The Vanished Kings
Apr. 29th, 2016 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7A trial run, perhaps, at expanding the Poe Dameron: Space Latino ‘verse, with a little bit of background on the Ibericans and who they assimilated, and how the Outer Rim is basically run by an assortment of gangs.
Disclaimers below the text; warnings for mentions of dead animals and moderate associated gore, as they are processing animals for food in the scene. 3500 words, Poe and Norasol mostly, with a lot of Poe and Kes feels; Poe is 16 and a student at the Naval Academy. I am probably going to change my mind on a lot of the details, so I’m posting this here rather than discarding it. Totally send me asks or messages if there’s anything in here that is awesome or terrible to you.
One of the prisoners was staring at Poe. Poe glanced at him a couple of times, and looked away afterward, pretending not to be intimidated. But he was.
Karé noticed it and nudged him a little, but Poe just nudged her back. He was starting to get a suspicion of why the guy was staring, and it was sort of upsetting. The guy had tattoos all over his visible skin, on his knuckles, and even had scrawling writing across his forehead, little marks on his cheeks.
The words were in Iberican, the ones Poe could make out. He hadn’t given any sign, he knew that. But he had noticed. The guy was absolutely staring at him like that because he recognized, somehow, that Poe was Iberican too. And Poe didn’t know how he knew, he just knew that the guy did, somehow.
He tried to avoid him, but at one point despite his best efforts he wound up standing near the group of prisoners. And the guy hissed to him, in Iberican, “I see you not looking at me.”
Poe looked studiously at his hands. He wasn’t a good enough actor not to let on, he knew that.
“Go on,” the prisoner said, low and intimate. “Pretend you don’t understand. Pretend you don’t know I’m talking to you.”
Karé caught on, and looked around, noticed the prisoner, and scowled at him, standing closer to Poe. It was the opposite of helpful. Poe set his jaw.
“To them there’s no difference between us,” the prisoner said. “They see the same thing I do, they see your blood, they see that Vanished Nations nose you have, and they know what you are. You can cut your hair short and lose your mother’s accent and dress just like them but to them, you’ll always be the same thing I am.”
“Stop it,” Karé said.
The prisoner grinned, and said in heavily-accented Basic, “Ask him if I’m wrong.”
“Thank you, but it’s not helping,” Poe said very quietly to Karé.
“What’s he saying?” Karé asked.
Poe shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Was there a question?” the instructor said, turning and stalking toward them with her hands on her hips.
“No, ma’am,” Poe said.
“Blush a little darker,” the prisoner crooned in Iberican. “They can see your blood. I can see your blood.”
The instructor looked at the prisoner, frowning, but Poe watched her expression shift to one of sly understanding as she looked from the prisoner back to Poe. “Don’t torment the kids,” she said to the prisoner.
“Oh,” the prisoner said, “I’m not tormenting the kids. I’m just asking my cousin here how his mother is doing.”
The instructor raised an eyebrow, and Poe set his jaw. “My mother died for the Republic,” Poe said, hoarse and quiet, “a decade ago. I have no kinship to you.”
“She sees the resemblance,” the prisoner said. He gestured to his nose, then pointed toward Poe. “Don’t you, ma’am? You see how similar we look.” He switched back to Iberican. “We both have the nose of the vanished kings of the Oaxctli, don’t we?”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Poe said, in Basic.
“Leave my babies alone,” the instructor said to the prisoner. But Poe didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on his nose, then went to the prisoner’s face, thoughtful.
It took him a while to bring it up. It didn’t come up the next couple comm sessions he had with his dad. It wasn’t until he was back home on break, and of course they were processing chanticlos while he was home, and there he was finish plucking while Tia Norasol was up to her wrist inside a carcass next to him, and she pulled her hand out and sorted efficiently through the viscera. He slid the carcass he was working on down the table toward her, and looked at her face, looked at her nose in profile as she turned her head to throw the liver into the pot with the organ meats they were keeping.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Norasol said. “What is it?”
“What are the Vanished Kings of the Oaxctli?” he asked.
Norasol gave him a keen look, and rinsed out the carcass she was working on. “Where did you hear that?” she asked.
He shrugged, and looked down to cut the legs off the new carcass Anara had just dumped onto the table for him. “Someone said something about my nose,” he said.
“Mm,” Norasol said, dumping the water out of the carcass and picking up her knife to cut a slit in the skin below the ribcage. She struggled for a moment, then made a frustrated noise and slid the carcass back to Poe, who obediently tucked the stiff legs through the slit to keep them tidy in the cold water bath. Norasol’s hands had started to give her trouble, and she could not always manipulate the birds’ legs if they’d stiffened up in death.
