Private For One, Please

[Onrai]

Kay-Larr

Kay's Tea Shop

A familiar presence entered the front door of a tea shop that at last recollection had been blown to smithereens, a corpse of the woman who now manned the counter lying upon the ground.

"I thought you were still in the body I made for you." The blonde woman asked.

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay paused as she was restocking a shelf behind the counter. She knew that voice and she had hoped to avoid this moment for some time. But given that she wasn't entirely hiding, this meeting was bound to happen sooner or later.

"Hello Vanessa...and no. I'm not. Can I get you some tea? Or caf?" She finished restocking the shelf and then wipes her hands on her apron as she turned to face Onrai .

 

[Onrai]

“Something with a refreshing mint flavor would be nice.” She said, sitting at the counter. “The galaxy moves onwards, and I grow ever Closer towards accomplishing those goals I brought you back for. How did you end up being brought back to the realm of the living?” That was the most unusual part. Admittedly she had not used her avatar for as much as she had initially hoped, but still.

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay took out a deep breath and let it out slowly as she began to prepare a mint tea. She kept her gaze solely on her task while she responded; "It's a boring story that I don't care to get into. You'll just have to leave it at that." She carried over the cup with the steeping leaves, as well as some honey and milk. "I'm quite busy here these days. So I can't be stolen away for one of your schemes, if that's what you're here for." She folded her arms across her chest as if to finalize her statement.

 

[Onrai]

Onrai took the cup and drank from it. “There’s more to it, I’m sure, my dear Kay.” The drink seemed to almost unnaturally flow from the cup to her lips, and whatever the heat was she seemed to not bother reacting. She raised an eyebrow for a moment, before a finger snapped.

For the moment, things remained quiet, and yet something was off. The steam of the tea remained perfectly still, suspended as though it were a prop hung from the ceiling. Onrai had done this before when speaking to Valery Noble during her captivity, and now was a perfect reason to do the same.

“Why are you willing to live this homely existence when there are such greater things that can be done? My people of Kiross need a herald to take care of them. And we are still linked through the ritual I performed that brought you back from death.”

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Of course there was more to it. But she wasn't about to speak of it. She didn't want to. Her life didn't have to be an open book for others to read.

Kay watched as Onrai snapped her fingers and displayed a small bit of her power. But she was still unmoved.

"My business is my own. Find someone else to be your herald, Vanessa. Or better yet, why don't you look after your own people. I'm sure that they'd be most pleased."

 

[Onrai]

"I'd love to, except it's not that easy." She said, sighing. "I don't have to be mutually exclusive between looking after my own people and coming here seeking to reclaim you." She pointed out. "I can exist in multiple places at once without irreconcilable paradoxes."

Credits emerged from the wraith's body, certainly moreso than her original drink order.

"Another, please."

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

"Reclaim me? Vanessa.....I'm not your property. I don't want to be anyone's property. I spent a good portion of my life fighting against slavery. I can't just be put into it. I'm sorry."

She took Onrai 's cup and left the credits alone as she began to prepare another cup of mint tea. "I need to sort things out for myself and get back on track. But I can't do so if I'm busy living another person's life. I need to live my own. When I am ready I may seek you out and help you as a friend. But I'm not ready yet. I need time." Kay carried the cup back over to her. "Let the tea steep. It'll taste better."

 

[Onrai]

"Kay, when you accepted by returning your spirit back to a body, there were certain... conditions to that agreement." She said, signing and letting the tea steep. "I'm not stating you're a slave, but I can't just simply let you walk away from the obligations that were a part of me bringing you back."

She watched and listened to Kay's next response. "If it's a life you want to work on living, why not do it with me? I have an entire planet being rebuilt and restored to working order that needs your help. Surely this can be a more constructive way for you to rebuild your life than to return to the same tea shop that saw you dead at the hands of a mad bomber." She waited for the tea to finish steeping before taking a cautious sip.

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

"You weren't the only one that brought me back..." Kay whispered under her breath. And it was true. She was fractured. There were others that did the same and one that put the fractured pieces together. And neither one of them held it over her head like Onrai did.

She closed her eyes, furrowing her brows in thought as Onrai continued, letting out a deep sigh. "But we hold different ideals..." Kay opened her eyes once again. "Our ways of life and of what should be are so vastly different. We'd only clash and argue, which isn't very productive, is it?"

