Part 4: The Ceremony

    Lynia’s lilac purple eyes looked up at the starry sky as she wondered what it was like out there in the vast darkness beyond her home world. Eur’s spirit servants told her that most of those tiny specks of light were vast burning bodies called stars, like the one that warmed this world during the day. Did each of the stars have worlds they kept warm? What might these other worlds might be like? What could be living on them? Her mind imagined both wonderful and terrible possibilities these potential worlds offered.

   

   As the faelin’s mind considered what these worlds might be like, she looked down at a small pond fed by a tiny bubbling creek below her perch. A tiny waterfall emptied into the pond creating ripples that danced in the pale blue light emitted by the unique bulbs of the large Vali tree she was sitting on. Her perch was one of Vali’s lower branches that was ten feet off the ground, and grew out six feet in length before bursting into teal leaves and glowing bulbs. These trees were massive in both girth and height, but they were best known for their unique bulbs that glowed pale blue at night. The view around Lynia made her smile, she considered herself lucky to call this world her home, but suddenly the thought turned dark.

   Lynia’s right leg and tail stopped swaying back and forth in unison as she sat on the branch. This was not her real home, the faelin’s real home world was somewhere far away, out there among the stars. The questions that haunted her about her unknown origins began to fill her mind once again. What was her real home like? Eur told Lynia that she had come from a world very far from this one, and Eur’s spirit servants had saved her from being killed along with the rest of her kind. Why were the faelin destroyed? What killed them? Why did Eur and her servants not save more of her kind? Why did she have to be the last faelin? Frowning, her ears drooped as she was reminded of the fact she would always be alone. She was nothing like the miztan, or Eur and her servants.

   There were the terrans, who she shared many physical traits with. They excited Lynia when she first saw them from a distance. She initial thought they could be related to the faelin somehow, and for a second she held hope that she would no longer have to deal with feelings of isolation. Her hope was crushed when she saw the terrible things they were doing to this world. Many miztan tribes had lost their homes to them, and large stretches of serene forests had been destroyed to make way for their hideous constructions. Their monstrous machines destroyed life without regard for the damage they were doing to this world and the pain they were causing. They seemed blind to their crimes and did what they desired without regard for trees, animals, miztan, or the natural cycle of life. Lynia could feel her loneliness, despair, and now anger grow as all these thoughts moved through her head. She could feel her emotions starting to overwhelm her, and she needed to keep them under control.

   The faelin’s slender arms came to rest on the top of her thighs, as she brought her legs into a crossed position in front of her. Her hands opened with her palms pointing toward the stars above. Closing her eyes she began flowing energy through her body and slowly created a field under her body. Slowly the field lifted her into the air so she was levitating as she entered a state of meditation. The designs on her skin glowed slightly as she focused her mind on world around her. Her unique energy abilities allowed her sense not only the energy in her own body but in the life around her when she focused her mind. In this form of meditation, the world transformed as she saw and felt the energy emitted by all life around her. In her mind, she was seeing life itself in spirit form, and one’s vision and mind was influenced by the differences one would see in physical bodies when looking at life in this manner. It did not take long for her meditation to make her elevated emotions to calm. Smiling once again, she then remembered she should be leaving soon. It was about time for the miztan’s joining ceremony, where she was the guest of honor.

   Lynia grabbed a ceremonial robe that was sitting on the next to her. She slid her arms into the dark green sleeves of the garb before fastening the lower section to her belt that looked like leaves made from a silk like material spun from a plant. This allowed the middle and top to slowly open up showing her fabric wrapped chest and the blue crystal that was attached to her clothing in the middle of her chest. The robe had intricate silver designs that mimicked those on her skin, and leaf like designs like her collar and belt. Looking around at her favorite meditation spot one last time, she hopped down to the ground and began bounding toward the miztan ceremonial fields.

   Minutes later, Lynia was standing on the edge of a field that served as the local miztan tribes’ ceremonial grounds, she quickly brushed her long bangs out of her face, and picked a branch out of her tail. After making sure her outfit was properly sitting on her body, she walked toward the ceremony with a warm smile look on her face. She controlled her pace so she was not moving more gracefully than her normally energetic gait. The festival was one celebrating the miztan’s unique form of relationships where three individuals would form a family unit for three seasonal cycles. Three was the sacred number for the indigenous race who had three eyes, legs, and fingers per each of their three arms. Lynia’s presence was considered by the miztan to be a blessing from Eur, who they worshiped as goddess of this world. As soon as she was spotted, the elders of the local tribes moved toward her before they raised their arms toward the sky in respect and shouted an ancient miztan phrase in their language that sounded like a series of whistles and clicks. They then proceeded to lead the faelin to her seat of honor on top of a large boulder that was in the middle of the clearing.