“Thank you,” she said, and set the carcass over on the separate counter. Once there were a handful waiting, Poe would stop what he was doing and go distribute them into the cooling tanks, but there were only three there just now, and he wasn’t far enough ahead with the finish plucking and heads and feet. He liked to have a little leeway so Norasol didn’t have to take over while he was gone.
She started in on the next carcass, and said, “The Vanished Nations were what came before the Ibericans.”
“What came before,” Poe began, and stopped, confusedly sorting through what he knew of history.
“The Ibericans took them over,” Norasol said, “and crushed their languages out of existence. Most of them, there’s nothing really left except a few artifacts in museums. But the people weren’t destroyed, just their languages, just their names for themselves. And so sometimes we remember. One of the Vanished Nations was the Oaxctli, we still know their names. And they had carven images of themselves, in rock and in gems.” She dropped her knife, rinsed her hand off, dried her hand on her apron, and reached out to run her finger down Poe’s nose. “They had noses like this.” She repeated the gesture, touching her own face. “Like yours. Like mine. Like your father’s.”
Poe blinked. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“Sometimes we still tell stories,” she said, picking up her knife to jab down through the carcass’s neck. “It’s hard to tell, what we really remember, and what we’ve made up for ourselves. I tell you who tells the stories the most, though, are the gangs. The organized ones, they cling to that kind of– mythical past. It has become something of a code language, to use the words we still have from those vanished tongues.”
“The gangs,” Poe said.
“Mostly they’re smugglers,” Norasol said, neatly pulling out the crop through the carcass’s neck, “but a lot of times, don’t you forget it, they’re the only reason the Republic ever comes out this far. A lot of the Outer Reaches only support life because of the smugglers. They will teach you about the criminals, in that school of yours, but they won’t teach you about the medicine and the protection the smuggling gangs bring out here.”
“The gangs are criminals,” Poe said, but quietly. “And the–”
“There are more shades of gray in this galaxy than your Academy is going to teach you,” Norasol said, spinning the carcass around deftly and pushing her hand in, probing with her nimble fingers to loosen the organs from their tenuous grip on one another. “What else did this person say to you?” she asked, and pulled her hand out of the carcass, the solid weight of the gizzard in her palm and the lungs cradled in her fingers.
“He said the others would see no difference between him and me,” Poe said, and bit his lip as he twisted the chanticlo’s neck to break the spine. He nestled the skull between his first and second fingers, clamping his fingers around the broken twisted neck, and held his thumb over the top of the bird’s head, and pulled in one smooth motion, tearing the head cleanly off. He dropped it into the bucket by his feet, and looked at Norasol. “He had tattoos on his face, Tia.”
“And he had the same nose as you,” Norasol finished.
“No,” Poe said.
Norasol inclined her head. “He did, though,” she said. “Close enough. So do I. He knew you spoke Iberican before you even opened your mouth, didn’t he.”
“Yes,” Poe said. He cut the legs off the carcass, one at a time, dropped the feet into the bucket– it was all going for soup stock– and set his knife down to pick up the forceps to yank out the broken pin feathers left in the wings. “It was– it made me angry, Tia. I’m not like that. I’m not the same kind of– thing– as some smuggler. Just because maybe I speak the same language as him.”
“The gangs are more than just criminals,” Norasol said. “Crime pays, but the gangs have a reach the Republic doesn’t.” And she pushed her sleeve up by rubbing her elbow against her waist, turning her arm over to show him the spot on the inside of her elbow. She’d always had a little ink blot there, the same as Poe’s grandpa had on his wrist, a little crown.
“You said that was a protection spell,” Poe said. “Magic.” Norasol was deeply superstitious. So was Kes. Poe always pretended he wasn’t. Nobody knew about the invisible designs he sometimes drew inside doorways, or the wordless little prayers he made sometimes. It wasn’t superstition, it was just giving himself a little mental space to process the stress of his life. It was a healthy human impulse.
Norasol laughed. “Whose magic is it, though?” she asked. “Sometimes it’s just a protection sigil. For human eyes to read.” She used her fingers to spread her age-softened skin, and Poe could make out the familiar blurry design. His grandfather’s had been a little bigger, a little clearer, even as he had aged. It was a crown, carefully picked out with a fine needle.
Norasol’s fingers smeared chanticlo blood across her skin as she stretched the design. “It’s a crown,” she said. “The crown of the Vanished Kings.”
