Light flitted through the iridescent greenhouse, sending shimmering veins of brilliant colour throughout the small, snug apartment. Slivers of brilliant blue and emerald danced against the walls like aquatic sprites in a tempest, illuminating the room and all that filled it's neat interior. Seated cross-legged on a thick Huj mat in the center of the modest living quarters was the disgraced daughter of Pal'da Tarvyn, Têhra, the dainty teenager having expended much of her energy refining a particularly intricate Twi'lek routine. Chalk covered the compressed sandstone floor near the large arced window, the pool of powdery white trailing off onto the rug in a succession of foot shaped prints. Scarlet ribbons, lace and tinkling bells were splayed out over the lip of a compact aluminium drawer, each an essential tool the girl used during her routines, both private and public. With dark silken hair tussled into a messy bun and the faintest remnants of shimmering sweat kissing her porcelain brow, the young bastard was the very image of what was not accepted in Hapans aesthetics-obsessed culture. Covered in chalk, barefoot and clothed in a simple beige two-piece Têhra would have surely garnered derision from the masses that flocked the city in their pretty gowns and expensive shoes if they ever so happened to peer into her one place of solace. There was no doubt in the girl's mind that if anyone were to walk in on her less-than-presentable appearance she'd be publicly harangued by her wickedly devious family, or 'owners' as Ali liked to call them.
Alas, such concerns weren't as threatening as they once were, a fact that the diminutive beauty found equally startling as she did comforting. If it wasn't for the diligent efforts of a certain Mandalorian beauty, then Têhra was convinced that her mental state would have regressed further into the sad little creature her aunt so overtly wanted her to be. She was a bastard, a title she could not clean regardless of who convinced her otherwise and she still lived in the outliers of her society, forever enduring the hateful and cruel taunts thrown her way by the impeccably beautiful woman she grew up with. Part of the girl wanted to tear herself away from such a burden, to embrace the freedom that Ali so gleefully coveted and yet her mind would always retreat back into its most vulnerable, forcing her to face the suffocating duty of words once spoken.
"Têhra, my beautiful, lovely little girl...I cannot promise you wealth or pretty dresses. I cannot raise up armies to defend you or build a castle in our name. Forgive me my sweet daughter, forgive your father for failing you...for forcing this life on to you. I know you deserve more, I know that you have more worth than a dozen of your cousins put together and...and I-I'm sorry. Serve your family and they will treat you well. Earn their love and they shall repay it...I promise..."
The ramblings of a dead man echoed in her brain, the face of her father a charred husk that haunted the mist of her memory. She clung to those last moments, cradled them in the feeble trenches of her consciousness, always hoping her mind would reach into oblivion and pluck out another forgotten thought. But such a thing was fantasy, as was the promise her dead father gave her. What love her family offered manifested in incessant abuse and neglect, the bruises they left her scarring deeper than any physical wound ever could. The one woman she could count on wasn't even part of her family and yet proved time and time again that such intense emotions knew no boundaries, Ali may not have been related by blood but she was the only person the teenager could fall into whenever the wounds became too deep and the memories too painful. The human was an alluring enigma, a smirking springboard into feelings the dainty dancer had never experienced prior to that fateful meeting all those months ago.
Alas, Ali was a woman bound by her own work and any chance at finding comfort in those slender arms would have to wait, for days even.
The mental gymnastics would have locked Têhra to the floor if she didn't shake her mind of such matters, the fleeting whispers of her thoughts retreating back into the depths of her brain like serpents in a sewer. She needed to breathe, cleanse herself of her exhaustion and loneliness. Gracefully uncoiling herself from the rug before hastily brushing the remnants of chalk off her feet and ankles, the girl let out a feathery yawn before skipping over to a nearby closet and procuring simple white flats for her dainty feet and a pale blue cloak to cover the exposed porcelain skin of her arms and midriff. The shimmering tattoo that trickled down the length of her spine faintly glowed beneath the thin material, forever staining the bastard's body like a malicious scar.
Plucking a stray lock of hair from her brow and pinning it backwards, the teenager slowly made her way out from the apartment and into the luminescent corridor that buzzed right outside her living spaces, the intense blue light that illuminated the narrow space bathing the girl in an ocean of sapphire. She was the only inhabitant of the floor other than the two handsome males that shared a room on the opposite end of the complex, whores that were often commissioned by wealthy business women to perform and satisfy whatever crude demand was given to them.
Pursing her lips as she escaped the simply designed apartment complex and deftly weaved through the nearby alleyway, the girl eventually eventually found herself ascending several shallow stairs till she entered a wide glass elevator, the lingering scent of perfume marking the interior and granting the teenager some semblance of what sort of person used the lift before her. The whirring hum of the elevator sparked to life once she pressed the very last node and in a matter of seconds the porcelain skinned teenager was well above the tallest peaks of some of the towers in Ta'a Chume'Dan, the brilliant glow of the Hapes sky bathing the city in warm orange and violet. No one bothered to visit the neglected roof of the observation tower, no one but the dainty bastard and the occasional repairman. Têhra used the place to think, dance and cry...of which she wasn't sure would be accomplished that day.
Unbeknownst to her the place of solace was acquainted with the presence of another, a man who would surely detect her presence once the doors to the elevator chimed open.
