Meta | メタ

Seraph sits and listens to me for hours while I tell her everything. Growing up lonely, finding Blossom when she fell from the sky, learning the sword from her, learning everything from her.

I tell her about rescuing Forest and losing Fire, about the night Forest was basically 'adopted' by Blossom, about Forest and I becoming each other's 'blood brother' that night in his shed behind the library.

I tell her about my childhood nightmarish visions, about Blossom fighting the fire octopus, about fighting the dragon at the fall festival. I tell her about the townspeople's racism towards Blossom for being a Halfling, about how most of them slowly came around once Forest and I started bringing her into town.

I tell her about how Father hated Blossom, hated me for loving her. I tell her about how he disowned me for choosing Blossom over him—and by extension, over Mother. I tell her about how much I loved Mother, how much I miss Mother, how much I hope she's doing okay.

I tell her about the curse of the 'white eyes,' which she seems genuinely surprised by, making me think most of the planet doesn't know about what's apparently some Chivalry Province children's tale that's haunted me my whole life.

And although I almost stop myself, I tell her about selling my soul to Nightmare to save Blossom, about working for him for those few weeks, about how stupid I was then, about fighting the Mariel over Startropolis with Blossom. I tell her about being trapped inside Blossom's apartment for the next few days, about Blossom removing the microchip from my paw and severing my connection with Nightmare.

And then I tell her about Blossom vanishing, leaving me, and my enlisting in the Army.

It takes all day, it feels like. But I tell her everything.

Seraph sits and listens quietly the whole time. She never interrupts, except to ask the occasional question of clarification.

When I finally finish, we both just sit there in quiet for a long moment. Outside, the space station keeps silently orbiting our home world beneath, as sunlight and night slowly move across its surface in never-ending tandem.

"I understand why the stuff took the form of your dad now," she finally muses quietly. "If I ever see him, I'm beating him up."

"No, you're not," I disagree with a scowl, "because I'm beating him up first."

"Okay, fine; you can have first crack at him. But I'm helping."

I snort at that despite myself. "I'll allow it."

"Good, 'cause I wasn't asking."

I laugh slightly at that and give her a fond glance. She's staring out the window at the moment, like she has been most of the day. "Thanks for listening."

"Anytime, Meta." She looks over at me, expression gentle but earnest. "Do you want me to call you that from now on?"

I think it over for just a second before nodding, but then quickly switch to shaking my head. Seraph frowns in confusion, and I sigh. "...Knight is... a sort of defense mechanism. Like the mask."

"So nobody knows you until you know you can trust them with, well, you," she surmises rather accurately.

"Exactly," I agree with a single nod. "So... I would like if you could call me 'Meta' when it's just us. But around everyone else..."

"'Knight' it is. Fair enough," she accepts. I nod once more. She crosses her gloves limply, leaning back against the wall and looking out the window. "Funny thing. I remember that episode with the Mariel dust being rained over Startropolis, although I had no idea you were involved with that, obviously. I learned about what was going on from a TV in a store window running a PSA on repeat, but I'd already had Mariel dust rained on me for most of a day at that point. Ended up spending the next week squatting in an abandoned building and having the weirdest fever dreams while my body fought off the infection."

I wince at that. "I'm sorry to hear that." I frown a bit though, as I think over her words. "I remember you mentioning at some point you spent several years homeless before joining the Army, but why didn't you go to a homeless shelter or something?"

She shrugs, still staring out the window. "Some of them I got banned from for getting into fights with other people looking for help or resources. Most of them I just timed out of though. Startropolis has a system that limits the number of days any given person can spend in any given shelter. Once you're out of days at all the shelters, you're out of luck. No more help for you. You gotta figure things out on your own from there."

I stare at her, trying to process that. "But what if you need more help than that?"

She shrugs again. "Tough luck, buttercup. You're never getting on your feet unless a miracle happens."

"That's awful," I mutter.

"That's Star World."

I scowl. "Remind me why we're fighting for this planet again?"

"Woah there, buddy," she warns sarcastically, though not harshly. "That sounds awful close to mutinous sentiment over there. Might have to report you." I snort and she smiles, just slightly. "I agree, though. I wonder sometimes what I'm fighting for, too."

The both of us go quiet for a long moment, until Seraph suddenly gives a heavy sigh. "I suppose I should tell you about my past too. It's only fair."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," I disagree firmly.

