The Red-Haired Woman

By L.D.Neill

April 2002

Introduction

One might call this fan fiction.

I call it a reply.

It is more fact than fan fiction or perhaps a combination of what I perceived to be the murder of my mother and
reasons I was not invited to my father's wedding.

To understand the premise as to how I am relating my character's story line it is best to read first, For Moments at Seventeen in the Ancestor's Breath (scroll down the page for the link to the archives) by Keith Hamilton Cobb. Mr. Cobb wrote fan fiction for his own character of
Tyr Anasazi on the Gene Roddenberry show, Andromeda.

His Red-haired woman resembles Big D from the The Colorful D. Consortium.

I have changed the name of the consortium to Digital D. for personal reasons.
You can't help but read the similarities that occur through out his fascinating story.
Mr. Cobb has been a voluminous source of inspiration over the few years
I have been under his spell.

I could ramble on about psychic energy and being dragged out of an auction by his energy, the day his installment of
"For moments at Seventeen" was unveiled, but that's best explained by the random order of things.

The Red-Haired Woman

She could feel his eyes upon her as she weaves her way between the tables dispensing
good natured exchange along with the meals and beverages. He peeked her curiosity.
A lone Neitzschean youth, quietly attending her motions.
The rare Neitzschean traders that frequented the restaurant where a boisterous self
important lot. All consumed by their status in the wolf packs that they addressed as
prides. Arrogant in their superior genes to a fault and the least pleasant of customers
to be dealt with on the occasion of their requests with much delicacy and diplomacy.
She sized the youth with a clandestine yet objective eye and found him not wanting in
potential Alpha status. There was a perplexing atmosphere about the him, a curious
injury behind his grave eyes. As he rose to leave she noticed a grace and genteel manner
uncommon to his kind.

While the opera was in performance business retarded to a minimum and she passed the
reigns of command to the next in line. Hurrying to hang her apron and run her hands
through her hair she escaped through the back entrance to the stage door of the opera
house. She was greeted with cheerfulness by the doorman with whom she traded culinary
delights for vacant seats. Tonight she was going to be able to sit in a box half way
down the grand hall. She slipped quietly into the box and perched in the shadows.

From her position she could see the youth sitting closer to the back of the hall by a
footlight in the aisle, anticipation purely outlined on his countenance. More curiosity
consumed her that was abruptly left to wait as the overture filled the air with promise
of a wondrous performance.

The opera tonight, a tragic love incident with masquerades and plot twists a plenty, was
well known to her by reason of studies as a devotee of the genre. She herself was a
mezzo-soprano with 5 octaves to her credit. She had been forced to forestall her career
due to circumstances outside her limitations. She had found herself in mortal danger and
had retreated to this lesser world of terra-forms in hopes that she might find a way to
regain her home lands in future encounters.

Her family before the Neitzschean uprising once ruled the planet Delta with fairness and
the love of the people they protected. Slavers came to render them powerless against their
inimical forces and the family was forced to obtain refuge in the lesser lands of the north
where the climate was severely unaccommodating. Over the centuries they had parley their
strengths and became merchants providing essential technical equipment to the Neitzschean
race thus saving their kind from Neitzschean genocide tendencies. Her family, now well healed
enjoyed a modicum of security.

As a youth she was indulged in the arts that the memories of such creative endeavors be
not lost. Her first love was dance. Being tall of stature was an obstacle that kept her from
performing with the others of her class and she learned to dance alone. Her grace was
well touted as was her ability to perform the most difficult of movements as though she
was born to be free of gravity and fly with the feathered creatures that did abound during
the milder seasons of their situation.

Singing came naturally to her, she would run with the family pets, huge canine, elk like
creatures in the frozen wastelands where her voice was exercised to it’s fullest extent.
She studied control and projection until her vocalizations where as finely tuned as any
virtuoso’s instrument. Living on Ianthe proved a trial for her control. She could not leave
the terra-forms. She recognized that the Iantheans would go into shock if she rallied her
force of expression near their settlements. Not wanting to draw undue attention to herself
she would venture into the opera hall while the denizens slumbered to recreate the fond
allegories of her component.

