Microstory 1230: Lubomir Resnik

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Lubomir Resnik was the eldest of the source mages on the mostly dead world of Durus, but that did not make him the strongest. It was quite the opposite, actually, since he was born about three and a half months before he was due. Baby Lubomir struggled a lot in his early life, but of course, he kept fighting, and survived well into adulthood. He was a loving human being, who liked to be around people. As a result, he was perhaps a bit too trusting of others, and they sometimes disappointed him. He never stopped believing in them, though, and he never stopped caring for pretty much everyone he could find. He was always mediating some kind of argument between his peers, and he didn’t like it when there was any sort of conflict. Since he was a premature baby, Lubomir was originally meant to be the youngest, but that spot eventually went to Valda Ramsey, after her pregnant mother found herself having unwittingly been sent five years into the future. He was always impressed with Valda’s strength and bravery after having missed so much of early life on the rogue world. He didn’t give her much thought beyond that, however, until they were both older. Then he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She would come to develop feelings for him as well, though their relationship wasn’t the easiest thing to deal with. While there was a strict no-child policy for all mages, which was something that everybody agreed to, there weren’t any rules against two mages being a couple, or one mage finding some other mate elsewhere. Still, the others didn’t appreciate that Lubomir and Valda were a pair. There were some jealousy issues, and it was an all around difficult time for the whole group. Eventually, their friends just had to accept that this was the way things were, and there was nothing they could do to change it.

Well, Lubomir and Valda did end up having a child together, and if any of the others found out, it could be disastrous. Fortunately for them, they were all essentially immortal, which made it easier to avoid being caught. The source mages had access to a special class of time monsters called verters. They were civilized and vocal, unlike most of the other temporal anomalies. They had the ability to alter a target’s age,  to make them either older or younger. They could use this as a weapon, but they were generally pretty agreeable. If the source mages hadn’t ultimately been killed in battle, they could have effectively remained young and healthy forever because of this alliance. Either way, it provided them with an abnormal perspective on life. No one questioned it when the two lovebirds went off on their own for several months while she was pregnant. They didn’t do the math, and realize what must have happened. They just moved on with their lives, and greeted them both with just as much politeness as ever when they finally returned after their daughter’s birth. Of course, the new parents couldn’t keep the lie going forever, unless they were willing to give up their child, which is what they felt they had no choice but to do. Lubomir was against it. He thought the others would understand why they had broken the rules, and that things were going to be okay. But he never found out whether he was right, because the others didn’t learn of Jayde’s existence until many years later. They didn’t react too kindly to her then, but they would never know what would have happened had they just been honest from the beginning. Lubomir desperately wanted to believe that history would have turned out better, but that was the compassionate side of him, and if he was going to survive the aftermath of the war, he needed to get over that.