"I want to," she says, but it's faltering. "I think."

I don't say anything to that, just watch her. Her face seems so dark at the moment, so sad, and yet somehow, so tired as well. I've never seen her look so old.

After a couple of minutes, she takes a deep breath. "I might as well start at the beginning, I guess." She nods out the window towards Star World. "I'm from that mountain range there, that's just getting into the sunset line now."

"Reverence Province," I muse in instant recognition.

"Yeah," she sighs. "Reverence Province. And you knew that right away. But I didn't know that was the name of the place I was from until after I'd left it. Heck, I didn't even know about Clans or Provinces at all until about that time, or about anything outside of the valley where I grew up."

I frown in confusion. "How did you not know those things? Wouldn't they teach them at every Star World school?"

She smirks, but there's no mirth in the expression. "I never went to school, just like you. There wasn't a school in the valley outside of the church. I learned reading, writing, and basic 'rithmetic from my parents, and nothing else. That was all I needed to know, as far as they were concerned."

She goes quiet for a long second. "But I'm getting ahead of myself. Like I said, we need to start at the very beginning." She takes a deep breath, steeling herself somehow. I just settle back against the window, gloves in my lap, watching her silently.

"You know I'm a Split—hell, everyone does. It's the first thing anyone notices when they look at me." She pauses for a long second before continuing. "Splits happen when a pair of fraternal twins fuse into one person in the womb very early during the gestation period. They're also referred to in some of the scientific literature as 'chimeras,' although that's generally regarded as a pejorative. So while I'm literally one person with one of every organ and everything, I started out as two."

She looks at me, pointing to each side of her face as she talks. "So in some sense, the pink half is me, and the blue half is my sibling, or vice versa. Although, obviously, I'm the resulting whole, as well." She looks back out the window, glove falling limply into her lap. "In reality, my sibling must have been a girl, because both sides of me developed to have female characteristics—slightly larger eyes in proportion to the rest of me, longer eyelashes, so on and so forth."

She half closes her eyes before continuing. "But scientific reality didn't mean anything in Believers' Valley. Science was a lie created to fool people out of salvation. So according to my parents and everyone around me, the pink half was me. The blue half was my brother. And I had killed him."

"That doesn't even make sense," I exclaim, already feeling infuriated on her behalf.

"Please don't interrupt," she mutters quietly. "This is already difficult to talk about."

"Sorry," I murmur. "You don't have to—"

"Sh," she repeats. She closes her eyes. "So that was the context I was born in. The second I showed up with split colors, as a little girl, it was predetermined that I was evil because I'd killed my brother to be able to exist." She opens her eyes again, but her gaze is distant, unfocused.

"And that was a problem. Because the leader of the community told my parents they were having a son who was going to grow up to fulfill prophecies, play a role in some great plan to destroy the nonbelievers of the universe. And my parents were all excited to welcome this holy little boy into the world, the only child they were permitted to have, according to the lots they'd drawn."

She smirks again, but there's even less happiness in the expression this time than before. "And then they had me instead."

I don't interrupt this time, but I'm feeling very confused.

Seraph seems to notice or sense this, because she says, "To make some things make sense, I have to go back even farther. You see, Believers' Valley called itself a 'community of faith and truth.' But in reality, it was a cult—although again, I didn't learn that word until I was already out.

"It all got started about a hundred years after the first war. The founder and leader, a pure white Star Warrior who called himself Angelus, formerly a banker, got seriously sick and had some really trippy fever dreams. Fever dreams about fire and destruction raining from the sky, of the vast majority of Star Warrior-kind being cleansed from the universe in an act of judgement for not being True Believers in the... you know. The power that supposedly guides the universe."

"The Star Power?" I fill in for her, confused as to why she doesn't just say his name.

"Yeah," she agrees, not scolding me for interrupting that time. "And 'the power' sent a sort of demigod to carry out this rage and destruction—a Star Warrior with six wings." She pauses for a long moment. "After getting over the fever, 'Angelus—' I have no idea what his actual name was—decided the dreams had actually been visions, and that he'd been sent by the power that guides the universe to warn the world about the coming judgement, even though it directly contradicted a lot of the orthodox teachings about... 'the power' that Reverence Clan was actually in charge of keeping and sharing with the other Clans. Heck, he wasn't even from Reverence Clan. But he was convinced he was some kind of special messenger—hence the name, Angelus; 'angel' of course meaning 'messenger.'"

