Dark Matter • Bellamy Blake [Slow Updates]

Stubborn Mothers and Ancient Lovers

~ nearly 2 years ago~

           After another heated fight with my intolerable mother, I found myself in the guards training room, beating the life out of the miserable punching bag. A layer of glistening sweat covered my body, my long brown hair that reached my lower back was presently tied into a high ponytail, strands of hair stuck to my to my damp temples. With every punch, I let out a breath of bottled up frustration.

"Damn, does my fiancé have moves," an amused voice remarks. Engaged in my own personal battle I had unconsciously tuned out Coal, my mother's pick for my lifelong partner, who had for some time been casually leaning against the doorway, observing me unleash the hurricane spurning inside.

"Coal, I am not your fiancé nor am I in the mood," I state whilst packing another punch.

           Coal is a descendant of the influential Matters family tree, which is renowned for its blossoming legacy of guards, this family's practice has thrived since the first generations of the Ark. Consequently, it has been Coal's lifelong aspiration to follow in his ancestor's footsteps and become a guard. As is evident, the Matters are a family of concrete customs, never deviating from the well-trodden path of tradition, and that's where my crisis transpires.

          My mother, Vera can be characterized as a stubborn woman, and the fact that she is the head of the guard...most definitely does not help. It gives every mother joy to see their child carry their best traits, lucky for my mother, from a very young age I expressed interested in joining the guard and excelled in my training. I yearned for the day that I would live to carry on her legacy. However, my desire to lead the guard was marred once I met Finn and Raven of Mecha Station. Their unwavering friendship opened the doors to much happiness...and heartbreak. With their influence I was seeing the world with new eyes, finally recognizing the honorable guard that I had worshipped for so long for what it truly was, a system intricately fabricated with corruption and injustice. From that point on I vowed that when it was time for me to operate the guard, I would bring forth change, transforming it into a league of morally composed soldiers.

          With time, and the strong opinions of a new acquaintance that hope seemed to drift further away. This was around the time I discovered Jake Griffin, an old friend of my late father. Jake revealed to me that my father had once been his colleague and close friend. He convinced me to join his apprenticeship, with the promise of telling me the truth about my covert father. It's been two years since I joined the apprenticeship, my mother still has no knowledge of the deal between Jake and I, and I pray she never will. I cherish every moment spent engineering with Jake, everything he has taught me seems to have been there all along, like a library of unopened file cabinets. The more I learn from Jake the more I feel that I am connecting with my father. For once I was not thinking of what might please my mother, but what would fulfill me, for once I was living for myself.

          However, as in all the thrills of life, there is always an unstable factor, a risk, a variable, my mother. Vera Knight, being the calculating woman she is, detected my reluctance to carry out her ambitions. Vera unable to accept my unwillingness to engage in another one of her common regimes began to scheme. My mother was close with the Matters family and she knew of there unbroken customs, one of which was that all in-laws must be of the guard. My mother did what she did best, with her tactics, her unnerving stubbornness, with her infuriating conviction that she owned the world, and people's lives, that she held the dice. With this mindset, she arranged a marriage, a forced marriage, with Coal Matters. Which destined me to join the guard when the time came.

          Which leads me to where I am today, in the training room, fuming at fate, lost in thought, wondering when was it that I lost my place as a daughter in my mother's eyes, and became another simple pond in her games.