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Late in October of the year Yang is born, when he is not yet a year old, a name rises to the surface of his skin.
It hugs the curve of his lower back, elegantly and perfectly scripted, lying just shy of his spine, starting just under his ribs, curving in a great sweep across his lower back.
Its elegant curling script proclaims Yang bound to one Oskar von Reuenthal, a matter which causes Yang’s widowed father to scratch his head.
A nanny remarks on how noble the name, how beautiful, and how very unusual? Surely Yang (and his soulmate) must be very special indeed.
Soulmates are not common on Heinessen, but not rare. Every family often has at least one, often more, scattered throughout interweaving family trees over generations.
Yang’s parents had not been soulbound, and though he had loved his wife in his own absent-minded, distracted way, for this and other reasons, Yang Tai Long does not see the revelation of his son’s soulmate as a matter worthy of celebration.
“He can make his way through life well enough without a soulmate,” grumbles Yang Tai Long. “I suppose now we must look for the… boy? When he comes of age? How troublesome.”
Some four months after Yang’s first birthday, a second name swims to the surface of Yang’s skin, this time a careless, relaxed scrawl as unlike the precise, restrained script of the first as night is to day.
Wolfgang Mittermeyer, reads the second name, mirroring the curve of the first, this time the right of Yang’s spine, twin scripted columns that proclaim Yang bound to not one, but two.
When the fact is brought to Yang Tai Long’s attention, the man frowns. “Another?” he asks. “Isn’t one troublesome enough? He doesn’t need two. That’s only twice the trouble, isn’t it?”
It is not unusual for soulmate names to fade and disappear as a soulmate meets an untimely death. In such instances, the individual may find in time that a second soulmark surfaces. It is, however, a rare occurrence to have two names at the same time.
The emergence of the second name changes nothing about the first, which endures stubbornly on Yang’s skin, unchanging as the darkness beyond the planet’s lights, unyielding as the man who gave Heinessen her name.
Yang Tai Long does not quite know what to make of it. Given the vagaries of population flow, notwithstanding that both names seem to speak of Imperial heritage, it is certainly possible that his son’s soulmates may reside in Alliance or Phezzanese territories.
While that would still be troublesome, it is not as troublesome as the alternative.
When he thinks upon it at all, it is largely to reflect that soulmates are a bothersome business indeed.
He resolves to speak to Yang on it when his son is older, and being the man he is, naturally eventually forgets all about it. Yang’s marks, after all, are not easily visible, and for Yang Tai Long, out of sight was equivalent to out of mind, an approach he also took to parenting his only child.
Father and son do not speak of it before Yang Tai Long meets his untimely end at the hands of a fusion furnance explosion.
Yang inherits his father’s blasé attitude to the matter of his soulmates. It does not overly occupy him, save for sporadic, speculative trains of thought which usually leave him contemplating what life is like for a citizen on Phezzan or in the Empire and the state of galactic politics.
For most of his life, it is not a matter that troubles Yang overmuch.
When Reuenthal is born, it is not the distinctly non-Imperial name on his skin that attracts his mother’s terror and loathing, it is the colour of his eyes - or eye, so to speak, for the terrible secret it speaks.
It is not the name on his skin that she seeks to strike from his being.
The name goes unremarked by nursemaids tasked with the care of the solitary child, whose nature only becomes colder and more bitter with the passage of each lonely, unloved year. They learn soon enough that remarking upon, or doing more than the barest minimum on the child’s behalf, for the matter, only brings disfavour upon their heads, and no one is keen to share the fate of the master’s son.
So it is when a second name swims to the surface of his skin, just under a year later, it is remarked upon by no one.
Reuenthal grows up believing that his soulmates are never to be spoken of.
Having never known love, he cannot conceive of anyone who would love him.
His matching names are sweep down from either side of his shoulders, down the broad curve of his back. Both are in messy scrawls, careless and offhanded, as unlike the man’s nature as night is to day.
Unlike his soulmates, Wolfgang Mittermeyer comes into the world with both his soulmates names circling his waist, like skin-scripted arms embracing him.
His parents are both worried and happy (even if that happiness is laced with no small amount of trepidation) that their Wolfgang is destined for such great love in his life – if one name promises one great love, why, their Wolfgang is meant for two! – but naturally concerned that one name is distinctly non-Imperial, and the other clearly does not belong to a lady.
Maybe his soulmate is in Phezzan, Mittermeyer’s parents think, hopefully. They do not dare to voice the other, equally valid possibility.
Wolf grows up a boisterous, happy child, looking forward to that day in the future when he would meet both his soulmates. It is a thing much remarked upon in the Mittermeyer family – Wolfgang’s two soulmates! I wonder what they’re like, Wolf would wonder. I wonder what Oskar is doing now. What do you think Wen Li likes to be calld? Do you think they would prefer to be called Yang instead? Do you think they’ll like me?
Of course they will, Mittermeyer’s parents reassure him. How could anyone not love you?
So it is that decades pass, and the pages of history turn onwards relentlessly.