Luna's Blessing

I guess when you think about it, I really shouldn’t say a word…

Folks like us only tell our truths when we’re on our death beds or when our luck has just run out. You know like those vintage shows on stream; a lawyer stares at a person somberly and gives two options and there is really only one choice.

It all started while I was at AIT, which’s an Army acronym for “Advanced Individual Training “.A college-like atmosphere, trees, laptops, and hormones. It’s where we became the most physically fit alcoholics. Who can make a 5 am workout class after only 2 hours of a drunken nap??? This chick. Our reality was etched into stone, these were our last days of presumed freedom in The Republic. 80% of our class was being deployed while 15% failed, and the last 5% well they were “training casualties”. On our first day, we were told

“War is never a surprise because The Republic is always at the ready”

I heard a version of that quote almost every Sunday just before my mother entered the pulpit. She didn’t hoot and holler like her counterparts in the Eastern Methods of Faith. She captured the attention of the commune with a hypnotic tone and cadence of speak…” Friends, the enemy’s pitfalls are never a surprise, because those with faith are always ready”.

Life before the military for me is just what you imagine, instead of guns at the ready we held tenants on our personal devices. So why was a commune leader remixing a Republic military quote? She was the third generation in our family that had served the Republic proudly. I was a legacy enrollment; our family had produced some of the highest-ranking officers in the Onyx brigade.

Legacy is a lot for people that looked like us. When my ancestors landed on the shores of what we now call the Republic, the natives called us Onyx daemon. My great-grandmother Eliomas would get this gleeful grin on her face reciting the story handed down to her. “We stood head and shoulders above them. They said we were angels of the sun because our skin was darkened by the suns but we were never consumed. Our forms looked as though we were chiseled from the rocks they called Onyx.”

She always reminded my cousin and sister they were Onyx too, despite their lighter hue. Every generation attempted to ensure our traits remained close to the Onyx daemon. Which meant at the age of 13 if one’s hue was darker than jasper found on the western plane, you were arranged in marriage to tribal members back in our native land of Lourdes. The only way out of this arrangement was service in the Republic Army.

Hence my eagerness to volunteer as a fourth-generation soldier in the Onyx brigade. I mean who wouldn’t want to shave half their crown and sport the infamous Onyx locs. I wasn’t as dark as my mother’s father but I passed the spectrophotometry analysis when I was a tot. My parents ensured my hued darkened with extra play in the sun.

My sister and cousin took after our great grandfather. Abner, a native man with whom my Gigi Eliomas fell in love while serving in the most southern unit of the Republic. She said pickings were slim for men in those parts, so the men waited for the arrival of our teams to find themselves, wives.

Women like Gigi were not only rare down there, they were prized unions for natives.

Onyx women were trained not only to defend their territories but were surrounded by myths. When I was 13, I thought these lies and myths were apprehensible. Butttt… now at 19 I embraced the myths of intelligence, chameleon abilities, and the sweetest nectar in the Realm. Life was just different for Onyx students like me. There were fewer of us but we were a tight-knit group.

A week before graduation, my father yelled my marks from the Optical Stream to the entire house. As my mother and grandmother cheered, my sister, hugged me tight and jumped with glee. Then my father sat me down and smiled at me and said: “You are ready”. I stared at him puzzled, “Père what is going on?” he walked out of the room singing a nursery rhyme I hadn’t heard since my sister learned to walk. My mother forced me into Père chair and began singing too. To be frank, I was terrified, my father was notorious on the commune for playing practical jokes despite being the head of security. He returned with two boxes decorated with textiles handwoven by the Tata clan, but these were different. One box seemed to catch the light and sparkle. I screamed with glee and jumped out of my seat, “Jari !! sit down”, exclaimed my grandmother. I immediately sat down and apologized for my outburst. My father handed me the smallest box first, it sat squarely in the palm of my hand. I gently pulled the lid up for fear of disturbing what appeared to woven strands of gold. Inside lay a beautiful gold and silver chain with what appeared to be a sealed locket. I looked up with tears in my eyes and asked “How do I open the locket?” “Jari, my love it’s a key”. I look at my sister as she laughed hysterically at me. In between her laughter she turned to mother and said “I told you this was antiquated, who uses FOB’s today?” Mother just shook her head and encouraged me to open the next box.

