KISMET ─ vento aureo.

INTERLUDE II *. ⊹

★ ⁺ — 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒

★˚⋆ NARANCIA GHIRGA WANTED TO BE a pilot. That was the cheesy answer he gave in school when he didn't know any better and it stayed his answer even when he did know better.

As a child, he'd loved to play with a model of the galaxy's favourite spaceship line, the Eva's. They were sleek, sexy pieces of aircraft, expensive as flack but well worth the price for how flashy and speedy and all-around cool they were. Narancia's particular toy model was one of the first generations, an Eva-01. The ship's body was cut like a bullet, its underside a glowing orange with graceful, arching wings. He'd zoom that sucker around like his life depended on it.

On every birthday without fail, Narancia asked to go to the residential flight hangar, giggling when his father put him on his shoulders to take in the hulking ships. Narancia took his first flying lessons a week after he turned eleven, and he was instantly head over heels.

Narancia loved the feeling of controlling a vessel, having it become so much an extension of yourself that you could forget there was anything between you and the stars. He had always chafed at the rules and expectations on Terra. Flying was one of the few times he could get away from that and just be himself.

It was only natural that Narancia applied to the Galactic Space Flight Academy three years later. It carved a chunk out of his family's account that they never recovered, but Narancia had never wanted anything but to fly. When he looked at his parents with his wide purple eyes and curling hair falling into his face, neither of them could say no. It had to have been around then that Narancia's father realized his only son wasn't growing up to be the quiet, obedient child he'd hoped for, but he kept those reservations to himself.

His first year was amazing. Everything he'd hoped for and more. He'd never been a good student, but he could spend hours learning about space's effect on the drag and lift of a spaceship. He was a natural talent at the flight sims, instinctively connecting to his vessel and flying it without a second thought. His zeal and enthusiasm rubbed off on his peers and teachers. Here was someone saw flying not as a chore, but as an art. He loved it—in that fiery, all-consuming way that people loved that one thing their lives revolved around.

Flying was Narancia's reason for living, but he had never meant for it to be the reason it tore his family apart.

He found out in his second year that his mother had an eye disease, one with a scary-sounding name he could barely pronounce. It could be treated, with bottles of expensive medicine and chemo. Narancia's family account was already light; his mother's disease hollowed it out completely.

Despite what people thought, Narancia wasn't selfish. If his parents had asked him to withdraw from the Academy, he would've, just like that. He would get other chances to fly. His mother wouldn't get other chances to get better. But his mother had passed off her disease as nothing more serious than a cold. If she rested and took her medicine, she would be fine. Narancia just had to focus on his studies and become the best pilot he could.

Weeks spent at the Academy meant Narancia didn't see his father tear at the seams. He didn't know when his father lost his job and scrambled to make ends meet. He didn't know that his mother grew thin and sallow—that the disease overtook her eye and spread. He never saw the dead glass eye that sat in her face. A cybernetic was way too expensive. He never heard the arguments his parents had, his father on the edge of shouting, and his mother barely breathing the words.

Narancia managed to gain an all-expenses-paid scholarship his third year. Not through academic merit of course, but from the sheer skill he had with flying. His instructors liked him. He was growing into a cheeky, genuine young man with a rakish grin and shining eyes.