First Contact

"Those who are lost, can be found. Those who are injured, can be healed. Those who are forlorn, can be loved again. Those who are reviled, can be forgiven if they truly wish it. All it takes is reaching out in care to one another." - Armored Matthias the Younger, Reflections Upon My Brother's Forgiveness.

Kweetna was almost forty-five years old. She had lived through the three wars, staying in the shelters each time. She had given birth to five children before and during the wars. She had given birth two four others, one pregnancy, since then. Her youngest children were a quadruplet boys, to everyone's celebration. Four two year olds.

Her oldest was eighty-two.

She reflected on it as she made breakfast by hand. The miraculous food-forge could have put out the hashbrowns that everyone loved for breakfast in seconds, but she had always loved cooking. It was such an orderly chaos and it appealed to her.

During her time in the shelters she worked in the vast kitchens that fed the tens of thousands of refugees in the huge multi-level redoubts.

She had often worried about her oldest daughter during the last few years, since the end of the Third Defense of Hesstla. Her daughter had joined the Terran Confederate Army, becoming a medic, and had deployed off-planet less than a year after the fighting had ended.

Sometimes the family would receive packets of letters. Months worth the letters being delivered less than a week after the last batch of letters. Some disjointed and scrawled as if by a maniac, others long, plodding, almost empty feeling letters.

She had watched part of her daughter fade in the letters.

Not her devotion to helping others. Not her determination to do her part.

Now she was home. Had been home for three days.

Kweetna had listened as her daughter had wept that the Confederate Army had 'thrown her out' and 'thrown her away' and 'made her leave' after she repeatedly failed the psychological evaluation and either did not or could not respond to in-theater or military treatment.

Her daughter, her beautiful, intelligent, and sociable Melinvae, had wept furious tears at being 'abandoned' by the very organization she had devoted over sixty years of her life to.

Yesterday, Melinvae had laid in bed all day in a dark room, staring at the ceiling. One of her baby brothers had called her 'grandma' and she had stood up from the breakfast table and went to bed. Her answers to questions were terse, often single syllable. Melinvae had rolled over and faced the wall rather than talk last night, had gone without food. She had only gotten up to quietly shuffle to the bathroom, wrapped in her blanket, before shuffling back to her room.

Kweenta, not one to sit idly by, had spent all day yesterday reading pamphlets and watching videos with titles like "Dealing with a family member who was a victim of temporal recursion" and "So, your child is older than you" and "Living with family members with post traumatic stress disorder" and "Dealing with PTSD induced addictions".

It had stressed the need for structure, for medication and therapy, for routines, for coping mechanisms.

With her brother and her husband, Kweenta had gone through the house and made sure that the pictures being shown, no longer pictures in 4K digital frames, were of happier times.

Personally, Kweenta was grateful to the BobCo Home Products Nanoforge.

Melinvae had left a meter and a half tall at the tips of her ears.

She had returned two meters at the top of her head.

None of the clothing in her closet would have fit her any longer.

The BobCo Home Products Nanoforge had a small laser scanner on an orb and while Melinvae was asleep Kweenta had pulled back the covers and scanned her daughter before taking the measurements back to the nanoforge.

Her husband had held her as cried over the markings covering her beautiful daughter's body. It wasn't that she wasn't beautiful still.

It's that Kweenta knew that every mark had inflicted pain on her baby.

The BobCo Home Products Nanoforge had printed what Kweenta had asked. She had been surprised to see massive, deep discounts on the clothing with veteran codes attached. The clothing was sitting on the couch, neatly folded or laid out on hangers.

She heard footsteps and turned around, smiling.

Melinvae stood there, awkwardly, in a pair of running shorts, with a tank top, and a pair running shoes with socks.

"Going for a run, dear?" Kweenta asked. She made sure there was no note of disapproval or disappointment in it, just a normal question for a normal day.

Melinvae shook her head. "No. I didn't want to wear my uniform to breakfast."

"There's new clothing for you on the couch. Everything, including your modesty clothing," Kweenta said, smiling. "I wasn't sure what patterns you liked, so I just ran off cream and dusty brown edging."

Melinvae just drifted into the other room.

Kweenta went back to cooking breakfast, turning down the heat slightly.

Melinvae went down the hallway and into the guest bathroom.

Kweenta heard the fresher turn on.

Her younger children came in, her husband and her brother each carrying two of the quadruplets.

