Private honey catching season

[Ellie Mors]

C Y R I L L I A

900 ABY​

LOCAL HOLOCAFE​

NOON​

golden retriever boy​

"How long has it been?"

She had asked the question out loud but it was rather obvious that she had been talking to herself rather than any of the people walking by her by the way she seemed to look down at her feet while she slowed down. A green jacket over a somewhat snug silk shirt didn't pair well with the fabric her pants were made out of - or the heavy-duty boots that went nearly a third of the way up her shins. She had her hair held up in a tight, if messy, bun that didn't do a good job of keeping stray hairs along her hairline from poking and framing her face in a less than flattering way. An earpiece, if you could call the little black piece of tech that looked suspiciously like an earbud than anything else one of those, flashed a green light to signify a connected call while she reached up absentmindedly to tap it in order to hear what was being said on the other line.

"I thought you'd be back by now."

She stopped dead in her tracks and pursed her lips while her eyes rolled with enough force to cause her head to tilt just a little to the side. "You told me you didn't want to see me anymore." Amara answered back before pivoting to the left, walking into a small cafe-looking place - a holonet cafe or something to be sure. "I am just doing what you asked and leaving you be." She said while she looked around, subtly nodding her head when she found the service counter. "I - listen, I was upset, alright? When will you be back?" The voice on the other end of the line asked, sounding a little more than just frustrated with her at this point. She shrugged and sighed loudly as she walked up to the counter and smiled at the droid that directed her to a set of instructions haphazardly laminated onto the surface of the countertop where she had rested her hands on. "Huh? Oh, well, that'd be never, hon." She answered matter-of-factly, lifting a brow at the prices listed out in front of her. 'A terminal and java for six hundred credits?' Was the question that ran through her mind, easily shoving thoughts about the loud cursing that was screamed into her ear aside.

"Listen, Dash, babes, you called me a bunch of names that both of us know you can't take back - and you ended things. I'm cool with it, really, but we're over and I'm not going to listen to you get angry over it so I'm going to be hanging up now."

She pointed to the stimcaf-less option, a substantially cheaper fifty credits price tag attached, and nodded at the beeping offered by the droid on the other side of the counter. A few minutes later and she was offered up an access card that would let her into one of the terminals that lined the walls of the tiny place and, rather than step off to the side towards the assigned cubicle she'd rented out, Amara decided the perfect course of action was to turn around while dramatically tapping the earpiece in order to end the call.

Immediately walking right into a much shorter Xariah Pavanos .

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

"I know it's been two wee-"

Wurming her way through the small crowd leaving the cafe the same time she entered, Xariah's attention was more on her call than the world around her. Her mom had too much time on her hands again, and so the check-ups had been getting more frequent. She considered herself among the lucky to have the parents she had, but sometimes it was a little too much.

"I've just been really busy! I promise I'll be there for family dinner! I'm on Cyrillia, practically next door."

Xariah already needed some caf, but after this it really was the number one priority. Dodging her way around a few more customers, she laid eyes on the service counter sign. She set course nearly instantly.

"Yes mom, I understand- Mom, you're getting overly worried again. Really, everything is going well. I'll tell you all about it when I ge- wh-!"

She hadn't noticed the taller woman turning around and walking right at her and into her. Xariah flinched and stumbled backwards, the collision bringing her attention back to her surroundings.

"Chite, sorry," the woman said as she scrambled to pick up the credstick that had fallen between the what almost looked like combat boots she wore, too busy to make eye contact for the moment. Her jacket was nearly the same color, though that had been a coincidence rather than a style choice. She had a hair tie around her wrist- while she had her hair loose now, it had probably been tied up earlier that day. "I gotta go- Yes, I'm fine, I'm fine. I love you too mom, see you soon."

Finally, she clicked away the call and looked up towards the woman she had ran into as she stood back up. "Sorry about that..." As she looked at her, a bit of fluster set in, causing her voice to trail off just slightly and a little bit of color to run over her cheeks. "You, uh, you good?"