Poe stared at her. “It’s,” he said.
“Your grandpa, grandma, and I all worked for the Kings at one time,” Norasol said. “I”ve done work for them on and off my whole life. Your father sometimes works with them.”
“But,” Poe said, and put down the forceps as Norasol gently slid the carcass across the table to him. He tucked the legs into the slit she’d cut, and went and gathered up the other waiting finished carcasses to put into the chilling tanks. It was a heavy armload, and he had to pay attention to keep them in order and rotate them through the tanks properly.
Kes came over to the tap to wash his gore-coated hands. “Only a dozen or so more to go,” he said, grinning, and he had a disreputable hat pulled low over his eyes, and his shirt had no sleeves. As he bent, Poe could see the edge of the intricate tattoo that had always been in the middle of his back, just below the base of his neck, peeking out over the neckline of his grimy shirt. It was a complicated design, and at the bottom it had spiky letters that spelled out Pathfinders, which Poe knew was from the Rebellion, but there were lots of elements in it. As a small child he had sometimes traced bits of it with his fingers, but he’d never really looked at the whole thing and tried to puzzle it out.
The top of the tattoo was clearly a crown, with the same pointed elements as the one in Norasol’s elbow. Poe dropped the edge of the tank and sloshed ice-cold water across his front, yelping as it doused his crotch. Kes laughed at him, and helped him move the heavy tank back into position so the hose could fill it again. “Baby boy,” Kes said, “are you getting tired? The Academy is making you soft.”
“Ugh,” Poe said, shivering; his underwear was drenched. Great. Well, at least he wasn’t so gross and sweaty now. “No, Papa, I just slipped.”
“Let me see that arm,” Kes said. “C’mon, make a muscle.”
Poe rolled his eyes, but Kes grabbed him by the elbow. “Papa,” Poe said, embarrassed, but Kes kept pushing on his arm, so he obligingly flexed his bicep. It was bigger than it had been; they did a lot of push-ups at the Academy. But Poe was disappointingly still much smaller overall than Kes, and that included his biceps.
“Not bad,” Kes said, and put his gross cold wet hand around the back of Poe’s neck, pulling him in to kiss him on the forehead. “My baby boy is getting pretty big.”
“I’m still short,” Poe said, a little grumpily.
“You’re my sweet egghead baby,” Kes said, beaming at him and tousling his hair with his gross wet hand that he had just rinsed gross blood and bird shit off of because he was a repulsive person.
“You’re keeping him from his work,” Norasol said, and threw a gizzard at them.
“Woman,” Kes said, ducking and fending the flying organ off with a deft swipe, “you’re repulsive.”
“Maybe I am,” she said. “But at least I’m not lazy. Get back to work.”
…
“Sweet mother of mercy,” Poe said, as Kes slung an arm around him and yanked him staggering sideways.
“Don’t you swear at me,” Kes said, and he was so goddamn cheerful. Poe saw him so rarely now, and in his mind his father was usually sort of reserved and surly, but there was very much a festival atmosphere at the moment and Kes was just lit up with it. He wasn’t sure why his father was so happy, but it was kind of nice. “Come here, son, you’re a man now, you don’t have to sit with the children.”
“Am I really,” Poe said. He was sixteen. His birthday had come and gone at the Academy; it wasn’t the sort of thing that people observed, beyond occasional well-wishes. This visit, he’d come home to a couple of presents from various family, waiting for him– a new blanket from Norasol, shoes from his father. It was very adult and boring, but he didn’t feel any different really.
“Of course you are,” Kes said, and kissed the side of his head, like he was a child, and Poe made a face, but let him do it. Papa was physically affectionate when he was happy, and Poe could sort of admit to himself that he’d missed it. “Come on, drink with us.”
It wasn’t that Poe had never drunk alcohol before, but at family gatherings he’d never had more than a little. His father handed him a full bottle of the home-brewed beer they drank here, which Poe had been startled to realize was absolutely nothing like what the rest of the galaxy apparently considered “beer”, and Poe obediently drank it, watching the others to see how fast it was appropriate to consume.
“Are you getting the boy drunk?” Norasol demanded, some time later, seeing what was in his hand. He had decided after only a few swallows that his father drank much faster than he ought to, so he was approximately keeping pace with his “cousin” Gita, who was in her twenties and about his size. (She wasn’t a blood relative. Poe had no blood relatives besides his father. But this was his family nonetheless, and he hadn’t ever thought to question it before.)
“Maybe a little,” Kes said cheerfully. “It’s a party, isn’t it?”
