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I own nothing. And I warn you, I know even less about astronomy so all you nerds forgive my blatant lack of celestial knowledge. Let's just get that out of the way firsthand.
Our story begins on Olvus, one of the many moons in a planet within the Andromeda Galaxy.
Keithek didn't notice the gaggle of kids sneaking up on him until the rock one of them threw hit him squarely in the back of his head with enough force to send him face first into the dirt.
"Bullseye!" Shouted one of them as his cronies began to heartily pat him on the back. Keithek clumsily got to his feet and glared at his tormentors. They looked disappointed to see him get back up.
"Aww, shinx*!" Cried a girl.
"I thought you'd brought that monster down for good!"
"Still, that bump on his head doesn't exactly look comfortable" Reasoned a boy in spectacles.
"You get points for that"
It hurt the purple skinned child to hear them talk about hurting him as if it were a game. He bunched his furry fists.
"Leave me alone!"
The children looked mildly perturbed to see that he had a backbone but one of the braver boys quickly found confidence in the fact that there were more of them in numbers.
"Why should we?" He retorted. His companions leeched off his tenacity like parasites.
"Yeah!"
"We don't want monsters like you in our colony!"
"Especially not a Galra!"
"Your kind forced us to live on this stupid moon after destroying our planet!"
"And our royalty was murdered!"
"The universe would be a better place without you in it!"
Keithek didn't even care about the blood dripping from his palms where his nails had dug into. How he wished that he had taken after his mother, or at least inherited her ability to shape-shift.
"I'm not a Galra! I'm an Altean just like you guys!"
A small girl stuck her tongue out at him.
"Only half Altean!"
"And that makes you even worse!" Her older brother grasped her shoulder protectively
"You're not even a Galra! You're just a freak!"
"My mommy says the only reason you're alive is because your mommy had no con-con-concept of dignity!" Taunted a small girl, taking care to perfectly repeat the sophisticated phrase in her childish mouth.
"She-threw away...her pride as an Altean for a Galra one-night-stand!" She recited the phrase as if she were presenting it for a grade.
Keithek wasn't sure what she meant by a 'one night stand' but it sounded like an insult. He decided to take it as one. He picked up the rock that was thrown at his head, and hurled it back at the bullies. It hit the girl, square in the face. She burst into tears as if on queue. Everybody rushed to comfort her while glaring daggers at him.
"What's wrong with you?"
"She was just a little kid"
"Its not like he cares! He is a monster!"
The group rushed away after threatening him the next time their paths crossed. Keithek waited until they were out of sight and his hearing couldn't pick up the sound of their heartbeats before he let the tears fall. Fortunately, they were long-since dried by the time he was approached again. This time, he heard the footsteps and looked up to see an Altean woman with a plump rosy face, ill-suited for the sour expression currently painted on it.
"My little girl came home crying with a black eye on her pretty little face! She says that you threw a rock at her like some kind of barbarian!"
Keithek scowled. There was no doubt in his mind that the kid hadn't bothered to tell her mother why he threw the rock in the first place. His eyes darted to the side of her dress, just in time to see a glimpse of a leering face and his galra ears managed to detect the faint sound of snickering.
"You leave them alone, you understand" Continued the woman, angrily shaking her finger.
"I can see why you might feel jealous of ordinary children, what with you being a half-breed freak, but that's no excuse for resorting to violence. Don't think for a minute that your savage Galra nature will be tolerated. I have a good mind to report you to the council. Why they decreed we tolerate you in the first place after your irresponsible floozy of a mother dumped you here without a second thought-"
Keithek had heard enough. He quietly got off the rock he was sitting on, and began to head for home. He hoped that his motherly tormentor would be so caught up in her rant, that she wouldn't even notice him leaving. Unfortunately, he wasn't lucky enough.
"Don't you walk away from me, you little brat!" She shrieked. He broke into a run.
"Were you even listening. Did you even register a word I said in that thick in-altean* skull of yours?" She called after him.
"You really are a simple-minded monster!"
He didn't really want to head back into town, but it was the only way home, which those kids and their mother had just proved was the only place where he where he wouldn't be reminded that he was a freak"
He didn't really pay attention to the direction he was going, but sure enough, he found himself in the market place. He slowed his pace down to a trudge, over the cobblestoned streets and bit his lip as he tried to ignore the sudden air of tension that washed over the townsfolk.
A street vendor closed shop and began to pack up his goods in the middle of a transaction. Not that the customer wasn't too busy apprehensively gawking at Keithek to care. A dog* moved protectively in front of it's owner and began snarling at Keithek as he passed by. He hoped the owner wouldn't feel threatened enough to let go of it's leash.