I don't say it, but I'm already finding myself thinking this sounds like a recipe for disaster.

"Anyway, most people saw Angelus for what he was, some kind of deranged nutcase. But some people bought into his hatred and anger and diatribe directed at most of the universe, and let's face it, some horrible people love the thought of getting special treatment while everyone else suffers. And that's the kind of people who were attracted to Angelus' hateful message." She goes quiet for a long moment, thinking things over. "Some of those people included my parents, founding members of Believers' Valley.

"You see, obviously their message of 'the power hates you and you're all going to die' didn't go over so well with the government or most people, so most of the Believers, as they called themselves, rejected their Clan and Province citizenship, and they settled down in an uninhabited valley in the mountains of Reverence Province. After the first couple of decades, no one new really moved in anymore, so it was just a hundred zealots hanging out in the mountains and not bothering anybody, so nobody ever came to check on them. But they started getting married and having kids.

"Kids no one knew about. Kids who didn't exist as far as the government knew. Kids that didn't have anyone doing wellness checks on them or making sure they went to school.

"Kids like me. But I digress.

"Everyone who joined the Believers, in addition to rejecting their Clan and Province, got a new name. Women got names based off of virtues; men off of military or warrior themes. My father's Believer name was Shieldbearer. My mother's, Chastity. I have no idea what their names were before that."

She pauses for a long moment. "But yeah. All these crazy people go settle down in the middle of nowhere in the mountains and start a little commune. They have their farm they share, and their little cabins, and their church where Angelus tells them all about how great they are and how awesome and fun it's gonna be when they inherit a perfect universe after everyone else gets deep-fried by the demigod six-winged guy. And they intermarry, and have kids based on how many the drawn lots say they should have. And the community slowly grows, but not super quickly because it was really easy to get kicked out.

"And once you got kicked out, you were gone forever. It was like you had never been there. No one ever talked about you again; any belongings you had were burned. It wasn't like you'd died. It was like you hadn't ever existed. Anyone who left the valley for any reason—to get medical help, to visit family or friends who were left behind, to return to an abandoned family when they grew a conscience—anyone who left was Forgotten the second they stepped out of the valley or the woods around it where the men would hunt for deer and things for extra food. If you were a kid and you wandered off too far, well, tough luck, bud. You don't exist anymore, you never existed, and your parents are having another kid to replace you because you never were.

"You come home begging for someone to notice you, and you just get ignored, no matter how much you cry or wail. You just kind of... starve to death on the fringes of society. And no one cares. Because you never existed."

Seraph goes quiet for a long moment once again. I want to say something, but I know she said she didn't want to be interrupted. After a moment, I notice tears welling up in her eyes, so I reach out and grab one of her gloves. She gives mine a grateful squeeze, but doesn't look at me.

"I saw more than one kid meet that fate. And it was never them trying to act out or anything. It was just innocent exploring, wandering off. But there was zero tolerance for rule breaking on any level. So they were just... Forgotten." She takes a deep breath, pulling herself together.

"So that was the world I was born into. A crazy, backwards, hate-fueled cult existing outside of greater society. And I was predetermined to be evil since birth, for killing my nonexistent brother. But because Angelus said he existed, he did. And because I was there, it meant I had stolen my brother's birthright, so it was still my job to save Angelus someday. But now instead of a destiny, it was a fate." She scowls.

"And 'destiny' and 'fate' are two very different things.

"Obviously, I didn't understand any of this. I didn't know why my parents said I'd killed my brother, all I knew is that they said it, so it must be true. I didn't know why my parents were convinced I had demons whenever I cried or acted different from other children, all I knew is they said it, so it must be true. I grew up knowing I was evil, unlovable, and that I was going to spend my whole life making up for something I'd done before birth. And no matter how hard I tried to be good, it was never enough.

"I spent most of my childhood locked in a closet in my parents' cabin as punishment for acting out of turn or saying something stupid or forgetting to do my chores. If it wasn't the closet, it was getting beat to try and scare the 'demons' off, or having the community pray over me, begging 'the power' to send the demons out from me. But nothing ever worked. I was still always the evil child everyone hissed at or ignored or kicked.