“He’s so happy,” Poe said to Norasol, which he hadn’t really meant to say out loud. It was never wise to draw too much attention to Kes’s moods, or he would get testy. Not that Kes’s temper was so formidable, but when he was testy he tended to cast a shadow over the room by his sheer presence.
“Of course he’s happy,” Norasol said. “You’re here. He’s been talking about nothing but you for months, Poe.”
Kes scratched the back of his neck and looked a little embarrassed as Poe swiveled to stare at him. “What? Why?” Poe asked, confused.
“It’s not the same without you here,” Kes offered. “I get bored.”
“He misses you, Poe,” Norasol said, rolling her eyes. “Of course he misses you! We all miss you, but he misses you especially.”
“Really,” Poe said, and nearly dropped his bottle as Kes hauled him in again to nearly crush him with his arms around Poe’s chest.
“Of course I do,” Kes said. “Poe, sweetheart, you are my chief joy.”
Poe was maybe a little drunk by the time the sun went down. Kes was certainly drunk, but still weirdly cheerful and sweet. “No, no,” Kes was saying, and he sat down next to Poe and leaned against him, nearly knocking him over. Poe laughed and caught him. “Look at my son,” Kes said, to no one in particular, patting Poe’s face with a ridiculously besotted expression. “Look at my beautiful son.”
“Papa,” Poe said, a little embarrassed, but no one was really paying any mind.
“No,” Kes said, “no. Listen to me. I am maybe a little drunk but I am sincere in this.”
“Maybe just a little,” Poe said.
“Hush, you,” Kes said. “Listen to me.”
“I am listening, Papa,” Poe said.
“Listen!”
“You keep saying that! I am listening.” Poe laughed, and Kes laughed too, and it was like he was a little kid again, the way they used to laugh together.
“You,” Kes said, still laughing, “you, Poe, you are the best thing I have ever done, the best thing I will ever achieve, in this world, and I just want to say that while I am drunk enough to really say that.”
“That’s a lot of pressure, Papa,” Poe said, because Kes had expressed sentiments like this in the past, though not so directly, and it was something Poe had mulled over.
“Pressure,” Kes said, pulling back a little to look at him. “No no, Poe. No. I am not saying that whatever you achieve will be what I take credit for. No. I mean you, Poe, just the fact that you have existed and are a person.”
“But what if I’m a terrible person?” Poe asked, just to be contrary.
“You aren’t,” Kes said. “You– you could have been a terrible person, yes. But you aren’t. And so it doesn’t matter, Poe, it doesn’t matter what you do, if you do things I like or things I don’t agree with or whatever. It doesn’t matter, Poe. You being a person at all, that is the point.”
“I don’t think that can be right,” Poe said, wrinkling his nose a little.
“I am telling you this now,” Kes said, “because you are all grown up now, and I can see now what sort of man you are, and I am glad to know you and I would like you even if I were not already obligated by the bonds of family to love you.”
“Oh, Papa,” Poe said, because he really wasn’t sure what else he could possibly say.
“So I figure,” Kes said, “at some point we are going to have another big fight about whatever idiot thing you decide to do with your life, and I am going to be a big fat asshole and say something stupid, and then you’ll never speak to me again and I will die alone. So before I do that–”
“Papa,” Poe said, “stop–”
“No,” Kes said, “no, it’ll happen, and when it does I want you to have this conversation to look back on. Because I am one of the people least suited in the world to be the only parent of a brilliant child, and I am going to fuck it up, and I just can’t believe I haven’t so far. Look at you! You’ve survived to adulthood!”
“Papa,” Poe said, and put his hand over his father’s mouth. “Don’t wreck it.”
Kes sputtered with laughter, and wrestled Poe’s hand away, and adult or no, Poe was still nowhere near a physical match for his father, so in no time he was wrapped securely in his father’s arms and utterly unable to move any of his limbs. He was also laughing too hard to try.
(I’m going to have to extensively rewrite this or throw this out, probably, because there’s no way Poe could have been raised by the people he was and not know this. Because the Lost Kings are not really lost. But this was my first writing on the topic, as I came up with it. So I’m putting it up here for now.)
Disclaimer: clearly, I’m stealing the fact that Guatemala, which is connected to the Star Wars ‘verse twice, by Yavin 4 being filmed at Tikal and by Oscar Isaac being a native, is the heartland of the old Mayan empire. But of course, the Mayans are not lost or vanished; they are alive and still living there and still speaking their languages and worshipping at their temples, some of them anyway. Pretending they’re vanished is, to put it mildly, fucking rude, so keep that in mind as you enjoy this fictionalization. I’m still working out this concept; by the time it appears in a longer work it will be somewhat different, I think.