The family was chattering when Melinvae came back into the kitchen. She wore a simple dress with simple sandals. The family went quiet for a moment until her brother Erylve asked the second oldest, at nineteen, how college was going.

Melinvae ate quietly, one arm around the plate protectively, constantly looking around as the fork moved mechanically. She never looked down at the food for long, just quick glances. She ate quickly, efficiently, and got up from the table.

Kweenta's husband, Arnett, motioned at Kweenta, who got up and followed her daughter.

She knocked on the door to the room. "Melly? Honey?"

"Come in," Melinvae said. Again, Kweenta was struck by the rough rasp in her daughter's voice.

The pamphlets had mentioned that some soldiers sounded that way due to exposure to harsh chemicals, environments, constant yelling, or vocal cord damage.

The room was lit, for that Kweenta was grateful. Melinvae was holding a pair of lacy lower modesty clothes, staring at them.

"Most of the time, I went commando, like I am now," Melinvae said softly, her voice oddly disconnected, like she wasn't talking about underwear. "I can't remember the last pair of underwear I owned that I didn't get from the Post-Exchange or from supply or out of a unit nanoforge."

Melinvae turned slightly, holding out the lacy underwear. "Who's going to want to see me in these?" She made a motion at her body under the dress. "Now that I'm... I'm... this."

Kweenta moved forward, gently taking the lower modesty clothing from her daughter's hand.

"That's just it, love," she said gently. "They aren't for someone else," she laid them on the bed and smoothed them. "They're for you. You wear them because they make you feel pretty, make you feel desirable, or just because you want something luxurious and lavish that only you know about."

"Oh," Melinvae said softly.

"Nobody knows you're wearing it but you. It's a secret. Perhaps a little naughty. Perhaps a little vain. It serves no greater function beyond looking nice and protecting your nethers," Kweenta gave a soft laugh. "You wear it for you. Not because you have to."

"I can't remember the last time I wore a dress," Melinvae remembered. "Even in garry, I wore my PT clothing, or just my uniform without my top, just my t-shirt."

"Now, you can wear other things," Kweenta said. "But you still should follow fashion."

Melinvae gave a harsh, bitter, bark of a laugh. "So what's the fashion for eighty year old females?" she looked down. "I'm supposed to get my next longevity treatment, my post-service treatment, in the next couple of months," she looked up. "But I'll still be an eighty-year old woman, even if I'm in the body of a twenty-something."

"Dress with lace cuffs and hems, colorful open weave knitted shawl, high brim bonnet over the ears, embroidered gloves, hard sole clacking knee high laced boots, and gaudy expensive jewelry," Kweenta smiled. "If you want to dress the part, you can."

Melinvae sat down.

"I don't know how to go on," she admitted. She looked at the window. "All I could think of at breakfast is possible emergencies and how they would need to be handled."

Kweenta sat down next to her daughter, reaching up to pull her close for a hug. Melinvae resisted for a moment, then snuggled up next to her mother.

"I'm not sure how I help you. That's my job as your mother and I'll do my best to learn how the best I can. It doesn't matter that you're older than me, it doesn't matter what you've done, what you've seen, what's been done to you, you are now, and always will be, my amazing oldest child. Born single when you should have been three or more," Kweenta said. She was silent for a moment.

"But I'm willing to learn how to help you grow. How to help you through this. Even when you fall down, I'll be there to help you up if you let me," Kweenta said.

She could tell her daughter was quietly crying, holding on to her.

She sat there, holding onto her daughter, until the sobs slowly ebbed away.

"Have you talked to your friend Dambree?" Kweenta asked. "The girl you went to school with that you used to take mail to?"

Melinvae shook her head. "How can I tell her that I was put out on a psych? After everything she went through, she..."

"Entered a convent for several years. Is reclusive. Must wear a veil when she leaves her home so that people do not gawk at her any more than they do," Kweenta cut it off quickly.

The Terran with the blue and red outfit, with the round shield, had said not to let the family member make comparisons between themselves and others where the other was better than they were. That it was a symptom of the depression aspect of PTSD injury.

She was glad she had watched "So, your family member has PTSD."

"She fought in the War in Heaven next to the Immortals and the Digital Omnimessiah himself," Melinvae said. "It's not the same."

"No," Kweenta said, petting her daughter's head. "It isn't. You have been gone for over sixty years to you. You have grown to be an amazing woman, have lived an entire lifetime," Kweenta was quiet a minute. "Do not diminish what you did, my daughter. There are many who still live who would not if you had not helped them."

