Matsu Xiangu
The Haruspex
NAR SHADDAA
Early Evening
Where she’d been, cities didn’t exist.
There had been things passing for an ecumenopolis, a sheet-like plane of glass roiled by fractures – great, clear tectonic plates warring against each other to reach the sky first. But such expanses had been vacant. For a woman that had once loved Coruscant so much it was unsettling to be presented with its twin, what it might have been like if there was nothing at all on its surface.
She hadn’t visited that Jewel of the Galaxy yet since her return, but a city was the first place she gravitated towards upon her return. She craved a heartbeat, a pulse of life covering an entire planet. It was a form of life she respected – one of the few, perhaps.
Nar Shaddaa. She had her reasons – two of her closest friends had been born in that stink-water city and they’d recently established some business connections on it, people she thought it best to show her face to after being gone for so long. Absence tended to allow people to forget that which created their fear and obedience. But it was also busy, loud, a distraction she needed to erase memories from her head. She wasn’t even sure they were hers, fragments of a collective consciousness she’d entered the moment she’d left for another galaxy.
Wind. It was all she could hear, a distant whistle at first that slowly woke her with its wail. It danced over her cheekbones, willed her to wake up. Her eyelids fluttered open, a veil of snow picked up in a gust off her eyelashes. Her fingers were curled in white, half her face cradled in its freezing embrace as she lay on her stomach spread-eagle. Rolling her eyes in her skull, whale-like and white, she caught a glimpse of a sky so dark-blue she was sure there was no sun in this place. Clouds rolled along its endless deep, broken by stars and a single glorious moon somewhere far in the distance. And she was so close to it. She might reach out and touch.
Out in the reaches she’d met the closest thing to the devil – arcane, some tribal idea of evil in religions long extinct – she’d thought possible. And he’d looked at her as if they shared history. Perhaps just commonality.
She’d long left the confines of her small, personal ship, shrugging off the hood of her cloak to reveal pale, alien features as she walked down the thoroughfare of one of the shadier parts of the city on the way to her meet-up. Raising a hand, she pulled an apple from the stand of some vendor to her right.
“Hey, you gonna pay for that?!”
Taking a bite of the fruit, she was gone down the next street as the man started choking on his own tongue. A neat trick.
Early Evening
Where she’d been, cities didn’t exist.
There had been things passing for an ecumenopolis, a sheet-like plane of glass roiled by fractures – great, clear tectonic plates warring against each other to reach the sky first. But such expanses had been vacant. For a woman that had once loved Coruscant so much it was unsettling to be presented with its twin, what it might have been like if there was nothing at all on its surface.
She hadn’t visited that Jewel of the Galaxy yet since her return, but a city was the first place she gravitated towards upon her return. She craved a heartbeat, a pulse of life covering an entire planet. It was a form of life she respected – one of the few, perhaps.
Nar Shaddaa. She had her reasons – two of her closest friends had been born in that stink-water city and they’d recently established some business connections on it, people she thought it best to show her face to after being gone for so long. Absence tended to allow people to forget that which created their fear and obedience. But it was also busy, loud, a distraction she needed to erase memories from her head. She wasn’t even sure they were hers, fragments of a collective consciousness she’d entered the moment she’d left for another galaxy.
Wind. It was all she could hear, a distant whistle at first that slowly woke her with its wail. It danced over her cheekbones, willed her to wake up. Her eyelids fluttered open, a veil of snow picked up in a gust off her eyelashes. Her fingers were curled in white, half her face cradled in its freezing embrace as she lay on her stomach spread-eagle. Rolling her eyes in her skull, whale-like and white, she caught a glimpse of a sky so dark-blue she was sure there was no sun in this place. Clouds rolled along its endless deep, broken by stars and a single glorious moon somewhere far in the distance. And she was so close to it. She might reach out and touch.
She was pulled from her observations by the crunch of snow underfoot, her eyes rolling back to look forward. Her vision was blurred but she could make out fine black dress-shoes that had no place in such an environment, capped by the finely tailored legs of some suit bottoms.
He sat down next to her, cross-legged and wrapping his arms around his knees, seemingly oblivious to the cold.
“Do you remember this place?” he asked. She didn’t need to see his face. She didn’t want to see his face.
She struggled to get up, pushing up on her forearms and eventually managing to roll herself on to her back, and then in to a position in which she could sit up. Her side was screaming for some reason though she could find no wound.
They were perched thousands of miles above the earth below, nestled at the apex of the tallest mountain on one of the most glorious ranges she’d ever seen. Dozens of peaks stretched out before them, all reaching for the navy sky. It was peaceful, fog rolling soundlessly between the behemoths, dark jets of rock jutting from underneath mounds of snow. An avalanche free-fell down the face of a mountain to their right, powder flying up in to the wind and carried to another peak.
When she looked back at him, he was looking at her with such pointed intensity – something she couldn’t describe – that it nearly drove her back down.
“We made this. You and I. We made all of this.”
Out in the reaches she’d met the closest thing to the devil – arcane, some tribal idea of evil in religions long extinct – she’d thought possible. And he’d looked at her as if they shared history. Perhaps just commonality.
She’d long left the confines of her small, personal ship, shrugging off the hood of her cloak to reveal pale, alien features as she walked down the thoroughfare of one of the shadier parts of the city on the way to her meet-up. Raising a hand, she pulled an apple from the stand of some vendor to her right.
“Hey, you gonna pay for that?!”
Taking a bite of the fruit, she was gone down the next street as the man started choking on his own tongue. A neat trick.
[member="Kadala Skirata"]