Cosmic Castaway

[Kaile Vera]

::Tatooine
::Two weeks after the events of Bimmsariel
[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile was at least eating again.

That much could be said with some relief, but even then, seeing the rather waif figure of the pallid woman as she quietly ate breakfast gruel was heartbreaking. She rarely spoke. When she did it was just to try and help out with chores. The bulk of the time she spent in in her room. Not in the homestead but back on the Messa. Attempts at having her come inside and stay in one of the spare rooms were answered with quiet 'Mighty grateful, but I'm okay here.'

As Kurt's mother had said, the Lorrdian was likely never going to be alright. Certainly not a complete representation of the former bubbly young waitress Kurt had met in the past. The one who could be seen trying to cheer others up. The meticulous bargain shopper. The hidden SIS agent for the Galactic Alliance.

Gone were the loud sing alongs within the Messa's tiny lounge. No where to be seen even a portion of a smile. One might call it that Kaile was all but a dead woman walking. Seeing her as she was now, it would be easy to understand why.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kurt stood quietly at the very edge of the Farm, his eyes folding across the edging reaches of the horizon. The suns were slowly beginning to rise, coming up against the rocky outcroppings that made up the distant cliffs. He let out a loud sigh, his lips thinning as he watched the reddish glare grow.

He had always thought Tattooine was the most beautiful place in the galaxy.

Many would have disagreed with him on that fact, he was pretty sure almost everyone would, but for him it was home. Every dune, every cliff, every single piece and curve of Tatooine was absolutely perfect. This was his home, where he'd grown up and where he felt the most whole, but that hadn't been so for the last two weeks. He didn't feel like he usually did when he came here, he didn't feel the same. It wasn't anything to do with the planet of course, nothing to do with any changes or shifts in the landscape.

It was Kaile.

Kurt didn't blame her in the least of course, but his friend was the reason things just weren't the same.

He knew it every time he looked at the Messa, knew it every time he glanced at the distant horizons. Kurt just didn't feel well without his friend. Kaile was the first person in a long time that he'd gotten close to, she meant a lot to him and right now...she was broken. There was no other way to put it, even if the thought made his skin crawl. He sighed again, then turned away from the sunrises and looked at his ship. He lingered for a moment, glancing at the speeder.

A stark bit of determination spread over his face, and slowly he stalked towards The Messa.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Kaile heard him come in, the ramp sliding down and opening to the dry Tatooine air. There had been a few sandstorms the past few days, but today was one of the few clear days out there without a grain of sand in the sky. Meant that it felt like a baking heat, but certainly was better than getting sands in ones eyes. Not that Kaile did much to wander on out there. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Bobo sat curled along the crook of her neck, his lightly furred body warm against her skin. Every now and then he would shift, only to settle back down again. He was good like that, keeping Kaile company. Didn’t talk or anything other than simply accept how she was right now and offering comfort. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Really was all Kaile could ask or think of right now. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Her spoon dug into the oatmeal, more playing with it than actually eating it. It was the thoughts you see. The thoughts that kept her busy and made her mind race and bring with it all the pain. If she couldn’t sleep it off then she felt restless. And it wasn’t the sort of restless she’d want to deal with. It was the dark, agonizing, soul wrenching kind that left you empty inside. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]Numb. As if no longer in control of yourself and simply barely existing in a purgatory. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]It was awful. [/SIZE]

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

He frowned for a moment as he stepped onto the ship. Kurt had expected to find Kaile in her room, tucked away under her blankets and attempting to deal with the misery that still clung to her. Every time he saw her do that he broke inside, his heart aching with a certain cruel sort of agony that he couldn't really comprehend.

When he saw her sitting at the table instead he couldn't help but be just a little pleased. It was the barest hint of progress, but progress still.

Kurt didn't let a smile touch his lips, not a large one anyway, but he didn't want Kaile to think she was ruining their friendship on top of everything else. He knew that his friend was likely consumed within her own little world, but if she began to think that she would be better off on her own...well Kurt didn't want those sort of things in her head. She was his best friend, she wasn't going anywhere any time soon if he could help her. The Courier Shifted, moving into one of the bolted down chairs that sat opposite Kaile.

"Hey." His voice was soft, careful.

The Courier paused just for a second, going on almost as if he were nervous.

