FSF: The Token

This is my second post as a Five Sentence Fiction Participant.  Thanks again to Lillie for making this possible!

Overall I received a lot of positive feedback on my first installment, and there were suggestions that I should continue with that story.  I also felt like there was plenty more story to tell, so here's my follow-up.

For anyone who didn't have the opportunity to read the first installment, follow the link below.

Detour

Since I'm now writing it as a larger story, I need a name for the piece as a whole. I think, at least for now, I'll call it Unchained.  The title ties into this installment specifically, as well as speaking to the overall idea of freedom.

Unchained

Chapter 2: The Token

Ylana watched the ancient pendant, the ornamentation of Jidan’s clan proclaiming that she’d been pledged to him and him alone, tumble through space on its way into the upper atmosphere. 

Image courtesy of porbital
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The pendant, carved from pewter-colored stone and fashioned to look like a gnarly tree, was also the symbol of the plague that swept the surface of the Rellian world millennia ago, destroying half the vegetation on the planet and threatening all life as a result.  The Kryllians offered them a cure in exchange for the right to take female host bodies from the chosen clans.

When the adult Jidan fastened the chain around Ylana’s neck on her fifth birthday, he whispered to her, “You are flawed, as we all are flawed, but you will find new life and be made whole through your sacrifice and devotion.”

Sitting beside Nara in the cockpit, Ylana recited her own ceremonial words: “I will make myself whole through my own choices and actions, so I return this token to my world in the hope that its charred remains may one day be reborn as something new and good.”

Go to Chapter 3: Healing Hands