Moonwater Perfume/Written at the Rising Point of Najahal

It’s now three days until Josym’s inauguration into the knighthood, and four days until his birthday celebration...and the other notable event of the night. In preparation for the reception, my benefactor, Lord Reunahn, has decided to prepare a grand oration in his nephew’s honor. It is supposed to be recited during the banquet, which is an odd return to the great fetes of the past, when this type of entertainment was common.

For a memorial, there would be hours of speeches about the deceased, from preconception to postmortem. For a birthday, there would be much less material to cover about the individual.

I am curious to hear about Josym’s childhood incidents. I know he couldn’t have been the studious and retiring type. He’s too interested in doing things, in being active. Sitting still is rather difficult for him, as I've come to notice. When he is getting involved in a serious discussion, he has a tendency to get up start pacing, or moving about the room and trying to adjust things even if they don't need to be fixed. He has a strong kinetic center, to say the least.

I spent most of the afternoon in the library with Lord Reunahn, pulling out stacks of old datacards to aid in our research. His Lordship gathered up one of the stacks in front of me at the reading table to take across the room to add to the four others on his own table. Which was no problem, as he reads far more quickly than I could ever hope to do in this lifetime.

I didn’t hear from him for some time, until he called out, “I’ve come across a person who might be appropriate to use in my speech.” He had come up with the idea last night to tie in certain stories from the many ancestors of the Di’sallach clan as a way to show the roots from which Josym springs. He also decided to weave in some of those ancestors from the Huranz clan, although this breaks tradition, since the heir is only descended from the paternal line according to the law. His maternal heritage should remain unacknowledged except during dowry negotiations.

“Wonderful. Hopefully it’s a dashing and colorful figure so we won’t have to be bored any longer than necessary.” I’ll admit a certain attraction to those who are glamorous and unusual. It can only enhance Josym’s reputation by attaching his name to that of an established and glorious personage from the past. And I trust him to put on a good show for the evening, yet also provide him with a grand story that blesses his soul with meaning. To know where he is going means that he must know where his roots are planted, to mangle the old saying. (I fear eloquence has escaped me in recent days. Niena’s predicament still weighs upon my thoughts. She is doing well at Lord Cirkah’s manor, but he has just recovered from a lengthy bout of the Brandy Ague, so his health is precarious. Which only adds to concern that the old boy might pass on sooner rather than later, and that would put her back into limbo once again).

“Would you please hand me that imager next to your elbow?” The sound of Lord Reunahn’s voice interrupted my useless line of thought, thankfully. He’s a sneaky sort who can easily scoot across the room without creating a disturbance, which allowed him to stand behind me near the bookcase. Actually, to call that thing a bookcase is incorrect, as it only holds the digital wisps of copies of words rather than the true representations of those solid edifices that are truly books. Despite their scarcity in our present days, there are still weighty tomes hidden in personal collections, or academic fortresses. Rare, yes, but they do still exist.

“Have you found something diverting?” I gave him the imager without any deference to custom, in that I did not stand up, or curtsy, or perform any other type of honor-thy-overlord nonsense. Fortune has granted me into the custody of someone who dislikes pointless ceremony. It almost seems as if he emerged from stock other than the puffed and rotten aristos. He has morals, for one thing. Now I’m getting a better picture of the origins of Josym’s nature. He is a combination of his mother and his father’s brother. I wondered for a moment if there was a time before his birth where Lady Casana and…no, not possible. She has always been faithful to her husband, not only in those early days when he still seemed to love her in a limited fashion, but also in the years since then, after the mysterious incident which drew them apart soon after Josym’s birth. The Prestatine has spent those long years wrapped in the relative comfort of prayer and contemplation while her husband has used women to pass the time. No, Jos’ father is the Prestat, not his uncle.

“I’ve come across an old disc that I haven’t seen in years.”

“What is it?” This mention of an old disc peaked my curiosity. It reminded me of the small cache of discs and cards I had passed to Josym that night in the wardrobe. I’ve felt hesitant about bringing up the matter with him since that night. Finding evidence of a lost relative among the stacks of genealogical treasures perhaps was the Force showing its hand. But it still doesn’t mean we can talk about it without looking over our proverbial shoulders.

