Snowdrops
Andreyich
NoctisPink Milk
Tanooknik, Industrial System
Svartnik Nebulae
Svartnik Nebulae
A pair of figures nestled behind the screen of faint pink haze. With a certain amount of imagination, one may have been able to decipher the outline of a mother and her newborn child. They were short in stature, squats as the galaxy called them. In the corner of their pink silhouette croaked a strange, frog-like creature, tassels and feathers confusing her shamanistic frame.
Outside the glowing pink box slumped a man, or at least the crumpled husk of one. Slougk, a great leader of the squats, present now only as a man. He trembled as he wept into thick calloused hands, a kind of cry that was a vacuum of sound rather than a gift of it. His only son played aimlessly behind him. They were in a small hospital room. Short bursts of giggles cut the silent torture of his father, as stuffed figure of a Lokoid clashed into a Augustan Star Ranger doll.
Within the pink prison cell was trapped Slougk’s soul, the bloom of life born into hospice. Slougk’s wife and daughter lay behind the thin film of Oogma milk. It was a curious substance from the frog-kin of Oogmanik. More importantly, it appears to be the only substance in the galaxy impervious to the spread of the Desperation. During her pregnancy, Slougk’s wife had been infected with an atom, a spore, of the vile plant; a blind destruction like that had ruined so many and so much. It now grew in her and their newborn child. The plant, a parasite from the bowels of Oogmanik, spread prodigiously, atomically, and without need for the natural vices of flora: light, soil, oxygen. It was something different. It was a curse from beyond the void; or at least that was what the Oogma natives had claimed as they grew in tandem with the pestilence for a millenia. This room, cloaked in the pink milk of the Oogma, was a quarantine. Here they would die.
A stubby hand affirmed the back of Slougk. The figure who bore it was similarly dwarfish. His long black hair slicked to his shoulders, a large uncut emerald dangling from his chest. “How long did the shaman say they had?” The consoling figure spoke with a cold raspy voice, perhaps half-attempting empathy.
It was a great time before Slougk could rapture the strength of a voice. “Days maybe.. A week.”
“There is much to be done in that time, Slougk.” Spoke the looming figure.
He was right. Behind Slougk the Wise stood Gjorn the Mighty, a great businessman and donor to Slougk’s authority. Gjorn chaired one of the greatest holo-banking industries in Svart’s Rest, a Lokoid sympathizer and money launderer. His influence was valued equivalent to that of a senator. Gjorn’s station was only seconded on the planet by the man huddled on the floor: Slougk, Harold of Tanooknik; governor of a system and leader of his people. And yet in this moment, what could he lead? He could not even keep his own family safe from the blight that cursed his people. Everything he had fought for was trapped behind milk. Though, perhaps not everything, he bargained to himself, as another curt giggle cut the room. His son seemed inured to the death around him. He was oblivious to the despair, to the suffering of the squats, to the potential danger that laid in the silly toys he cherished. The woman who had brought him into the world, who had taught him to laugh, he would never hear her song again.
“I will take care of the boy Slougk, your family will have all the joys this short life can give them. Your wife will finally be able to taste the joys of real food, warm-sap desserts from the Simmie, sunbread from the Daxini; never again will the brine of Oogma milk be needed to preserve them from the curse. It will be merciful. I have gone through much to secure this for your family. The Oogma shaman will watch over her and the child. I have secured the beast at great cost, and it will need to be shipped back to that wretched planet while in this contraption… in due time. We have given them all that the nation can offer. You must think of the other’s in your care affected by the Desperation. You must give to the nation in turn.”
Slougk summoned the strength to rise to one knee. Every sinew of his muscle seemed devoid of energy, of worth. He did not want to serve, he did not want to breathe, he wanted to hold his daughter and walk into the heavens with his wife and family. He wanted to sing with them; to know their voice in the afterlife. He wanted to suffer with them. To die as they would die, too soon, too painfully, too usesely.
But he could not. They were forever departed from his world, trapped. And yet trapped together. The woman he loved was with her daughter. Their daughter. A piece of him. She would hold her blessing though every short breath. They would spend the rest of their lives together, a small infinity of joys. And what a woman to spend them with, even now behind the thin pink veil his girls were beautiful. He had been blessed, beyond belief, to have loved them. In a galaxy of curses, his miracles had been equal. And yet now he could not truly love them from this small, sterile room. If he loved them he needed to leave them, to help them, to end the cruelty of the Desperation, to find a way to Tar Yrra or die. Perhaps only then would he hear their songs, only then would his son be free. Slougk stood to his feet, heavier than the planet beneath him.
