Private A to B to C

[Kairon Rees]

One of the cans went bang as it struck the floor. The pressure blew the hole in the lid and suds poured out.

Davis leapt to his feet. His chair tumbled backwards and two more cans fell to the floor.

"Oops," went Jarrick, dropping to one knee. He was quick to grab to leaking can and to bring the opening to his mouth.

The cathar had hunched forward, arms around her middle as she belly laughed. Chaos always entertained Mai.

Kairon stepped up to the table, glancing curiously at Davis.

"Bit jumpy lad?" Kairon asked. It wouldn't be the first time he'd given a fugitive a ride. He just preferred to know what he was signing up for.

"No, no. I'm fine," Davis said, holding up both hands.

Kairon shook his head. He bet the young man was a financier running from some white collar crime.

"Grab a seat," Kairon said to Loxa. "I'll get some...less shaken beers."

 

[Loxa Visl]

Typically her reaction time was quick enough to stem the tide of chaos such as this, but all Loxa could do was watch wide-eyed as cans tumbled everywhere and contained bedlam ensued. This was a terrible first impression of her attempts to be helpful and once she regained her wits she apologized in Paecean profusely as she helped tidy up. A hand cloth from the table to mop up the puddle on the floor, she quickly collected the remaining wily cans and stood again.

Pink had flushed along her tanned cheeks, bleeding into the skin around and through the slash of scars.

"Forgive," she said to Kairon then looked to Davis, "forgive, please." She handed off the danger-cans to Kairon and nodded before retaking her seat. The cathar was still cackling and Loxa wasn't sure if that made her feel better or worse. Jarrick had just finished emptying the punctured can into his belly and she watched him crush it between his hands.

Loxa fixed the man with a look of faint amusement and a growing smile, "Is good trick."

 

[Kairon Rees]

"Yeah making my beer disappear is a trick the two of them are great at," Kairon said, pointing at Mai and Jarrick in turn. "If they could ever turn up when cargo or parts needed carryin' about that would be a neat trick too."

Mai bared her teeth at him, just for the notion of being made to do some work around the ship. Jarrick just laughed, smiled at Loxa and placed the flattening ring of metal down on the table.

"No need to forgive, it was just an accident," Kairon said.

"Yes, yes of course," David agreed, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses.

"Besides," Kairon continued, "You cleaned up whilst my crew watched."

Jarrick groaned. Mai rolled her eyes. It had been easier for them when there had been Kairon's teenage nephew to order around.

Kairon finally took his seat, cracking open his own can of beer.

"Where did you both come from then?" Kairon asked of his passengers. He looked to Loxa first, but he was interested to see where Davis had come from too. He was absolutely certain he would find out the map was on the run for fraud or tax evasion. Loxa meanwhile, was a complete mystery.

 

[Loxa Visl]

Choosing not to comment about cleaning up, Loxa quietly opened her own can to take a drink. Beer wasn't her first choice, but it wasn't her last either.

"This One comes from Dathomir," she replied to the question of origin.

"...so yer a witch then?" Jarrick raised a brow with a glance to Kairon.

Loxa paused to answer that, carefully looking between the two, "Yes. This One is witch."

 

[Kairon Rees]

Silence followed her confirmation for a few seconds. Jarrick raised an eyebrow at Kairon. Kairon offered a shrug in return.

The silence was broken by the scraping of a chair. A chair was pushed, back first, up close to Loxa's left hand side.

Mai hopped up onto the chair. Feet on the seat, she rocked onto her haunches with both hands on the back of the seat. She leaned uncomfortably close.

"Mai..." Kairon warned. The cathar had upset their passengers before, but usually she wasn't interested in them.

"A real witch? Can you do magic?"

 

[Loxa Visl]

Loxa's golden eyes stared straight back at the cathar. She knew well of her kind - had experience working with and against them. They were deadly and worthy of respect in such close quarters. The witch stared back at the cat for a few moments and then nodded.

"Yes..."

She hoped she would not be asked to prove it. Her magic was to be treated with respect and was not always compatible with deep space travel.

 

[Kairon Rees]

"Can you do something to Kairon with it?" Mai asked, eyes wide at the possibilities. "I'll trade ya something!"

