Joanni’s Farewell
The Eridanus captain and diplomatic delegation having returned to their ship, the Origin Clesig secured in its rightful place, there was nothing left for Joanni except to say good-bye. “I have to go home; I miss my sun,” Joanni told her winged and dark-eyed hosts when they suggested the possibility of extending the length of her stay. Speaking for the last time in the language of the land she now stood upon, she continued, “I miss . . ..” Here she hesitated. There was no Oreanian word for softly falling snow, for perfumed angel wing peonies; certainly no word for the barbecued chicken of her past. Joanni felt the Oreanians’ patience wearing thin and turned her attention back to address them. “But return? Return one day? Yes. Yes, Oreana is here now,” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “I’ll return.”
“What will you do now, Joanni N.?” they asked her. “Your mission is over.”
“Find a new one,” she told them, while conceding to herself that what she needed was to find a true harbor, to understand where she best belonged. She thought about the impossibility of the captain fitting into this Oreanian world, but how he operated in his world of command in perfect harmony and certitude; she fit in neither one completely nor comfortably, though she loved them both.
The departure ceremony was small with no public audience. Fitting, as the Origin Clesig was home now and safe. It was not so much a celebration as an acknowledgement of the completion of the journey for the hallowed instrument and its loving caretaker. It was the closest the Oreanians ever came to showing gratitude. The Council was there, of course, and a young dance troupe, and off in the distance, a boys choir provided a poignant underpinning to the formalities. Joanni gave a short speech and handed the Primora a framed photo of her father to be placed somewhere at the far end of the ceremonial plateau, behind the ringed statue. The Primora presented her with the crown she wore at the return of the Origin Clesig ceremony with a warning that it would no longer light up once she left Oreana.
One of the younger girls ran up to her, as seemed to be their wont. Joanni knelt down to her level, and the girl pressed her forehead against the shoulder of the departing celestial alien who so fascinated her. ‘Don’t start bopping,’ Joanni thought, surprised at the tears that clouded her eyes. She climbed for the last time into the scout vessel with a different pilot and Ganhokeet accompanying her to the rendezvous space station—a singular honor. Joanni looked back through the gloomy inkiness at the group assembled to see her off. It gave her a pain in her chest, and caused a constriction in her throat, leaving these arrogant, ridiculous creatures, so proud of their half-formed wings, yet unable to fly. Leaving so much behind on this twilight-colored vouronium rock: memories of her childhood, her father, her past. Leaving behind her vaunted queen status, her crown notwithstanding.
And most of all, abandoning her beloved clesig—the harp-like companion that had brought her everything, a gift from her father’s lonely friend to a small girl with big emotions, not unlike the Oreanian child who had just rushed the stage. And now she was leaving all that, racing away from her past, flying back into the future with her galaxyship captain, facing once again the unknown with an unshakable joy and underlying concern of the harm that might follow. Back on the ground, watching their scout vessel rise into the air, the Primora and not a few members of the Oreanian Council also silently wondered whether the price for the return for their precious clesig would prove to be too high.
Image: We flock together. Source: Detail from “Cranes in Flight,” by Utagawa Hiroshige. Japan, no date. The Art Institute of Chicago. CC0 Public domain. Edited by J. Weigley