this impossible thousand years

Year 98

Zeillese looked up to the head scientists and commanders of CAPS with no small amount of wonder. These were the men that let Zeillese walk again. There was no other place in the world that could have done the same, that could have decided to so selflessly give their kindness towards helping people like her.

“In a few years, Rookie Zeil, you are going to be graduating to a military recruit. How does that feel?”

“Super-super cool!” she answered. Her childlike enthusiasm would take a few more years to get dulled; it is surprisingly how quickly we go from children to teenagers.

“Super, for sure,” the Head Coordinator replied. “You have just a few more years of education ahead of you, and then you can officially join the wondrous ranks of the CAPS. In honor of this upcoming achievement, we wanted to return something to you.”

“I can’t wait!” Zeillese said, totally overlooking the latter point of the Head Coordinator’s statement. He just smiled at Zeillese’s excitement.

“Not so fast, Rookie. But here. Take this; it was left by that lovely kalon woman that brought you to us. She told us to give this to you on the day of her death.”

Zeillese stared at that, wide-eyed at the mention of who she thought as her mother, however vaguely, however distantly. “W-what?” she said, shocked. The Head Coordinator just smiled and handed her a small black box.

She opened it, and was met with the simple sight of a black rock. “A rock?” she questioned, disappointed. There was no great discovery or revelation of her past as Zeillese had wished. Just some stupid rock.

“Yes, just a rock, according to our tests,” the man said with a frown.

Zeillese frowned too. When she left, she put it away in her bedside drawer without a thought.

~*~

Years 418 - 739

The future.

It was an amazing, powerful concept; divine in nature, and fated in deliverance. It was no wonder the Riwohrs saw themselves on the top of the world, when they knew the world’s future; knowledge, after all, is power.

Zeillese, herself, was an intuitive woman, the kind that wouldn’t just wonder at strange dreams, the kind that wouldn’t just take the explanation that suddenly she could see the future for granted. There had to be reason: Zeillese wasn’t pure Riwohr. Her color shifting was hardly a working function without the help of the cyborg’s technology. So surely, seeing so vividly into the future could not be taken so for granted.

She knew she never dreamed every night. She knew, whenever she dreamt, she remembered that rock. The rock that wasn’t quite a rock, but something magical, in meaning and perhaps in power - given to Zeillese by her mother - and maybe just with the power to give her these future dreams.

It was an answer Zeillese decided upon. The other consideration, of leaving such a powerful power to doubt, left her insides mingling with a fear and uncertainty too turbulent to leave unchecked.

But where had that rock come from? It clearly was not just a rock, and it was from her childhood. Zeillese had never heard of anything like it. But, perhaps, in the dark void of its color, the flexible shape, and the subtle glitter of galaxies, it reminded her of the Riwohrs themselves. Something eternal, something immortal.

Few people had seen the Riwohrs face-to-face in this war, even their home planet. This alien species, as a whole, was so elusive, it was as if they were part of the darkness of the world itself.

Zeillese stared at the rock and rolled it between her blue paw-pads rhythmically until she had fallen asleep.

~*~

Pulsing black, glittering purple, frivolous, writhing appendages, and gleaming beams of light for eyes. It was not a Riwohr; it was one of their ships. Their ships, their planets, and themselves as a species: they were all made from the same material.

This ship did not look like the other that had destroyed Trading Outpost 5. No: from these eyes of Zeillese’s most inborn, fearful kin, it looked like it was dying.

And die it did, in a outward exhale of breath - in a slow blink of beady black eyes - and in a flurry of orange sparks that in some way, to Zeillese, felt like just a beginning.

~*~

Zeillese opened her eyes, and looked down on her rock.

It had to be from her home planet.

On the other hand… Zeillese stood, conflicted for the moment. Absentmindedly smoothing her hair in the mirror, thinking through long, steady breaths, as long as her thousand-year life.

I have to do something, she thought, over and over. She pondered over the way she was quick to forge those documents so the cyborg militant’s shielding was inputted. That was different. The answer was clear. But this… It seemed like something impossible, something meant for a hero, to find an end to this war - to find out just why an alien ship disappeared without a shot its way.

Yet, the power to see into the future had opened up a million avenues in Zeillese’s eyes. When she would look left, she would see a co-worker, and wonder, If I out of the blue talked to them as friend, would I gain a friend? Zeillese didn’t talk to many; she stuck to the people she knew. For the past century, it felt almost like she had been alone in a sea of people. And then - if I talked to the Head Coordinator about the militant cyborgs, would that change anything? Too risky, she would normally think. But - if I took a turn off my daily surveillance route, or paperwork, I wonder who I would meet - I wonder if my legs would ache of tire, and my eyes fill with marvel or fear.

Of all the powers that Zeillese had ever thought of, the deviance from the fate our destiny seemed to have already carved out for us was the most powerful. Being able to fade into the dark, see into the future? Bah! It was worth nothing, nothing at all - no, not next to that otherworldly nature, that otherworldly action, undeniable action, the kind that had turned nations to their knees, the kind that had turned the tide of a harsh, verbal battle, the kind that had changed hearts and made joyful, mournful, and angry tears fall.

But let’s be real, Zeillese acknowledged, it isn’t that easy. And it isn’t. But then, I’m a near superhero, with dark ninja’ing and future seer ga’kalore on my side.