Ael's Past - Her Pet Mogai, Eshae

Here I am again with a bit more about Ael. This is from a conversation in which she was recalling her childhood pet. The mogai is a t'liss, or bird-of-prey, similar to our peregrine falcon. All of what I have here is written in rough form...enjoy. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Jade chuckled quietly, the green light in her eyes dancing.*

"Yes, there were times I wished you had never been born, or at least, never come to the council..."

*She wondered to herself if the ruling beings really did have a sense of humor because it this case they certainly seemed to. She was far from wishing him dead. I must have been so blinded with prejudice that I never even gave him a chance to speak for himself when circumstances and honor seemed to condemn his actions. She frowned slightly. She did not appreciate it when her personal opinions clouded her judgment in such a fashion. She had always tried to live honorably, even when...dishonor seemed to be her fate. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line as she was thinking, the recollection of her past behavior vexed her exceedingly. She looked over at him suddenly as he asked her about the scars on her wrist...he obviously had sharp eyes. She paused a moment, thinking, how I got these scars and the situation...was in so many ways almost a forewarning of what happened to me later... She smiled, and began speaking, though at times she had to pause and remember. Much of her childhood had become dimmer, dreamlike, as her life flew past and events occured...many of them of such a nature to cause other memories to fade. He was also fast, she hadn't let her sleeve fall quickly enough. She was surprised that she would even have wondered about it when he was around.*

"I...was forgetful. Back when I was very young on ch'Rihan I had a pet t'liss...this would be similar to the peregrine falcon of the humans' old world from many years ago. I think I was about eight... I was walking in the woods a long way from home, and I heard a huge squawking and hisses as if there was some sort of animal fight nearby. Of course I wanted to know what it was, so I went to look and I found a young mogai that seemed to have somehow fallen from its nest. One of its wings was broken and it was surrounded by five or six other t'liss of its kind that looked to be about the same age. With the mogai..when one is wounded...the others cannibalize it. But the thing that held my attention was the wounded bird...it wouldn't stop fighting...even when it was set upon by those of its own species. It had a broken wing, and it still wouldn't give up..."

*She paused a few seconds, glancing back at the seagulls flying over the water, then continued speaking, eventually looking back at Nyyrikki.*

"The t'liss is a warrior bird. And something about that one called to me...inside...you know? It defended itself tooth and claw...I thought, why should such a brave bird die like this? And so, I spoke to it...and slowly reached out toward it...I only wanted to help. It scratched me a bit, it had very sharp claws...but I took my prize home and spoke to one of the old warriors that stayed on my family's lands...he taught me how to take care of it. And when its wing was healed, he showed me how to train it. Over time...the mogai became my shadow...Eshae, I called him...Fierce. We would wander for long times together...spending nights under the stars in the desert...or on the mountains... But, some people from my school were jealous...and one of them distracted Eshae, provoking him...and this caused him to fly off... I did not want to lose him, so I did not even stop to grab my thick left glove that we use when hunting with t'liss, so when I did finally call him back to me, as he landed in his accustomed perch on my arm his sharp talons dug deeply into my wrist. He did not know he hurt me...I didn't feel it at the time, I was simply glad Eshae was back...he was my best friend, always with me. I had him for many years... When I got back home I had to sneak to my room because if my mother had seen all the blood, she would have killed Eshae."

*Realizing that she had been talking for quite awhile about something that really didn't matter much, she lapsed into silence, still thinking. The deep cuts had hurt later, particularly when she was cleaning them, but then, the tightly wrapped bandage looked almost like the wrist wraps they occasionally wore in her fighting school, so it had escaped more than a casual glance and she had refused to act like anything hurt. She sighed, and then laid on her back with her hands crossed under her head as she looked up at the Nabooine constellations. Her Force sense was greatly heightened, as she did not want to be caught by surprise, however relaxed she might appear. She looked over at Nyyrikki Tuoni apologetically.*

"My apologies...forgive me for rambling. I'm afraid I forced you to listen to rather more than you wished to. Eshae meant a lot to me...in some ways...how I found him reminds me of what happened to me in the following years...set upon by my own kind as well. But...I don't think many others would understand this."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Copyright, 2009