Disclaimers below the text; warnings for mentions of dead animals and moderate associated gore, as they are processing animals for food in the scene. 3500 words, Poe and Norasol mostly, with a lot of Poe and Kes feels; Poe is 16 and a student at the Naval Academy. I am probably going to change my mind on a lot of the details, so I’m posting this here rather than discarding it. Totally send me asks or messages if there’s anything in here that is awesome or terrible to you.
One of the prisoners was staring at Poe. Poe glanced at him a couple of times, and looked away afterward, pretending not to be intimidated. But he was.
Karé noticed it and nudged him a little, but Poe just nudged her back. He was starting to get a suspicion of why the guy was staring, and it was sort of upsetting. The guy had tattoos all over his visible skin, on his knuckles, and even had scrawling writing across his forehead, little marks on his cheeks.
The words were in Iberican, the ones Poe could make out. He hadn’t given any sign, he knew that. But he had noticed. The guy was absolutely staring at him like that because he recognized, somehow, that Poe was Iberican too. And Poe didn’t know how he knew, he just knew that the guy did, somehow.
He tried to avoid him, but at one point despite his best efforts he wound up standing near the group of prisoners. And the guy hissed to him, in Iberican, “I see you not looking at me.”
Poe looked studiously at his hands. He wasn’t a good enough actor not to let on, he knew that.
“Go on,” the prisoner said, low and intimate. “Pretend you don’t understand. Pretend you don’t know I’m talking to you.”
Karé caught on, and looked around, noticed the prisoner, and scowled at him, standing closer to Poe. It was the opposite of helpful. Poe set his jaw.
“To them there’s no difference between us,” the prisoner said. “They see the same thing I do, they see your blood, they see that Vanished Nations nose you have, and they know what you are. You can cut your hair short and lose your mother’s accent and dress just like them but to them, you’ll always be the same thing I am.”
“Stop it,” Karé said.
The prisoner grinned, and said in heavily-accented Basic, “Ask him if I’m wrong.”
“Thank you, but it’s not helping,” Poe said very quietly to Karé.
“What’s he saying?” Karé asked.
Poe shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Was there a question?” the instructor said, turning and stalking toward them with her hands on her hips.
“No, ma’am,” Poe said.
“Blush a little darker,” the prisoner crooned in Iberican. “They can see your blood. I can see your blood.”
The instructor looked at the prisoner, frowning, but Poe watched her expression shift to one of sly understanding as she looked from the prisoner back to Poe. “Don’t torment the kids,” she said to the prisoner.
“Oh,” the prisoner said, “I’m not tormenting the kids. I’m just asking my cousin here how his mother is doing.”
The instructor raised an eyebrow, and Poe set his jaw. “My mother died for the Republic,” Poe said, hoarse and quiet, “a decade ago. I have no kinship to you.”
“She sees the resemblance,” the prisoner said. He gestured to his nose, then pointed toward Poe. “Don’t you, ma’am? You see how similar we look.” He switched back to Iberican. “We both have the nose of the vanished kings of the Oaxctli, don’t we?”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Poe said, in Basic.
“Leave my babies alone,” the instructor said to the prisoner. But Poe didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on his nose, then went to the prisoner’s face, thoughtful.
It took him a while to bring it up. It didn’t come up the next couple comm sessions he had with his dad. It wasn’t until he was back home on break, and of course they were processing chanticlos while he was home, and there he was finish plucking while Tia Norasol was up to her wrist inside a carcass next to him, and she pulled her hand out and sorted efficiently through the viscera. He slid the carcass he was working on down the table toward her, and looked at her face, looked at her nose in profile as she turned her head to throw the liver into the pot with the organ meats they were keeping.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Norasol said. “What is it?”
“What are the Vanished Kings of the Oaxctli?” he asked.
Norasol gave him a keen look, and rinsed out the carcass she was working on. “Where did you hear that?” she asked.
He shrugged, and looked down to cut the legs off the new carcass Anara had just dumped onto the table for him. “Someone said something about my nose,” he said.
“Mm,” Norasol said, dumping the water out of the carcass and picking up her knife to cut a slit in the skin below the ribcage. She struggled for a moment, then made a frustrated noise and slid the carcass back to Poe, who obediently tucked the stiff legs through the slit to keep them tidy in the cold water bath. Norasol’s hands had started to give her trouble, and she could not always manipulate the birds’ legs if they’d stiffened up in death.