"Mai!" Kairon warned more sternly. "I'm sorry about her..." he started saying to Loxa, but he was interrupted by Jarrick.

"Hold on there boss, I'd like to see magic done to you too."

"No one needs to see magic of any kind whilst my boat is flying!" Kairon growled.

 

[Loxa Visl]

A frown took hold. This was always the risk of sharing what she was - everyone always wanted to see it in action. But she would not under any circumstances perform magic while in flight, let alone on the man responsible for getting them from A to B to C.

The witch shook her head to the pair of them, "No. Magic in space ... no safe."

 

[Kairon Rees]

"So you're saying...how not safe? Because if it might turn Kairon inside out its a risk I'm willing to take!" Mai declared with a cackle. That sound turned into a yelp as Kairon rounded the table.

The cathar dropped down from the chair and fled before she could be swatted away.

"Leave guests alone!" Kairon said, wagging a finger.

Mai bared teeth and hissed at him. She grabbed a portion of bread and fled in the direction of the cargo bays.

Jarrick clearly found the exchange amusing. The other passenger didn't. He looked down at his lap in awkward silence.

"Sorry about that."

 

[Loxa Visl]

Watching the cathar high-tail it away from the Captain's admonishment wasn't quite what she had expected. Perhaps this was a young cathar ... or a very foolhardy one. Frown persisting as she looked back to Kairon, Loxa nodded.

"Magic ... special. This One knows. Many want see. Mahz... magic no toy."

Wishing to maintain amiable graces, however, Loxa pressed a friendly smile back onto her face and motioned toward Davis, "Where does A Man come from?"

 

[Kairon Rees]

"Erm."

David adjusted his glasses again.

Once, Kairon had instituted a policy of not asking questions of their passengers. People without any problems did not usually come down their end of the docks looking for transport.

Kairon didn't judge people for their pasts, not with what lurked in his.

Nowadays it was mild amusement to watch them squirm. Kairon glanced at Jarrick. He was going to put a bet on tax fraud with Jarrick later.

"Coruscant, originally, but my family had all tried to migrate to the Outer Rim," Davis explained.

"And Elrood is your final stop?" Kairon asked. He took a long swig from his can of beer. He wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his sleeve. There was little that stood out about Kairon. He had a large frame and had the look of a man that had once been much broader.

"I'd...rather not say..."

"So why are you travelling Loxa?" Kairon asked.

 

[Loxa Visl]

Coruscant. The fabled heart of the galaxy. Loxa gave a moment of awe to the man's home - a location she'd always wanted to visit. Having come from a planet dominated by dangerous jungle and animals, she'd always been intrigued by a planet dominated by city and steel. For now it was far beyond her present day destinations.

When addressed again by Kairon the witch gave a blink to disperse her musings of the city-planet.

Took her a moment to put into words her very unusual path forward.

"This One ... look for someone, some -" her brows furrowed in thought, "place that see ...here," the woman raised a hand to tap at her temple.

How did she explain that she was seeking out an entire history of a culture that she had witnessed through visions gifted to her by her staff? And how ... without sounding utterly lost or insane? Perhaps they would not think it so strange for a witch to do such things...

 

[Kairon Rees]

Davis excused himself from the table. Kairon cast a curious glance at his back, but he wouldn't miss his company. He'd never got on particularly well with the middle classes, no matter how amusing it was to see one lowering themselves to shipping out on a rickety freighter.

The witch was a considerably more interesting passenger anyway.

"You're looking for someone...you've...got a magical kind of sight to track them down?" he asked.

Asmus had said he'd seen real jedi when fighting for the Alliance, so Kairon knew that these things had to be real. Even when shouting at Mai, a part of him had been curious about seeing one of these otherworldly powers being used.

 

[Loxa Visl]

Golden eyes also tracked the departure of Davis, keenly aware of the mans discomfort. Loxa wasn't an empath, but she was well adept at reading body language and that man was positively bristling.

That question from the Captain, however, drew her attention back. Loxa's brow furrowed. He was asking questions that she wasn't sure how to answer and thereagain came the notion that too much information might not go over well.

"Yes," she nodded, thought for a moment, then shook her head, "no. This One see ... memory ... like dream? What say ..."

