Chapter 1 - Hulthra
There is a lot of work that goes into an instrument like a tretharum. Years of diligent polishing, oiling, humming and coaxing the sentient plant into just the right shape to capture and resonate sound with just the right warmth, wholeness and volume. It is said that the exact hue of the instrument developes and changes according to the thuum - soul-breath of the user, and can even glow after a particularly emotional performance. This tretharum was a deep royal blue with whisps of growing black covering the broad, oval instrument. Yet, right now it was humming warmly and exuding a feeling of rightness into Sarrahs hand as she took deep breaths to empty herself of the emotions her playing and her singing evoked.You would think after two 19-cycle Vahids of daily concerts her body wouldn't be able to produce this level of emotion anymore. But her body still rebelled against the armour of cold disinterest that she exuded to those around her. Especially during her performances, when she couldn't fight the call of her instrument or the powers it gave her. It was precarious thing, to need the powers of the instrument, but to have to balance her own emotions on a knifes-edge to receive them.
The twitch of a shadow in the corner of her eye warned her that it was time to put away the beloved tretharum - when had she started loving it? No, now was not the time for such thoughts. Soon she would start claiming that she could hear it speaking to her and she would be one of the throthll - those voided mucicians that never stopped playing but no longer made sense to anyone, found playing in the deepest bowels of the space station, with longing, empty notes.
The creature at her left exuded a menacing emptyness that made her want to reach for her hidden blades. But she couldn't give herself away—not yet. He had to believe Sarrah was oblivious and caught in the threthll—the temporary after-effects of playing a tretharum. She waited with practiced patience for him to make his move. There. A slight flicker of nervous emotion vibrated from him before he burst into movement.
She caught his flash of surprise when his back crashed into the hard, cold wall, and the cold, numbing feel of her blades bit into his neck and his groin. With pinpoint precision, she knew just where the lethal arteries were on a creature such as him. He was caught in the trap she laid every night, this night for him.
With a surprising twinge of regret, she called up a thread of bright, blinding, coaxing threthll and eased it through her blades into his bloodstream. This was a secret he would keep, her forbidden powers, the ability to control the threthll, to coax his secrets from him before she left him with no thum left. "Hulthra" he exclaimed, breathless. "But you are ... impossible!". She could feel his body filling with the ice of fear and knew she had to act fast, before his adrenaline kicked in. Just one more secret, then maybe the Stnira would leave her be. But no, she was too valuable, she knew too much and was too useful for them to ever let her go, ever let her thum leave her body. The Stnira would keep her alive to be the knife, the lever in their dynastical games. The million-year-old Stnirarian game of controlling each supernova, gas cloud and star in the Struima twin-galaxies. A better name than the one her own species had named them - The Antennea Galaxies, Sarrah had gathered that Struima meant something akin to "vibrating birth of plenty" in an old language everyone refused to answer any questions about.
His last secret poured out of him and with it the last of his thuum. With a tired bitterness, she noted that they had bound yet another secret to the bearer's thuum, thinking that this would keep the secrets hidden. She let his thumless body drop to the deck, and watched as it slowly smoldered into ashes then thin air. They certainly made her cover-up job easier when they bound his thum, making the bearers body unable to exist in solid form once the thum is gone.
Once the last flicker of ash evaporated she turned and slunk away and into the cabin she was expected to be in, cooling off and coming down from the threthll like the proper musician she had convinced the station she was.
It was in this pretend relaxed state in her cabin, the Stnira found her. "Do you have it?!" Their confusingly commanding and compassionate voice bounced against her thum. She let herself pretend to be affected and showed the right amount of trust and obedience, lowering her eyes to just the correct degree of deference that the Stnira's position commanded and coaxing her emotions to reflect exactly what the Stnira expected from her. When they relaxed slightly, a show of allowance towards her, indicating that she could move closer to them, she moved towards them in a smooth, slow, predictable pace to not trigger their hunting instincts, and lowered herself to the deck in front of them, baring her back and the base of her neck to them. A blue electrical current gathered at her neck as they reached their long-fingered, glistening, icy hand to touch her neck. This feeling was familiar to her, almost home to her, the icy pain of a migraine enveloping and digging into her brain. She let go of and gave the Stnira all the secrets she had gathered and let the pain cloak her, sinking into its welcome, dark and icy arms.
Short story by SecretWords
Read 51 times
Written on 2024-03-08 at 10:22
Tags Dystopian Dark
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