 

[Ellie Mors]

Atmosphere​

The reason that she tried not to walk around with an earpiece in all the time, particularly while she was out in public, was because hearing other people walking up towards her - or much of anything, really - was a near impossibility. Being a little on the taller side, as far as distinctly human-looking women went, Amara was used to being able to see over the heads of most women - just not to being a literal wall for them to walk face-first into, or to completely not notice someone else when turning around around. Instinctively a hand reached out to try to catch Xariah Pavanos - only to freeze up when she reacted way too slow to have made any difference or be any help.

This stranger, whoever she was, had already made her way down to the floor to snatch the credit stick that she must've dropped when she walked right in between her - she blinked at the woman's question, the previous thought immediately vanishing from her mind like a leaf in the wind. "Huh?" She asked, taking half a second to process the question that had been directed her way. 'Aren't you the one nearly on her ass?' She thought with a shake of her head, trying to nonverbally dismiss the woman's inane concern. "I'm fine really but, like, are you okay though?" Amara asked while she lifted one of her eyebrows with as much an animated sense of confusion as her tone was offering. "Really sorry about that, by the way." She said.

"Amara," She offered, along with an outstretched hand.

"I'll cover whatever it was you were going to pay for."

Oof - her credit stash was not going to like that.

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

It was relieving to find out that both women had been caught off-guard, rather than just Xariah herself. As long as the other woman had not noticed her reaction when she looked at her, she had not completely embarrassed herself.

"Right as rain," she confirmed while she shot a cheeky smile towards the woman. "And to be honest, I was kinda partly to blame myself." The credstick twirled between Xariah's fingers, though she stopped and reached out her free right hand to shake Amara's. "Pretty name," she complimented. "Xariah."

The quiet hope was that there was more to the offer, but just free caf was already a plus. She was not going to complain either way. "It would be rude not to accept," she replied before putting away her credstick and walking up to the counter. "Medium caf, black." That was the way she had learned to drink it and it was still her preferred way to have it. The more there was added to it, the less she liked it.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Black Sheep​

'Thanks,' She thought, 'I picked it out myself.'

There was a little bit of warmth that crept up her back, putting her shoulders at ease after they shook hands. There wasn't any way for her to know that her name had been an acquired one, and she knew it, but she was going to take any compliment thrown her way. Still a little surprised that she'd been taken up on her offer, other times she tried to make things right like this - like the time she knocked over some man's stimcaf - people wanted to get away as fast as possible from what was generally a rather awkward interaction, her expression only seemed to emphasize that and compounded it with the shock of the woman's preference.

'That's it?' Not that she was judging - she just couldn't handle the bitterness, herself.

"Uh, right." She said, suddenly quite a bit more glad that she hadn't splurged on the overpriced stimcaf on herself. Uncertain on how exactly everyone managed to speak binary like they were walking machines, however, Amara merely gestured to the listing and then slid her index finger over towards the plain, black price as to indicate just how Xariah Pavanos had wanted it made. "I've rented out a terminal over in the back if you were going to stick around, I'm just here to tap in and out - don't have one of those fancy access nodes just yet to do stuff on the go - so you're more than welcome to use the rest of my time if you need, or want." She suggested while the machine next to the stoic droid prepared the stimcaf, the hissing sound of boiling water puncturing her words here and there.

She glanced down at her wrist, not that there was anything there, and then back up at her new acquaintance. Whoever she was she seemed to be a bit more approachable than half of the people she ran into, metaphorically speaking of course. Friendly, one might call it, but after losing three friends in a single night over a fight that showed just how little the word had mean to them she was rather hesitant to apply it to anyone else for at least the next few days - or at least not literally moments after ending a call with her most recent ex. "Well, that's yours, I will be over there if you decide to join me." Amara said, the machine brewing the stimcaf started pouring the dark liquid into a cup, while she started heading over towards the terminal she'd paid for.

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

​

Sticking around had not been part of the original plan, instead the aim was merely to pick up a cup of caf and head back out. Xariah did not want to shoot down the kind offer right away, though. Besides, the whole sticking around thing really did not seem like that bad of an idea. "It's almost like you're trying to get to know me," she replied cheekily.