“Thank you,” she said, and set the carcass over on the separate counter. Once there were a handful waiting, Poe would stop what he was doing and go distribute them into the cooling tanks, but there were only three there just now, and he wasn’t far enough ahead with the finish plucking and heads and feet. He liked to have a little leeway so Norasol didn’t have to take over while he was gone.
She started in on the next carcass, and said, “The Vanished Nations were what came before the Ibericans.”
“What came before,” Poe began, and stopped, confusedly sorting through what he knew of history.
“The Ibericans took them over,” Norasol said, “and crushed their languages out of existence. Most of them, there’s nothing really left except a few artifacts in museums. But the people weren’t destroyed, just their languages, just their names for themselves. And so sometimes we remember. One of the Vanished Nations was the Oaxctli, we still know their names. And they had carven images of themselves, in rock and in gems.” She dropped her knife, rinsed her hand off, dried her hand on her apron, and reached out to run her finger down Poe’s nose. “They had noses like this.” She repeated the gesture, touching her own face. “Like yours. Like mine. Like your father’s.”
Poe blinked. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“Sometimes we still tell stories,” she said, picking up her knife to jab down through the carcass’s neck. “It’s hard to tell, what we really remember, and what we’ve made up for ourselves. I tell you who tells the stories the most, though, are the gangs. The organized ones, they cling to that kind of– mythical past. It has become something of a code language, to use the words we still have from those vanished tongues.”
“The gangs,” Poe said.
“Mostly they’re smugglers,” Norasol said, neatly pulling out the crop through the carcass’s neck, “but a lot of times, don’t you forget it, they’re the only reason the Republic ever comes out this far. A lot of the Outer Reaches only support life because of the smugglers. They will teach you about the criminals, in that school of yours, but they won’t teach you about the medicine and the protection the smuggling gangs bring out here.”
“The gangs are criminals,” Poe said, but quietly. “And the–”
“There are more shades of gray in this galaxy than your Academy is going to teach you,” Norasol said, spinning the carcass around deftly and pushing her hand in, probing with her nimble fingers to loosen the organs from their tenuous grip on one another. “What else did this person say to you?” she asked, and pulled her hand out of the carcass, the solid weight of the gizzard in her palm and the lungs cradled in her fingers.
“He said the others would see no difference between him and me,” Poe said, and bit his lip as he twisted the chanticlo’s neck to break the spine. He nestled the skull between his first and second fingers, clamping his fingers around the broken twisted neck, and held his thumb over the top of the bird’s head, and pulled in one smooth motion, tearing the head cleanly off. He dropped it into the bucket by his feet, and looked at Norasol. “He had tattoos on his face, Tia.”
“And he had the same nose as you,” Norasol finished.
“No,” Poe said.
Norasol inclined her head. “He did, though,” she said. “Close enough. So do I. He knew you spoke Iberican before you even opened your mouth, didn’t he.”
“Yes,” Poe said. He cut the legs off the carcass, one at a time, dropped the feet into the bucket– it was all going for soup stock– and set his knife down to pick up the forceps to yank out the broken pin feathers left in the wings. “It was– it made me angry, Tia. I’m not like that. I’m not the same kind of– thing– as some smuggler. Just because maybe I speak the same language as him.”
“The gangs are more than just criminals,” Norasol said. “Crime pays, but the gangs have a reach the Republic doesn’t.” And she pushed her sleeve up by rubbing her elbow against her waist, turning her arm over to show him the spot on the inside of her elbow. She’d always had a little ink blot there, the same as Poe’s grandpa had on his wrist, a little crown.
“You said that was a protection spell,” Poe said. “Magic.” Norasol was deeply superstitious. So was Kes. Poe always pretended he wasn’t. Nobody knew about the invisible designs he sometimes drew inside doorways, or the wordless little prayers he made sometimes. It wasn’t superstition, it was just giving himself a little mental space to process the stress of his life. It was a healthy human impulse.
Norasol laughed. “Whose magic is it, though?” she asked. “Sometimes it’s just a protection sigil. For human eyes to read.” She used her fingers to spread her age-softened skin, and Poe could make out the familiar blurry design. His grandfather’s had been a little bigger, a little clearer, even as he had aged. It was a crown, carefully picked out with a fine needle.
Norasol’s fingers smeared chanticlo blood across her skin as she stretched the design. “It’s a crown,” she said. “The crown of the Vanished Kings.”
Poe stared at her. “It’s,” he said.
“Your grandpa, grandma, and I all worked for the Kings at one time,” Norasol said. “I”ve done work for them on and off my whole life. Your father sometimes works with them.”