Her plight was formed through her fathers lust for another woman. Her mother a
controlling self-important autocrat was aware of his infidelities. Their mutual
relationship had deteriorated into a mere tolerance of each other. A plot was formed to
remove her from hindering his progress towards his hearts desires. He knew her patterns
her times of travel, and solicited the help of a mercenary known to him in his youth when
he lived in Fenwald, a small settlement farther to the north. He was ruthless in his desire
to attain his freedom from her grasp. It mattered not who he took out along with his wife,
if it had to be others, so be it. Even his beautiful talented daughter whom the mother had
successfully alienated him from was not to stand in the way of his all consuming fever.

They where traveling along in there hovercraft, a thoroughfare with roads intersecting and
parallel lanes. Returning from an afternoon matinee. The mother was in control of the
vehicle while she herself slept secured in her seat, only to be awaken by the sound of
crushing metals and plastics as the hovercraft repeatedly flipped and rolled until it came
to rest on it’s side against an embankment. Seemingly unscathed and charged with adrenaline
she unfastened her restraints and climbed out of the window to balance on top of the side of
the vehicle and catch her breath. She could see her mother’s bloodied face, her convulsing
body and quickly scrambled to the ground.

Many travelers had stopped and she directed them to lever the craft so that her mother
could be removed through the shattered window. Then to her horror a burley man had her
mother held under the arms trying to make her sit up. She shouted to him to lay her down
and was deemed hysterical, pushed aside, totally shut out by the tight crowd around her
mother. She limped along the road side, her fine ankles damaged by the impact where they
were slammed into the floor of the craft. Finding their belonging, she in shock, picking
up the scattered possessions.

Her mother did not die that day, it was five days later when she was deemed brain dead
that the apparatus to sustain her life where disengaged. She herself had not a good
relationship with her mother. There had been advancements in their connection. The very
day of the collision she had been gazing into her mothers beautiful eyes as her mother
talked to others and the sun played off the deep brown of the twin orbs. She had smiled
to herself that there had been improvement in their relationship and perhaps shortly in
the future they would become closer, she less a subject and more of a co-ordinate in her
mothers dictatorial demeanor. It was not to be. Once grasped the hopes had been dashed by
the dastardly plotting of a man consumed with his need for freedom.

There where no tears to be shed at her mother’s memorial service. She had spent her youth
imagining the loss of her mother and the tears had been copiously spent through out the years.
An anomalous exercise in grief. Her mother thought not supportive or loving was non the less her
mother. Being alienated from her father she had not but this vain despotic woman to cling to.
She stood stalwart beside her mother’s mother who wept uncontrollably at the service.
Comforting the elder with her strength and her love for the one person who gave her the sustenance
of unconditional love.

Perhaps there would be time now for father and daughter to find common ground. Her
fondest wish was to be closer to her father. This was not to be. Her father with in six
months was cavorting with his chosen one in public. She did not mind, seeing that it gave
him pleasure. She had learned the lessons of unconditional love from her grandmother.
Giving it was the equivalence to breathing for her. Life was pleasant enough. She was
invited on the Sabbath to join them for meals. Things where not as they should have been,
an indistinguishable undercurrent could be perceived. She loved her father,
preferring to assume no artifice or deception between them.

The day that the papers for the legal matters arrived was the turning point. She was to
sign for the significantly small settlement against the mercenary who had taken them out
on the road. Supposedly in a drunken stupor. As her eyes fell to the name of the
perpetrator for the first time she noticed that his birthplace was Fenwald and remarked.
“Didn't you grow from a youth in Fenwald father?”

No longer where invitations to dinner extended.
Their excuse was that she knew there was food there, she
should come if she wanted. The distance she was struggling to span had augmented
wider. She became consumed with her studies and used the time once spent with
her father to concentrate more on her arts. Still blind to the conspiracy, she
of a trusting innocent heart and the selfish need to perfect what was lacking
in her attempts to learn a new instrument labored on in guilelessness.

She spent the following short summer season in the south studying dance, trying to
rebuild her ravaged ankles. When she returned he had sold the family home to his lovers
daughter, and had moved to accommodations not suited to her studies. She heart sick at
losing the family home to his paramours daughter returned to the south, not wanting to
interfere in what she perceived as his wish to be with his woman unencumbered.

