Chapter Text
At last, the trembling little freighter set its shaky legs on the planet’s surface. Vanto’vah’nya stood promptly, passing the two other passengers on her way to the exit. Her fellow travelers were just as carefully nondescript as she was; wearing long, heavy traveling cloaks and low hoods, obscuring everything from complexion to number of limbs. She, in addition to all of that, wore tinted pilot’s goggles over her eyes to hide the red color and slight illumination that would mark her as a true foreigner. She paid the pilot quickly and stepped out into the muddy streets of the capital city of Clear Spring on the planet Lysatra.
She wasn’t sure if this was where her husband’s family still lived, or if they still lived at all. But when Eli Vanto had last had contact with his mother and father, they were still operating their family shipping company from the same building it had been in for 50 years. If, as she hoped, Eli had survived the destruction of the Reverent and been lost outside of Chiss space, he would certainly have tried to contact them. It would likely be a dead end, but after weeks of travel, it felt like a victory just to have arrived.
Her Galactic Basic was by now so flawed that she had used the local trade language, Sy Bisti, almost exclusively during her journey. Once she had spoken Basic well, almost fluently, but that had been years ago. She hadn’t used the language at all since she had sold the little cottage on Sposia and Eli had taken up a more permanent residency with the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet. The only reason she had learned the language in the first place was because many years ago, when she had been young and in love with then-Lieutenant Commander Eli’van’to, she had asked him to teach her as an excuse to spend time with him.
Then, it had been like a secret code between them. Now, her poor grammar and heavy accent made it nearly useless.
She didn’t know Eli’s parents’ names. At least, she didn’t think she could say them confidently. Eli had only told her once, and the names had sounded so foreign that she was sure she had garbled them in her mind over the years. But showing up and asking if anyone knew where the parents of Eli Vanto lived would be too risky, even for her already shaky plan. Eli had likely, wrongly, been branded an Imperial deserter. So she went with a different tactic.
She approached a man who appeared to be checking a shipping manifest for a nearby freighter.
“I was told that the Vanto shipping company is looking for workers,” she said. “Do you know where I can find that company?”
“Vanto? Vanto Shipping?”
She nodded.
He rattled off the directions, gesturing the directions she would need to turn, then looked back to his manifest. She thanked him politely, and headed off.
After about a ten minute walk through the town’s modest business district, she came to the shop indicated. And there, on the small sign written in Basic script was a name that she recognized instantly: Vanto. She took a breath and allowed herself a moment of hope. Then she stepped through the door into a very small storefront.
Through the heavy tint of her lenses, she saw that the room was empty of people and nearly empty of anything else. There was a long countertop that ran the entire width of the shop, and several paper maps on the wall behind it. A small wood bench stood beside the door.
When she’d entered, a bell above the door had sounded, giving her a chill of mostly-forgotten memory. The bell had summoned a man, and from her first sight of him, she knew he must be Eli’s father. He had the same cheekbones and jaw, and the same complexion. At least she was in the right place.
The man took in her appearance as best he could. “Can I help you?”
She had been prepared to not know who the man was, and to make more oblique references to her search. But seeing how he must be the very person she was looking for, she discarded her script and went with something more direct.
“You are the father of Eli Vanto?”
The man’s eyes narrowed at once. “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him in years. Leave us alone.”
“Please,” she said, raising her arms and lowering her hood so he could see her face.
Undisguised fear came into the man’s eyes when he saw her light blue skin and dark blue hair.
“Who are you?” he said, a warning tone creeping into his voice.
“You don’t know me, but if you are the father of Eli Vanto, I am your daughter-in-law, Vah’nya Vanto.” Raising the pilot’s goggles away from her eyes, she continued, “And I’m afraid I have sorrowful news about your son.”