The Kobe Dragons: Epilogue

EPILOGUE
Clan Ghost Bear Enclave
Strana Mechty, Kerensky Cluster
12 September 3042

With the sun setting on the distant horizon, Pandora quickly worked the canvas in front of her with her brush, trying to capture the amazing colours of the sky and clouds before they changed to something else. Landscapes were always challenging for her because she liked to paint “in the moment” rather than off a still-frame holograph.
    Pandora wasn’t the world’s best artist, she knew that. But painting made her happy and helped her relax. You didn’t get many opportunities to relax in a freeborn sibko, so she tried not to waste what little free time she had. Almost all of her instructors (solahma trueborn warriors assigned to the sibko because the Clans deemed them past their prime and good for nothing else) treated her artistic inclinations as a colossal waste of time. Useless freebirth nonsense! was how they usually described it.
    Well, that’s what she was, wasn’t she? A freebirth. She might as well embrace it.
    “Painting again, I see.”
    Pandora turned and saw Yusagi, one-time Star Commander Yusagi in Delta Galaxy’s 115th Striker Cluster and now a teacher of children. Yet unlike his fellow solahma, Yusagi didn’t see his assignment to a freebirth training sibko as a disgrace. Although trueborn, he saw nothing inferior in freebirth warriors, and looked on his position as a chance to pass on some of the wisdom his many years had brought him.
    “Whenever I can, Old Cat,” Pandora replied, smiling, and gave her attention back to her canvas. With any other instructor, such a remark would have been taken as the highest insult and she would have been severely beaten or whipped. But Yusagi simply smiled and strolled up beside her, watching her paint the sunset.
    Although he was a loyal member of Clan Ghost Bear, Yusagi had been born into Clan Nova Cat, serving them as a trueborn MechWarrior for thirty-odd years. He was taken as a bondsman by the 115th Striker Cluster when the Nova Cats lost a Trial of Possession to the Ghost Bears, and after a short time he rejoined the warrior caste as a Ghost Bear. Yet he never forgot his Nova Cat roots or changed his outlook on life. Which was how he’d earned the nickname “Old Cat” from Pandora.
    She paused for a moment and straightened up to work a kink out of her back. When she glanced at Yusagi, he was staring into the distance with half-lidded eyes. It was if he was seeing something else entirely and not the colourful sky of Strana Mechty. Visions were an integral part of Nova Cat culture, something else Yusagi hadn’t left behind when he became a Ghost Bear. Pandora found them to be both creepy and fascinating.
    “What’re you seeing, Old Cat?” she inquired softly.
    “A roaring wave, young Pandora,” he replied and closed his eyes. “War is coming to the Clans, a war unlike any since before the Exodus. It will alter the fate of all humanity.”
    Yusagi opened his eyes and looked at her. “Your fate is tied up with it, child. It will bring changes to your life that you cannot possibly imagine.”
    “Do you mean I will become a MechWarrior? Truly?”
    Yusagi nodded. “That was determined long ago. You will pass your Trial of Position, young Pandora, and join the warrior caste.”
    Pandora closed her eyes for a moment in relief. “What else do you see?”
    “Beware dragons, child. They are both your death and your rebirth,” he said, almost sympathetically, then added with a mischievous smirk, “Wiley dragons that will give the Ghost Bear a nasty bite on the paw.”
    Pandora frowned in confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean, Old Cat?”
    “It means watch those contractions,” he replied, giving her light cuff upside the head. “Everything will reveal itself, in time. Now finish your painting.”