"The other kids were told to stay away from me at all costs, so they did. Blind obedience was necessary for survival; you learned that quick as a kid in Believers' Valley. So if you wanted to survive, you stayed away from the Demon Child. The Chimera. The Brother Murderer.

"Anytime I wasn't locked in a closet or getting exorcised, life followed the same pattern—spending most of the day in church listening to Angelus rant underneath a statue of the Star Warrior with six wings that hung from the ceiling, and spending the rest keeping the farm we subsisted off of going. There was no school, like I said, and no one ever spoke about the outside world except to describe a den of debauchery and sin that was going to be burned away one day.

"None of us kids knew about Clans, or Provinces, or Star World, or even the Galaxy. All we had was Believers' Valley and the fervent belief that we were so incredibly lucky to be born there."

After another long pause, Seraph continues. "And that's how life went for my first 16 years. I genuinely believed I was evil, sinful, horrible, and that no matter what I did, that's all I'd ever be. But I tried, so, so hard to be good. I wanted so badly to be good. But nobody ever believed me. It didn't stop me trying, but nobody ever, ever believed me.

"And the weird thing was—we still had the orthodox teachings. We all read them, learned them, memorized them. 'Love your neighbor as yourself;' 'redeem the times, for they are evil;' 'be in the world but not of the world.' And even as a kid, the dissonance bothered me. It didn't make sense to me that the teaching said that, and then we ignored them. It didn't make sense to me that the text spoke of 'the power' as a loving and creative force, but because of Angelus' visions, we had turned it into a monstrous, destructive being who was obsessed with torturing all of its creations.

"But no one was allowed to bring things like that up. Disagreement with Angelus' word was treason, and treason was deadly. So while so many things always sat wrong with me, I knew never to say anything. I may have been stupid, but I wasn't that stupid."

Seraph pauses then for several minutes, staring numbly out the window, her gaze lost somewhere in the distance.

I finally dare to break the silence. "How did you finally get out?"

She smiles weakly past the tears that are still streaming down her face, but again, there's no happiness in the expression. "Angelus died. He came down with a severe illness, and within days of getting sick, he was gone." I frown, confused. "You'd think that would have been the end of things, that the cult would have collapsed without a leader—but no, there was still the prophecy. My brother hadn't been there to save his life, because I'd killed him. But I was still there. And I could still bring him back."

"I don't understand," I say.

"I didn't either. But my parents told me, this was how I could finally make up for everything. This was how I could redeem myself. I could dedicate my heart to... 'the power,' and in exchange, he would bring back Angelus. If I just did this, I could finally be pure, good, one of the Believers. I could finally be saved."

Her smile vanishes entirely. "Basically, I was going to be 'married' to 'the power,' as I understood it. And I was fine with that. I wasn't interested in marriage; I saw the way the wives of the community were treated as less than, and I knew I didn't want that even though it was every girl's fate. So this seemed like a win-win situation from my perspective."

"What happened?" I question, just growing more confused.

Seraph's tears are coming harder now. "I overheard some of the other kids talking about the dedication ceremony a few days before it was supposed to happen. And what they were describing wasn't a wedding. It was a sacrifice."

I interrupt again, unable to stop myself. "A what?"

"A sacrifice," she repeats. She pulls her glove out of mine, hugging both of hers around herself. "My heart wasn't being 'dedicated' to the Sta—to 'the power,' in a proverbial sense. My literal heart was going to be cut out and offered, in exchange for Angelus to be sent back to the cult. I was going to die for my sins, for the sins of the whole cult, in a sense, and they would get their leader back.

"I didn't believe it at first, but I went home and asked my parents, and they agreed that was what was going to happen. I was going to be killed and offered up as a sacrifice, as a scapegoat for the people to get their beloved leader back. It was the only way I could ever be worth anything, could ever be more than a demon-riddled piece of garbage everyone hated.

"And, well... self-preservation took over on the night of the sacrifice. My parents came and let me out of the closet to take me to the church, and I grabbed a kitchen knife and tried to kill them to save myself. I didn't kill them, but in the confusion I managed to get out of the house and run away.

"I thought I'd be Forgotten, like everyone else who left. I was wrong.

"I ended up wandering around the woods, not knowing what to do or where to go, but in a rare episode of contact with the outside world, the cult got the police involved. I was hunted down and charged with attempted murder.