He started to spread lies as to why she was now distancing herself from him. Being the
patriarch he succeeded in convincing the residuum of the family that she was the liability.
That she thought their northern home not worthy of her attendance. Differentiating full
well that if she was to become in adjacent contact with them that she would eventually
discover his despicable treachery towards her mother.

The puzzle that consumed her started to fit together. Knowing that there was nothing that
would verify her suspicions she took flight. In fear that he might try to eliminate her in
more devious a fashion.

A cargo ship ready for transport of goods was docked by one of her father’s
warehouses. She took what she wore and a satchel of small goods, some of her
mothers lesser jewelry sewn into the lining of her cloak and stowed away in
the hold of the vessel. When the craft landed at Ianthe she waited for the
appropriate moment and slipped away into the milling crowd of the docking area.
Poised detached in a foreign unfamiliar region, she breathed in deeply as she
surveyed her new home land. Strange as it was to her, it had potential as all
new beginnings have. The spark of adventure, the lure of the unknown, the quest
to find your hearts desires even if you know not what they are, they await you.

Food and shelter where her first priorities and she quickly charmed her way into the
graces of the restaurant owner. The director, Ajuda, a middle aged woman of full girth,
and a jolly companionable glint, allowed her humble, clean accommodations above the
restaurant in exchange for undertakings. Her gratuities where to be her income
to start. Ajuda understood there was a deep sorrow gnawing away behind those
dark eyes, folding the despondent spirit, under her ample wing gave her nurturing,
a roost to rest.

Her heart was torn asunder for being ostracized from her family through no discerned
actions of self. Curled In a ball on the bathroom floor of her apartment she
shrieked of the outrage, pouring forth an ocean of angst and confusion. She
conceived she had fallen prey to being victimized and this steeled her. She
arose to bore in to her red and swollen eyes in the small mirror above the
sink. Vowing never to be treated for less than her worth again, she washed her
face then went out to explore what this dissimilar terrestrial sphere had to proffer.

The owner, Ajuda, was a fair and reasonable woman who didn't pry as to where she
had materialize from. She was contented of the assistance and instinctively new that this
attractive charming woman would be a boon to her growing business. She was proven
accurate as the months progressed. The cooks where kept bustling preparing only the
finest of cuisine to the new-sprung employees dictates. The word spread throughout the
terra-forms of the now famous restaurant beside the opera house. The congenial
atmosphere, the warmth of the ambiance. She had achieved a satisfactory station in this
peculiar to her, unique world.

As the resonance of the adulation for the exceptional performance subsided and
the house lights rose. One more time she beheld the favorable face of the teen
by the aisle. A semblance of absolute ecstasy mirrored her own resplendent exultation.
A Neitzschean kindred spirit? Could it be? Was there a possibility that he was a
maverick to his genetic code? What was it besides the weighty physical attraction
that drew her to examine him more closely? Surly she new the dangers of the species,
history had taught her well the machinations of these superior products of the
geneticist tinkering. For a split second he looked up and their eyes locked.
In that infinitesimal moment volumes of sentiments where exchanged and she
overwhelmed, broke off the potent connective, emitting a gasp of release!

There was no time to continue to contemplate any relevance with the youth. Hastily she
ascended the exits stairway to return to the restaurant. Once again to take up the
reigns in her performance of her present assignment. There was an art to her
responsibility, thought not to be considered to be of the higher classification, still
a source of satisfaction. She unearthed within the knowledge that the meals where well
presented and the customers pleased with her ceremony of service as cause enough for her
temporary contentment.

From time to time the anamnesis of the admirable Neitzschean youth would hitch it’s way
into her pensiveness. Prickling sensations would arise at the conception of the inevitable
myriad of variance of insertions. What consummate potential lay behind their ephemeral
connection? Where they ever to ascertain that fate was to be their commander, to
magnetize them together to fashion a incomparable nation. A dominion to be replicated
by example through out the galaxies. Their differences suited to form an unassailable
fortification where the fragile and the famished found strength, assurance and
enlightenment. Where the judicious and the wealthy would yield their benefits with all.
Discrimination and rapacity would be put asunder, buried to concentration so finite only a
cataclysmic detonation would disentomb them. Difficulties and ascendancy contests to be
assimilated. These where the apparitions that frequented her in slumber and vigilant.
These are the optimism’s she pondered to a mentality splitting, “When!”

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