   Once Lynia was seated on top of on the large flower covered boulder, the miztan began the ceremony with percussion based music and the dance of attraction. This beginning dance would be one of three and it was the first step where miztan showed interest in each other, allowing miztan to pick out potential partners for the next stage of the ceremony. This part would last until all the miztan had found partners or had tired out. The entire time Lynia would light up the dancing ground with orbs of burning light high above the heads of the miztan. Following this initial dance would come a period of feasting and rest before the dance of forming began. The faelin could not wait to partake in a little of the food, but she could not eat her fill due to her much higher metabolism and larger size meant she could easily out eat three miztan. She didn’t want to appear gluttonous despite her growing hunger.

   After first dance concluded, Lynia dispersed her orbs with a gripping motion following by her hands quickly opening to instruct the orbs of energy to explode in a brilliant display of light that brought cheering from the miztan. Smiling, Lynia slowly stood and nodded to the group of elders giving them permission to begin the feast. Just as she was about to step off the boulder, her sensitive ears picked up an unnatural whining sound quickly approaching. Her ears lifted up in the air as she scanned the horizon right as large black shape flew over the ceremony grounds a hundred feet above the treetops. 

   Growling, her ears pined themselves to the side of her head as she glared at the aircraft as it spun around in place after coming to a hovering position on the opposite side of the clearing.

Lynia quickly yelled to the miztan while motioning toward the edges of the clearing, “Run! Flee into the forest! I will deal with the invaders!” The designs on her arms began to emit an intense glow as she pulled energy from both her body and her surroundings and funneled it into her hands. She had to buy time for the miztan to flee. As hovering ship’s back opened up Lynia hopped off the rock and charged toward the ship hoping to keep its attention as energy from her left arm dispersed and wrapped around her body into an invisible protective layer. Once the ramp and door were fully opened, two zip lines fell out of the gunship and two of the terrans began a quick descent to the ground. They pointed their weapons at Lynia as they descended, and began to opened fire as they fell. The faelin was bounding toward the point the soldiers were going to land in a zig zag pattern to make herself harder to hit. Despite her dodging movements, the highly skilled soldiers hit her several times, but her protective barrier deflected the darts.

   Her right hand then released a pair of burning darts that hot out out from either side of the faelin as the terrans landed on the ground and quickly disconnected themselves from the ship before continuing to attack the faelin, while moving toward her. The energy spikes spiraled off to the side before beginning to arc back toward the human attackers, gaining speed as they converged on their targets. Two seconds before she reached the pair of warriors, the darts had come around and burned through the terrans’ weapons, rendering them useless. The bursts of energy then impacted each other creating a motionless orb between the cursing humans. Dropping her shield, Lynia reached out and grabbed to brilliant orb as she leaped high into the air doing a flip between the two disarmed humans, who tried to grab the agile alien. The humans were too slow to catch the agile faelin as she jumped over their heads. Mid flip when she was upside down facing the terran ship, she threw the energy orb that quickly split into a dozen tiny bolts that flew toward the terran flying machine’s open door. The burning bolts caused the other terrans still in the ship to dive for cover deeper inside the ship’s belly. The ship’s shields flashed a brilliant bluish hue as the energy impacted the protective barrier, and causing weakened ripples of energy around the impact points. The faelin’s flip landed her several feet away, and facing in the opposite direction from the two humans. Her feet landed firmly on the ground and she fell forward into leaning posture with her left hand braced against the ground to prevent her from falling.

   Looking over her shoulder Lynia gave the humans a teasing smile, before she stood up straight and sprinted for the nearby tree line. “Go! Get the target! We will pursue by foot!” ordered the taller human’s sandpaper like voice as he motioned toward the troops in the back of the transport with his hand. The pair of humans dropped their useless weapons before pulling out their side arms and starting toward Lynia. At the same time, their ship quickly rotated around and started toward the faelin as well. Lynia’s ears perked up when she heard these words as she crossed into the tree. She rapidly removed the ceremonial robes so they would not catch on anything and slow her down. She now realized they were after her, and not the miztan. Once the robe was removed she started into the forest with a renewed urgency and quickly began to ascend the trees by leaping gracefully from branch to branch.

   She hoped she could evade her pursuers quickly because she was already starting to feel drained from the extensive use of her abilities. A feeling of fear slowly began to invade her mind. What if they caught her? What would they do to her?