If Keithek didn't know any better, he'd have thought everyone was seeing him for the first time. He never did understand why everybody seemed to think he was oblivious to their hushed whispers about him as he walked by. Especially considering how the very reason they acted like he was infected with a case of scyrillian flu* was because he was part Galra, a race of aliens who were known for their superb sense of hearing.
"Are you sure it's only half Galra?"
"How does a freak of nature like that even come into existence? It's the product two completely different species from different planets so less! How in the quiznak does it have a stable genetic code? "
"Don't make any sudden movements. You can't get into the head of a creature like that. You never know when it's gonna go beserk"
"As if I'd want to understand what makes a wild thing like that, tick"
"As if anybody would even willingly come within 100 feet of a Galra, in the first place"
"Well it's bimbo of a mother certainly did. She even went the extra mile of getting in one"
"I'll never understand why the council felt like they were obligated to honor her request of raising the little beast on Olvus. Unless of course she used the same technique that got her pregnant in the first place!"
"Still, you cant blame her for trying to put as much distance between that thing and herself as possible."
"Well she must have felt some kind of maternal instinct for it, however grotesque it was. Otherwise, she'd have had no problem with letting us turn it over to the Galra's research division. Bet the druids would have a field day dissecting that disgusting abomination."
Keithek was dimly aware of the hot tears flowing down his face, but he was so angry that he didn't even care. He wanted to lash out more than anything. To scream if any of the gossipers knew what it was like to be called a monster, to be treated like their very existence was some kind of crime against the Altean race.
"I didn't ask to be born!" He thought sourly.
"It's not my fault that my mom fell in love with a Galra!" Suddenly he noticed a small child questioningly pointing at him out of the corner of his eye. The irritation with being gawked at like a zoo animal threatened to surge past his breaking point. He was about to go up to her and demand to know what her problem was when a woman seemed to materialize out of nothing at protectively scooped her up. Keithek resignedly turned away.
"Mommy! Mommy! What is that thing?" A high pitched voice, no doubt belonging to the child struck his eardrums.
"That is a very dangerous monster" This voice probably belonged to the mom.
"This one is about your age, but it was grown-up ones like it that nearly made the Altean's extinct. All they know or care about is hurting people. Whatever you do, do not get it's attention ever again. Do you understand me?"
"That sounds really scary" Keithek gritted his teeth.
"But, I'm not afraid" He raised a furry, purple eyebrow.
"You should be afraid. He could gobble you up in a minute!" The mother's desperation to get her daughter to understand how dangerous Keithek supposedly was, seemed to be on the verge of hysterical.
"But he won't" Replied the child confidantly.
"Because you'll protect me! That's what mommies are for, right?"
Keithek heard the mother give a throaty chuckle . He turned around to see her affectionately cuddle her daughter before gingerly kissing her forehead.
"You're absolutely right. I will protect you. From monsters and anything else. Because you're more precious to be than 1000 barrels of quintessence! You're the most precious thing in the entire universe to me!"
The little girl girl giggled.
"I love you mommy!"
"I love you more!"
"You'll always be there for me won't you?"
"I promise!"
Suddenly, the woman noticed Keithek still watching them and glared at him as if to confirm her promise to her daughter.
"Get out of here! Even monsters like you should know it's not polite to stare!"
He sighed and trudged away.
After what felt like an eternity, the concentration of the crowd of spectres slowly decreased until he found himself facing a colonial-style bungalow, the home of Lucretia, the Chief elder. The only reason why he was permitted to live on Olvus, despite all six of the other council members voting to turn him over to the Galra was because she had the final say in all decisions and also took responsibility for his upbringing. At school, his classmates made a tradition out of seeing who was brave enough to incite the violent nature of his Galra side, and the chief elder made sure to remind him of the gratitude he expected him to owe her every time the principal sent him home for his classmate's unruly behavior.
Keithek was grateful that she had recently decided that he was 'civilized enough' to be left unsupervised inside the house alone and rewarded him with a key. Because on the door, was a note, saying that she had a late meeting with the council (and a reminder not to help himself to anything but the standard grainy mush she always fed him, due to the extent of the limitations on the planet's natural sources of food) He went inside and helped himself to his daily dinner ration, trying to suppress the revulsion that every cell in his body felt towards eating the same tasteless slop every day. Afterwards, he began his usual chores of washing the dishes, cleaning the floor, and bringing in the pinned up laundry. He found the image of the mother and the child replaying in his mind's eye over and over again. He wondered if his own mother ever made promises to protect him when he was a baby.
