A Token for the Uncertain Future

Written by Starcross for character development of Ula del Rosario

Long ago, when Ula was a child, her mother would bury things in the nearby beach for her and her brother to find. Boxes full of shells. Wooden toys. Yo-yo's. Chess pieces. Notes written in love. They were scattered across the beach, marked by carefully placed stones and shells that formed constellation patterns. Lan loved the game. It made him feel more like a pirate. Perhaps that was why their mother did it.

Ula's father once told the girl a story of how her mother had done something similar for him. She hid a secret message buried in the sand, guarded by the Azure Dragon of the East formed out of seashells, the heart marked with a pink shell.

"I thought I might die before I got a chance to show him how much he meant to me," Ula's mother had confessed. "So I hid that message for him to find, just in case."

In many ways, Ula was similar to her mother. Same brown eyes, a quiet, stubborn will, the ability to read the stars... the eagerness to jump into an unwinnable fight for another's sake. The draw to chaos. The risk of a life, because what else did she have to give that was worth enough?

The nav crossed the beach with a letter stored in a tube meant to hold a rolled up map. She looked for a part safe from the tide in an area that didn't experience too much foot traffic. Upon finding a suitable spot, she knelt down on her knees and dug up a hole about two feet deep, removing clumps of sand with cupped palms. She placed the tube into the hole, then pushed the sand back to hide the item. It took a couple swipes of her arm to smooth out the top sand. Then, Ula brought out a few shells and placed them on top of the spot, arranging them in the shape of the Cygnus constellation.

Satisfied, the girl rose up and headed back to the Razor. It didn't matter much if anyone found it or not, even if she ended up dead by the end of this cult conflict. All she needed was to feel as if she had left something behind in preparation for the future.