Private Chains of Expectations

[Smiling Ahren]

PRISON COMPLEX
UNKNOWN PLANET
CELL C

Alcariel

The cell was damp. Water dropping down from the ceiling, making several pools along the floor. The walls were moldy. So was the food, so at least it was consistent. The bed hard, the air stale, suffice it to say that it wasn't a pleasant place to be locked in.

Ahren had found himself here after stealing from the wrong person and getting caught without his crew when he least expected it.

That was for the best. They'd have massacred his people and that might have put a dent in his perpetual grin.

For now the man was biding his time. It was a heavily guarded place, but they didn't seem to know that he was force sensitive, no yslamiri around. Or maybe those animals were too expensive to waste on the likes of him.

A door opened in the distance. The dragging of feet, which always heralded a new prisoner. The cell door next to him opened up and then something was thrown in, like a sack of potatoes, before the door was closed again.

Ahren listened to the guard walking away and then glanced to the wall between them.

"You will get used to the mold." The man said with a faint tease in his tone. "On the walls at least, the food... Not so much. Got a name, neighbor?"

 

[Alcariel]

​

It wasn't exactly the same as the cages she'd grown up in. Sure, she was a prisoner again, but as far as she could tell the intent here would be to let her rot for an undetermined amount of time (maybe indefinitely). Not to force her to conduct menial and degrading tasks as she had in slavery.

Nevertheless, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet and therefore any cage was a cage. Didn't matter what she was meant to do behind it.

The test was to get out of it intentionally; not mistakenly as she had so many months ago.

"You will get used to the mold." The man said with a faint tease in his tone. "On the walls at least, the food... Not so much. Got a name, neighbor?"

Huh? She hadn't expected anybody to be speaking to her.

She brushed her bangs from her eyes and squinted through the dim lighting, seeing nothing but wall.

"I don't intend to stay long enough to get used to anything." The Zeltron said, the meekness in her voice that had been there when last caged no longer traceable.

Then they asked her name. Her first instinct was to say the one she'd known for so long, Sael, but that wasn't it now, was it?

"Alcariel."

Even through the walls she could feel the person on the other side, their presence, their casual, unbothered emotion.

"Are names any good in here?" Head tilted as she watched the doors, listened to footsteps. "You remember yours?"

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Smiling Ahren
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​

 

[Smiling Ahren]

"Alcariel."

Now that was a fancy arse name. If Ahren wasn't mistaken, it was Echani, something he was rather familiar with since he spend some time in that neck of the woods. Close to Hapes and Hapes was probably one of his favorite places to be.

Oh, the women, the women.

Then his name was asked for, in a sense anyway.

"If I don't remember my own name you ought to call the ambulance, Alcariel, I am called Smiling Ahren."

He grinned at that, maybe he should have insisted on Grinning Ahren.

It was more apt.

"But speaking of names, yours is fancy as all hell. Echani? Or are you a princess?" Ahren wondered what the going rate these days were on a princess rescue.

"What did you do to end up in this moldy place out of anywhere?"

If Alcariel tried to home in more into Ahren's presence and his mind, she'd notice an oddity she hadn't experienced in the wild all that often.

There was nothing beyond the superficial relaxed and amused emotion.

His mind was totally and utterly warded.

 

[Alcariel]

​

Alcariel felt herself flush. It was a fancy name wasn't it? Something that the wretch Mercy had pulled from the gutter never could have dreamed of. Even now, hearing it from her own voice, it felt foreign. Like it didn't belong to her.

But it did, and she would wear it as such. Spencer and Mercy's investment in her growth could not be so easily forgotten.

"That's a funny name." She remarked, still feeling outward. He had nothing more to offer than simplicity. But she felt the shape of it. Something guarded, as Spencer had shown her. Hm.

"Are you sure it's not chatterbox Ahren? You're awfully talkative." Alcariel said simply, pressing beyond him to feel out the guards. They were several walls away. She'd have to beckon them back in before she really got to work.

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Smiling Ahren
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