"I was terrified, Meta," she says, trembling. "I had no idea what was happening—I had no concept of the police back then; I just knew tall, angry men found me alone in the woods, tied my paws, and threw me in a cell. I didn't understand what was happening in court, although I was able to parse things eventually from the concept of 'judge,' using the concept of 'judgement' I was familiar with.

"And over the decades, the insanity of Believers' Valley had become less known. So the only context the police and court were running off of was that this was a community of dedicated, holy Reverence Clan people who had gone to set themselves apart and be extra holy, who had some crazy teenager act out and try to kill her parents in an act of deranged rebellion.

"This was the story all the adults told the police. And while my punishment could have been worse, all they wanted was for me to be turned back over to the cult—'the community.' Of course, they wanted me back to sacrifice me and get Angelus back. But the police assumed they just wanted to bring me home and give me a second chance, a true show of holy love and mercy that just proved how wonderful and pure the people of the community were.

"And I guess they probably would have just gone on believing that. But the terror I showed whenever I could see my parents in the courtroom, the blind screaming and panic that ensued, tipped them off that something wasn't exactly right.

"Me and the other children of the community were taken in for questioning by social workers. And of course, they were incredibly concerned when they realized none of us had any education, any medical history, any legal trace of existence as far as the government was concerned. The adults were going on and on about government overreach through that whole process, but the social workers quickly concluded something was deeply wrong.

"They wanted to have us all rehomed, and that made all of the other children panic. No one wanted to be taken into the world of sin and debauchery. No one wanted to end up burned with the nonbelievers.

"So they reached a deal: the children would testify in court about not being schooled and all that jazz, and they would be allowed to go home—on the condition that they had legal records set up, a doctor would visit the community every year to make sure all the kids were healthy, and a social worker would check in every year to make sure they were receiving a basic education.

"It was wrong. It was fraudulent. But it was what happened.

"The other children—I say children, but it was several dozen of us ranging in age from 5 to 17—testified about the conditions in the community. The rules were agreed to. I was going to be sent home. I was doomed.

"But then one of the children, another girl about my age, spoke up about me partway through her testimony, which no one had told her to do and no one was expecting. She said that I was going to be put to death for being a bad influence on the community, and that I had attacked my parents in self-defense.

"That wasn't fully the truth, but for some reason, every child after that corroborated that story when questioned. 'It was self-defense.' 'It was self-defense.' 'It was self-defense.' I don't know if someone told them to do that, or if they agreed to it amongst themselves, or what. But that was my saving grace.

"By all accounts, my parents should have faced charges. But they maintained in the face of the children's testimony that I was only going to be killed for being such a bad influence on everyone else.

"And the thing about Reverence Clanners is... they assume the best of each other. All sorts of horrible things are allowed to go on behind 'holy doors.' Because after all, no matter how heinous the acts, there must be good intentions behind them." Seraph's face is covered in obvious disgust, but she keeps talking.

"Since the authorities didn't see any of the other children as being in the same sort of danger, the other adults were given the benefit of the doubt. I was fully acquitted on a ruling of self-defense and removed from my parents' custody, taken in as a ward of the state. And my parents faced no consequences.

"My parents ignored me through the whole case. The last time they ever spoke to me was the day of the ruling, when they basically told me for the last time that I was evil, I was demonic, I was damned, I'd murdered my brother and now Angelus too, and that I was not their child.

"They also gave me my Warp Star, which I'd never known even existed before that. We weren't allowed to have them in the cult. They were a sign of the nonbelievers, the outsiders. It was a sort of official disowning, in the cult's eyes.

"And then, and only then, was I Forgotten.

"I was taken in by the nearest orphanage, but because I was 16, I was old enough to emancipate myself. They tried to talk me out of it; said I needed an education before I tried going out on my own. They were probably right. I probably would have been better off if I stayed there. I don't think the people at the orphanage were bad people. I just didn't know how to trust anybody, I didn't understand the world I'd been dropped into, and I was fresh out of a cult that had told me everyone outside was evil and could never have my best interests at heart.

"And if not for the other children's testimony, the outsiders would have happily sent me back to my death, sure they'd done the right thing. So maybe I was right not to trust anyone in Reverence Province.

"But regardless, I was terrified still being that close to the valley, just a couple of mountains over. I wanted to get as far from my parents as possible, because I was sure I wasn't safe. I was sure they'd come back and try to kill me.

