The Olive Branched

Desperation makes monsters of us all. Violence is the only thing it understands. I said that, when Qual still existed. Near the end, when it was possible to say such heresies. A million worlds stretched across space, civilization burning as though it could have no end. Peace is a seductive beast. I know that now. Once you have it, truly, you will do anything to keep it. Go to war for it, even if that makes no sense. Become ideologues, as if there was no crime that was more ruinous to peace than ideology. We had the best, and we desired to share it.

It is possible to love too strongly. Too share to much. Qual expanded. A union. An idea. A way of being. All grew. All prospered. Until. A thousand worlds joined in a week, and then ten were gone. And ten more. Six more. From beyond Qual, something moved in. Inexorable. Unstoppable. Beyond anything known or unknown.

The worst part was learning it was not a stranger. One word had inspired the birth of Qual in a hundred different systems. A desire became a goal, became a destiny entwined with fate. We reached for the jaysome within us, found it without.

And then Jay came.

He sundered Qual. A look, and worlds were torn free. A gesture, and alliances were unbound. He was on his way somewhere. We were in his way. He carved through the heart of Qual, and some were not certain he noticed. Not until we united. Not until he was asked to be jaysome.

There were a million beacons burning hope into the universe. All snuffed out. A single moment, an act of will beyond understanding. But there are weapons, even in Qual. Nothing is ever lost, even if it is destroyed. I gathered what I could. Forged energy from the living and the dead. The summons was answered. We passed science, but we had no choice. Jay was beyond us, so we went beyond him.

Desperation makes nothing that lasts. The boy we broughht before us. Jay. Eleven. Not twelve. Eleven and impossibly kind. With a smile that could restore Qual, but that mattered nothing at all. He listened to what we told him, and the jaysome left. Everything we told him broke him. And something took him away. Something bigger than Qual. It was white. Iot made him forget. It was called Winter, and we fled –

“No.”

I turn. Even memory is a summons. Winter is behind me. Pale. Humanoid. With eyes of falling stars that do not end. “Qual will be lost. Qual must be lost,” Winter spoke, and the speaking made it so.

“You could save us.”

“I am Time. Time does not save things. To destroy Jay at eleven would cause damage beyond imagining. I could not let that pass.”

“But he must be stopped!”

“I know. You swore once to do anything for Peace.”

And Time speaks as if Peace were like time, a force beyond understanding.

I nod. I find words. I say one of them.

“I can send you to where the Jay you know is. I can permit you to speak with him. You will wear a face he cannot ignore. He will unmake you beyond what I can retrieve.”

I say the word again. Because yes is always more terrifying than a no but sometimes so, so necessary to speak.

*

It is far away. Beyond anything I knoq. I don’t know who I am, or what face I wear. I speak Jay’s name. He turns.

Qual fell. Everything I knew, everything we worked for, gone in a moment. It is nothing. It is nothing next to the pain in Jay’s face when he stares at my borrowed form.

“Qual is gone. I can still extend an olive branch for peace.”

I don’t have time to say it. I think I think it. Maybe that. He is twelve, and the anger inside him beyond anything I can comprehend.

*

“There was no pain.”

“You were lucky.” Jay hands me a drink, eats olives off of the vine.

“Lucky?”

“Winter aided you. And Peace. The last person who dared confront me like that might never be free of what I did. I am stronger than I was at eleven or twelve. But some things even I cannot repair. Some acts that cannot be undone.”

“You brought me back.”

“You can make Qual again. But different. Better. I can offer that much. If I act, it will be too much. It is always that. It will be that for some time.” He smiles sadly, at fourteen, and there are still echoes of a loss too big for me to ever know.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

And we eat olives. And I watch branches bend. And I realize that jaysome never breaks, not even when it does.