"Even if she did, it's not like she kept it, anyways" He reminded himself, bitterly. He couldn't remember a time without the chief elder or her iron-hard rod (the thought of which prompted him to instinctively bring his hand to his shoulder and wince) But three years ago. when he was six, he asked her if she was his mother.
"Don't be ridiculous!" She had snapped, without even stopping her work at the spinning wheel.
"There's no resemblance, I'm far too old, and it'll be a cold day in nocturnoir* before I let a Galra have his way with me"
Keithek was mildly curious as to what she meant by 'have his way' when he was gripped with another question.
"Are you my grandma, then?"
"No" She replied curtly. He mulled over his options.
"Then, who is my mama? What about my papa?"
The chief elder finally looked up from her work.
" I was hoping to wait until you were mature enough to handle this, but since you obviously won't stop pestering me until you're satiated, I suppose I've no choice but to tell you"
Keithek's eyes were wide with anticipation.
"She died. Giving birth to you. Her reproduction system wasn't prepared for dealing with an alien life form. To tell the truth I didn't expect her to survive her pregnancy for more than a month much less up until the point of delivery. If I'm being totally honest, I didn't expect you to, either."
Keithek felt like he'd been slapped in the face.
"Wh-what about my papa?" He said slowly.
"A few years ago, the Galra were at war with another planetary system in our galaxy and used Olvus as a military outpost. Your mother got too friendly with a soldier who filled her head with all kinds of promises about how he would make her his wife and take her off this stinking rock back to wherever it is those purple parasites go when they aren't trying to conquer everything in sight. Ourania was always an adventurous girl who could never resist the prospect of new experiences."
The misery that Keithek had felt himself sinking deeper into with every word that came out of the chief elder's mouth, was temporarily put on hold.
"My mother's name was Ourania?" He asked
"Yes and I came up with the name myself. Her mother and I were good friends" The chief elder's usually grim expression was now mixed with something vaguely resembling wistfullness.
"When she and her husband died of an epidemic, I swore to her on her deathbead that I'd look after her little girl. But apparently I didn't do a good enough job because she wasn't even officially considered a woman in our society when the war ended and her fiance returned to Galra HQ, leaving Olvus, her and his unborn child in the dust"
Keithek bit his lip.
"He just...left? He didn't keep his promise? Was it-was it because of me?"
The chief elder sighed and resumed spinning.
"He left without saying goodbye and he didn't even leave her a letter explaining his reason. But Ourania did say she told him she was pregnant and I wouldn't be surprised if that was it."
Keithek sniffed loudly and blinked his eyes as hard as he could. Lucretia didn't look up
"Interspecies crossbreeding is not an everyday occurrence. The possibility that she'd get pregnant probably never even crossed his mind. But on the rare occasion when it does happen, the mother and the child don't usually live to tell the tale" The elder wiped some sweat off her brow and shrugged.
"Maybe he was planning on taking her with him at first. But I wouldn't blame him for not wanting to watch his wife die before or after giving birth. Probably expected you to be a stillborn either way. Try not to hold a grudge against him"
She stopped talking after that point. Keithek had slunk away to his room and cried for hours that day.
He wondered what his mother looked like. The chief elder never saw any point in keeping photographs of the dead, and since she always claimed that he took after his father, he couldn't even use his own reflection as a basis for his imagination. He liked to pretend that she looked like Allura, the legendary Altean princess who went missing during the Galra invasion of Altea. While the chief elder didn't keep any portraits of her in the house, everyone else in the colony seemed to be going out of their way to make up for it. Keithek couldn't remember a single building he had ever set foot in where there wasn't at least one shrine dedicated to a portrait of the dark-skinned, White-haired woman. Whether she was sitting in a meadow, or on her father, King Alfor's knee, Keithek always found himself transfixed on her. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she was always in the form of an immobile drawing, but she was the only woman aside from the Chief Elder who didn't cringe, shudder, scowl, or quickly scuttle away in the opposite direction whenever he appeared in the vicinity. And as long as he had no way of knowing what she looked like, Keithek couldn't imagine a better woman to be his mother.
*Made up swear word
*I was going to use the word, inhuman, but it didn't seem right, considering that we're talking about aliens
*Made up Altean disease
*No it's not an Earth dog. It's a species of alien that Altean people have domesticated over the years, breeding them to be companions. But it's bright turquoise with blue spots and it has scales and horns.
*The Galra equivalent of hell. I couldn't think of a better name and if it's mentioned in the original cartoon, I don't watch it.