Book of Todram by Sebiestor Lynn Yi
Author: Lynn Yi
Original post: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WvSOiZ1naXOjJQuPvEkCnWyKbkCSoISJ9XkzsrWp3tQ/edit
Entry for YC120 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the prose category.
Book of Todram
by Sebiestor [賽畢斯托部族 米玛塔尔]
Lynn Yi [易林]
YC 106
I, Lynn Yi, was born on a Wreathe-class industrial spaceship in transit from the cold Northern steppes of the continent named Mikramurka on Matar of the Pator system to a spaceport of Caille University orbiting the second moon of the seventh planet of the Bourynes system in Sing Liason Gallente Federation space. At least that's what the records I have found which match my bone scan for the date and time say. Matar is the fourth planet in the Pator system, temperate and covered in water by eighty-five percent. These details matter to me since I have no memory of them. While moving from system to system with my parents our vessel was caught in a capsuleer led 24th Imperial Crusade Ammatar blockade that tore apart our family, killing my mother in the process. I can't even recall my parent’s faces, although the records tell me my Vherikor father’s name is Hongtian Yi, and my Sebiestor mother’s name was Meilynn Yi. The Ammatar spaceships took me back to their nearby stars of San Matar and I was sold to another female child a couple months older than myself to grow up with. There are no records of my actual birth or that I even exist. The name I carry was given to me by my Ammatar parents, although through some red string of fate we share the same clan name of the old Nefantar tribe of Matar.
YC 109
My fate could have been so much worse as I came to realize from the lives of the other slaves. My older sister’s name is Ling Yi and I was hers to command and to play with however she wished. My first memories are of her family rather than my own. I was given a toxin called Vitoxin and then an antidote called Vitoc via an implant surgically placed in my neck as a mere toddler in order to make me easy to control. At first the antidote, Vitoc, felt wonderful, but a few days without it I was in agony from the Vitoxin and would do anything to make it stop to get the Vitoc. I may have already seemed meek to her family, though they would one day discover the animal spirit within of the feline predator native to the frozen forests of my home on Matar.
YC 110
My head was shaved to clearly indicate my status as a slave and as an attempt to demoralize me and my strong emotions regarding respect. I came to believe in equal respect toward all living things. The other slaves who were born in Minmatar space taught me a great deal of my Sebiestor traditions and I took their words to heart far greater than those of the religion of the Ammatar. This tradition of writing an autobiography is known as a Book of Todram. While I started my book rather late, I felt I should try and keep with the traditions of my real Sebiestor family I never knew. Even if it was written in Ammarian at the beginning. My father was not born into the Yi clan but was initiated into it when he married my mother.
YC 112
The antidote, Vitoc, did its job and at times I lived in a dream like state as if viewing myself from far away and yet without it a slow agonizing death awaited from the Vitoxin. And while my owner and older sister Ling may have been just a few months older than myself her temperament was childlike, arrogant, and ignorant of any truth she disliked. This all must be caused by having been taught that I did not deserve the same respect as she did. My tasks as her servant were primarily to care for her hygiene, provide her with entertainment, and to carry out any duty she did not wish to do herself. If she was required to learn something she did not enjoy I was to engage in her studies with her. My strong emotions for earned respect did not fare well when I succeeded in a subject she did not, particularly the sciences and anything mechanical in nature.
YC 113
After my traumatic experience of first traveling the stars being ripped apart from my family and placed in a cage within the hold of a slave freighter I forever had nightmares of my real parents whose faces were never in those dreams. The parents of my elder sister Ling did all that they could to either silence my screams in my sleep but they only managed to make them less frequent and extreme with nightly heavy tranquilizers which I am still taking to this day.
YC 116
While my life may have been more comfortable and my daily tasks easily performed than those of the Brutor slaves, all of it still lacked a profound sense of self respect. However, being aware of that fact did not ever provoke me to act upon it. The Vitoc that was pumped into the base of my neck every few days ensured that I acted as I was commanded before I could even consider to rebel.
YC 117
On rare occasion my sister Ling found her curiosity about my Sebiestor tribe overcame her sense of superiority in every aspect of our lives. We were past having come of age and yet no lessons had ever been provided to her on the changes her body experienced. While I had learned of all of this as a child from the other Brutor slaves my age for some strange reason her family had gone to considerable lengths to keep this particular subject knowledge secret from her. Ling first showed particular interest when it came time for us to bathe as I was responsible for maintaining the cleanliness, care, and aesthetics of her body.
