Private Lost time

[Enedina Tal]

Locale:// somewhere between the Pentastar frontline and Imperial space
Roselina Tal

A rare leave of absence from the frontlines in the Pentastar sector and a break from a nearly four-month unabetted orgy of violence and sorrow, somehow while most others in her unit lay dead or maimed, she seemingly had the gall and dare say luck to be breathing. Many of the free state forces had perished in the struggle for home, ideology and the collective survival of an entire peoples future. Be it in the fires of Ziost, the green hell of Generis or the spires of Serenno. Galidraans people had paid in blood for this fleeting victory that appeared closer and closer. But at what cost?


Enedina was left to ponder this in her room's solitary confines, which overlooked an Imperial shipyard that glowed and hummed with life as ships periodically took off into the night and technician crews scrambled across the rain-streaked landing pads to fix the following incoming vessels and transports. Solitary in her thoughts and misery, she waited for the expected arrival of a familiar face. One she hadn't seen since this whole struggle had started three years ago, and now that struggle was close to its end. She had left Rose scared and alone, as did her father; the calling of their people's fate might've been a noble cause, but the thoughts of abandoning her own kin bore heavy on her mind, as did the deaths of many of her troops. Enedina hoped that Rose's memory of things was perhaps more sympathetic to the situation of that time. She wasn't counting on it. ​

 

[Roselina Tal]

Silence.

That was all that marked the last three years from her family. It was fitting, honestly. Silence was had marked the better part of her life. She had learned young not to draw attention to herself, while Enedina...

Nothing was fair when it came to Enedina.

She tried to smush this childish thought from her mind as she approached her sister's quarters. It was hard not to view her family through through the lens of her childhood, not when her step into adulthood was done alone. She barely recognized the trepidatious girl that had once watched from the balcony as Enedina marched to war.

Their father had left her free to pursue her passions, and there and been a lot of good found in that. But she couldn't help... the bitter inner voice... that always wished things were different. She should thank her sister for being so perfect, because at very least she had never had to be.

"Enedina?"

She let herself in, stunted figure of 5'2". She pale and she was soft, but there was no mistaking her for what she was. A matured, young woman. She did not shy back from the door frame, the room's light washing over her as she found her sister's gaze.



"Wow. You've got a wrinkle."

 

[Enedina Tal]

"And you're still short."


She quipped back at her younger sister ever fast on the verbal trigger, it had been like that even as bored children running away from studies and responsibilities. Enedina had been her sister's proverbial guardian and fiercely protected the smaller Tal sister from any and all she felt threatened Roselina. But as she grew older and her responsibilities as heir to the family and her fathers own ambitions grew more and more of a burden, she drifted away from her sister. She became increasingly suffocated by the long years spent on the frontlines; the same cheerful Enedina who was fast to joke and was overly protective of her sis was not the same Enedina who came back from war. Sometimes she wondered if she should've died, it seemed innocence had left the elder Tal sister many moons ago on the scorched grounds of Serenno, and for what outcome? it seemed fathers ambitions reached everything and spared no one. Not even his own flesh and blood.

Enedina moved from her bunk to embrace her sister but hesitated at the last moment, fear building in her gut at the thought of being rejected or outright hated. It was the one thing that burned at her soul amidst the sea of guilt and horror that had nearly drowned her with nightmares and flashbacks of the things she did. She wondered if Roselina could accept her when she had callously taken so many lives in the name of the homeworld; after all, she had so willingly executed dozens of prisoners after Serenno in some vain attempt at revenge for the deaths of her own men. Not once did it register that those men might've had sisters too, but then she didn't care back then; all she cared about was satisfying her desire for blood and reclaiming her sense of pride. She got to go home, and they didn't.

Roselina Tal ​

 

[Roselina Tal]

Roselina closed the distant, almost blind to the hesitation that had froze Enedina last moment. She don't know about the things her sister had to do to make it to this moment, but she was able to fill in the blanks. She had always been sharp, she just didn't see the sacrifices her sister had to make the same way Enedina did.

Death was a far away concept. She was just... she just glad to have her back. She hugged her a little tighter than she meant to, her trepidation dispersing. Three years had passed and it barely felt like yesterday.

She pulled away, her expression pinched as she took in all the nuanced changes on her sister's face.

"Yeah, well. You can blame genes." She liked to. Speaking of which. "I suppose father couldn't make it." The bitter edge could barely be contained. She was stupid for expecting otherwise. The war was actually over yet.

She spread out her hands and surveyed the empty room. She looked for luggage. Unpacked clothing. Hair brushes. Any sign that could hint at her sister's intentions.

"Will you be staying or-"

 

[Enedina Tal]

"Well, you know how it is, he's a ghost these days, and if he isn't out on the front, he's holed up in an office doing lord knows what," she shrugged to herself almost apathetically, eyes cast down on the panelled flooring as if an admission of some deeply held guilt or pain stowed deep away and sealed tightly below a stoic surface. Though the pair of them had been separate for many years, it seemed deeply ironic that Enedina had barely seen her father either in those three long brutal years. He had held her at arm's length for much of the conflict; whatever real love he had at the start seemed washed away by the tides of war and bloodshed. Maybe father did love her and Roselina, but Enedina seemed increasingly sure it had not been the same father that led a nation to war three long years ago; ambition seemed to corrupt all it touched with madness or the death of all that made someone human. What was family to the intoxicating glory of securing a legacy to your name?

"Only a few days, I'm due to be posted to a new posting somewhere near Generis; I don't expect much other than boredom and counting down the hours until I'm sent away again; they say we'll be in Galidraan by the next month."

Roselina Tal ​

 

[Roselina Tal]

"That soon," Roselina commented, shock tinting her tone. It had always felt like a distant dream, one that they would never actually reach. Countless hurdles had marked their exile, some even seeming inescapable. Not that anything could ever stop their father from his goals. He would tell if death if it was ever stupid enough to come for him, and he likely already had.

She realized then how lucky it was that their entire family had survived.

Not many others could claim to be so untouched.

She let out a slow breath and wrapped her arms around her core. "And you'll be expecting no trouble, will you? The fighting should be done, this is all now just... formalities, yes?" If she could bend the war to work her way, she would have years ago.

Alas, what good was a girl at challenging the whims of fate?

She pulled off her gloves, her hands clammy.