Not mine. Wish they were. --------------------------

The entire ‘verse is looking for them. Don’t seem like much—an obviously out-of-place Core-worlder and a spry waif of a child that speaks nonsense. It seems almost bizarre that the girl is clearly the ‘more important’ one, given her strange affect, but there you are. It’s not like Alliance brass to go telling anyone the particulars.

The chances of someone like me ending up on the same ship with these two were astronomical. Clichéd, I know, but there you are. It would have been easy, in any case. The boy’s a fighter, but lacks any real training or even the will to harm others—unless, as I’ve discovered, it’s to keep his sister safe. So much the better, I say. Girl’s got no one else looking out for her, aside from you, and in her state she needs all the help she can get.

They tell me they’re innocent, if the boy is to be believed. After this long, I am inclined to agree on that point. Alliance brass doesn’t go around offering nearly a million credits for two wayward children unless there’s something they don’t want others to know. Money like that, it isn’t real. I know.

Plus there’s the demeanor of the two—his compassion and loyalty to those close to him, her inquisitiveness coupled with nonsensical whimsy and intuitiveness. These are not the trademarks of black operatives or cold-blooded killers. The girl’s attributes, however, do spell out why the Alliance is so keen to get her back. The thought of that child—barely a straw on the wind half the time—being crafted into some sort of governmental experiment for assassination…oh, Lord, it makes me sick to my very core.

I have seen, and witnessed, and known of horrors done in the name of betterment to the general populace. Whole moons eradicated to destroy evidence of plague or treason against the ruling body. Political kidnappings executed in order to ‘straighten out’ a Rim-world planet that could be left to its own devices. The slaughter of innocents to create a cover story when an operative goes just a little too far. It is these images that sent me to the abbey in the first place—a place of spirit, of belief, of something other than brutality and adherence to a enforced authority that I could find solace in. These two—these children--they are just as much at the mercy of your will as I am, now.

It makes me smile to see the girl playing; to watch her draw, or explore a part of her world in that special way of hers. It makes my heart glad when I see the boy take a moment to realize what gifts he has now; much richer and more fulfilling ones than those he left behind. He has a sister who depends on him; a woman who loves him; the camaraderie of those that would stand by him, no matter how unlikely they might be.

Even now, as I sit down to this table, and ask that you bless those around it, oh Lord, I pray that you look after these two wayward souls, and give them the courage and the strength to continue on in their endeavors. I feel that someday soon the truth will out, and that on that day you will show them to be as they truly are—the same people as I have come to live with, laugh with, cry and mourn with.

In your name, Lord...amen.