The sound of caf brewing drew her attention away from Amara for a moment. There was something about her new acquaintance that Xariah couldn't place, though the random act of kindness was the likely cause for that. Nothing she considered to be alarming in any way.

The invitation was laid out before her again. There was no reason to object.

"I'll be right there with you," Xariah confirmed before watching Amara walk towards the terminal. Once the caf was served, she quickly took the cup and retraced the other woman's steps. A chair from an adjacent vacant booth was taken and placed next to Amara's. "Let's see how good the caf here really is," she said as she sat down. "My mom is a bit of a caf fanatic and always has the real good stuff, which is what I started off on. I'm a bit spoiled."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Jane Doe​

Whether or not she'd had an access node of her own was rather irrelevant given what she was doing in such a public setting. She glanced around as she made her way over to her rented out terminal, trying to put a quick headcount on the amount of people in the cozy place. There were probably a dozen now, and she'd seen several other people walk in and out leading up to her little accident just a few moments prior - 'Perfect.' She thought, taking her seat with an almost practiced grace. This wasn't the first time she'd been in one of these shops, not something entirely suspicious on its own, and the quick shuffling of fingers over a holographic keyboard-of-sorts that was illuminated across the tabletop saw the terminal screen cycle through several screens in a rather rapid succession.

It wasn't the first time she'd done this, specifically, either.

'Just need to validate the transfer and..'

She hummed to herself while she typed away, her dominant hand - that being her left - moving to the side every so often in order to rotate the small trackball positioned on her right in a direction that would navigate across the screen in a way beneficial to her. 'Done.' She thought to herself with a winning smile just as Xariah Pavanos sat herself down beside her. By that point, of course, the screen she had been on was closed and the details linking her to the Black Sun was out of sight and mind. Nobody would be looking for her, of course - she wasn't exactly a real person, as far as identities go - and as far as the broader galaxy was concerned the person bearing her real name and likeness was as gone as the planet that'd been blown to pieces along with her.

"She sounds nice." Amara said with a nod, wondering, if only for a brief moment, what it would have been like experiencing a childhood like that. "I think my mother's honestly a little more into the herbal teas kind of thing, bit of a superstitious old woman if you ask me." She said, imagining her mother - a bona fide witch - peering down at tea leaves like some kind of caricature out of a children's book. "The terminal is all yours by the way, I just needed it for a quick bit of digital mailing and the like." She moved over a little at that, scooting the pleather chair just a bit out of the way from the decades old access point. "You live around here? This place is a total maze, no idea how people put up with all the streets that seem to go nowhere and everywhere at the same time."

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

Every child complained about their parents sometimes and Xariah was no exception, though she was keenly aware of just how lucky she was to have them. A good childhood was a rare thing, but she had been provided that.

"She's the best. Her and ma both. But don't ever tell them I said that," she admitted, hiding her grin by taking a sip of her caf. Her head tilted slightly as she swallowed. "Not bad." Experience had taught Xariah not to expect any place to rival the brewing skills of her mom, though this caf was actually on the higher end compared to many of the other places she had sampled the drink from. Another swig only served to reinforce that opinion. "Eh, tea isn't bad. On occasion." One thing was for certain, it did not weigh up to a good cup of caf.

Xariah looked over to the terminal for a moment when Amara made the offer, though her eyes swept back to the woman quite quickly. "To be honest, I don't really need it for anything right now. You don't mind me joining you for a bit just because, surely?" The fact she had been invited previously made her fairly confident the question was redundant, but she felt compelled to ask it anyway, even if just for the sake of good manners.

"Can't say I am. We moved around a few times growing up, but I live on Balmorra. Ma's from there originally as well." Even if the family was a bit much at times, there was no better place than home, even if she was away more often than not. A safe place to retreat to when she needed it.

She continued after a quick sip. "This place definitely needs navigational skills to traverse, I'll agree with you. I'd probably go nuts if I lived here." As much as she liked the city, actually living there sounded like a nightmare. Even when she lived on Bastion and later Dromund Kaas, her family's estates were just far enough removed from metropolitan areas to not affect their quality of living.

