Trance, Trance Little Child Lost (Illias Nytrau)

[Yasha Cadera]

Being a High Councillor of the Fringe hasn't been the biggest bowl of irli I've had but the work is honest and I love my Fringe. The weight of it, sheer and laborious is beginning to fracture and cauterize the burns. Sargon's been showing me of the present Force, the living and breathing macrocosm and the training has come in handy these last few weeks.

I brush my hand over the pristine flesh of my neck and my mind flashes to the moment Mikhail Shorn's fangs ripped into it. I knew enough to heal the wound, but in the lonely after was all but dead until Jared's bodyguard Devon boarded my ship, the Sumatiyara. Five pints of blood and a harrowed week of fever and I'm up, at the races. This has been another in a long line of situations which remind me that personal growth and development is the difference between life and sacrifice. Two days in the Meditation Sphere aboard my ship, with nothing but an idea and an open mind have led me onward to a place my intel informs me is collecting Jedi.

Never been a Jedi myself, tried. First person I met was so damnably angry and caustic I turned right round and ran. What can I look at that situation with but the knowledge of my own fledgeling weakness? As the Suma hits orbit, I pull a thick wool sweater over my shirt and check that my empathic and force-skill in masquerade have me looking as Anders looks - thin and masculine. Call it a safety mechanism, call it following up on [member="Thurion Heavenshield"]'s offer. Call it a potentially catastrophic idea but I search all the same for a Master [member="Ilias Nytrau"], my feet pounding the soil of Voss.

Somehow I expected the planet to feel chaotic, a struggle of Lights and Darks battling for dominance as it is many places I've known. There is none of that here, a peacefulness I'm constantly unaware of out there has leaked into the brisk sun, radiating down into my frail and fragile body. Bucket follows behind me a step away, servomotors whirring in neat rhythm and I'm glad my SC1 Bodyguard Droid's already had his Droid Brain modified to take in more than threat analysis and the odd calculation of range. His head moves back and forth as a child in a new place, taking in the surroundings and studying them with an insatiable discovery.

"H-hhhhh. Come on Anders." I exhale and ring my finger through my hair. "Hello? Ah, I'm . . . ah hello? I'm looking for Master Nytrau, is he… please someone be here."

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

Being an almost-nine-hundred year old Jedi Master was much the same as being an eight-hundred year old one, as it was to being a seven-hundred year old one. One in such a position is given the somewhat unique opportunity to see history repeat itself over and over and over again, the ebbs and flows of time and the Force begin to feel common, and the goal therefore turns out to be in avoiding complacency. Fortunately, even the Force continued to surprise him at the latter end of his first millenium of life, and that went a long way in keeping his mind fresh and his focus sharp.

Humanity, however, did not surprise him. The only surprise was in when things were done and how. At least that much was variable. This alliance between two independent sects of Jedi, for example, smacked of things that had been done before. He could speculate on the long-term outcome of it, but that was all he could do at most, speculating. The fire-haired master had no extensive talent for farsight, yet... for all his meditations, the Force had gifted him with a handful of glimpses, and it gave him appreciation for the burden that the seers of his youth had carried, and surely the burden they carried now.

His burden was a different burden - and one that another was coming to call upon him to share. One that seemed lost on the plains of Voss, whereas he was out for a simple stroll when the calling of his name by voice matched to the feel of an unfamiliar presence, and shortly thereafter a living being of bipedal, humanoid stock came into his vision, tailed by a droid. That fact alone split his lips slightly in bemusement, and he stopped, standing on one spot and observing this individual, not wondering so much when he - the knowing glint traveled across the eyes of the master - would notice the tall ginger standing there, but more as to why it was he elected for this costume. Defense mechanism, perhaps? For several more moments he made his observations of this one, gathering as much information as he could with his eyes before making himself known to her. There was a lot he could know, simply from knowing where and how to look. Then, and only then, did he speak. Was this the one that Thurion has mentioned? Was this [member="Anders Sivas"]?

