Much to my continued horror, Fafnir stayed gone. It’d been… I didn’t know. I lost count while I winced and paced in front of the hearth. I couldn’t tell if their god listened to their prayers and took their offerings, or if the blizzard raging outside was considered temperamental weather for this time of year. The dim sun rose, peaked, and set. All the while, I didn’t dare brave the outside… until I did.
He’d found me shortly after, terribly lost, snow blind, and nearly frozen to death. The savage sounds that left his throat shouldn’t have pleased me as much as they did. He gathered my violently shaking form in his arms, shielding me from the worst of the wind as he walked us back to the house. Yes, walked, not rode. Apparently, I was less than a handful of steps away from the front door. I was too chilled to care much about that as he all but slammed me next to the fireplace, replacing my sodden furs with dry ones while saying an assortment of no doubt creative curses in his language. My teeth chattered while I peppered him with the questions that had been plaguing my mind since last night, finally able to put substance to them. He grumped, kind of answered most of them while he ate dried meat. He’d offered to make me more pizza, I’d declined having not eaten the pizza earlier. It’s been over a week now, and he still hasn’t grasped that the human palette goes beyond that. Food replicators automatically supply any food choice with the daily needed nutrients for whatever species’ cuisine it’s programmed for, so that’s not a concern, at least.
And that little segway brings us to the here and now, Fafnir glaring in his natural way at the roaring fire as if it’s committed some terrible act against him and me, more unsettled than ever. I’ve learned a lot in the past two zentics. Apparently, not so shockingly, Faf responds better to outright angry interrogation than gentle prodding. Especially when it comes to war madness. First, he was gone, ensuring the mount’s enclosure was ready for the upcoming storm. As if it hadn’t already started? Also, his sudden and unexplained absence bothered me more than it should have.
But more importantly, war madnesses onset, like I suspected, is only during or after they serve their war contract. Contracts are absolutely required for able-bodied males at the risk of “being set out to wander,” which he declined to explain rather aggressively. War madness, disturbingly, has zero medical basis. It’s an affliction of the mind, a disease, as they call it, without a cure. Long understood to have been sent to males who proved to be without valor by their war god. They go mad, suffering from extreme bouts of paranoia, rage, and uncontrollable fits of violence.
It seems very much like the way humans of Old Earth had once viewed the aids epidemic of their time. Dirty, shameful, and… scary. They’re ostracized, so suddenly by the very people with whom they once shared every meal. A people so deeply set in community, resource sharing, the way they rear their young, down to the way they couple, shared partners, only bedding down with one person for any extended time in the winter. Only to serve the war contract they demand of you, against all odds, live and be received home with pride… then a few months or years later, ostracized. No aftercare, no help, no support. War madness is a newer affliction too, only affecting the two generations before Faf’s in any real numbers.
He’d clammed up when he noticed I was taking notes on my holo pager, sending the messages to myself for safekeeping. He’s ashamed. It only makes me angrier at how the winter festival ended.
They tried to kill him.
Not just the one male who challenged, but he’d brought friends.
All for what?
It doesn’t sit right. My mind aches and spins long after I retire to the bedroom for the night. I spend it staring at the vaulted ceiling, seeing nothing except the unmarked mound of dirt that covered Dad.
He’d had loads of love and support. Just not enough credits for the fancy machines to work on him, to fix his mind, or at least ease it. Not enough backing to show we could afford a credit loan. He had so much more than Fafnir.
And he ended up dead despite it.
Something terribly familiar seizes my chest, the gnawing, aching helplessness I’d felt in the days after Dad told us he hadn’t been feeling himself. The way mom cried as she emptied their small savings to have him seen by a human doctor there on Terra2. After my sister found him dead, a blaster shot to the face in his shed out back. I still didn’t know how he got his hands on one.
I’m up and out of bed before I can think better of it. Before I can keep the lines we’ve drawn in the sand firmly in place. My bundle of furs dragging the slightly uneven ground as I pad quietly over to where Fafnir’s huge form rests on the couch. I stand there for a minute, realizing I’ve never really considered the fact that he actually slept. A male like him seems above silly needs like that, which is ridiculous in hindsight.
My movements are slow and deliberate as I lay out a tiny bed of fur on the floor beside him. The fire dimmed so he can rest. It still wards off the cold just fine as I settle into my makeshift bed. Telling myself everything will be fine; any child will still be cared for and their world… while unfair and cruel, is the lesser of two evils compared to the plight of humans. I tell myself Fafnir is okay. That he’s here. That he’s stronger than Dad, but then I wipe that thought away completely. It feels like a betrayal. I go to sleep fitfully, my hand on my empty stomach, and tell myself my worries and tears will be gone by morning.
They weren’t gone, but with the daylight came reason. Determination. I held onto it as I awoke back in the plush bed, the smell of pizza in the air, and a suspiciously Fafnir shaped divot unoccupied beside me.