"My da' needs to go to one of the local Tusken tribes to pick up some things he traded for." He eyed Kaile for a moment. "I told him I'd go for him..."

Kurt frowned, glancing at the overly stirred oatmeal. "I...I'd like it if you came with me. It'll just be an hour..."

That was his goal for today, get Kaile to leave The Messa for longer than it took to get food from the house. He knew that she wouldn't be better for a while yet, knew that she was still mourning, but one small trip...one hour long journey to pick up some Bantha Feed and 'acquired' tech from the Tuskens. It was a small thing, but still.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile gave Kurt a brief frown, her eyebrows furrowing just over her forehead to study him in mild confusion. Tusken Raiders? Weren’t they dangerous? Not that she knew much about Tatooine's culture to begin with, but even then there had been plenty of rumors revolving around the Sand People and their viciousness.

“Your pa trades with the Sand People?” it was one spark of attention that hadn’t really been present in Kaile’s face for the past few weeks. However, that didn’t stop her from hesitating.

“Never thought folk would trade with them, what with all the raiding rumors…” she set her spoon down upon her oatmeal. Bobo perked his head up, peeking through the strawberry blonde length of her hair.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

There!

A light. A blesssed light.

Oh it was something small, so very small, but Kurt had seen it. The interest, the slight bit of attention that Kaile had granted him. It was almost enough to make Kurt squeal with delight. The Courier remained stoic however, or rather let his expression remain the same as before. "Only a few tribes."

Kurt explained quietly.

"He managed to befriend a few years ago before I was born." Kurt had heard the stories often. "Fixing the little bit of tech they had in exchange for water and protection from the other tribes."

It was one of the few points of pride old man Meyer had. "Their camps are amazing Kaile, completely different than anything else on Tatooine."

He was obviously trying to hook her in, but Kurt didn't care. He'd seen the flash of interest, knew he'd seen it.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

The hesitation came back. Uncertainty. The past two weeks her entire 'verse revolved around her tiny cabin, Bobo, and the Messa with Kurt fretting over her, vacillating between trying to comfort and utterly lost on how to even do the former. Now he wanted to go out and meet up with Tusken Raiders?

Kaile bit the center of her lip. Hours of sobbing and that nervous tick of her had worn away the delicate flesh there, cracking it until it bled at times. With those dark hollows under her eyes, she was nothing but a pale vision of her self from weeks past.

"I..." her voice gave a crack. Mouth wobbly. Therein lay the struggle. Knowing all the bad due to the rumors of how wild the Sand People were and worrying about Kurt's safety, and the desire to not even do much at all waring with that ever-growing restlessness.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

For a moment Kurt remained silent.

It wasnt an easy thing to do. He wanted to blurt out that she had to come with him. He wanted to tell her it'd be good for her. That she needed to do it, but every time he got close to doing so his mother's words ran through his head again and again.

Kaile needed time.

He couldn't push, he couldn't force her. All he could do was offer and ask. All he could do was wait for her to make her own decision. He smiled just a little bit. ”Please?”

It wasn't a big push, just a question.

He wanted to do this for her. He wanted to get her up and moving, even if only for a short hour. It was his goal for today, and however small Kurt was determined to see it through.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile took a deep breath. Part of her struggled with this. To leave the Messa. To exit out of the place where she had been wallowing in her misery half dead half alive. A mere shadow of herself. Kaile bit her lower lip, chewing on the chopped flesh. Bobo at her shoulder gave a slight nudge of encouragement.

She had been feeling restless. Even sleeping hadn't been able to completely block away from the pain and anguish she still felt. There was a knot that grew in her throat. One that almost threatened to choke her. what was she to do?

Especially when Kurt did so with his heart on his sleeve and that expression of desperation.

The Lorrdian took a breath.

"Okay."

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Almost in an instant Kurt beamed, his expressions grew into a wide smile and his eyes lit up like a kid walking into his favorite candy store with a blank check. He tried to subdue himself a second later, not wanting to overwhelm Kaile with an overabundance of joy. Still he couldn't help but keep the smile off of his face. It didn't matter how small the trip, how tiny the journey, it was finally something. Finally Kaile would step out of The Messa for longer than just a few hours.

That was enough to make him grin.

”Okay I have to go get the speeder ready.” Kurt tapped his fingers against the table and jumped up from his seat. The trip was just a small step. He had to remind himself of that. She wasn't the old Kaipe, not yet, but they had at least taken the first step on a very long road.

