Footholds

I watched her from the other side of the fire pit. When we caught each other’s gaze, her face turned stony and firm. When she interacted with the clutch, she was more at ease. She had no worries or concern. She knew her place in the group hierarchy.

The clutch didn’t differentiate between genders. Males and females had a place in the clutch that seemed to be a combination of skill, worthiness, and merit rather than the regular order of gender chronology.

The burliest male in this clutch was not at the apex of leadership. From what I could tell, he was somewhere in the middle. She, my love, was in the upper reaches of the group. She had rights and rank above that behemoth. He had to follow her orders.

Everyone in the clutch seemed to be able to submit ideas regardless of rank. The clutch leader was a middle aged man with greying hair that was cut short and slicked back with some sort of oil. His face, like the others was worn and seemingly sand-blasted. There were pockmarks in his reddened flesh. He was from the deep desert wastes.

He called himself Aes. She was introduced to me as Tersphaaret M’Peeri Mopia. She allowed me to call her Phaari. I didn’t know how long that was going to last. I may have just been dropped in rank within the pack.

Being an off-worlder had already put me at a disadvantage, but now that Phaari was angry and distancing herself from me, other members of the pack could be free to challenge my position. Based on past history, that meant anything could happen. I didn’t like being in the midst of unknown possibilities. It didn’t track well with my orders or my team.

Wilkins kept looking at me from underneath his helmet as if to ask, “What the hells?” He was getting nervous. I ignored him. I was the one who let me feelings get in the way of the mission. I had to find a way to fix it.

The mission depended upon our integration with the indigenous forces to defend against what was coming from beyond the solar system. The Sparq Legion’s cruisers were two days from planet fall and it was going to be hell trying to defend the place without local support.

The ball of dust and sand dunes needed to be secured. We needed the foothold. I needed her.

3. Clutch

Clutch

She seemed to absorb the dark shadows of the cave as she stood. I was kneeling there with my mouth agape. I must have looked like a fool.

“Your Epuuc does not rule the clutch or what it feels. My pain is my own. I feel for the clutch and the clutch feels for me. That is simply it. There is no other than the clutch.”

Back on the Youngstown, I read the field reports. The clutch was more than family and friends. It extended beyond the local nuclear family. It was beyond the definition of social, casual, and intimate love. Clutch held an amalgam of deep interactions.

One’s clutch held not only brothers and sisters, but also fathers and mothers. It held parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins of all sorts. It also held more than familial members. A clutch could also contain the children you grew up with outside of the family.

The clutch also held lovers, past and present. It held people together beyond feeling and ego. Clutchmates were bonded for life even though their relationships changed over time. It was a mind-boggling net of connections. To my knowledge, there were no foreign clutchmates. We were not close enough to be included in the defining qualities of clutch.

“But,” I blurted as her boots scraped against the flooring, “Epuuc is clutch to me.” She stopped and looked back with hardened eyes.

“What is Epuuc to the air?” she asked. “What is Epuuc to the earth, and water? Does Epuuc consider his clutch before all others?”

“He is love and desire.” I fumbled with the words. I knew she understood love. I saw it in her eyes and the way she looked at me.

“Is that all?” She was waiting for the answer. “What does Epuuc know of the fire that burns slowly, but cold? What of the invisible storms?”

The field reports didn’t cover anything about invisible storms or cold fire. Her metaphors were lost on me.

“But, what I’m speaking about is beyond what is front of you physically. It’s a feeling that comes from deep within. It isn’t tangible. You cannot touch it.” I patted the cavern floor.

“Then it isn’t clutch and has no place here.” She turned from me and walked towards the others who were gathered around the firelight. I stood, confused at the conversation. There was obviously something I was missing.

I followed her lead and joined the others as well. Her smile was back in place. Some of the other natives nodded to me, I nodded back and found a spot where I could just gaze into the fire. There was something about that word that meant more than I was meant to understand.

The fire danced for me, drawing me into the flickering. The embers lit to a smoldering red as the slight breeze came in from the cave entrance. I sat in the group and contemplated clutch. Some of them were clutchmates, many were not though. These were my fellow crew from the Youngstown. They were my comrades, brothers-in-arms.

The word meant more though. It was some sort of intrinsic connection. All I could do is sit and hope the mystical meaning would come to me as I sat by the flame.

2. The Touch of Epuuc | 4. Footholds

The Touch of Epuuc

“Oh you,” I could see her face better now that my eyes adjusted to the darkness in the cave and the diffused firelight. “You say that without this ‘Epuuc’ you would not know me. What is he that is so powerful?”

