Side quest: The Oracle's Debt

You wake with a voice already in your room. You are not in your room. You are nowhere in particular, standing in a garden of tall thin trees that throw golden leaves upward instead of letting them fall. An old woman sits at a table of pale stone. 'Pilot. Forgive the theft of an hour — I am not going to have many more and I needed yours. My name is not important. I am the Oracle. I am dying. Not badly; I am ending in the right way, at the right time. But there is one debt I cannot collect in the body I am finishing in. Will you take it for me?' She pours two cups of something that smells like rain.

'When I was young — and I was, once — I made a promise to a boy on a world called Liska. I told him I would come back before his wedding. I did not. He married without me. He had children. He had a whole life and he died an old man four winters ago. I was never able to apologize. His daughter inherited a small box of my letters that he kept. She does not know who I am. I would like her to know I am sorry. That I loved him very much. That the reason I did not come back was good but not good enough.' The Oracle slides a sealed envelope across the table. 'Liska. A blue building near the harbor. Her name is Ilo. Will you.'

'Because you have already made a choice you cannot unmake, and you have lived with it, and you have not pretended it didn't cost you. That is the only quality I require. Anyone else would deliver it as a task. You will deliver it as a person.' She smiles. 'Also — I do not have many options. You are who is available.' She slides the envelope closer. 'Take it, pilot. Go drink something stronger than this tea when you dock.'

You are in your pilot seat. The envelope is on your console. Your instruments show you were asleep for nine minutes. The envelope is real. It is warm. Liska is a six-hour jump from here.

Liska is a planet that smells like nothing bad, which is an underrated thing. The blue building is near the harbor as promised. An older woman — Ilo — answers the door. She is in her sixties. She has her father's eyes. You introduce yourself carefully. You hold out the envelope. She takes it slowly and looks at the seal and her hand starts to shake. 'This is her handwriting. He waited his whole life for this.' She invites you in for tea.

Ilo reads it aloud, slowly, because she wants you to hear it too. The letter says: 'I was a coward. I loved you. I could have come back many times and always chose not to. I am sorry. You deserved someone who would have. I hope she was kind. I hope the children were easy. I hope you forgive me for the years I did not deserve.' Ilo is crying quietly when she finishes. She folds the letter and presses it to her heart. 'Thank you, pilot. He would have — ' She can't finish. You don't need her to.

You leave Ilo with the envelope and walk back toward the harbor. Before you get to your ship, she catches up to you, breathing hard from the run. She presses a small heavy object into your hands. It is warm, and unmistakably a Guardian-forged sigil, her family's heirloom. 'My father said if the pilot who brought this ever came, I was to give them this. He was certain one would come. Thank you for proving him right.' She kisses your cheek and walks back home.

You are back in your ship and the garden-room overlays your cockpit for the briefest moment. The Oracle raises her cup to you. She has an hour, maybe two. 'You did not have to stay for the reading, or to go back for the sigil, but you did, and you did it well. Elder Sera will know what you have done — not because I tell them, but because you carry it now. Fly lightly, pilot. Fly cleverly. And when the Starforge asks its question, tell it what you told Ilo: that you are sorry, that you are here anyway, that you hope.' The garden is gone.