Round 6, Challenge 2: In Her Stead
Sep. 18th, 2006 03:39 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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big_damn_questsTitle: In Her Stead
Author: Daeleniel Shadowphyre
Characters: Adelei Niska
Rating: PG
Challenge: Round 6, Challenge 2: Describe your mother. What was she like and how did she shape you?
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is my god; I merely worship at the temple of his greatness with my humble offerings.
Warnings: Again, vague head trips.
"Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy." --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Maxims"
Strange that you should ask about my mother. I never knew her, not while she was alive. Sonya Adeleine Niska, by all accounts, was a petite woman with thick black hair and a piercing, flinty gaze. I am told I resemble her. My father once said I have her temperament, but I wonder if he ever truly knew her, either.
She met my father in space, all but passing ships in the Black between one struggling Core world and another. To hear my father speak of it, he fell in love when first they met face to face. I somehow doubt this was the case, whether it be some special sense for falsehood or the snickers from his crew whenever he told the story I do not know. And to be sure, he told the story often.
Nevertheless, my mother was with him for three years before I was conceived. What must be understood is that, given the uncertainty of gravity and protection from the cosmic radiation of the nearby suns unbuffered by the atmospheric veils of planets or terra-formed moons, taking into account the as yet still experimental structural integrity of the ships of the age, the conception and bearing of children while in space was most hazardous if not deemed impossible. My father never speaks of the many times they must have tried and failed to produce children before my coming.
To hear the crew speak of it, my mother was an unholy terror while she carried me. Her moods were volatile enough without the stress of hormones put her under. Father was constantly nagging to stop on one moon or planet "until the babe is born", but my mother would have none of it.
"You wooed me among the stars, won me among the stars, wed me among the stars; now I shall whelp among the stars as well."
This is the only direct quote I've ever heard of my mother, and as often as the crew repeated it, word for word and in high, strident mimic of my absent mother, I feel I can trust the veracity of the account as much as I trust when my father's crew would say she cursed the stars and my father to high Heaven when she gave me birth.
Beyond the stories of those three years and the memories of a worn and faded photograph, I have nothing of my mother but her name and mine. Everything that she left behind went up when Icarus lost its wings in swiftly stifled flames. She loved the stars, sought to conquer them, and was consumed by them. Pity she could not see her son grow up to conquer them in her stead-- the child going on to accomplish the dreams his parents failed to realise.
Yes... how strange that you should ask about my mother.
I must ask her someday if she is proud of me.
Author: Daeleniel Shadowphyre
Characters: Adelei Niska
Rating: PG
Challenge: Round 6, Challenge 2: Describe your mother. What was she like and how did she shape you?
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is my god; I merely worship at the temple of his greatness with my humble offerings.
Warnings: Again, vague head trips.
"Everyone who enjoys thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.—Herein lies the difference between them that create and them that enjoy." --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Maxims"
Strange that you should ask about my mother. I never knew her, not while she was alive. Sonya Adeleine Niska, by all accounts, was a petite woman with thick black hair and a piercing, flinty gaze. I am told I resemble her. My father once said I have her temperament, but I wonder if he ever truly knew her, either.
She met my father in space, all but passing ships in the Black between one struggling Core world and another. To hear my father speak of it, he fell in love when first they met face to face. I somehow doubt this was the case, whether it be some special sense for falsehood or the snickers from his crew whenever he told the story I do not know. And to be sure, he told the story often.
Nevertheless, my mother was with him for three years before I was conceived. What must be understood is that, given the uncertainty of gravity and protection from the cosmic radiation of the nearby suns unbuffered by the atmospheric veils of planets or terra-formed moons, taking into account the as yet still experimental structural integrity of the ships of the age, the conception and bearing of children while in space was most hazardous if not deemed impossible. My father never speaks of the many times they must have tried and failed to produce children before my coming.
To hear the crew speak of it, my mother was an unholy terror while she carried me. Her moods were volatile enough without the stress of hormones put her under. Father was constantly nagging to stop on one moon or planet "until the babe is born", but my mother would have none of it.
"You wooed me among the stars, won me among the stars, wed me among the stars; now I shall whelp among the stars as well."
This is the only direct quote I've ever heard of my mother, and as often as the crew repeated it, word for word and in high, strident mimic of my absent mother, I feel I can trust the veracity of the account as much as I trust when my father's crew would say she cursed the stars and my father to high Heaven when she gave me birth.
Beyond the stories of those three years and the memories of a worn and faded photograph, I have nothing of my mother but her name and mine. Everything that she left behind went up when Icarus lost its wings in swiftly stifled flames. She loved the stars, sought to conquer them, and was consumed by them. Pity she could not see her son grow up to conquer them in her stead-- the child going on to accomplish the dreams his parents failed to realise.
Yes... how strange that you should ask about my mother.
I must ask her someday if she is proud of me.
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Date: 2006-09-18 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 02:06 pm (UTC)Glad you liked it! ^_^
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Date: 2006-09-18 02:10 pm (UTC)I definitely like this! *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2006-09-18 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-19 03:46 am (UTC)