Don't Forget Where You Came From, Girl
A short story set in the Shiraya's Sanctuary after:
In chronological order
Chapters I - V
" Him "
" Summon Your Council, I Have Secrets "
" She and Her "
" England Made Me "
" Scars of Maldra IV "
A short story set in the Shiraya's Sanctuary after:
In chronological order
Chapters I - V
" Him "
" Summon Your Council, I Have Secrets "
" She and Her "
" England Made Me "
" Scars of Maldra IV "
"...This is a person who has gone by so many false identities ever since they came into contact with the brothers on Malachor 5. Such is the complexity behind this individuals true identity and origins that I have trouble even certifying that they are a woman at all..."
-- Excerpts of ' The Informant ' 's investigation into the elusive, enigmatic individual colloquially only known as ' Her ' .
There are nights where they are, sometimes, different. Of course, when you are used to traversing the star-ways between Lianna and Naboo (as Her had gotten used to), time elapses into a thing where day or night are blurred for there are no lights up there to tell you the difference save for the gleam of artificial panels and their clocks; the overhanging beams which shine a certain yellow luminescent that doesn't seem natural to the eye; and interstellar phenomena that were only useful in distracting you from your own thoughts. The senses tend to dull in these moments and Her found that it always took time to adjust back to normal whenever she made landing in former Imperial territory or Republic space.
However, unlike some nights where she could dream, or as Her quietly longed for a dreamless state, this particular one is the same like most of the other times where she tries to sleep. It doesn't help that being stuck in this cell is reminiscent of a ground hog's day. Rinse and repeat. There is nothing much to distract you from yourself or to help bide away the time. It was good, then, that Her had an inexplicable patience in times like these. Fruits of a Jedi curriculum one could say. If you asked Quin or Basran they might admit to each other that their prisoner seems to think that she knows more than what she has let on. Opinions tend to die on the stem of this tree.
It's rotten after all.
The dream always starts in the suburbs of a ruined city that has since been claimed by the dirt. Sand and torrential wind assault the senses. It is a wild place covered in dirt, and judging by the damage, it tells the story of a civilisation that was once prosperous until a calamity came for them all. Where the eye can see there rests the wreckage and ruins of a once great place that looks to have been bombarded into oblivion and left behind to be claimed by the desert surrounding it. Some say the people who once lived here were called the Builders. But this name, designation, classification only served to further the enigma that they were in the streams of time itself. It isn't their real name and, unfortunately, there was no-one left to tell what they were really called. The rumours, myths and stories are virtually similar, however. They say a race of Humanoid's traversed the galaxy during the Four-Hundred Year Darkness on a pilgrimage to help save and cure the sick or needy. Her used to believe those stories up until she found out the hard way that, unfortunately, such myths don't tend to stem from the parallels of truth and fiction after all. There had been no cure for them by the end of their pilgrimage.
Resting atop of a pyre is the corpse of a woman who had died frail and sick as a consequence of a parasitic weapon contracted during an ill-fated voyage on Dxun. The funeral was only ever attended by three people. Four if you counted the Jedi's astromech companion. The cremation had been Nova's idea and The Nomad had agreed to help put Ayra to rest. After all that was what his people had done for others before the Builders went extinct. Her was certain that there had been words spoken on that day but it has been such a long time since the funeral that she could never recall what was said. Memories are like that, unfortunately. People don't recall the facts of the day but are rather left with the recollection of certain events which stem from the feelings felt in the moment; and for Her it was a feeling of dread every time she looked up to the skies to see the ship leaving Kalist behind.
A child's laughter can be a saving grace, you know. Every morning, since the beginning of their incarceration in the sanctuary, Her has been woken up the sounds of nearby kids playing and laughing to themselves. It saved Her from that dream. Soon enough she found herself sitting on the ledge of the makeshift cot that the Jedi Council had provided (while they debated and deliberated on what to do with their prisoner) drenched in sweat and fatigue as Her usually was when the funeral came back to them as vividly as these walls were starting to come to the senses while sleep and exhaustion slowly abated at the precipice of a new day in confinement. Yet, the past refused to erode with the sleep and dream. It was always there and Her feared that it always be.
"You said that you would save me," Ayra had managed to whisper.
"I will," Nova had replied.
Pressing either hand down into the cot, Her stood themselves up and commenced with the daily, morning routine as she waited to see what the Jedi Council would do with them. Before she begun the stretches and familiar exercises Her found themselves staring into the corner of the cell with that same thousand-yard stare and she was in no rush to break that gaze into the abyss. A soft, cool breeze came through the slit of an opening in the corner of the cell but in that moment of quiet lamentation and self-loathing all Her could feel was the harsh, freezing cold winds of Kalist assaulting her as it had done all that time ago. . .
