Lightning Strikes Twice -- Forgotten Fragment
So I've finally converted the story fragment I recently dug up into a Word doc. To read it, drop down the spoiler tag, but if you're too lazy to do that, here's basically what happens: Ariadne, Stara's right-hand Matoran, talks to her friend and one of the few, non-Xi-Matoran residents of Xi-Koro, Kouki. However, there is much more to be gained by reading it. I'm not sure where this would have gone; probably somewhere in Chapter 11.
One of her main concerns was of Stara's choice to continue spying on Deimos, despite their theory. Ariadne was worried that she was propelled by her desire to check on Nuju instead of actual spying work. Another concern was that Stara might not be safe as a spirit. Halflings were said to have great power - maybe they could reach through the weave of the spirit realm and harm the Turaga.
All of her woes drove the Xi-Matoran to walk up to a friend's front door. She needed someone to talk to, someone to confide in, and Kouki was just that person.
Kouki was a newcomer to Xi-Koro, arriving within the last fifty years and liking the climate enough to move in permanently. Despite the fact he wasn’t a Xi-Matoran, it wasn’t unknown for other Matoran to live in the village, so he was welcomed into the community. Some of the more wilder-minded of the tribe believed that his arrival in the Amaris had some connection to Stara’s homecoming, since he had come within months of Stara’s return from exile.
Ariadne rapped on the wood door of Kouki’s hut, which lay on the northernmost arm of the village’s formation. It had once been the home of the treacherous Xi-Matoran Sekmet, but even knowing its history had not dissuaded him from living in the place.
As usual, the door opened three seconds after the knock, revealing Kouki’s Komau-style mask as his blue eyes peered out to meet her own orbs. Smiling, the Ko-Matoran beckoned her inside: he didn’t get very chatty until he and his host/guest were in the same area together, in this case his home.
True to his nature, once the Xi-Matoran had crossed the threshold and the front door had closed, Kouki spoke up. “How is the Turaga doing, Ariadne? Is she spying on the halfling right now?”
Ariadne was about to nod “yes”, but the Ko-Matoran had bustled off to brew tea – in Xi-Koro, the signal to make yourself at home – so she had to say so aloud. “Chaka and Scylla are watching over her right now,” she said, sitting down on the Rahi-leather couch in his living room. “They forced me to take some time off; do something for myself instead of hovering.” The scent of herbal tea wafted into the room through the saplings he cared for in his home, serving as a nursery for the young trees until they were planted on the three islands that provided Xi-Koro with fruit and wood.
The refreshing smell heralded Kouki, carrying two mugs of the brew into the room, handing one to her as he sat down in a chair opposite of Ariadne. A surprised frown crossed the Xi-Matoran's expression as she watched him sit down, and she added, “You seem taller than you were the last time I talked with you.”
The Ko-Matoran examined the Matoran of Lightning, realizing that he was indeed a head taller than her. “Growth spurt, I guess,” he said with a shrug. As Matoran went, he younger than her and didn’t take life as seriously as his kinsmen, preferring the ways of his adopted village than of his tribe.
Now that she was paying attention, Ariadne also noticed that he seemed to have more Xi-colors mingling with his natural white, but since she knew she would get the same response to it, she didn’t bring it up, instead sipping her tea to distract herself: piping hot and without sugar, as most of the village preferred, allowing the sweetness of spearmint to flavor the brew instead.
“You are worried,” Kouki stated suddenly, setting down his empty cup (how males managed to drink their drinks so fast was a mystery to Ariadne) and catching her amber eyes in the gaze of his blue ones, holding fast. Unable to deny the truth – and she had planned to speak about this anyway – she nodded.
“Why do you fear?” Kouki spoke in a slightly formal voice when conversation turned serious, and was less inclined to use the slang Ariadne did. Why was a mystery to most of the villagers, but no one felt inclined to try and change his habits.
Because Stara had bidden Steena and Ariadne to hold their tongues on what they had discovered, the Turaga’s right hand did not speak the whole truth, instead voicing only her fear. “I’m worried about Stara’s errands to spy on our enemy,” she said, looking down into her tea’s scalding depths, a murky, clear-amber color greeting her eyes. There was a second drink common to the Matoran here: a thick, dark, bitter-sweet drink made from the seed-pulp of a native plant here. It was one of their main exports to the wider world, but since this one of the few places you could get it, the outer world tended to save it only for special occasions. The Xi-Matoran tended to follow this policy, even though most of them had those plants growing near their houses and could make the brew practically any time they wanted.
“Why?”
Leave it to a Ko-Matoran to get straight to the point, Ariadne thought, slightly amused. “Her motives,” she stated simply. “She says she’s spying on him, but is she really doing that? Maybe she’s just watching Nuju, instead of doing what she says she’s doing.”
She never would have said this directly to Stara, since her biased trial years before had scarred the memories of many of the Matoran that had participated about motives, Ariadne included. While all of the present evidence had pointed at the erstwhile Lightning Toa at the time, her trial had hardly been fair to her, since no one had thought of pulling out a Noble Rode and checking Stara’s story at the time – and even when they had, they didn’t really care, since most had been fully convinced of Stara’s guilt.
“You have to put yourself into Stara’s boots,” Kouki said. “She has to worry about the safety of us all; she doesn’t want to tell Stiaye that one of her friends was killed during her journey home to fight Deimos. She fears for Nuju, yes, but she needs to put the village above her own feelings – even though I’m sure she still wants to protect him.”
Ariadne was silent, so the Ko-Matoran reached over the table to clasp her hand. “Stara’s been up again halflings before, and she’s still alive. Trust her abilities.”
Kouki was orginally supposed to appear in LST, but he got cut from the final draft. He might show up in Wings, but then again he might not.
Also, I put in so many references towards him playing another role in the story, I might as well just stick a sign on the door explaing the whole thing. However, I'll see if you guys can figure it out first.
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