Thats what he told himself.

”Wear loose clothing.” He fussed over her for a moment. ”And bring a scarf, the sand will be pretty bad where we're going.”

Not dangerous, but annoying.

Kurt wanted this trip to be absolutely perfect. He needed this trip to go well. The Tuskens wouldn't do anything as long as they saw his father's speeder, and they kept to the customs, but Kaile had always been respectful of other cultures and he'd made the trip to the Tribes more than once. Kurt gave Kaile one last quick smile, then stepped out of the Messa to prepare the speeder.

Today was going to be a good day.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Wear loose clothing.

Honestly, staring down at her messy room and the shambles it had been left in from her two week period of utter misery, Kaile wasn't sure if there was anything she had on hand that would suffice. Swallowing hard, the Lorrdian did her best to try and look past the pile of toys and baby gear they had both collected for Quin -- A sizeable hard knot rose in Kaile's throat. That wretched feeling came back like a crashing title wave. Melancholy rose, threatening to overtake her.

Finally, with Bobo clinging to her shoulder, Kaile managed to find a loose shirt, some semi clean pants, and tugged her boots on. She had a scarf of sorts, and there were goggles she picked up from their salvaging mission a month back. A brief glance at the mirror and she could barely recognize herself. Her skin was sickly pale with deep sunken mars under her eyes. Grabbing her hair into a messy ponytail, she did what she could do, tearing her gaze away from her reflection.

It was something to do. Something to keep the demons of guilt at bay. Leaving her cabin, she went in search for Kurt.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kaile would find Kurt standing next to a speeder.

The vehicle was nothing fancy, just the opposite in fact. There were dozens of dings and dents in the hull of the vehicle, scratches lined the side of it and it appeared that sand had long ago etched away any sort of paint that might have clung to the metal. Still, it looked like it would make it through three sandstorms and some blaster fire. The large engines on the back as well as the bulky weight of the cab itself appeared to be more than built for withstanding the Tatooine weather.

"There you are." Kurt said as he pulled himself away from one of the engines holding a wrench. He smiled at her, and then turned on his heel, walking towards the other side of the speeder and towards Kaile. There wasn't much to say, but he wanted to make sure she had a good time today.

If that was possible.

"We'll be headed South." The Courier said. "The Tribe camps in one of the valleys most of the time."

They moved, but they'd sent word to Kurt's father that they would be there. "They'll know us when they see the speeder."

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Kaile was still uneasy. It was easy to read from the way she would shift her weight from one foot to the next. Even under the swath of the scarf that went wrapping around her head and shoulders, the young, pallid woman was hesitate. It was heartbreaking to see her so. In the past, she would be bright and cheery. Now there seemed to be nothing but a haunted, restless expression.

"I never figured folk would trade with the Sandpeople." she began, a light scurrying by her shoulder revealing the iridescent Bobo. His small head came peeking out from under the scarf, just by her chin. The suns were far too bright and he went ducking back inside, preferring the warmth of Kaile's skin to the heat outside.

Her boots made a slight crunching noise as she came up to Kurt. Honestly, she wasn't sure what else to say.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

"My father befriended them when he first got here." Kurt said quietly.

He knew that he was repeating himself, but maybe going into more detail with the story would help draw Kaile's mind out of the slump and push her back into acting a little more like her old self. It was a silly thought in a way, a story wouldn't be enough to bring her back, but it was still there. He smiled for a second and walked around to the other side of the speeder as he began to explain.

"My father is an engineer, and when he first set up the farm they got raided by the Tuskens like pretty much everyone else on Tatooine." That was pretty much the way of life here. Even the biggest enterprises had encounters with Tuskens. Sometimes you fought them off, sometimes you didn't. Kurt's father had been rather lucky. "At first he tried to fight, but that's not really my dad's way. He doesn't like combat and that's part of why he left the Empire."

Didn't like designing weapons. "So one day he managed to reach out to the Tuskens with a..."

Kurt frowned, trying to think of the right word.

"Sign." It had been an odd light signal he'd worked out somehow, Kurt had never really understood the details. "I guess they were curious, and the Chief of the tribe talked to him. He showed them what he could do with old tech and without even knowing the same language I guess they sort of just...worked something out."