"Where're you from?" Amara's question had made it fairly obvious she was no local either.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Good Ideas​

Glancing back at the terminal, as if willing it to speak some answer for her, she relented with a subtle nod that was followed with one that was quite a bit more obvious. "Not opposed to it." She offered back, crossing her legs as if to convey her willing immobility. Things didn't usually move forward quite so.. forwardly. A little talk at first, a quick favor, and then she was gone and they were left behind - pondering the intentions of some woman that was only just a little bit more out of the ordinary than one might've expected. It picked up on the second run-in, she supposed, and sometimes the third, but the first was always brief.

It went against her nature to gamble on someone she might not see a second time, much less a third, but she couldn't help but feel a weight that pushed down on her shoulders and made her sit, Xariah Pavanos confirming the suspicion she had that this encounter was little more than chance - a chance that was dwarfed by the odds that there wouldn't have been a second one if she had decided to stand up and leave a moment earlier. Even now, with her own clumsy flirting thrown into the mix, she couldn't help but feel like this was the sort of odds she was used to avoiding out of necessity taught by experience. With the conversation turned back her way, though, she couldn't escape the feeling that this might just be a risk worth taking.

It was a question she'd wondered for the longest time without quite ever realizing it. Always there, like a shadow under candlelight or the rays of some foreign moon or star, waiting to be seen but never once noticed. A little like herself, she mused, shaking away the metaphor as she became aware she'd taken too long to answer. "A dream, I suppose." She said with an impish smile, more of a smirk really, that was as much genuine as it was a mask to hide her own understanding of things. It was hard to explain even in its most simplified form just what her origins were, though perhaps the ambiguity of her meaning wasn't entirely false either. "I'm not quite sure, honestly," she admitted with just a hint of color in her cheeks. "Grew up surrounded by doctors and in and out of different rooms with very little time outside.. I don't think I really considered it might've been across different planets at the time, if it was, but ever since then I've moved around a lot."

"Just went through a break up, actually, so I'm drifting around again."

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

A dream.

A smile and minute chuckle, then a single bounce of Xariah's eyebrows. Her eyes remained affixed on Amara as she brought the cup back to her lips. The lesson to not trust strangers she had been taught over and over growing up popped back into her mind, but that ironically only made Amara's mysterious side only more compelling.

A little bit of danger never hurt anyone.

The mystery did not become much clearer with the actual explanation, either. For a moment Xariah contemplated prodding further, but she wouldn't let her curiosity get the better of her just yet. This was not the time for potentially heavy subject matter, not when things were still lighthearted. Save the unfortunate comment that followed, at least.

"You don't seem too upset about it. Guess they had it coming?" She herself hadn't had anything nearly serious enough to call the end of it a break up, though nonchalantly kicking someone to the curb was something she was familiar with. "Terrible exes make for entertaining stories, at least."

 

[Ellie Mors]

Waves​

Something about subdued candidness in casual conversation just seemed to lend itself towards her forgetting just what it was she was after. Xariah Pavanos wasn't making subtle passes at her, she certainly wasn't an nerf herder, so the focused direction she'd been trying to guide their little talk was steadily slipping towards the back of her mind. "After a while letting go of people we can't or shouldn't have, or accepting situations that are more or less out of our control for what they are, becomes a bit easier." She said, her gaze shifting slightly away with a slight tensing of her shoulders. "It's a way to stay humble, I think, to understand that relationships sometimes end and that it's okay, worrying about it or being mad and upset just makes things harder to accept and move on from."

She shrugged, shedding the minor discomfort with it, and nodded her head in a delayed response to the woman's opinion.

"Good stories in good fun, I guess, but I don't have any on hand - it wasn't like ghosted me or anything - we just weren't a good fit and he wasn't okay with how I made my income."

Her eyes shut rather tightly at that, accompanied by a sigh - it wasn't normal for her to let something like that slip but out of context it left a lot more questions about herself out there for Xariah to have than she felt comfortable leaving unanswered. "I'm a broker for deals between people with money and people that want money, with a particular talent for conversation, and he let his imagination run a little wild on what goes on in those sorts of meetings." Amara clarified with a wave of her hand, leaning back a little in her chair to relax. "Which is nothing, by the way." She added while rolling her eyes.

