Past Dreams

Posted on Wed Sep 14th, 2022 @ 3:27am by Lieutenant JG Kassandra Selin

Mission: http://vengeance.split-world.com/index.php/sim/missions/id/3
Location: Sidari
Timeline: 2354
1131 words - 2.3 OF Standard Post Measure

The click-clack of heels on terracotta tiles spelled impending doom. But the person for whom doom was impending was not hanging around where the wearer of the heels could get to them.

The severely dressed nanny stalked into the nursery where the now 5-year-old Kassandra lived. It was empty of the young child who should have been there. And the lack of child did little to offset the starkness of the room. A single bed, with a dark red coverlet and single pillow and the lone teddy bear, with a desk and dressing table on opposite sides of the room and no rug on the cold tile floor. A big difference to the bedrooms of the other Selinofoto children, the older sister’s room was filled with toys and games and beautiful rugs and chairs. But it had been deemed appropriate for the youngest child.

The nanny sighed and fisted her hands on her hips. The child was always slipping off. If she listened it would not be so bad, the Nanny just prayed the child was not in the courtyard where her stepmothers were hosting an afternoon tea. Many high women from the Empire would be attending, including the wife of the Butcher of Rakal V.

Kassandra was not there, she avoided the courtyard like it was the 7th ring of hell. She, in torn shorts and tee shirt was sitting in a tree in the small lemon grove at the back of the mansion. There was an olive grove as well but she hated olives. She had chosen a branch high up in one of the oldest lemon trees that, family history said, had been planted by the first Selinofoto when they came to the isle a thousand or more years before. She had a small canvas bag hooked over a smaller branch and in it were several pads and two green apples. She had swiped the apples from the kitchen and the PADDS’s from the family library. She was banned from it, because her stepmother, Clarissa, her father’s first wife, had caught her reading in there the other afternoon when she should have been with her nanny.

The nanny. A woman chosen because she was strict and harsh on Kassandra. Kassandra ignored her where possible, avoided her when she could and had even buried the switch the Nanny sought to use to bring Kass to heel, and the child was content sitting in the crook of the branch a PADD in her lap, reading a story about a Lion, Witch and Wardrobe and the four children who discovered that wonderous world.

Yes she was 5, and yes the book was aimed towards older children but Kass had always enjoyed reading. She barely remembered her mother, reading to her each night before bed, and she had, while she lay dying, insisted on reading to Kassandra against the wishes of Kass’s father. Mariette Selinofoto had insisted on reading stories that were not baby stories to her daughter, continuing the tradition she had started with Kassandra’s older brother Iason. She didn’t remember much else of her mother, and even now Mariette was not spoken of in the house, and there was only two holo’s of her. One in each of her children’s bedrooms, and each one depicted the mother with the child just before she had fallen ill.

Kass’s love of reading came from her mother and soon, soon she would go to school. Real school! She could not wait. To be away from the Nanny, her stepmothers, even her father. She barely saw him. And when the family had ‘family dinners’ she was often whisked away after the prayer to eat in her bedroom. Be seen and not heard. The five-year-old knew her place – Out of sight and out of mind. And she … no she didn’t like it but she accepted it. After all she was nearly 6 and 6 meant boarding school and freedom from the family home. Maybe, she would make friends? That would be lovely. To have a friend to talk to, to smile and laugh with like her sister did with the girls that hung around her, to share secrets with…. One could not share with her sister, after all, Athanasia used it to get her into trouble.

Footsteps in the orchard had her pulling her feet up and gathering the bag close as she sat on the branch and looked down into the orchard. Below her, the Nanny walked cautiously through the trees, looking but not calling out. As the trees’ branches were filled with leaves, Kass was well hidden in her high branch. If the woman had discovered her hiding place she would need to find another and the only place left was the cliffs, or the beach and she was not allowed down there even when there were adults. She stayed still and silent as the woman peered through the foliage and moved from tree to tree.

Kass barely dared to breath as the woman checked the tree she was hiding in and then moved on, having not seen her. Eventually the nanny stalked inside the mansion to report she could not find her, or not.

Content and believing herself safe for the moment, Kass relaxed in the tree branches and went back to the world of Narnia as the day wore on.

Hours later as night fell on the isle of Sidari, the house was a blaze of lights as the Adults celebrated Alexandros Selinofoto - Son of Clarissa and Artaxes- 18th birthday. All his siblings were there, with the sole exception.

Kassandra was locked in her bedroom, not allowed to be seen or attend. Her Nanny was in there with her, and while cheers rang out in the main reception areas of the house, Kass’s room was filled with sobs as the Nanny, issued the ordered punishment of 15 lashes of Kassandra’s father’s horsewhip. Once the punishment was done, the Nanny washed the child’s back and without using the medical tricorder, slathered the child’s back in cream and left her to sleep.

2 days later, she was ‘escorted’ to Athena’s All Girls School in Athens by her Nanny and her father who didn’t even look at her when he handed her over to the teachers there. Her sister would arrive three days later to great fan fare with the rest of the family there to see her settle in. Kass knew that this was the pattern of her life as she watched from the window of her dorm room as Athanasia was hugged, kissed, and praised by the family.

Turning from the scene below, Kassandra crawled gingerly back into her bed and curled up. Life sucked. She had no one.