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< Talk? >

The end of the word lilted up in her head, a clear question, though the voice was to none but Damsy and perhaps Srina Talon Srina Talon , who had kept the miniature dragon before gifting her on. She was used to all of Keziah’s vocalizations by now—mewls, coos, chirps, brays, snorts—but words were truly few and far between. Telepathic as one came now, the pronunciation was squeaky and broken, the vocabulary rudimentary. Literal baby talk if not for her double-digit age.

Still, the mental intrusion didn’t startle Damsy as she pulled a bowl of nyork chowder from the microwave. She set it down on nearby counter space, stuck the surface with a spoon, and started idly stirring as she glanced around the kitchenette for Kezi. A drawback of mindspeak was how it lacked perspective. Finally, the dragon galloped across the hardwood floor. “Sure, hun. What’s up?” Damsy asked as she took up the spoon. She carefully picked clam meat out of an otherwise herbivorous bite. With one hand under the convex, she stooped and held out the utensil at her pet’s mouthlevel.

The bounty floated out of the scoop and towards Kezi—of her volition rather than Damsy’s. She munched into a translucent onion piece while the diced potato remained suspended mid-air, surely little's the next target.

Damsy was about to stand until an invisible rouge wave crashed into her front. It sent her tumbling backwards off her haunches. The spoon clattered beside her somewhere, undoubtedly creating an unseen mess. A seafarer never got used to the oceans’ tantrums; momentum was momentum, and in this case, the empyrean weighed just as much as water. If not more.

What’s more, they both drowned just as well.

A pit opened at the bottom of Damsy’s heart. Colder than cold gripped at all the strings, freezing them solid in an instant. Tautness like internal scar tissue overtook. Her breath became shallow, lest she rip one open.

She had felt this before, nearly daily on Kamino, middle of her seas: loneliness. Empty as the void. Helpless as a…
a Sithspawn among Jedi.

But then these strange demons scampered back from whence they came, mending what they had ravaged on their way in. Damsy sat for a moment in shocked silence marred only by her heavy, starved breath, then rearranged her body into a kneeling position. “Woah,” was all she could muster for another moment, though she wasn’t very sure upon playback that she had in fact said so aloud, so she repeated herself with an emphasis that couldn’t stick in her throat. “Woah. Kezi, where the hell’d that come from?

The equine didn’t just make noise. She made feelings, specifically for other people to feel. It was surely a mode of communication.

An aftershock of heat swept from head to toe, raising goosebumps on her skin in its wake. Her throat clenched, not in a way to make breathing difficult but to set panic into a downwards spiral.

This too: sorrow. Not unlike all the dread and disappointment she had felt after Talay for the Omegas and herself respectively. Both came back especially easy. She didn’t have to embody the sensations too much. They were still days fresh years later.

I’ll…” Damsy began, riding the coattails of the most recent emotion. “I’ll be fine, babes. He wouldn’t kill me.” No, not Dag. But maybe Sardun or Grayson. She’d heard stories. Stories that made a monster finally doubt her own supposed monstrosity.

Kezi blew agitation through her snout and stomped her front hooves. She shook her head too, back and forth, mini mane flopping about. On the last cycle, the diced potato launched itself at Damsy.

She barely had enough time to block the projectile with the back of her hand, so little distance stretched between them. “He wouldn’t,” she articulated, never so sure of anything in her life or else just about.

Until heat zapped a line through her stomach. Air knocked out of her again and she felt a great deal of blood rush midsection-ward. And, when Damsy’s eyelids fell closed in pain, the image of a lightsaber blade etched itself into the dark. She swore that she could smell scorched offal.

Her eyes shot open to drink in relief from Kezi’s implanted vision. She was right, of course. “Okay, okay, but only if he didn’t have a choice. I just need to keep on givin’ him choices. Easy.” As if it was. Orsk was content with Damsy’s promised of conversion and Dag’s commitment to help her see it through, but that was one, old Bothan. He was pretty liberal for a group of teenaged zealots, if she did say so herself, and at least she thought it. “Plus,” she added, trying to lift the mood heavy as waterlogged basalt erratics, “they’d neva eva kill you. You’re way cuter than me.

Damaged people could ruin a moment like nobody’s business. In the absence of yet another chance at redemption to feth up, she’d sure as chit try a relationship. Self-deprecation was the talon that was always attached to her at the fingertip—never at all out of reach.