That was how I became an altogether different sort of toy of hers. This had one perk as it seemed after some time Ling began to show some measure of respect and concern for my well being. It seemed I was now in her favor. This helped put and end to the games she liked to play to reinforce her superiority to the fact that in the Amarr society I was classified as mere livestock.
YC 118
With this change in our relationship I was also granted privileges of learning other topics which Ling enjoyed and now wished to share with me. I was taught to pilot more than her personal shuttle around her grandfathers corporate space station and to learn of the vastness of the Ammatar space and eventually the route I would have to take in order to get back home… if I remained within the safety of the borders of Empire controlled high security space. My ancestral star, which I never knew its warmth, Pator, was not so very far away.
YC 120
Somehow during a regular transport to visit our uncle, Garret Yi, our worlds fell apart. An attack by the Gallente, and Minmatar Tribal Liberation Force, who somehow managed to avoid detection by both the DED, and the 24th Imperial Crusade, opened fire on our transport. We quickly made our way to the escape pods. I remember Ling gave me a desperate kiss before we climbed into our separate pods. It was the first time she ever really expressed that I meant more to her than just a slave. There was little doubt that we would be rescued, assuming we survived that is. And indeed it was Garret who came to rescue us, but he did not take my escape pod. Garret and I had something of a friendship and I couldn't understand how he could abandon me like this. Another shuttle quickly came in from behind and to my horror a design of a Gallente shuttle and I was taken on board and immediately went into warp back the same direction the attack from the Gallente squad had come from. How Garret could betray his own family for me, a mere slave, confused my wits to no end. Who had be betrayed me to? Was I actually being rescued to return back to my own people? Perhaps even my own family? I felt the red string of fate tugging me in a direction I had no choice but to follow no matter what I might try to do. Our shared name Yi, I had felt, must be key here.
Just as I had finally become somewhat comfortable in the life I was imprisoned within, I now seemed to have been taken yet again from what I was finally beginning to accept as my family. Once we fell out of warp my pod was opened and a strangely familiar face greeted me on the other side of the escape hatch. She introduced herself as Sunon. Sunon Yi. My confusion must have been very evident on my face. Then she told me that she was my little sister which raised far more questions than answers. She led me to the captains quarters of the Gallente shuttle rather than return back into her pod. Instead she sat down at the controls and gestured that I sit into the copilots seat so that we could chat along the journey. We were going to take a series of secret gates used for smuggling around Empire space to get back to where we could travel in relative safety and during this time I would be free to ask the many questions I was sure to be struggling with.
She explained to me that Garret was my father’s half brother and that through his intel had provided a time and place I could be rescued along with the information of the Vitoxin that had been used on me and which Vitoc antidote would keep me alive. Garret had done all of this for me knowing he would become a hunted man in Ammatar space but would be welcome in my father’s home on Pator. Only we weren’t headed towards Pator first, the place they would hunt for us all first. Instead we were headed to the star system Eram which was full of Sebiestor stations. It would be Sunon’s job to return to the Serpentis to reproduce the exact Vitoc I needed and bring me a crate each month. If I was lucky I might find the Vitoc I needed on an Amarr or Ammatar transport in Minmatar space as well.
What I was certain would be 10 jumps through Empire space, the hidden stargates landed us in Eram in what was just 6. Not to mention this shuttle, a Leopard-class shuttle, was insanely fast taking us from stargate to stargate in a mere fraction of the time every other shuttle I had piloted could ever reach. We were already in Minmatar space in 3 jumps through the hidden stargates. What I truly did not expect was who was there to greet us at the landing pad.
I had no memory of the face of this man, but a strange feeling of nostalgia overwhelmed me at the first words out of his mouth, “Welcome back, Lynn. Welcome back Sunon.” Sunon replied back just as easily, “Im back, Dad.” I couldn’t utter a word but to stare at the face that had always been a blur in my nightmares.
I had never been able to find a picture of any sort of his face in all of my searching through what records I had acquired access to while in San Matar. But his voice I felt I recognized from night after night of nightmares of my first day outside the womb. Perhaps even from something hidden from before I was even born.