray on her hands, around her mouth and nose, her whiskers drooping slightly. She wore the current matron fashion of laced boots, lace edged dress, bonnet, and heavy jewelry. Her eyes were bone white, no pupils, and her face and forehead were scarred.

Except Dambree recognized her instantly.

"Melinvae," Dambree said, drifting over to the older Hesstlan, her hands folded at her waist.

"Dambree," Melinvae said. "How did you recognize..."

"My eyes see much more now," Dambree admitted. "I recognized the light inside of you as soon as I saw you."

Melinvae shook her head. "My mother said the same thing about light."

Dambree shrugged. "It's just the way I see things since I witnessed the return of Armored Matthias the Younger and his Redemption," she said. She looked around. "I would love to catch up, spend time with you, but there is a meeting soon."

Melinvae nodded. "I know, that's why I'm here."

Dambree reached out with one gloved hand.

After a moment, Melinvae reached out with one of her own gloved hands and took the larger woman's hand.

-----

The huge Hesstlan stood up. Taller than other females, very much more than the males. She wore somber cut clothing and dark colors, with a veil across her face that mostly hid the dull red glow from her eyes.

"Good evening," the large Hesstlan said. "I'm Dambree, I'm an alcoholic and I suffer PTSD that I self-medicated with alcohol. I'm three months sober."

"Hi, Dambree," Melinvae said softly with the others.