“But,” Poe said, and put down the forceps as Norasol gently slid the carcass across the table to him. He tucked the legs into the slit she’d cut, and went and gathered up the other waiting finished carcasses to put into the chilling tanks. It was a heavy armload, and he had to pay attention to keep them in order and rotate them through the tanks properly.
Kes came over to the tap to wash his gore-coated hands. “Only a dozen or so more to go,” he said, grinning, and he had a disreputable hat pulled low over his eyes, and his shirt had no sleeves. As he bent, Poe could see the edge of the intricate tattoo that had always been in the middle of his back, just below the base of his neck, peeking out over the neckline of his grimy shirt. It was a complicated design, and at the bottom it had spiky letters that spelled out Pathfinders, which Poe knew was from the Rebellion, but there were lots of elements in it. As a small child he had sometimes traced bits of it with his fingers, but he’d never really looked at the whole thing and tried to puzzle it out.
The top of the tattoo was clearly a crown, with the same pointed elements as the one in Norasol’s elbow. Poe dropped the edge of the tank and sloshed ice-cold water across his front, yelping as it doused his crotch. Kes laughed at him, and helped him move the heavy tank back into position so the hose could fill it again. “Baby boy,” Kes said, “are you getting tired? The Academy is making you soft.”
“Ugh,” Poe said, shivering; his underwear was drenched. Great. Well, at least he wasn’t so gross and sweaty now. “No, Papa, I just slipped.”
“Let me see that arm,” Kes said. “C’mon, make a muscle.”
Poe rolled his eyes, but Kes grabbed him by the elbow. “Papa,” Poe said, embarrassed, but Kes kept pushing on his arm, so he obligingly flexed his bicep. It was bigger than it had been; they did a lot of push-ups at the Academy. But Poe was disappointingly still much smaller overall than Kes, and that included his biceps.
“Not bad,” Kes said, and put his gross cold wet hand around the back of Poe’s neck, pulling him in to kiss him on the forehead. “My baby boy is getting pretty big.”
“I’m still short,” Poe said, a little grumpily.
“You’re my sweet egghead baby,” Kes said, beaming at him and tousling his hair with his gross wet hand that he had just rinsed gross blood and bird shit off of because he was a repulsive person.
“You’re keeping him from his work,” Norasol said, and threw a gizzard at them.
“Woman,” Kes said, ducking and fending the flying organ off with a deft swipe, “you’re repulsive.”
“Maybe I am,” she said. “But at least I’m not lazy. Get back to work.”
…
“Sweet mother of mercy,” Poe said, as Kes slung an arm around him and yanked him staggering sideways.
“Don’t you swear at me,” Kes said, and he was so goddamn cheerful. Poe saw him so rarely now, and in his mind his father was usually sort of reserved and surly, but there was very much a festival atmosphere at the moment and Kes was just lit up with it. He wasn’t sure why his father was so happy, but it was kind of nice. “Come here, son, you’re a man now, you don’t have to sit with the children.”
“Am I really,” Poe said. He was sixteen. His birthday had come and gone at the Academy; it wasn’t the sort of thing that people observed, beyond occasional well-wishes. This visit, he’d come home to a couple of presents from various family, waiting for him– a new blanket from Norasol, shoes from his father. It was very adult and boring, but he didn’t feel any different really.
“Of course you are,” Kes said, and kissed the side of his head, like he was a child, and Poe made a face, but let him do it. Papa was physically affectionate when he was happy, and Poe could sort of admit to himself that he’d missed it. “Come on, drink with us.”
It wasn’t that Poe had never drunk alcohol before, but at family gatherings he’d never had more than a little. His father handed him a full bottle of the home-brewed beer they drank here, which Poe had been startled to realize was absolutely nothing like what the rest of the galaxy apparently considered “beer”, and Poe obediently drank it, watching the others to see how fast it was appropriate to consume.
“Are you getting the boy drunk?” Norasol demanded, some time later, seeing what was in his hand. He had decided after only a few swallows that his father drank much faster than he ought to, so he was approximately keeping pace with his “cousin” Gita, who was in her twenties and about his size. (She wasn’t a blood relative. Poe had no blood relatives besides his father. But this was his family nonetheless, and he hadn’t ever thought to question it before.)
“Maybe a little,” Kes said cheerfully. “It’s a party, isn’t it?”
“He’s so happy,” Poe said to Norasol, which he hadn’t really meant to say out loud. It was never wise to draw too much attention to Kes’s moods, or he would get testy. Not that Kes’s temper was so formidable, but when he was testy he tended to cast a shadow over the room by his sheer presence.