Visions? Clues? But she didn't know those words in basic. Frowning, her eyes scanned the food on the table and sought out a bowl of nuts. Brows raising, she leaned forward to take a small handful and place the nuts down one by one in a trail, "Memory ... memory .... memory ...." leading up to Davis' abandoned beer can upon which she placed the last nut and pointed, "memory place. This One follow, go here."

 

[Kairon Rees]

"Yes and no," he repeated.

He smiled through his beard, but his expression turned apologetic. He was essentially mocking someone for not speaking his language properly.

Kairon narrowed his eyes. He'd heard stories of people moving things with their minds, making people see and think whatever they wanted.

He felt a sudden flash of nerves at the notion she could have such power. Not much frightened him, but having control of his own mind taken away did.

"So you can see the person's memories? There's a place where memories live and you go there ?" he asked.

"Why do you follow this person?"

 

[Loxa Visl]

And that was the whole question. Why follow?

The concept was perhaps much too difficult to explain with her limited capacity of basic - that of attempting to expound upon a culture, a way of life, a belief system, the history of an entire society ... at the end of the day, the why was quite simple.

"This One must follow."

These memories had been gifted to her for a reason. The why became who, became where, became when. The life of a woman spread long and far across the galaxy, following the words and whims of Gods from opposing beliefs. Establishing clans and family of her own. And a man...

Loxa blinked at the thought, lifting her hand to gesture that she would just be a moment. The witch left the sanctuary of the dining hall to return to her little bunk where she'd stowed away her travel bag and something inside it.

 

[Kairon Rees]

If Asmus had been here, Kairon was certain the lad would have found the idea of chasing a dream across the galaxy deeply romantic.

Or would he? Kairon wondered.

His nephew had changed him irrevocably. He had taken the Harlequin with the intention of finding a crew to go raiding again. Enamoured with stories of action in space, Asmus had snuck about the ship and instead Kairon had taken to smuggling and salvaging.

Asmus had changed too. After leaving the ship he had spent years fighting for the Alliance navy in the wars. Kairon had to wonder if he still had that same outlook on the Galaxy or if that had been eroded away by the reality of war.

Kairon thought it sounded a tiny bit insane. Interesting, but definitely not right.

When Loxa returned she would find Kairon busy cleaning away. Cans went into a miniature trash compactor. Food waste went into a small energy recovery unit.

 

[Loxa Visl]

Had she taken very long? Time was always such an arbitrary thing in space but it didn't keep her from being surprised to see that everyone had finished their meal when she returned. Either way, her own meal was still waiting there for her, given she hadn't touched much of it to start between the beer fiasco and the questions.

In her hands she held a datapad. It was well worn and looked as though some beast may have chewed on it. The front glass face of it had been shattered into a spiderweb of cracks. When she presented the tablet to Cairon there was a digitized image of a man's face as well as a description.

Loxa offered him the pad to take a closer look, "Does A Man know this face?"

 

[Kairon Rees]

Kairon took the datapad. He handled it gingerly. Both because he felt that a rough touch would extinguish it's last tenuous thread of life and because the shattered screen looked like it could cut his finger.

"No, can't say I have," he said apologetically.

"I know some people that could take this information and do a search, but they'll take your credits and come back empty handed as much as they do anything useful. You might be better off sticking with dreams."

He turned the datapad around on the table towards Loxa and meandered back to the kitchen.

On return, he set down a small metal bowl containing a handful of mixed berries. There were ice crystals on the skins because he had already started freezing them for the trip.

He didn't say anything. He didn't want to explain that she's probably overpaid for the trip three times over.

 

[Loxa Visl]

It was a long shot, she knew, but she had nothing to lose if he wasn't familiar to the Captain. Loxa nodded, but did perk up at the mention of a contact. The witch's brows lofted, "Ah, yes?" Losing credits wasn't something she was too concerned about. Money had no more value to her than the food it put in her belly and the passage it bought while she traveled.

After a moment to think on it while he left, but by the time he'd returned she'd already decided it was worth the risk, "This One want try."

The berries were a curious surprise. Not a type she'd come across before so she curiously tempted a small handful.