 

[Onrai]

"That doesn't mean we can't cooperate. perhaps adjust to one another. Conflict is the very fundamental essence of sentient evolution. The myriads of races raised and devoured by the charnel laboratory of Dark Illathurion is more than enough proof of that - and the Charon yet reign supreme within the blue womb. So too can our conflict better develop us both along the lines of a future worth experiencing mutually."

At least, that was her thoughts.

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay raised a brow as Onrai spoke of places and people that she had never heard of. But then again she has been out of touch with everything for so long... Even when she led the CSA she was in the dark about outside governments and people. Being isolated from them kept them safe from the wars that besieged the Galaxy. And that wasn't a bad thing at all.

"Conflict is not something that I enjoy. I don't see it as essential at all. I just want peace. I don't want trouble. Why is that too much to ask for? Haven't I suffered enough?"

 

[Onrai]

'Living one's life inside a bubble is not a life worth living." Onrai said plainly. "I'm not here to tear down what you've created, Kay. I'm here to give you an opportunity to grow beyond this." She said.

"And one way you could do that is coming to Kiross. I may be working on something that could provide you with a unique opportunity."

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay closed her eyes, dipping her head as Onrai echoed statements made by Veiere both when he was alive and also a few times after his death. He was never happy with her just keeping to her tea shoppe either. He wanted her to be out there helping others like she used to when she was younger.

Yet the shoppe had been her crutch, much like Sapir tea was....

"And what of my shoppe? How long am I to be away? What about my customers? I have orders to fulfill and ship out." She was of course, her only employee. Yet some more rare and dangerous ingredients couldn't be trusted in the hands of just anyone..

 

[Onrai]

Onrai paused, thinking for a bit as she considered the best possible solution. "Obviously you don't want to split your soul. Nor do you want to have an HRD take over, or cloning... What if I were to tell you..."

"That there was a means by which someone such as yourself could break the linear chronometry of time and exist within two different places at once?" She asked. Or rather, another her, this Onrai of which looked more like the spectral shadow-woman visage she was more used to wearing. "It's what I use, the means by which my many avatars can exist on numerous worlds. Each a full me, and yet not separate from me." She said.

"Then you would be able to both help me at Kiross and continue to exist here, within the bubble you've made. A bubble of tea. The irony is palpable."

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay slowly shook her head as she thought it over. "No. I don't want to be split again. No more magic, no more Force. I just want to be normal."

She chewed the inside of her cheek a little as she glanced around her shoppe. "I'll do a bit of shopping for an appropriate droid. And I imagine that 'll be able to come back here whenever I need to?" Kay imagined that Onrai wasn't going to prevent her from doing so, but it was always better to get reassurance.

 

[Onrai]

“That’s the thing.” The human-like Onrai said. “I’m not split. I am every bit as completely present here as I am over there." She motioned to her wraithlike doppelganger. "There's no splitting of the soul involved at all. Only an acceptance of truth and denial of so-called "reality" that inhibit's one's ability to do so, as Ap'aci once did within the plains of the Bedlam Pulsar." Perhaps a journey to Bedlam itself would be in order.

"But if you truly want a more conventional method of operating, yes, that is a non-issue, nor is your travel here. I will see if perhaps something can be done to provide you with... easier access to this place." She pondered for a bit, questioning whether or not it would be possible to create such a direct line from the shop to the nascent and developing world.

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Again Onrai spoke of people, events and places that she didn't know. There had been decades of time that seperated her from her time studying different cultures and the like when she was training in politics. And some time since she had been a Queen and at any type of political or social gathering. At least while being herself, anyways.

"Conventional is best and far more trustworthy." These days she found it difficult to trust anything.

 

[Onrai]

"With this, I have the ability to form tears in the fabric of reality." Onrai said, her shadowed avatar disappearing and leaving behind the gleaming yellow crystal that was the Sunstar-Shadowstone. "I can form such a gateway in the back of your store, then connect it to one on Kiross, so all you'll have to do is activate it and go through it to get from one place to another." She pointed out.

it was the best option for all parties involved.

Kay-Larr

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay's brows furrowed in thought as she looked at the crystal. It was a form of magic, and one that she had no trust in whatsoever. But still, it was an option....

"And what are the chances of it going wrong and taking me somewhere else? Or of it being tampered with?" She didn't want to end up in a cage, either by Onrai or anyone else.