"Lujet! Epert opane eudiz euten."
My parents always scolded us in the tongue of my grandparents. Maybe they didn't want the locals to know what trouble they thought their children were, but really all it did was make us think that Gorbesh was a language used to tell you that you were doing something wrong.
"Dad, I was just showing Kiahle how to watch for Avieben to know when Hodierna and Sieben are out being treacherous." I loved showing my sister the stars at night while we laid in the back of our wagon empty from delivering our cargo to a nearby oasis.
"Nituki, you will one day take over this route. You need to pay attention. The desert is dangerous, especially at night when it wakes and comes alive. The yeehar depend on us to steer them safely through the sands back to home." Even when he admonished us, he could never hide the joy in his eyes when he was on the trade route with his kids.
"Trading is in our blood," he would say. "It is not just to earn coin for our family, but it is to brave the deserts to bring water, nourishment, and supplies to the oases. Without these they might not survive another season."
Our family had been traders and store owners for as long as we could remember. My grandparents were once rival store owners, both competing to make money and a name for themselves among the Gorbesh. It wasn't until the words of General Iluaja spread and they decided to follow his teaching and flee the Empire, that they learned they shared so much in common and became friends instead of competitors. I was never told how their path brought them to the desert lands of Velaka. Was it just to escape the chill of Misiumos or was it to find a new hardship to make them strong? Only one of my four grandparents survived the trip to Velaka. My grandfather never would talk about the migration and after seeing the pain behind his eyes whenever it came up, I knew to never ask.
When my parents grew up and married, they broke tradition and chose a new last name for their new desert life, Sutovazeuten or "Star of the Desert". It was based on my grandparents parting words to their loved ones,"We may be gone but we will always be under the same stars," and our new homeland.
Thankfully the Albarian trinkets and baubles my family held onto were exotic enough to fund opening a new shop and re-build their business. It was hard work, but my parents always made it look easy (at least to us). Even though I knew that one day my sister and I would be expected to run our shop, I had always loved the stars.
One night I snuck away to try and join the Moon Mage guild, but my dreams were crushed when they turned me away and told me that I had no inherent magic and would never know the stars as they did. I ran home crying, wasting my tears upon the sand. I never fully gave up my love for the stars, but for years I thought they had given up on me.
I was 12 when I learned war. I had heard stories of it before, but nothing prepares you for the reality of it. The Gorbesh had plenty of stories, and the Outland Tribe we now lived among had only just recently ended a war of retribution on a people who stole their homeland and drove them out into these deserts.
But I don't think anyone was ready for the war that Lyras brought. We should have listened to the Prydaen and Rakash who warned us of the evil fettered in their land, but who could fathom an evil like that? Someone who could not only kill your family members, but make them rise back up as mindless creatures who sought to kill you.
Even in the desert we were not safe, the destruction and devastation was endless and complete. Those who endured this time, did not survive it. We were and still are left with invisible scars from that time. My sister, who was my greatest friend, died to an early wave of zombie beasts as they swarmed an oasis while my father and I were out on a trade route. When we returned, we had to bury her among the sands along with so many others.
That night we woke to find my younger sister standing in the middle of our tent. We thought her a hallucination of grief, but as the moment lingered for what seemed like an eternity, we realized that she was there. My mother ran to her thinking the Gods had heard her prayers and bestowed their favor upon our family by returning her to us. That they had more planned for the daughter lost too soon. But that hope turned quickly to horror as she clawed into my mother’s throat, splattering blood everywhere. Suddenly my father and I saw our terrified reactions reflected in her lifeless eyes as we had to fight a demon in the body of my 10-year old sister’s body.
We ended the abomination that hijacked my sister’s corpse and were yet again forced to grieve a second day as we set the bodies of my mother and sister ablaze in the morning sun. Our hearts broken in ways that we can never say. My mother was the star in my mother’s eye and to this day, I don’t think he has ever really recovered.
With my sister’s death, my dream of her taking over the family shop so that I could pursue my study of the stars also died. I had to bury it among the sands so that I could shoulder the weight of my family’s future.
