Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Package Deliveries

Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in Package Deliveries

Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Package Deliveries
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻
(snip)

Casela gave him a moment and then approached him. “Santa, there is one more child. She’s been helping the little ones, but we shouldn’t forget her.”

Santa and Zanya returned, having left Vedi and Neltus to contemplate their gifts. There was one child left: Alyssa. This one Zanya had taken a long time to consider. Alyssa wrote beautiful stories. Filled with suspense, beauty, darkness, struggle, and believable characters that conveyed the harshness and the beauty of life. Her characters were believable and her worlds vivid and detailed. Zanya had collected the stories over the years, and Karra had submitted them to Intergalactic Publishing and they had made Alyssa an offer. A proof copy of the book was included. Alyssa was the last child she’d found in the mine, the child whom given her the stick doll wrapped in a tattered scrap of cloth, that still sat on the shelf in her office.

“Alyssa” A human girl, very serious, only 14 years old, but looking and carrying herself as so much more than her age. She walked up to Santa, but before he could delve into his bag she laid a gentle hand on his arm, but her gaze was riveted on Zanya. Her voice was cold and snapped like a whip, but barely a whisper and it cracked with heartache and abandonment. No one other than herself, Santa, and Zanya would hear her. She glared at Zanya, a persona that the girl knew was false, and said to Santa, “You can’t give me what I want.”

“For Casela to love me enough to keep me. I’ve known for years that ‘Zanya’ was just a cover. I’m sick of her pretending with me!” and she turns and leaves the yard, disappearing into the village.
Casela/Zanya

Cobb’s eyes followed the fleeing child, before unleashing a curious glare on Casela. Was there more to this trip than she had been willing to reveal? Would the Leviathan be welcoming another child into its midst? Or had Casela, like Cobb himself, already accepted the shackles of solitude, the denial of a primal longing to care for another, as fitting punishment for her former deeds?

Shifting a few paces away from the others, Zachariah beckoned for Synthi-er to join him. Then once within earshot, he whispered, “Do you intend to go after her? Or should this fake Santa chase her down instead?”

• Santa Cobb

Casela followed him and sat down abruptly on the low wall surrounding the yard. She looked – pale. She looked in the direction of where Alyssa had run off. “I had no idea. I’m not sure she wants to talk to me. There is nothing I can do for her anyway, no matter what I want to do.” She looked up at the sky. The sun was beginning to go down. “I have to go set something up for tonight. I’ll be gone a couple hours. Karra will get you anything you need.” She got up and walked towards the back gate and slipped out looking absolutely shattered.
Synthi-er/Zanya

Zachariah frowned. Clearly the child had pulled on that one, ragged heartstring that refused to spare Casela the pain of vulnerability. He knew better than to try and dig further. He definitely knew better than to follow.
But someone else, he suspected, might just welcome a little following up on right now. Reaching into his sack, he pulled out a stuffed bear made of long brown fur and with a large red heart emblazoned into its chest. With a shrug, he tucked the bear under his arm and then strolled off into the forest, following the direction he had last glimpsed the fleeing child…

• Santa Cobb

Alyssa had not wandered far. In her young teen angst she was hurting. The one woman who she loved more than anything didn’t want her. She had this ability, she always knew the truth. She always figured it was an over active imagination; that she could see all the possibilities of what might happen. Imagination and anxiety. But when she’d heard Ch’otok, the old Klingon hermit call Zanya ‘Casela’ all those years ago she knew something was different, that she ‘knew’ the truth simply by wanting to know it. It scared her, but nothing bad had ever happened to her. She’d stopped at the edge of the forest. She’d learned responsibility from Casela and Karra had always told the children to stay out of the woods. She was the oldest and so she had to make the example. They looked up to her and so she didn’t let them down. She sat down in the bole of a tree and cried, silently. Why didn’t she want her? Why did she keep coming back? She had seen possibilities, once and only once, where Zanya, Casela, had loved her and wanted her and had been her mother. Why wouldn’t she do it? Was something wrong with her, Alyssa? She cried softly feeling empty and unwanted.

She heard the foot steps approaching and looked up at ‘Santa.’ She studied him, wanting to know who he really was. Of course Santa was the embodiment of an ideal, so who was the man underneath. Many images chased across her mind, many possibilities for this man’s life. Some beautiful and happy, others much more horrifying than the one he had, and still others where he was still not alive. She dashed the tears from her face and watched him approach.
Alyssa