"None of the adults around me believed me when I expressed that fear, so all I could do was emancipate myself and run away.

"And I ran as far as I could. I wound up running through what I later learned was Chivalry Province. I snuck onboard a train—having no idea what it was—and ended up eventually across the ocean in Startropolis. And that's basically where I stayed after that. I learned about the world from TVs in shop windows and books at public libraries. I wanted to enroll in school once I figured out what that was, but I didn't have a permanent address, so I couldn't.

"And that's the thing with most opportunities—school, jobs, finding a place to stay. You need a permanent address, and homeless shelters don't count as one. So I couldn't get help of any kind. All I could do is hunker down in shelters and abandoned buildings and try my best to figure the world out on my own.

"I had no real goal to live for. I figured out pretty early on I loved flying, thanks to my Warp Star, but I didn't have it for long before it got impounded when I got in trouble for street racing for money to buy food. And... I guess in desperation, the mind makes up reasons to stay alive. I learned about the concept of outer space and starships from shop window TVs and books, and I decided that was my goal: to make it into space.

"I taught myself to fly and to fix ships. I went through the so-called 'school of hard knocks,' and I learned how to fight as a result, how to keep myself alive despite the odds. And after everything, after several years of barely getting by day to day, I got a fifty-sixer Brillco Chromatica into orbit.

"And after that... I guess the rest is history."

I sit in silence, stunned. I don't even know how to begin to react. Seraph doesn't say anything further, but she's still trembling and crying, hugging her gloves around herself.

On instinct, I pull her to me and wrap my gloves and wings around her in a hug. "If I ever see your parents, I'm doing a lot worse than beating them up."

She snorts weakly but doesn't say anything else.

I just squeeze my eyes shut, having so many things I want to say but struggling to put them into words. "So... these nutcases just got all their kids back, with no further consequences? Even though they found out these people almost killed one of the children?"

Seraph shrugs. Her voice is scathing when she speaks. "Like I said. You can get away with almost anything behind 'holy doors.'"

I scowl, feeling myself flood with rage. "How dare they. How dare they use the concept of the Star Power like that, to justify that kind of hatred and violence and—" My voice trails off, but another thought strikes me. "What happened to the other children who went back? Surely they faced consequences for preventing you from being taken back into the cult."

She shakes her head. "I have no idea. I try not to think about it. I'm sure it wasn't good."

I shake my head as well. We both sit quietly for a long moment before I speak again.

"So... that's why you don't want to talk about the Star Power. That's why you're not sure he's good. Because the context you learned about him in presented him as a hateful and destructive force that exists only to judge and to condemn."

She nods, but once again, doesn't say anything in answer.

"That makes a lot of sense," I murmur. "I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault," she mutters. "I know the worldview I grew up with was full of outright lies and shadier perversions of the truth. But yes. That's why I struggle to believe the power is 'good,' and why I can't bring myself to say its name. I still believe on some level that I'll be punished for speaking it with 'evil' lips, even though that doesn't make sense."

"But you've seen and heard me say it, and nothing bad's ever happened to me," I point out.

"I know; I know." She sighs. "It's not a logical thing; I'm aware. I just... I can't do it." She shakes her head. "I don't want to talk about that part further right now. I might never want to talk about it."

"Fair enough," I accept that, although I still feel horrible for her on so many levels. Another question quickly comes to mind. "Wait. If women in the cult were named after virtues, why is your name Seraph, like the kind of angel?"

She sighs heavily, still leaning against me. "The angelic Star Warrior with six wings who was supposed to come 'cleanse' the universe with fire and brimstone? His name was the Six-Winged Seraph. The cult's name was the 'Church of the Six-Winged Seraph.' When I enlisted, I needed a name, and I... I wasn't... I haven't gone by the name my parents gave me since I left—at least, not any further than I absolutely had to from a legal standpoint.

"My birth name, my former legal name, wasn't a blessing or a gift. It was a curse used to control me. I wanted nothing to do with it. As far as I was concerned, I had no name, just like I had no home, no family, no friends. When I needed a name to enlist, I... I just spat out the first name that came to mind."

"And that name was Seraph?" I question. She nods once. "But why?"

"I don't know," she murmurs. "But it's my name now. And it's the first name I've ever had that's felt like mine."

