Black Holes & Revelations (TimeConsumer & Ink Knight)

[TimeConsumer]

The Halkyon space station was a melting pot, drifting between prime planetary trade routes, and temporarily housing all manner of merchants plying their wares, pioneers seeking a better life, spacers chasing their next thrill, and politicians and criminals rubbing elbows, mingling in both the shadows and the light. However diverse, the Halkyon was divided into several sectors, where societies elite slept in luxurious suites and dropped credits at the finest restaurants with only the most filling, organic meals. The poorest were delegated to the station's lower ring, sharing cramped sleeping quarters easily mistaken for cell blocks, and rationing whatever genetically engineered products labeled 'edible.'


The little girl was hungry. She should have had chubby cheeks for old women to pinch and coo over, but her face was thin and sunken, her small bony body drowning in the plain brown sack she wore in place of clothing. Someone had taken the time to comb and plait her hair into a braid, though, and she was freshly bathed. Her eyes were rounded and gleamed with an innocence so precious and rare in the harshness of spacer life. There was still hope.


She stood with her back against a wall, in the Halkyon's main marketplace and activity hub, invisible to the strangers bustling by. Except for one.


Bindiya watched the child from afar,at the little window she set up shop, earning whatever credits she could by telling the fortunes of merchants worried about their future business prospects, or socialites longing to know if their true love, a rugged space cowboy whom their fathers would disprove of naturally, awaited them somewhere in the galaxy. All this knowledge, and more, the Roamers claimed to be written in the stars from birth.


Bindiya sold fortunes as a pastime on her travels, more than actual need for credits. Her rent was minimal, compared to other ship patrons. She slept on the floor of the Halkyon's engine room. Where others would have found the endless whirring of the engines, fuel pumps and thrusters a maddening distraction, Bindiya found comfort in the ship 'talking' to her, and couldn't sleep unless she was closest to its heart, its engine. The Halkyon's Head Engineer thought she was mad, of course, but tolerated her eccentricities because Roamers were skilled mechanics, practically born with a wrench in hand, and if she was there, he could nod off from time to time without worrying about the entire space station imploding.


But as much kinship, and near worship, as she had with the ship, nothing compared to the suffering of her fellow man, especially children, the smallest and most vulnerable. She hurried her last client, a snooty woman with cybernetically changing colored eyes (the latest fad), by telling her that the star clusters in her holographic star chart were too tight for her to get a proper reading, and for her to return tomorrow.


Bindiya moved swiftly through the crowd to where the small child stood, a satchel slung over her shoulders, blue robes loosely flowing from her tall, lithe form, and a veil modestly covering her thick black hair. The child froze like prey in the wild when Bindiya didn't just stand near her, but knelt in front of her, so their gazes met.


"Hello, little one, may the stars brightly shine upon you and you always feel at one with the universe." She delved into her satchel, withdrew an object wrapped in tinfoil, and extended it to the little girl, whose eyes widened. She hesitated before taking the concealed offering, but Bindiya motioned for her to. Tiny hands unwrapped the tinfoil, revealing a chunk of unleavened bread and an apple, as real, bright and red as blood.


"Food," the little girl whispered. "Real food. I.. I can't. Mummy and I don't have any credits."


Bindiya shook her head. "I wouldn't accept them, even if you did. It's a custom, you know, for Roamers to greet those worthy of great respect with a gift."

 

[Ink Knight]

A little ways away Theria was arguing with a vendor about the pricing of some weaponry, eyes flashing and teeth bared as she made her point. There was a wildness that clung to her, from the many small braids worked into her long brown hair to the almost patchwork appearance of her clothing and armor; all of it marking her as a member of the warrior peoples who sold their services across the stars. There was a gun on her right thigh, but the most prominent weapon was the blade somewhere between a machete and a short-sword on her left hip. Most people had left behind melee weapons any larger than a bowie knife long ago, even before humans left earth to scatter across the galaxy. But her people hadn't, and they were proficient with all sorts of 'primitive' weaponry that was no less deadly in their well-trained hands than a gun was.


Right now she seemed to be wanting to buy a large knife, and the vendor was apparently trying to get more for it than she was willing to pay. But when she huffed and turned away he was quick to call her back, offering a lower price hurriedly. She stared at him for a very long moment, an intimidating prospect with the black paint around her eyes, before nodding sharply and handing over the payment. Accepting the knife she stepped out of the stream of people in order to thread the new blade's sheath onto her belt so that it would sit at the small of her back where she could easily reach it. This put her only a few feet from the Roamer and child.