Hi, It's Me Again... Pt Three

Posted on Sun Mar 3rd, 2019 @ 2:12am by Civillian Shae & Major Jacob Asher

Mission: Aftermath
Location: Lethuan
Timeline: Current

Outside the snow fell still, heavier than before, and the wind howled. Jake wasn’t looking forward to having to trudge back to the gate. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure if he could find it without Shae’s help. He had a compass. No GPS of course, because no satellites. He’d used it to get and keep his bearings on the way to Shae’s home, but in the snow and the wind, he’d be nearly completely blind. It would be possible for him to walk around in circles in the immediate vicinity of the gate and not even see it.

“Hey,” Jake said. “I don’t mean to impose, but can stay until the storm passes? Or at least until it dies down enough that I can see where I’m going. As much as it embarrasses me to admit this, I don’t think I could find the gate in these weather conditions. I used my compass while I was following you and made notes of which direction we were headed and where the gate was, but but the visibility is so bad out there that I could miss the gate even if it were practically right in front of me.”

“I pretty much assumed when you didn’t immediately go back through the gate when I cautioned you to do so, that you would be staying with me until morning,” Shae replied with a chuckle. “I’ve only got the one futon, but the blanket should be big enough to share. If you are tired now, I can get it out, but I just planned on making more arrows until I passed out.”

“Thanks,” Jake said. “I appreciate the trust. And not only am I not ready to crash yet, but I’m interested in how you make arrows. I worked with this SERE specialist, um, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape specialist, it’s a career field in the air force. Anyway, he was from a family of real outdoors people and they not only bow hunted, but made their own gear. I know that doesn’t sound special to you, but to us, at least in my country, we don’t hunt out of necessity much anymore. Anyway, he tried to show me how to make not only arrows, but also a bow. I have to say, I wasn’t too bad at it. If I had to do it in an emergency, I probably could, but they wouldn’t be the quality of yours. Mind if I watch?”

“Oh, well, sure,” Shae said, then when she tried to stand the pain in her leg made her gasp and settle back down to the mat. She reached into her pocket for the pill bottle she had been given, but then growled when she couldn’t get it open. “What kind of sorcery is this?!” she said as she gave the bottle a shake, then tried to bite the cap.

Jake started to laugh, but reined it in. “Here, let me,” he reached out and gently took the bottle from her. “It’s designed to prevent little children from getting into their parents’ medication and harming themselves. You push down and turn this way, like this,” Jake showed Shae how it worked and then handed her the open bottle. “See? Easy.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Shae replied, taking the bottle and popping a pill into her mouth. After she washed it down with some tea, she closed the bottle then tried opening it the way he showed her, and thankfully she was more capable than a little child because she was able to open it. “Yes, I could see how this would be useful,” she affirmed now that she knew how to open it. She pocketed the bottle and tried once again to stand; the pill she had taken would not start working for a while, so of course it still hurt, but she wasn’t one to just sit around and wait for things to happen. On one wall of her little house was a large wardrobe looking piece and next to it was a small low table that she knelt at.

“If you know how to make arrowheads, perhaps you can help?” she suggested as she passed him two bowls from the little table, one containing a few completed arrowheads, and the other was full of various types of stones and even a piece of natural glass she’d intended to chip into new arrowheads, along with a piece of antler that she used for the process. “If you can do this, then I can attach the feathers.”

“Let me take a look at these...yeah, I think I can do that,” Jake said, taking the bowl and the piece of antler. “I’ll try one and show you and if it looks good, I’ll make more.”

Jake set up what he needed quickly and efficiently and went to work on an arrowhead. It was about like he remembered it to be. The first one was slow going as his muscles remembered what they were supposed to be doing, but he soon had the first one done. It wasn’t bad, but he was sure he could do better. “Here’s my first attempt. My next will be better. Any suggestions?”

Shae had already started prepping some feathers, and she paused to take at look at his first arrowhead. “Yeah, that’ll do. Maybe make the next one a little bit narrower at the base, but it’s still good,” she said approvingly, then returned her attention to her feathers. “So, I have told you about myself, why not tell me a little bit more about you?” she said as they worked together.

Jake already knew that one of the things he was going to do for Shae in the near future, was get her some metal arrowheads. That would give her a real advantage over what she had now. Talk about himself? Well…

“Well,” Jake said. “I was born in a part of the United States, my country, called New England, specifically a place called Massachusetts. My parents were members of a branch of the Jewish faith known as Reform. Basically, rather than tie ourselves down with rules, we put moral and ethical concerns, and of course, compassion, ahead of outdated rules, many of which are oppressive to women. Anyway, we still practiced our religion, and to make sure I would be ready for the coming of age ceremony of my faith by the time I was 13, my parents sent me to a religious school. Not to study to be clergy or anything like that, but a school that taught the same things everyone else had to learn, plus everything I would need to be ready. I enjoyed it, for the most part. Like most children, I would have rather spent more time playing, but I managed to buckle down, study, practice, and get through the event without a hitch.”

Jake handed Shae a small handful of arrowheads. He was working faster now.