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

"Sign?" needless to say, the tone of disbelief from the haggard Lorrdian was reasonably evident. It didn't make sense. Not with people whom were known to be violent for as long as Tatooine had been a dust rock baking under twin suns.

How does a sign even halt any of that?

"How did they even communicate? " her eyes gave a blue flash, a flicker of the agent pulling up information from her implanted data stim. No known languages beyond Tusken. Not like they could simply speak in Basic.

It was just a bit confusing.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

He shrugged. "My father said its basically hand gestures and not moving around."

That was an oversimplification. The old man was quite clever, more clever than Kurt had ever given him credit for. He could build an engine out of a few scrap parts. That was what had gotten the tuskens attention, and what had allowed him to deal with them for so long. He frowned for a moment as he tried to think of how to further explain it all.

"The Tuskens aren't stupid." Kurt said as he opened the door to the speeder and slipped inside. "A lot of people think of them as savages and tribal simpletons."

Kurt turned the ignition on. "That's not accurate at all."

Sure they were a bit more primitive, but they were hardly idiots. Most of the tribes all operated in their own way with their own traditions, paths, and everything else. They were a smart bunch, curious, though of course very aggressive.

"My dad didn't shoot at them or attack them or run away...he just tried to communicate and they were open to it." Not all Tuskens were out to kill everyone of course.

Perhaps his fathers luck had simply been in that day.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

"I see." well, not really, but who was Kaile to really nitpick the intricacies of what went down between Kurt's father and a Tusken Tribe. She felt Bobo nuzzle her neck, and her hand came up to gently pat him. After a second, she gave another nod to Kurt. Honestly what else was she supposed to do? Shifting from left to right, the Lorrdian gave a couple of seconds to ponder all this. In the end, it didn't really matter did it?

"Okay." bringing her arm back down to her side, she gave Kurt an expectant look. Sliding beside him in the speeder, Kaile sat down. It had been a while since she went riding in a speeder with Kurt. The last time had been filled with an adrenaline rush of fear, sex, and everything else that came in between when they raced against an approaching sandstorm.

That seemed so long ago now.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Kaileann Vera"]

Kurt didn't push the speeder to its limits, not this time.

He doubted Kaile would mind all that much, but he wasn't exactly in a hurry to get to the canyons and then race back here. Plus the speeder they were using belonged to his father, this wasn't his pod-racer that he could just loop around the dunes with. Better to just take it easy, especially considering that anything going too fast might attract something lurking beneath the sands. Not that he was really all that concerned about encountering a Sand Demon or Krayt Dragon.

Those were far less common than people thought. "You'll see when you meet them."

Kurt told her, having to raise his voice over the roar of the wind. The Speeder kicked up a trail of dust as it throttled along the dunes, Kurt taking careful measure to avoid going over any of the larger hills and instead taking them straight through the narrow alcoves.

"I haven't been there in years." He explained. "But I used to go all the time with my father."

Kurt shot Kaile a smile. "We used to get parts for the pod from them."

Where had the Tuskens gotten those parts? Well...that was best left unsaid.

 

[Kaile Vera]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

"If you haven't been there in years... then how do you know it is safe?"

It was in her line of work to weigh the pros and cons and all the risks. Kaile might be going through a sea of utter despair, but that didn't mean she wasn't still thinking about how their skins might end up in the end. Was it a bit prejudice in regards to the Sand People? Yes. And while normally Kaile might have been of a better and curious nature in the past, it didn't mean she was going in this blind without saying a few words or two.

Then there was the question of just where the Tuskens managed to get the parts for Kurt's pod.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

”Well, my dad was there last week.” Thats was enough for Kurt.

Never once in his life had Kurt seen his father do anything that might endanger him or his mother. If the old man thought it was unsafe for Kurt and Kaile to go then he wouldn't have asked them to do so. It was innate trust, something that the Courier couldn't even begin to question even if he wanted to.

That being said, Kurt could understand the hesitation.

Kaile didn't grow up the same way he did. She didn't know the tribe in the same way. All Kaile knew about Tusken raiders was born of books, holo movies, and Alliance briefing points. They were right in some ways of course, but at least with this one tribe they weren't. A rapport had been established before Kurt had even been born, mutual respect between two parties. He could and did count on that.

”He’s known them for decades.” He explained again. ”Theyre not going to double cross him now.”

His voice was sheer confidence, not arrogance, but simple assurance that it would be okay.