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I'm really not surprised BL authors avoid the xenos-perspective. I never read Fire Warrior so I'm not sure if this aligns with anything written there but it is my take on some subtleties of Tau thought. No action as of yet. I kind of just left off so as to get it posted more quickly.
The monastery was built high into the chalk-white mountains. This was so the master could see the ocean across one side of the peaks at the same time as the plains across the other. Or so she had heard from other pupils, although she did not believe it herself. Idle talk was spun into legends about lesser commanders. With a figure as venerated as Puretide, the legends had given way to a sort of mythology. And Shas’Vre T’au Shaserra Kais found the implications of hero worship extremely distasteful.
Still, the deep honor of being matriculated into Puretide’s hermitage-like academy was not lost in the slightest on Vre’Shaserra. Neither did she doubt for a moment that she deserved to be here. She had earned it, along with her recent promotion and her new name. Shadowsun. For too long she had made due with the all-too-common sobriquet “Kais.” It, too, was a well-deserved credit to her abilities, a testament that she was a more than adequate leader. But many veterans bore the title and even if she was by far the youngest she counted it as nothing next to the name Shadowsun.
And yet the tribute was bittersweet. Every promotion, every honorific was a lonely step away from who she had been such a short time before. Vre’Shaserra had been content to have no name but Shas’La. This name, she sensed, was the most powerful of all. It bespoke a force like the infinite waves swelling up to batter the mountains into dust. Unconsciously, she turned her gaze toward the direction of the ocean but could see nothing. The morning sky was not clear.
She seated herself in a formal position, her hooves tucked neatly under her, and carefully arranged the pleats of her flowing training garment. These little rituals of order would focus her mind on most occasions but they proved useless to her now. Mere moments before a personal audience with Commander Puretide himself and she could not keep her eyes from probing for an ocean too distant to reasonably expect glimpsing. This haziness, this unwilling aloofness from Tau’Va was an unfortunate side effect of promotion, she thought with a grimace.
The only cure was battle.
“I am glad to find you looking for the ocean, Shas’Vre.” The voice was soft but crisp like the hum of Vespid wings and seemed to emerge from out of the wind itself. She did not jerk her eyes away from the cloudy horizon. That would be an admission of being caught unaware. That would allow one failure to become two. Instead, she would be still and wait for an opening to seize the initiative.
“Only one of my pupils had the audacity to claim that he could see it from here,” the master reminisced thoughtfully. He moved into her peripheral vision. She noticed that he was facing the direction of her gaze, indicating that his eyes, too, mostly likely searched beyond the peaks. Shifting her gaze now would give her the opportunity to study him before engaging. And he would then need to respond to her eye contact.
“He must have been uniquely far-sighted,” she said evenly as she turned her head. Commander Puretide, unbent by age or battle, was indeed facing the far away ocean. She noticed he was smiling.
“Indeed he was, Shas’Vre,” he chuckled turning on her. She realized her unintentional pun and blushed a deep purple. “Indeed he was.” He cocked his head slightly as he appraised the young officer. She felt like an in-suit tactical overview display under his eyes. But she did not hang her head or look away. Instead she fought the color out of her face and stared back at him.
His ancient visage was lined, likely with as many scars as tau-cyrs, and his pale blue, nearly gray skin seemed paper-thin over his angular skull. His deep-set eyes, by contrast, betrayed no hint of his years. They were bright with a vivid, dynamic intelligence. It was difficult to regard him as an opponent. The y-shaped crease in Vre’Shaserra’s forehead dilated slightly, hopefully not visibly. She felt compelled to see him as her leader. If she let herself, she knew, she could unquestioningly obey his every order. It was something like the presence of an Ethereal, although not so deeply satisfying of its own accord. Puretide’s draw was more demanding.
“I take it, Shas’Vre, you do not see the ocean.”
“No, Commander Puretide.”
“I have never seen it from this vantage point, either, nor the plains,” he gestured to the opposite expanse of sky. After her embarrassing slip, Vre’Shaserra was somewhat buoyed by this confirmation.
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