"You do any fun work? Aside from, uhm, sight-seeing I'm guessing?"

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

It was hard to bring anything against the small bit of philosophical thought Amara shared. "That's... fair," Xariah quickly interjected as she casually tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. For most having such a mindset was easier said than done, but Amara seemed to be practicing what she preached. As for herself, she had never had anything nearly serious enough to be upset over.

She nodded along with Amara's explanation of what had happened until the tail end of it, at which Xariah let out a small chuckle. It was probably some kind of shady business, but she was willing to believe that it at least wasn't what Amara's ex thought it was. Either way, Xariah wasn't particularly bothered.

"Kind of just whatever comes my way, really," Xariah replied to the question with a mild shrug. "One job is more interesting than the other, but nothing has really stuck yet. Just figuring out what I want to do with my life, you know, and I'm not too keen on following in my folks' footsteps." Neither an imperial navy nor the Sith sounded particularly tempting, even if she grew up surrounded by that life. Not that she had anything against any of it- it just wasn't for her.

"You like what you do?"

 

[Ellie Mors]

'Does anyone actually enjoy what they do for a living?'

It was an honest question, something she was sure a lot of normal people asked each other to gauge how successful or happy or whatever else they were in each other's eyes, but it was quite honestly one that she felt everyone and their akk dog lied to themselves about. "It's definitely the best." She lied with about as much grace as a swan might with just the right amount of rain to produce a faint shimmer of a rainbow over her head - that is, to say, rather well if she would have been in a position to brag. "Make my own hours, most days, decide what cut I get, for the most part, and I get to spend a day or two on a new planet or moon every other week." She added, totally not bragging.

Okay, maybe a little.

She shrugged. "In all honesty the actual job isn't really an issue, not really, it's the, er, lack of schedule that really makes things unbearable when you have to do what I do." There was a slight pause, one part considering how to explain how surprise - you're working could be explained to someone who either didn't normally work or never really had to consider an abrupt interruption to the next month of one's life might be considerably less than ideal as well as one part how do I acknowledge parents without acknowledging my parents. "Not that I don't always have whatever money I need to start and end a given day.. just sometimes work just sort of pops in with about five minutes notice and doesn't stop until about a month or so later, personal life and all the plans that come with it be damned."

"It, uh, does definitely beat doing whatever nonsense my parents had been or are up to nowadays, so I definitely can relate there." She added, hoping a little beyond hope that the one-off quip came across as more of a I feel you and less like a there's a story here that is definitely very much so interesting and not at all something I don't want to talk about.

"It would be pretty cool to jump from job to job though, I bet. Probably has that same uncertainty factor, huh?"

Xariah Pavanos

 

[Xariah Pavanos]

Ellie Mors ​

---

Being completely tied up in work for an entire month certainly didn't sound all too appealing. The saying 'to each their own' came to mind- even if Amara didn't seem too fond of that part of the job herself either. The work itself had more than make up for a downside like that, or the pay was simply too good to pass up on. Either way, Amara seemed content enough, especially when she compared it to what her parents did, whatever that was.

"It's less that for me and more 'not my thing', actually. My parents had very respectable careers, mom in a high government position and ma was a navy admiral. They're both retired now, though." Xariah made it a point to never specify they had those positions in the now-fallen Sith Empire, for obvious reasons. Especially considering mom used to be a Sith Lady, and at different times a triumvir and dark councilor at that. There was no need to risk the less-than-kind reactions. Her own work, in the meanwhile, was a completely different world altogether.

"It does keep things exciting," Xariah admitted, "Though I really don't see myself doing this kind of thing forever. I just want to accomplish... something, you know? Just trying to find out what exactly." Vague, but true nonetheless. Her parents gave her large shoes to fill to and even her twin sister had her path all planned out.Meanwhile, she was still 'looking for a calling', as she sometimes called it.

"But, can I be just a little blunt? I think we've talked enough about parents and work." There was a small twinkle of mischief in Xariah's eyes. "You have any plans later?"