Momentary rage gripped her and aimed at Dagon. It wasn’t hers but borrowed from Keziah; still, for an un-precious moment, it felt like it was. Her hands fisted atop her thighs, knuckles digging hard into her skin. The water pulled out to sea before Syreni came to join the fun.

< Meanie. >

Dag’s not…” Damsy trailed off, electing to grasp after Kezi’s deeper interpretation instead of furthering a vain defense. It was doubtful she could say would sway Kezi. Plus, the more she thought on it herself, the more she herself agreed, in a manner of speaking. “So maybe he’s ind…elicate?” Translated: clumsy as feth. But that was to be expected she supposed. He and she were quite alike in emotional intelligence—that was, lacking a few sizable chunks. Dagon was exhausting in zeal, pushy in his attempts to rehabilitate, but Damsy wouldn’t equate either to being mean. On the contrary, in the admittedly short time she had known him, all he did was follow his faith and mean well. That had gotten him nothing but mad respect from her so far.

Maybe that ought end today. Maybe it was high time something else file in.

What was it about that Jedi Padawan-turned-Knight that had her wrapped around his finger, looking up to his high horse? The sithspawn simp act couldn’t be all loth cats and sunshine. This had to be a long con terminated with murder excused as pre-emptive. The only question was whose. Theirs or hers? The sudden dread cooling her blood was entirely her own. “No, you right.

Mean.

Ashla damn it.

Kezi mewled small and pitiful for her keeper before running off towards the living room area. Damsy had half the mind to stand, to get back to her late lunch, but none of the strength. Released grief ran though her muscles, chattering each into the other on its course. The resulting exhaustion alternated with burst of energy as electrons jumped across her fingertips. At first, she thought it was that, the Force Lightning, that had scared her last best friend away.

She didn’t want this truth like she wished with all her heart that her had been born through mundane means.

She was crying silently when Kezi returned almost into her lap. She gave another coo, followed by a chirp, and began to catch Damsy’s saltwater tears as they fell. The Force floated them about slowly, allowing the sun to catch on their crystalline surface tensions. It would have been beautiful had Damsy had the mindset to appreciate it.

Kezi kicked something out ahead of her, then bowed her head and backed away. It took a moment for Damsy to recognize through bleary eyes that a metallic bead chain was sliding off her pet’s neck. It curled over the twin rectangles where it fell. She extended a hand to move the coil aside, to read the text below:

[[ Vi’dreya, Damsy Callat
CIS Daunt. 117 - Ω
Adj-Maj
]]

Identification chits. She had never had anyone to give one’s pair to. Well, not after @A’Runda and her series of promotions from sergeant.

Another projected memory, from the depths of hers; a voice echoing in her mind. Her former XO, Typhan Berrezz, as he presented her with the revamped pendants. He had one of the quartermasters redo them when she revealed herself as, well herself rather than Niobe Crowe, after the literal sithstorm on Ryloth:

< This is who you are, Dams. Don’t forget us. > She didn’t need to hide from them. Why had she?

Because Damsy Callat would have been better off cold, dead, and undiscovered on Atrisia than a disappointment to the Vi’dreya name. And the assessment still held, but with a new name.

Kaze? To call herself a Jedi?

Emphatically no to both. Such mentality had been crazy back then. It was crazier now, but she could still pry herself from living as its victim.

Hers. Callat. Middle made last for her loathing.

If she had seen fit to give him a sorry-for-ruining-your-jacket-and-also-damn-near-your-life gift, she’d better muster one for a knighthood-warming too. He just wouldn’t get it until he pried it from her hands, maybe by the time he made Master, the unicorn rank:

‘Grats, iiaa. You don't get to worry ‘bout me anymore. Happy birthday.

But she wouldn’t leave the Order—not yet. Neither would that happen until her hand was forced.

Not if, because it would be. The realization hadn’t come into existence as suddenly as the hypergates. She just could see the improbably high possibility now.

< Please? >

< Don’t forget it. >

Who you are, Callat.

Don’t compromise for the raven-haired likes of Dagon Kaze Dagon Kaze .

When Damsy picked her physical memories off the floor, so too came the shards of her heart. “Alright. I hear you, Kezi,” she said through to sniffs following a good cry like a rainbow after a storm. With one hand and the Force, she clasped the chain around her neck, and with the other, scooped up Keziah.

I promise.

No more Jedi worship.

Except she was already jonesing.