Private A Question of Faith

[Kaiva Rowe]

Veridia did not behave the way frontier worlds usually did.

That was the first thing Kaiva noticed.

She had been planetside less than a day when the pattern became clear. Arguments resolved themselves before voices rose. Disputes stalled rather than spiraled. People paused, recalibrated, and moved on. There was tension here, certainly, but it did not accumulate. It dispersed.

Kaiva watched from public spaces. Markets. Walkways. Communal halls. She did not intervene. She did not ask questions that would direct answers. She listened, and she measured.

Locals spoke in shorthand.

"He'll take care of it."
"Let it be, it's not worth pushing."
"He's around somewhere."

No name attached. No reverence. No fear.

Just expectation.

In the Force, the effect was subtler still. There was no flare, no pressure, no sense of dominance asserting itself. Instead, there was a noticeable lack of turbulence. Emotional spikes flattened. Potential conflicts lost momentum before cresting.

Someone was here.

Not moving through. Not passing judgment. Staying.

Kaiva did not seek them out. That would have introduced bias. Instead, she adjusted her own behavior. Less masking. Fewer deflections. She allowed her awareness to sit closer to the surface, not broadcasting, but no longer hiding either.

If the presence she had identified was as attentive as the results suggested, this would be enough.

She took a seat where sightlines were clear and waited, content to let observation resolve into contact if it chose to.

Braze

 

[Braze]

TAGS: Kaiva Rowe

Braze could sense some one in the market place... some one like him and yet... not like him. A Force sensitive that was unfamiliar to him.
He looked about as if taking in the scenery of the market as he finished tucking away some treats in to his travel basket. "Where, could you be... " He mused aloud to himself.

 

[Kaiva Rowe]

Kaiva noticed the shift the moment it happened. It was not a disturbance in the Force itself, not some external ripple or warning, but something far more specific and far more telling a change in him.

It was in the way his attention narrowed, sharpening with sudden purpose. In the subtle adjustment of his posture, the way his body reoriented by degrees rather than by instinct. In that moment, his focus stopped drifting with the easy rhythm of the marketplace and instead began searching, scanning, reaching for something he could not yet name.

She did not react. Not at first.

She remained exactly where she was near the vendor's stall, outwardly absorbed in examining a small cluster of dried fruit wrapped in thin cloth. Her presence blended seamlessly into the marketplace's flow, becoming just another passerby, another potential customer, another unremarkable figure among many. Nothing about her posture or expression suggested she had noticed anything at all.

But she watched him from the edge of her awareness, the way one listens for a faint sound without turning their head.

She noticed how his gaze moved through the crowd, how it lingered on certain shapes and dismissed others without hesitation. She noted the steadiness of his breathing, the absence of panic, the lack of defensive tension in his shoulders.

He was not afraid. He was not preparing to fight. He was curious.

And that distinction mattered.

After a few moments, Kaiva shifted not toward him, not in a way that would draw attention, but just enough to alter her position relative to the crowd. She took a single step to the side, a small adjustment of her weight, a slight turn of her shoulders that opened a new line of sight where there had not been one before.

A quiet adjustment. A deliberate test.

If he was truly sensing something unusual, this subtle change would sharpen the sensation, give it shape. If he was mistaken, if it was nothing more than a passing instinct, then nothing at all would change.

She resumed her stillness with practiced ease, letting her attention drift back to the small details around her, the cadence of voices rising and falling in uneven waves, the warm scent of spices carried on the breeze, the way tension ebbed and flowed through the crowd like a tide responding to unseen moons.

And she waited to see if he was feeling her or something else entirely.

Braze