Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter invites enthusiastic EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, funny, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read! This month's topic comes to us from Quintrala of Speed Fairy. She suggests to "write a short fiction story about the dissolution of the BoB alliance. It could be from BoB's point of view, the Goons', by neutrals in 0.0, civilians in Empire, NPCs or even rats. Write about before, during or after the coup; give us stories of market, war, people or love. In-character or roleplay. We want to know what happened, from those fictional characters that, in your mind, were part of it." Direct questions about the EVE Blog Banter to CrazyKinux. Links to other EVE Blog Banter articles will be listed at the end of this post as they become available.
"We regret to inform you of the death of Sakhala Tryssan, Capital Ships Electronics Specialist, whose life was lost in Delve when the dreadnought she served on was destroyed by Goonswarm..."
The official letter on official letterhead had arrived by personal courier an hour earlier, attached to a small package, officially sealed and officially stamped. Oh, Sakkie, I thought sadly, feeling the old guilt for not having made some effort to heal the rift between us. We'd met as kids, were best friends for years...even lovers briefly...but her bitterness over her disqualification by and my acceptance to the capsuleer program broke the threads of our relationship permanently. She couldn't deal with having the dream we'd dreamed together--to become capsuleers; to rise above a past of slavery, strife, and struggle--dissolve for her and not for me. She departed abruptly, hurtfully. We hadn't spoken since.
And now, years later, any chance to do so was forever gone. The letter continued: "You have been named in Ms. Tryssan's last will and testament to receive items from her estate, which have been dispatched via courier with this letter. Any questions..."
The letter droned on in officialese for another paragraph. I tossed it on the table and picked up the small package, curious what it might contain. It weighed very little, and nothing shifted when the package was tilted side to side. Slowly, I opened it. Inside, rough-textured folded cloth. My heart caught when I drew it out and recognized the woven design. This was the work of Mahra, our "adopted" mother in the rebel camp--the camp I stumbled upon in desperate flight with Kea from the savaged, lifeless body of the Slaver Kennelman who betrayed me, the camp where I met Sakkie, the camp where I had finally found a family--the only family I had ever known. Memories painful, joyful, bittersweet crowded together in my mind as my fingers caressed the felt-like fabric. There was something wrapped inside. I turned it over to find a small note pinned to it, in writing I still recognized. "For Mynxee" said the familiar scrawl. I unwrapped the cloth, slowly, so slowly.
There was no blood on it now. The supple rolled leather gleamed, the handmade brass fittings shone softly in the low light of my quarters. Deep scratches on the small brass plate near the buckle end did not obscure the name engraved there: "Kea". Ohhh, oh Sakkie, oh how did you come by this? I wondered, eyes filling with tears. That something so much a part of my beloved slaver hound had been returned to me, that someone whose friendship I thought was lost forever had done it, was overwhelming. The tears fell and I let them. The memories rolled and I let them.
Later, soothed by music and relaxed by a drink, I considered the very few degrees of separation between each of us and the major events in New Eden. I marveled at how random events can affect our lives--even events that don't seem directly relevant in the slightest. I had barely given Band of Brothers' alliance disbandment a second thought beyond incredulity that it had happened at all. Null sec politics were about as far off my radar as high sec mining ops. And yet here I sat, profoundly affected on a very personal level by that very event. An alliance falls, a long-lost friend dies, a treasure finds its way home. Figure the odds on that.
The Universe has a bizarre sense of humor when it comes to dealing our hands, I thought as I poured another drink.
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