“Of course he’s happy,” Norasol said. “You’re here. He’s been talking about nothing but you for months, Poe.”
Kes scratched the back of his neck and looked a little embarrassed as Poe swiveled to stare at him. “What? Why?” Poe asked, confused.
“It’s not the same without you here,” Kes offered. “I get bored.”
“He misses you, Poe,” Norasol said, rolling her eyes. “Of course he misses you! We all miss you, but he misses you especially.”
“Really,” Poe said, and nearly dropped his bottle as Kes hauled him in again to nearly crush him with his arms around Poe’s chest.
“Of course I do,” Kes said. “Poe, sweetheart, you are my chief joy.”
Poe was maybe a little drunk by the time the sun went down. Kes was certainly drunk, but still weirdly cheerful and sweet. “No, no,” Kes was saying, and he sat down next to Poe and leaned against him, nearly knocking him over. Poe laughed and caught him. “Look at my son,” Kes said, to no one in particular, patting Poe’s face with a ridiculously besotted expression. “Look at my beautiful son.”
“Papa,” Poe said, a little embarrassed, but no one was really paying any mind.
“No,” Kes said, “no. Listen to me. I am maybe a little drunk but I am sincere in this.”
“Maybe just a little,” Poe said.
“Hush, you,” Kes said. “Listen to me.”
“I am listening, Papa,” Poe said.
“Listen!”
“You keep saying that! I am listening.” Poe laughed, and Kes laughed too, and it was like he was a little kid again, the way they used to laugh together.
“You,” Kes said, still laughing, “you, Poe, you are the best thing I have ever done, the best thing I will ever achieve, in this world, and I just want to say that while I am drunk enough to really say that.”
“That’s a lot of pressure, Papa,” Poe said, because Kes had expressed sentiments like this in the past, though not so directly, and it was something Poe had mulled over.
“Pressure,” Kes said, pulling back a little to look at him. “No no, Poe. No. I am not saying that whatever you achieve will be what I take credit for. No. I mean you, Poe, just the fact that you have existed and are a person.”
“But what if I’m a terrible person?” Poe asked, just to be contrary.
“You aren’t,” Kes said. “You– you could have been a terrible person, yes. But you aren’t. And so it doesn’t matter, Poe, it doesn’t matter what you do, if you do things I like or things I don’t agree with or whatever. It doesn’t matter, Poe. You being a person at all, that is the point.”
“I don’t think that can be right,” Poe said, wrinkling his nose a little.
“I am telling you this now,” Kes said, “because you are all grown up now, and I can see now what sort of man you are, and I am glad to know you and I would like you even if I were not already obligated by the bonds of family to love you.”
“Oh, Papa,” Poe said, because he really wasn’t sure what else he could possibly say.
“So I figure,” Kes said, “at some point we are going to have another big fight about whatever idiot thing you decide to do with your life, and I am going to be a big fat asshole and say something stupid, and then you’ll never speak to me again and I will die alone. So before I do that–”
“Papa,” Poe said, “stop–”
“No,” Kes said, “no, it’ll happen, and when it does I want you to have this conversation to look back on. Because I am one of the people least suited in the world to be the only parent of a brilliant child, and I am going to fuck it up, and I just can’t believe I haven’t so far. Look at you! You’ve survived to adulthood!”
“Papa,” Poe said, and put his hand over his father’s mouth. “Don’t wreck it.”
Kes sputtered with laughter, and wrestled Poe’s hand away, and adult or no, Poe was still nowhere near a physical match for his father, so in no time he was wrapped securely in his father’s arms and utterly unable to move any of his limbs. He was also laughing too hard to try.
(I’m going to have to extensively rewrite this or throw this out, probably, because there’s no way Poe could have been raised by the people he was and not know this. Because the Lost Kings are not really lost. But this was my first writing on the topic, as I came up with it. So I’m putting it up here for now.)
Disclaimer: clearly, I’m stealing the fact that Guatemala, which is connected to the Star Wars ‘verse twice, by Yavin 4 being filmed at Tikal and by Oscar Isaac being a native, is the heartland of the old Mayan empire. But of course, the Mayans are not lost or vanished; they are alive and still living there and still speaking their languages and worshipping at their temples, some of them anyway. Pretending they’re vanished is, to put it mildly, fucking rude, so keep that in mind as you enjoy this fictionalization. I’m still working out this concept; by the time it appears in a longer work it will be somewhat different, I think.
