Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money.
Author's Note: Around four hundred words about Crais and the stars, written as part of The Stars Are Ours, a group project on the Leviathan mailing list.
After the first few monens, Bialar Crais had adjusted to life as a Peace Keeper well enough to be both pleased by his progress and frustrated at its pace. The training hall felt almost over-familiar, and he stretched in preparation for the daily sparring without much enthusiasm . He already knew which of his class mates he would beat, and which would beat him.
This day, however, the instructors had a surprise planned: they turned the artificial gravity off.
The recruits floated up into the air, screaming or gasping, bobbing in odd constellations, banging into walls. Some of them squealed and giggled, as if they were still children instead of soldiers-to-be. Bialar, who knew far too well what he was becoming, cautiously turned himself right side up. It was only then he recalled that there was no up in zero gravity. Whenever he thought he had learned all the trainer's tricks, they reminded him that he knew almost nothing.
Even so, day by day they were scorching away the son of farmers he had been, revealing the potential Peace Keeper beneath. Every meal, the food seemed less strange. Every day, the routine grew more ingrained. Each time he woke, it took him a moment longer to remember that he was far from solid ground.
For all his silent hatred for the army that had taken him from his home, he welcomed this - if he must be a soldier, he would be a good one. It was the only way he might be able to protect Tauvo. Today, that meant working out what this exercise was for, if anything beyond a simple test of their reactions. He kicked - not up exactly, but in the direction of what was usually the ceiling. Around him, he could see other trainees who had far more trouble. Perhaps they had never been swimming; born in space or on planets without large bodies of water.
Eventually, he came to rest beside one of the tiny, grimy windows set high up in one wall. Looking through the transparent barrier, he saw the void for the fist time. There was a whole universe beyond the stifling confines of the orbital training base, and Bialar felt his breath catch in his throat. With virtually nothing between himself and the stars, the orbs seemed infinitely close and close to infinite. He had never imagined that they could burn so brightly with the veil of the atmosphere peeled away.
He could never get used to that sight. Yet he already liked it far too much.
The End