Memories and socks.

Barac sud Sarc, Third Level Adept and formerly First Scout of the Clan, shook his head as he added the holocube image of his murdered brother Kurr to the clothes already in the travel case. Memories, indeed.

I wondered when you would go, the words formed in his mind, the touch soft and familiar.

"First Chosen," Barac acknowledged out loud, continuing to pack. "Come in —" He triggered the locking mechanism on the door with a thought.

His mother entered, her movements gracious despite the pain he could sense rippling the unseen M’hir between them. The M’hir. Barac swallowed, suddenly unsure how long it would be before he could touch another of his kind this way. Clan philosophers debated if the M’hir had existed before Clan thought, some believing it to have been an emptiness waiting to be filled with Clan power, others arguing it was a construct of Clan minds and not truly a place at all. Like most, Barac merely accepted that every Clan mind existed in part there, in that nothingness through which Clan thoughts and form could pass at will. It was the medium making them one, regardless of strength or ability. Or dispute.

Barac studied his mother’s face, feeling as though he had to memorize every detail: the delicately pale skin and fine bone structure he saw in every mirror, the dark eyes and generous mouth edged by laughter lines.

Not at this moment, however. "Where will you go?" she asked calmly enough, aloud. It was her right to question his intentions — not as his mother, Clan family structure was almost non-existent — but as Enora, First Chosen of the House of sud Sarc.

Barac tossed an old coat on the lopsided pile of discards covering his bed and some of the floor. "Must be time to move on," he commented instead of answering directly. "Look at all this junk!"

"You could stay."

He hesitated in the midst of closing the final bag, then made his decision. He turned to face her. "If you knew what I do, First Chosen, you’d send me yourself."

Enora frowned, taking a step closer to her son. Her elegant hand waved in a complex gesture, as if drawing threads from the air. "What are you talking about, Barac? Why would I —?"

Barac shook his head. It’s time you saw the Clan Council as I do, he sent. He opened his thoughts to hers, using his greater strength to forge the gentlest of links with her ordered mind, then drew her into his memories, letting Enora relive with him events of which she’d only been told. And, as the Clan knew well, words were the easiest way to lie.

It didn’t take long. Barac withdrew, somberly watching his mother as she groped one-handed for a chair’s back, oriented herself, then sank down into it slowly. "Sira —" she whispered, shying from the intimacy of mind touch as she sought to control her emotional response. "A lawbreaker. She did all this, herself?"

Barac waited, knowing what his mother struggled to reconcile. Enora had been a Chooser herself, once, as all Clan females.

Choosers possessed the Power-of-Choice, an uncontrollable force within themselves that instinctively tested the strength of unChosen males within the M’hir. Win or draw, and the Joining formed, a permanent connection between a pair through that other space, regardless of distance, severed only by death. The Chosen female Commenced, her body altering to its reproductive state.

Losing males were rejected. A Chooser could be patient, since their bodies, untouched by physiological aging, would wait as long as necessary for the moment of Choice.

But with each generation, the Power-of-Choice had become stronger, more dangerous. The Clan Council, hungry to increase the abilities of the Clan, hastened the process by pre-selecting the strongest male candidates for Choice. After all, to the Clan, power was everything: status, currency, and life.

It took only two generations for Choosers to be born who were powerful enough to kill weaker males during the Test. Fewer and fewer Joinings were successful. The inevitable result? The birth of Sira di Sarc, a Chooser so powerful, so potent, that no male could survive her testing.

Barac’s memory of Sira carried the taste of longing, the overwhelming desire any unChosen felt for such power, and a self-preserving dose of fear. Yet he knew the person as well as the legend: outwardly fragile and ordinary, an easily-overlooked shadow with wide-set gray eyes and solemn expression; inwardly, self-willed and brilliant, brimming with power awaiting release.

Sira had willingly gone into seclusion to protect the unChosen. She had used the years of her isolation to study the population dynamics of her species. She was given access to the old records, from the time when the M’hiray — the 730 individuals possessing the mutation allowing them to use the M’hir — had been forced to leave the Clan homeworld during the Stratification of their species. It didn’t take her long to discover that not only were the M’hiray in trouble, her own existence, a female who could not find a mate of her kind, meant that extinction was close at hand. She proposed alternatives, the most promising being to test the Power-of-Choice against the mind of another telepathic species, such as a Human. The subject might die, but perhaps the Chooser would Commence and become reproductive without risking more Clan lives.

The Clan Council accepted her conclusions about the danger to the M’hiray. The Council didn’t accept Sira’s proposal, utterly rejecting any possibility of a Choice involving a Human. Such a violation of Clan ways was unthinkable. Instead, they decided on a different solution. They would erase the mind of the most powerful and desirable Chooser, Sira herself, in an attempt to destroy the Power-of-Choice and bring her precious genetic makeup back into the Clan pool.

Sira was warned. She selected a Human for her experiment, a telepath named Jason Morgan. To protect any unChosen she might encounter, she underwent stasis, the procedure that temporarily blocked a Chooser’s powers. To make it possible to undergo Choice with a Human and a stranger, her memories were ruthlessly suppressed, ridding her of all identity, substituting compulsions that would send her directly to the Human and the moment of Choice.

"She broke the Law," Barac agreed. "But so did the Council."

Enora shook her head. "I know. What they tried to do was wrong. But Sira — I saw for myself how she cared for this Human, even after her memories were restored. She learned to control the Power-of-Choice in order to save him. How could she —"

"Justify herself to Morgan?" the Clansman smiled. "All I can say is, Morgan is a remarkable being. He risked his life to save her, and risked losing her to bring back her past."

"Such caring is rare among the Joined," Enora said almost wistfully. "I can see she would value it." Her voice firmed. "Nothing you’ve shown me explains why you are so intent on leaving."

"Efforts were made to keep Sira from Morgan. One of them resulted in Kurr’s murder."

"Yihtor di Caraat killed your brother," Enora said, face growing pale but still composed. "Yihtor’s mind was erased for his infamy and his family name removed from the M’hiray. It is over, Barac."

"Yihtor was merely the weapon, First Chosen. Kurr was someone’s messenger — an expendable messenger."

His mother’s eyes narrowed. Barac felt the troubling in the M’hir between them as she fought to keep her thoughts private. He knew better than to reach for them. "Whose messenger? Who is responsible for Kurr’s death?"

Barac shook his head sharply. "I don’t know. But Sira does. She wouldn’t tell me, not in front of the Council."

"So you would seek her out now." Enora paused, her lips pressed together in an unfamiliar hardness. Then: "I agree. Go. But even if you can find her, Barac, she may not want to see you."

Barac closed his eyes briefly. Then he picked up both travel bags and said without facing Enora: "She'll see me. We have something in common now."

He began to concentrate, preparing the mental image that would guide his passage through the M’hir, sidestepping space and leaving his troubles behind on this planet that was no longer his home.

We have both been driven into exile, he sent into her thoughts, surrounding the bare words with the taste of his despair and a glimmer of what might have been hope. Goodbye.

Barac pushed...

And disappeared. The air in the room shifted slightly to fill the space where he had been.

Enora, First Chosen, walked slowly over to the pile of unwanted clothes. She picked up a shirt, faded gold threads taking fire from the light as she folded it in her hands. "Imagine saving this," the Clanswoman murmured.

She brought the shirt up to her cheek. The fabric trapped a tear. "One son murdered," she whispered to the tiny damp spot. "And now, the other son gone. Who is doing this to us?"