I opened the next box even slower it looked older than me but still just as beautiful as the first box. Inside was a worn little black book that appeared to a digital count down. Père explained the FOB would open the book on my first day of training.

Weeks of training went by before I opened the journal. There was too much going on for me to look at some old book. We had already had two class casualties and I nearly failed the quantum physics advanced placement exam. I adored my necklace so I kept it tucked inside my uniform and touched every time I thought of the commune. One day while training the FOB slipped from beneath my undershirt. My instructor told me to get up and come to the front of the training room with a battle buddy. He looked at me sternly and asked: “Jari, why are you in my class?” I stared at him puzzled and snapped to parade rest.

“Warrior you bear the Onyx FOB”

“Instructor I don’t understand.”

“Jari, is that your necklace around your neck?” I went on to explain to him the presentation from my father. He shook his head with displeasure and told me to leave class immediately and retrieve my book. The book was locked in my footlocker back at the barracks almost a mile away. I ran avoiding all officers for fear of having to stop and salute.

I placed my eye on the optic scanner for my footlocker. Inside were all my civilian clothes, 2 bottles of Bukah, and the black book. I pulled the blinds closed and removed my necklace. I could not do this sober…judge me if want. The only thing more unnerving than this was becoming a woman…you know the red moon and all that. I cracked open the warm Bukah and drank until I felt the burn in my chest.

I placed the FOB on the book and a latch opened. At first the pages appeared to be blank but as I flipped them, text appeared. It appeared to be hundreds of pages of binary sequences, you know the ancient computer language of 1’s and 0’s. I went back to the beginning of the book and began to decode. It took me 3 hours to decode the first page, but that was enough for me to request a call to my father. I drank nearly half the bottle of Bukah after reading...

01000110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01110111 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101100 01101011 00100000 01100001 01101101 01101111 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01100101 01101100 01100101 01100011 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00101100 00100000 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100101 01100001 01100111 01100101 00101110 00100000

From this day forward, you shall walk among a select few and break bread with all, you are of divine lineage.

“Père, what does this mean!” as soon as I heard him speak on the phone. He couldn’t stop laughing at me. Through his laughter he managed to get the words out “What took you so long? No matter Jari, at least you’ll make it before Luna is full. Go to your barracks chief and show her your necklace. Remember us Jari, we will always love you” and with that, he hung up.

I cried as I walked down the hallway past the senior soldier’s lounge. The building was still empty because everyone else was still in training. My gut turned as I knocked on her door. As I stood there I stared at the wood etchings, there were various symbols and binary text which I never noticed before. The only thing I could make out was

01100001 01101100 01110000 01101000 01100001

Alpha

“Enter”, spoke a voice in a dialect I heard my grandfather Abner use only when speaking to people in his home village.

“Jari, clean yourself up child, I could hear you sniffling down the hall,” said the Barracks Chief. She seemed to glide across the office and her uniform was different from the other cadre. She stood at the corner of her desk and smiled at me. My name is Chief Elsi, how may I help you?

I slowly pulled my necklace from beneath my shirt. Her smile seemed to grow 10 times larger. She quickly returned behind her desk and grabbed what seemed to be an ancient device. “Jari, I should have known it was you” As I wiped the tears from my face I asked, “How do you know my name”. Chief Elsi didn’t skip a beat, “I know every soldier's name in these barracks as will you in time”. She stared at me and quietly asked where I was from. I told her about my father’s clan and the commune. She quickly sucked her teeth and exclaimed: “I’ll never understand why they choose to live like that, it could not be me.”

My voice got even lower than hers “What are you talking about?”

She pulled up a stream entitled “Luna’s Blessing” and projected it to simultaneous view. “This will give some context to your black book before you decipher it with the device I just gave you”

“In short Jari you have been left a substantial dowry by your ancestors only to be received if the stars align. You’re of Onyx and Native descent, correct? I nodded yes politely. You choose on your own freewill to serve the Republic, correct? I nodded yes again.

She stood in front of me and pulled all my locs to the right side. She took a tissue and wiped the tear marks from my face. "You begin your training as an Aminatu Warrior when Luna is full. Jari remember there are but a few women granted this path, take these next few days and enjoy your new-found wealth. I’ll call a driver to escort you off post. We’ll move your things to the quad with the other ladies.”

So, what would you choose?