“It’s a memory record.” Lord Reunahn turned towards me, with a small blue opaque disc in his right hand. “This one happens to contain various media related to my youngest brother's medal ceremony.” Then he sighed. I understood why this reaction came from a man usually not prone to a stray walk into melancholy. Lord Kenor was the tenth and last child of the previous leader of House Di’sallach. He made a career for himself in the Republic Navy, eventually taking command of the particularly noteworthy corvette Nyneve. He served with distinction at the Battles of Arbra, Cezno, and Wriestel during the Clone Wars. But it was the unfortunate debacle over Vashti where Lord Kenor lost his vessel and his life when a Trade Federation charger sent forth a laser and turned both the crew and the vessel into permanent dust. Only several weeks before his demise, the Council of Ancients honored Lord Kenor with the highest honor that can be afforded to a member of the Houses, aside from the Lordship itself. The Medal of The Rykos Order was presented to him in a ceremony inside the capital at the Lyorita Great Palace. It was a splendid day for the Di’sallach clan, with all the leading members of the twenty-one Prestatures gathered together on such a rare and august occasion. So this memory record contained media related to that day from footage taken by the official holographer.

Lord Reunahn inserted the disc into the imager. “Let’s see what the past can show us.” He took a seat next to me in the empty chair next to me. Then we both leaned forward to watch whatever was about to unfold.

It took a few seconds for the imager to call up the data; colored opaque lucetene is never the best repository to permanently store information. Soon enough, though, an image flickered, then spread outward from the center, and finally coalesced into something tangible which played just above the table’s surface. A scene of grandeur in miniature from only twenty years ago, but it could just as easily been from some foreign era several millenniums in the past.

In the scene before us, we saw a grand outdoor spectacle. What we beheld was the day when Lord Kenor was awarded his medal. Towers of gaily beribboned fabric swayed in a breeze; twenty-one banners, each with the House glyphs embedded into the fabric. Underneath each banner sat representatives from each Lordship. The men, at least: Prestats, heirs, descendants who would never stood a chance of inheriting a title other the one they received at birth. Rising above the assemblage gathered in the quadrangle, up a wide stack of steps, was a dais. On this platform were the major male members of the Quodris line. I recognized them all from their grim visages left behind for posterity in the portrait gallery. From the far left, I recognized the four doddering uncles, including Cirkah, who looked only slightly less elderly than he does now. After them were the five sons of the past Lord who were still alive at the time of the ceremony. (Of course, the four daughters were all tucked away in the city manse). First in the line was Josym’s father, then a particularly dashing young man with a full head of hair and the same flashy dress sense that I had come to know over the years since I was first presented to him as a young cortigia.

“Sir, you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Ah, you flatter a nearly old man. I’m afraid the years have altered me.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Not very much.”Honestly, except for the certain minor physical changes, Lord Reunahn still appears much the same as the younger man in the holo. The two sons between Reunahn and Kenor werem’t memorable. At the far right of this group gathered on the platform were the man of the hour, and his father, Lord Girov.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">These men were all anticipated faces. But my attention was drawn past this group, and past the podium to two individuals who stood at the farthest edge of the dais. They had just come into frame, up the steps from the gathering down in the forecourt. They weren’t part of the Di’sallachs. And one of them was a woman. Definitely not a normal face to see at one of the usual male-only ceremonies. Someone who may have been a man, woman, or something else accompanied her. The other being was definitely a Jedi, since they were clad in the brown robe so typical of those mystics, with the hood drawn up around the head, so their face was obscured. But I was able to discern the woman’s identity..."Lady Casana!”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Lord Reunahn peered at the image. “She came with her brother and wished to speak with Father about an urgent matter. We never found out what was so important that she was willing to break protocol.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I was less interested in the reason for this appearance than the identity of the knight accompanying Josym’s mother. It could only be one person. Her brother. This was my first view of Josym Huranz, the last Jedi of his clan.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“How odd that we should come across his image so near to a certain someone’s birthday. Would it not make for an interesting gift if my dear nephew were to see what is contained on this disc?”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I looked over at him. “You already had the disc hidden away before now.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He reached out and turned off the imager. “It was tucked away in one of the storage closets. Unused dusty places are a perfect place to hide items of historical interest which also are suppressed by the orders of unenlightened individuals.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So I wasn’t the only one who dared to venture into those spots. I was never consciously searching for anything hidden the day I found the records I handed over to Josym. An unseen force drew me towards the second closet. I wondered if it was the same way for my benefactor.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Apparently, he either was able to read my mind for the first and last time, or else the mood in the air was such that it was obvious he needed to explain the circumstances surrounding his discovery of the disc. “I could not possibly tell you what prompted my excursion into a storage closet. It was all very strange. I was pulled towards it, barely aware of what I was doing even when I opened the door. And there it was, sitting alone on this shelf that was far less dusty than one might expect to find in a space that has remained behind a locked door for Deity knows how long.”

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">How odd, as those were the exact circumstances under which I found those items now in Josym’s possession. How could things tucked away years ago by someone eager to keep them away from the cut-and-obliterate editing of the Prestat suddenly turn up in such an obvious location? Not once, but twice, within weeks of each occurrence.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Certain sure, there are strange events afoot.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">Part XI