Shiraya's Odyssey
Here, the pace was different... tangible and comforting.
The world and her people moved with a steady sense of hustle and bustle, graceful and purposeful, steady as the waters that plunged from the cliffs edge of Virdugo falls. It was a world that somehow managed to breath beauty into everything. Slipping her hands into her pockets as she walked through the crowd, Briana watched as couriers darted through sunlit courtyards, artisans opened their shops beneath flowering archways, elegant speeders glided past marble façades without urgency. Men, women, and others alike poured in and out of the various shops and cafe's. Some perched on ladders to trim the bushes of the treeman's herb and the draping queen's heart that had begun to flower, others swept gathered dust from off of their doorsteps.
Even during its busiest hours, there was always that steady undercurrent. A rhythm to a city that knew how to breathe; a place where tradition and progress coexisted like the twin rivers that wound through her heart.
On days like this, like today, it was almost easy to forget the scars that lingered beneath the freshly laid brick. To believe Naboo had always been this peaceful. To forget that they hadn't spent the past several months, once again, piecing their world back together, brick by solitary brick after the Neo-Crusaders had attacked them unprovoked. It added a sense of tension to the atmosphere that'd never been there in her youth. One that couldn't be seen, but something Briana always felt. Especially today.
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By the time she'd reached the edge of the western pad of Theeds Spaceport, the one reserved for heads of state and other dignitaries, the hum of the city had fully faded into the background. Here, the air was heavy, dense. The delicate scents of floral queen's heart and jasmine, replaced by the pungent odor of fuel, the tang of scorched metal, and freshly burnt ozone. Droids rolled past on maintenance tracks, and the low hum of idling repulsorlifts undercut the stillness like a background note in a song that never quite ended.
Briana continued along her path, moving down a long stretch of permacrete leading to one of the private platforms, flanked by the scarlet-cloaked guards of the Royal Naboo Defense Force. They didn't speak to her as she passed, but remained still as stone, acknowledging her presence with subtle deference. There would be no fanfare. No press. No diplomats. Just the Republics defender… and the one who had accepted her boldly spoken invitation to come and see who they were, to find his own sense of understanding.
The Mandalorian ship sat ahead like a sleeping beast as it came into view, matte and gray steel, its surface marked by old flight scoring, along with what she could only surmise as clan etchings that'd been carved into its side and dulled by time. Not a warship, no...those she'd become intimately familiar with, though it was unmistakably bred for war, all the same.
She waited at the edge of the pad, boots faintly clicking as she came to a full stop, hands held loosely behind her back, lightsabers clipped neatly at her belt on either side of her hip. She didn't fidget. Didn't posture. She simply stood, chin held high, full lips pressed subtly together, eyes clear and her expression open, waiting.
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