"I'm no hero," Melinvae whispered. "Please don't call me one. Please, mommy."

"You're my daughter. That's all that matters. I know you did what many consider to be great deeds, deeds that others lauded you for, but I know that, in truth, everything you did you did because of who you are," she slowly petted her daughter's head. "I always knew you had such a fire inside of you, even when you slept alone beneath my heart. You were so big there wasn't room for anyone else. You carried that fire into the darkness, just like I knew you always would."

"Because you're my daughter. You cannot change that any more than I can change the pattern of the stars in the sky," Kweenta said. She hugged her daughter closer. "You're home now, and that fire is still there. It makes you shine so brightly, beautiful one."

"Do you still love me?" the voice was small, tiny.

"Of course I do. Even when you came home covered in mud and scraped up from athletics and got my freshly mopped floor muddy, I still loved you," she gave her another squeeze. "I will still love you for who I know you are, even when it is my turn to be old and gray," she paused. "You always have to do everything first and better, don't you?"

There was silence for a second.

Melinvae snorted. Then laughed. She straightened up, laughing softly, covering her mouth, snorting slightly in between laughs.

Once Melinvae had calmed down, the videos and pamphlets had warned Kweenta that moments of giddiness never lasted, Kweenta stood up and touched her daughter's shoulder.

"Get dressed. We'll go to the jewelry store in the mall and pick you out some gaudy jewelry and knee high laced boots," Kweenta smiled.

Melinvae held her mother's hand and got up.

"Might as well buy some jewelry to hand down to you," Melinvae said seriously, then laughed when she couldn't hold the serious face any longer.

Kweenta laughed too.

-----

The chairs squeaked as she shifted them back into the circle. She spritzed cleaner on the seats and the backs of the chairs then wiped them down. She made sure there was not only enough chairs for the people she knew would be there, but four others, just in case new people showed up.

That done, she moved over to the table.

The snacks had been decimated. The coffee pots were all out but the decaf. She cleaned up the snack boxes, poured out the coffee, then got more nibbles from the food-forge and set the boxes down on the table.

She started new pots of coffee for the next meeting.

The smell of fresh kaff washed over her and she smiled.

Satisfied that the preperations were done, Dambree turned and looked over the small meeting room.

It was nothing special to look at. Some folded up tables and folded up chairs in an extra room at the Community Interaction Center. Wide windows that were polarized to let dim light through but not allow anyone to see inside. Comfortable lighting and the temperature set to comfortable for the average Hesstlan.

Nothing special to look at.

But Dambree knew the truth. That the little circle of chairs, the place to go, the safe space to speak, was important.

It was more than mutual support, in a way, it served as a confessional.

Dambree had learned during her time in the convent that sometimes confessional and the feeling of understanding, maybe even forgiveness for one's perceived transgressions, was more potent than any drug being abused to numb the pain.

The door opened and Dambree touched her veil to make sure it was in place before she turned around.

It was an older Hesstlan female. Gray on her ears, which were slightly droopy, the cartilage succumbing to age and gravity. Gray on her hands, around her mouth and nose, her whiskers drooping slightly. She wore the current matron fashion of laced boots, lace edged dress, bonnet, and heavy jewelry. Her eyes were bone white, no pupils, and her face and forehead were scarred.

Except Dambree recognized her instantly.

"Melinvae," Dambree said, drifting over to the older Hesstlan, her hands folded at her waist.

"Dambree," Melinvae said. "How did you recognize..."

"My eyes see much more now," Dambree admitted. "I recognized the light inside of you as soon as I saw you."

Melinvae shook her head. "My mother said the same thing about light."

Dambree shrugged. "It's just the way I see things since I witnessed the return of Armored Matthias the Younger and his Redemption," she said. She looked around. "I would love to catch up, spend time with you, but there is a meeting soon."

Melinvae nodded. "I know, that's why I'm here."

Dambree reached out with one gloved hand.

After a moment, Melinvae reached out with one of her own gloved hands and took the larger woman's hand.

-----

The huge Hesstlan stood up. Taller than other females, very much more than the males. She wore somber cut clothing and dark colors, with a veil across her face that mostly hid the dull red glow from her eyes.

"Good evening," the large Hesstlan said. "I'm Dambree, I'm an alcoholic and I suffer PTSD that I self-medicated with alcohol. I'm three months sober."

"Hi, Dambree," Melinvae said softly with the others.