“I had an incentive to study, though,” Jake said. “There were these guys who set up a small school where they talk four different kinds of fighting from their country. If I studied and did all of my chores, I was allowed to go and study with them that day. I loved it there, and I learned a lot, so I made sure to not let anything keep me from learning to fight. Hands, feet, knees, elbows, grappling, knives...short swords, sticks...I guess I just kinda took to it. It became a sort of refuge for me, and a source of self confidence. While a lot of kids I knew got into fights, usually over something stupid, often to prove they couldn’t be pushed around or something ridiculous like that, I rarely had to. First because I wasn’t worried about proving how tough I was. I did that four nights a week for two hours a night during school sessions, and whole days in the summer. And then second because when I did get into a fight, I usually ended it really quickly and then walked away, leaving some really surprised bully in my wake. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life and the end of my secondary school education was coming up, when there was a horrifying attack on my country. Thousands were killed. At that point, my choices became simple...sort of. My country needed me, so I signed up to fight...well, I TRIED to sign up to go to school to become an officer. I was told I needed to improve a bit, but the Air Force gave me the chance to do that. The rest is kind of history for me now, I guess.”

Jake handed over another handful of arrowheads. “There’s more details, but that’s the basics. I could tell you my likes and dislikes and the name of the first girl I kissed or the first woman I made love to, but that might sound like bragging.” Jake grinned to show he was teasing. “I like to have fun, but sometimes that means just sharing a moment in good company, like now.”

“So, you are a religious man, but not a clergy, but the rest of your world is not religious, so you have special schools for religious people?” Shae said to try to clarify. “That is very confusing. My people weren’t religious. We believed in spirits and had shrines that we would pray at for good luck, but I don’t really see that as being ‘religious’,” she said, sweeping the arrowheads closer and fitting them onto the arrows she had finished fletching.

Jake chuckled at Shae’s confusion, but not unkindly. “You know, I had a feeling that explanation sounded better in my head than it did out loud. Okay, so first of all, there are a great honking lot of us on Earth. Almost eight billion people live on our planets. Some are religious, some aren’t, some are somewhere in between. But there are, and believe it or not, I looked this up once, there are an estimated 4200 different religions on the planet. So even if everyone on the planet were religious, we wouldn’t all worship or practice our faith the same way. To make matters worse, some religions are practiced by a minority of people. My religion, not just Reform, but all Jewish people, are a minority religion. More so because almost eighty years ago, an awful excuse for a human being took over large parts of the continent of Europe...and murdered six million Jews. Humans are capable of great kindness, great compassion, great creativity, great genius...and also of committing great wrongs. So...anyway...there are lots of different religions and cultures on Earth, and a lot of them don’t agree with each other.”

Shae turned to look at Jake, her jaw practically hanging to the floor. 8 BILLION people, 4200 religions, and 6 million of his faith dead? It was a lot to take in, so much more than she had been prepared to hear.

“Billions? As in hundreds, thousands, millions, and then billions?” she asked. This was unheard of! “Civilizations under the control of the Goa’uld are lucky to ever reach millions in terms of their population…” she said in stunned shock. And of course, there was only one god, one faith, fear, for each world.

“Yes,” Jake said. “You heard me correctly. We threw off the yoke of the Goa’uld thousands of years ago and we’ve prospered since. Perhaps too much, but that’s a whole different conversation. But that’s something new. I don’t think the original SG-1 ever encountered a Goa’uld controlled world with a million people on it.”

Shae was silent for a long moment, just taking it all in; was it possible that one day all worlds could be free of the Goa’uld and prosper like the Tau’ri? Could her people one day recover to have a population of millions?

“That is…” she started to say, looking back at her work table just to have something to focus her eyes on. “I can’t even fathom what a future without the Goa’uld would be like, and yet you have lived free of their influence all your life. I am envious,” she admitted.

Jake handed over more arrowheads and shrugged. “We have a whole different set of problems from the Goa’uld. But let’s maybe talk about something less heavy, or at least lighten the mood. Hang on.” Jake went into his pack and took out an old MP3 player and a set small portable speakers. He plugged the device into the speakers and started searching through it for something to share with Shae. Finally, he shrugged again and just picked something. He had a lot on the thing, so if she didn’t like what he picked he could try something else. He selected Out There by Christian McBride, then he chuckled at the irony. The first song was called “Ham Hocks and Cabbage”. This for a girl who would probably like ham, but already hated cabbage! Oh well. Maybe she’d at least half like it. He hit play. He made sure the volume wasn’t up to high. He wasn’t sure about attracting predators.

“This is a kind of music called Jazz,” Jake said. “If you don’t like it, I have other music stored in that device.”

Jake moved the music a bit before taking a seat and getting back to work.

Shae tilted her head curiously as the music spilled from the magic boxes. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before, but there was something about the syncopated beat and the soothing melody of the piano, not that she knew what a piano even was, to be quite wonderful to listen to.

“That’s nice,” she said with a smile, then continued working. He had just about gone through all her stones, so she showed him how she liked to attach her arrowheads to the arrow shafts, and she gave him enough sinew to bind the arrowheads in place as she handed him fletched arrow shafts. “So, I think I would like to hear more about this ‘Air Force’, because there are many confusing things relating to this that I hear when we are on your world,” she said.