“My dear,” I crept closer to her and took her hand, “Epuuc is one of the Primordial. He is one of the few that were spawned from Xaoc and because of that, he is within each and every one of us. Epuuc is the one who pulls the heartstrings in the dead of night.”

“His tunes are played and we, the songs are meant to be full of sound and joy. It is only through Epuuc that we could dare to understand the life we live. Without His force, there would be no love. There would only be the darkness and hatred that boils within mankind as a whole.”

“Epuuc moves that hatred into the confines of warpspace to live with his father, Xaoc. This is how the storms keep going. This is why travelling through the warp is so dangerous. There is much hatred and rage there. All of the negative emotions that Epuuc finds end up there in the swirling mass.”

“As one of the Primordial though, his Touch still brings about some of the confusion and pain of his father in the warp. At first the Touch of Epuuc is akin to insanity. It fills one’s mind with thoughts that ought not to be there when trying to maintain focus.”

“It brings about a melding of fantasy and reality. It fills your heart and soul with a fullness that cannot be truly recognized while in the moment. It is a flock of birds singing a silent song that only you can hear. It is a bristling upon your skin that only you can feel. It is all of this and more.”

I could see her brows knit together in concern. Her eyes drifted to the fire at the other end of the cavern and then back to me.

“With all of this, there is still pain?” she asked, her mouth suddenly becoming serious and her shoulders becoming fixed. I could tell that the casual nature of the conversation had shifted.

“As with anything we experience,” I paused, licking my lips, “there are different facets. The orbits around suns create day and night. The things we eat can be sour and sweet, or even savory and bitter. It is the same with the Touch.”

“It can bring about such heights that no starship could ever reach. It can also bring about the most depraved lows that would put any time spent traversing the warp to shame. It has brought about times of war and times of peace. It has brought men to murder as well as brought forth new life.”

“The Touch of Epuuc is tainted through perspective. It is the manifestation of our own chaos that we inherited from the Primordials when they created mankind.”

She let my hand go and made to stand up. Her face was frozen. She was back to being the warrior that I found in what seemed like a lifetime ago. The hard points were all in place.

“I do not like this ‘Touch’ as you call it. It does not serve me well.”

1. Provenance | 3. Clutch

Provenance

Our part of the cavern was dark and well away from the group as a whole. The firelight was lost in the darkness that reached down from the ceiling. I could only see the slight glint in her eyes that let me know she was looking at me. They drew me in as her confident voice, soft and absorbed by the cave, asked me for a tale of my homeworld.

“Xaoc was the first thing. There was nothing before him. He was a raging chasm churning with all of the energy of the cosmos. Within the folds and rents in time and space, he seethed like a terrifying but powerful child. Xaoc was angry, hungry, frightened, and alone. He was a mere shade of what he was to become.”

“As an unshaped mass, jumbled beyond recognition, Xaoc could not ascertain what was right or wrong within the new voidspace he occupied. There was nothing he could observe beyond the yawning gap that was his great self. His was an energy and body born of pure cosmic power. The wont and scope of Xaoc could not be contained.”

“The unstoppable Xaoc spilled over out of the chasm of his self and roiled into and out of voidspace. He was sheer might manifested in the jumble of all elements. He was the shapeless taking form. His birth from the nothingness of all could only be reflected in the great rage that he was feeling.”

“It was here that the wilds of warpspace were born. They still storm and writhe with that remembered pain of birth. They still heave with that unhappiness and solitude. They still scream in Xaoc’s great name.”

“In the void, Epeboc was spat out of the mass that was Xaoc. Epeboc’s darkness soothed the great beast and cooled his temperament. The tears he cried pooled within voidspace and Nus was born from the coagulation and freezing of this primordial liquid.”

“Bits of power were scattered from Xaoc and this thrashing fit of being born. These too cooled and coalesced into what would be known as Taia, Taptapoc, and Epuuc or the Land, the Abyss, and Love.”

“This is how my homeworld started. This is how everything started. We all exist in a fine line between what is voidspace and what is warpspace. Without Xaoc, we would be nothing more than an insignificant burp of soulless energy moving within the cosmos. Without Epeboc and Nus, we would know only the boiling of the stars.”

“Without Taia, we would not know the lands of planets orbiting the stars. We wouldn’t understand her gifts that she brought. We wouldn’t understand the soul of voidspace.”

“Without Taptapoc, we would not understand our own journeys through the void to get to the warp. We wouldn’t know what to fear in either the light or the darkness. We wouldn’t know that we were safe as he held the keys and chains of the beasts set to destroy us.”

“And, without Epuuc, I wouldn’t know you.”

2. The Touch of Epuuc