She got up and followed him, catching up with him easily. ”You mean, because you couldn’t provide for them, is that it?” She asked.

He nodded ’yes’ without saying anything.

”Wouldn’t it be your uncle who failed, rather than you? He’s an adult, you’re not.” Kes put forward.

”…he offered to take me in.” Tresit told her.

”Your uncle?”

Tresit nodded. ”Only me though. That’s what mother didn’t want my sister to know. He… he wanted me to let them die. I would not… He said I was stupid, stupid like mother, like his brother, and my father. And that I deserved to die with them.”

Kes said nothing, though she felt a wave of anger and revulsion go through her, more revulsion even than she had felt towards the man who’d tried to rape her and make her his property. Her mind still could not grasp why that man had wanted to rape her, why they would treat her like property like they had, especially if what Tresit had said were true and it had been done to them once, and this… this was even more incomprehensible to her. Leaving children, family even, to starve to death? Hadn’t Anara said that blood relation was important to the Kazon? ”…Anara said that blood relationships, they are very important to your people. Your uncle, he wasn’t punished for abandoning you like that?” Kes asked.

”No.” Tresit almost spat. ”He should have been though, he should have been killed. I would… I swore to him that I would prove him wrong. That I would keep mother and Lanam alive, that I would become a man, and then I would show him how wrong he was. In combat. He laughed at me. Kicked me to the ground, and turned away. He was right though, in the end. I couldn’t do it. I was weak. If it wasn’t for you, they would be dead, if not today, then tomorrow. Me too.”

Kes stopped, her hands clenched into fists. She calmed herself with effort and went to sit down on a rock. ”You are not weak, Tresit. He his. A grown man, afraid to even try to look after his own family. And you, you were just a boy, younger than you are now.” She tried deliberately not to think of the difference in Ocampa and Kazon aging that she’d just discovered an hour ago. ”And you were brave enough to try.”