I trail off for a long second. "It suits you." She snorts. "It does," I insist, but then a new thought hits me. "Do you not want the armor and things because they match your name, and it reminds you of the cult?"

She bursts into a sitting position. "What? No. I told you, I love them. They're beautiful gifts. I just... can't accept something so valuable." I open my mouth to protest, but she shakes her head, her eyes welling yet again with tears. "Meta, no. I'm not worth that much. And..." she takes a deep breath, "speaking as someone who lived in abject poverty for so long, having something that costs so much... feels wrong. It feels... sinful."

My gaze softens as her protests finally make sense on that front. "Seraph, you are worth that much and more. And it's not wrong to accept a gift that's freely given—that's grace."

"Meta," she says firmly, and I begin to realize she's not backing down. "You're not giving me those gifts."

Unfortunately for her, I'm not backing down either. "...Fine. They're not gifts. They're a trade."

Her brow furrows in confusion. "How do you mean?"

I smile a bit despite myself. "I give them to you. You continue to use them to protect the both of us." She opens her mouth to protest, but I continue. "And! I'll give you some of my letters to Blossom to carry in your cape, with the understanding that if anything ever happens to me or we're ever separated, if you ever find Blossom, you'll give them to her for me."

Seraph scowls slightly at me. I grin back at her.

After a long moment, Seraph sighs, scowl breaking, and lifts her gloves placatingly. "Fine. Fine." I punch the air in victory while she laughs despite herself. "You drive a hard bargain, Meta-Knight."

I freeze at the linked names. It feels strange hearing them paired together, but not wrong, per se.

After all, I'm both in some sense. I'm Meta. I'm also Knight.

She frowns, noticing my reaction. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"You're fine," I assure her, shaking it off and grinning at her again. "I'm just glad you're finally accepting the gifts—"

"—the trade," she corrects me.

"Right. The 'trade.'"

She sighs, bemused, and looks over at the box of gifts, which has sat untouched on the table for hours now. "...Thank you, Meta. It's... going to take me awhile to feel like I've done enough to deserve this. But I deeply appreciate it."

"You're welcome," I tell her firmly. "And hey." I wait for her to turn to face me again. "I'm proud of you, okay? So proud it almost hurts."

She blinks at me in confusion. "What? Why?"

"Because look at you. Despite everything, despite the odds. You're here. And you're you." I point to the planet outside the window, as the mountain range she pointed out earlier, now fully in night, drifts past once again. "And despite all the people on that planet who hurt you, despite all the people on that planet who failed you, you're still risking everything to keep them safe."

"So are you," she points out.

"That's not the point," I disagree with a shake of my head. "My point is... you had every right and reason to turn out hateful and angry and destructive. And yet... you're the opposite. You're good, Seraph. You're so intensely good. Don't let yourself believe for one second that's not true."

Her eyes well up with tears yet again. "You... you really think I'm good? Even though I'm snarky, and distrustful, and have a short temper?"

"Seraph," I say firmly. "I've met a lot of people in my life. You are genuinely one of the best." She blinks at me, seemingly stunned. "I mean it. I'm glad you're my backup and my sister of sorts. I'm glad you're in my life. And I'm glad you exist."

She smiles past her tears, and after a moment, the smile builds into a grin. "I'm glad you exist too, Meta." She gets up to go look at her things, and then puts the lid on the box, picking it up. "I'm going to go try these on—I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Sounds good," I agree.

She leaves, and after a moment, I pull a legal pad and a pencil out of my cape. If I'm going to have her carrying some of my letters to Blossom for me, I should probably include a short letter of introduction.

Dearest Blossom:

If you're reading this, it means you've met my sister of sorts, Seraph. She's a brave soldier and one of the most incredible people I've ever met. And she's someone I'm proud to know and fight alongside.

The war sucks, Blossom, as Seraph told me just the other day. But it's so much easier to face when she's here with me. It's so much easier to face with a friend, someone I don't have to just be 'Knight' around, someone with whom I can be Meta as well.

Take good care of her, Blossom. I know she'll take care of you in return.

I'll see you soon. And when I find you, I'm never leaving you again. I promise.

I love you, Blossom.

Ever yours,

-Meta.

End of Part 1.

(Author's Note, 3/25/23: This isn't the end of the book. Just the 1st part. I'll remove this note once further chapters have been posted.)