Slave to Duty, Servant to Nobody

Stargazer Itzel perched on her nest, given to her allotted space in the Councillors’ rooms.
Cross her legs...
Close her eyes...
...And breathe deeply...
She peacefully resumes her thoughtful meditation, her spirit floating across her memories, as they always tend to do the moment she begins praying.

Today’s meeting was tiring for her old bones. She had chosen to represent her whole species in the Council to try and show everyone the Flightless were not crazed zealots, and that the Grounded weren’t openly ridiculed either... Though she knew, in her heart, that was most certainly the case in the latter. The former was... Debatable. Zealots yes, certainly -- devotion to Kluex and the Sunborn came above many things -- but crazed, most absolutely not. She had felt it was necessary to rectify these mistakes, and had not taken into account the politics that went along with it.

She had come from a wholly Flightless sector, over which she was the High Priestess, and had been thus for the last fourty years of her life. The cities were as magnificent and splendid in their architecture as they were in their people, with happy gatherings and inter-continental games of ullimalitzli being a regular event on every planet in the system. In her mind’s eye she also saw the prime altar, atop the highest pyramid on the largest planet, Karath. She had delivered a speech there but a week before she had offered to join the Council, coincidentally on the threat of the great Other as well.

She was used to speeches, giving and taking, but not with so varied a group of individuals.

She had her prejudices herself, indeed, but the Floran - Preystalk - was every bit as savage and blunt as she’d anticipated. Holtz, the Apex representative, was hollow in his words. He never seemed to mean or put feeling into anything he said or did, which rankled with her. Clearwater was cordial enough, but cold, very cold. Lockweld was an interesting fellow, seeming most capable of them all - perhaps even herself - at seeing both sides of the argument at an even level. Jefferson was very warm to them all, and she appreciated it. The good cop to most of the others’ bad cop, as the saying of his race went, she thought. And the Novakid, she felt, didn’t even deserve a place here. He obviously didn’t care, so why bother bringing him along, but to hear his apathy and disregard for the dire menace that loomed over them all?

Her incense burned at the side of her altar, filling her room with a relaxing and soft smell of flowers and ritual oils, clearing her mind for her next duty. She gently raised her grey and feathered arms to the small mannequin of a faceless Sunborn with its magnificently carved form splaying wide its wings and arms, and began humming almost inaudibly as she started praying once more.