"I am here," he said with a calm like still water, his eyebrows lofting gently, "Also, good morning."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Aah!" I yelp and jump as [member="Ilias Nytrau"] comes up all calm and subtle. I didn't even feel him coming, and it's in the safety of Voss I feel what can be achieved under training from members of the Light. I brush my hands over my trouser legs, smoothing the fabric and hopefully my sense. I gulp and look deep at his kindly face, I brush my hands on my jacket and nod.

"Hi, um." I offer my hand, as my droid keeps walking around in a little circle, scanning the environment as it learns. "Anders Sivas. I'm ah, a friend of Thurion's I . . . I'm hoping you can help me? I'm ah, I'm a healer, well I do alright with it, but there's… I can heal someone's wounds but I can't stop the others from … " Why did I come to Voss? What sent me from my natural habitat in the Fringe to the other side of the Galaxy? Lessons on hibernation and force guided anaesthetic? I push the grief down, the horror of the last few weeks and can see nothing in the Master Nytrau to fear or quake or fret. The hairs on my neck ring like a struck church bell and I purse my lips together. "I can't let people die, I also can't do my job with them flailing about or with some ridiculously over potent Sith Lord shoving their hands in and playing knot the rope with intestinal tissue. Sedating them could save... I'm not a fighter, but I can't . . . I was told you know how to do things… things to help a healer take control of a situation. I could use that. Goddess, I could. Will you teach me?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

Seeing [member="Anders Sivas"] jump at the soft announcement of his presence was the kind of thing that put a light touch of laughter in his eyes. For a man of his size, the ginger master moved in an unusually silent way. For the most part, his sneaking up on others was unintentional outside of training purposes, and to a certain degree, it had something to do with the distractibility of others. Such as the clearly occupied mind of the young individual in front of him. He smiled when shaking her hand, but said nothing more as Anders tripped on through words in an erratic, nervous gait of mouth, and observed the mannerisms of the younger healer in such a state. Both brows lofted, and a breath was drawn in, then loosed in slow, calm meter.

"How do you feel about tea?" He asked, with full awareness that he was, in fact, answering a question with a question. "I find tea does much to calm the nerves."

His head turned towards the main facility out of with the Silver Jedi operated on this world, then scanned his eyes away from the structure out into the wild of the outside world in which they both stood. Then as if he had picked a direction on pure whimsy, Ilias began to walk again, seemingly leaving the young knight behind. After a few steps he paused for just a moment...

"Walk with me, Knight Sivas," he said, not looking back, "I would very much like to talk with you a while."

...then continued walking, short strides with long legs.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Usurper! Pretender! Any second he's going to smell it on me, the faint lustre of the lack of Jedi...ness. [member="Ilias Nytrau"] is going to smell the taint of an often gender confused androgynous empath and the idea which had been brilliant when I'd had it will die in a whistling fire. Ash. It'll all turn to ash in my mouth. This was it, the great rejection! The running time was here!

"Tea?" I blink. Reality comes crashing into my nervous fantasy and my shoulders lower as I deflate visibly in a wash of relief. "I can do tea. I enjoy tea, tea's good." My fingers are mashed together in front of me, I yank them apart and smooth my trouser legs out again and start walking. "Never been to Voss, before. Was in a Jedi Temple once, but got chased out. Too much rage, I couldn't... I was younger then... Sorry, this is a far off place from home. Well, Annaj and thank you again for seeing me."

As Illias retreated I realize my feet have stopped moving. Bucket's walking up with Illias, the droid continues walking and offers its hand for a handshake. At least my droid is learning! And seemingly at a faster rate than me! Oh joys, I'm being outdone by a droid. "Knight Sivas. First I've heard myself called 'Knight Sivas'. I like it. Keep forgetting that Im a Knight, now. That I've grown in things, ways of understanding or just plain gumption and talent. Am I talking too much? Please tell me if I am. I've never been to this planet, and it takes some adjusting before I can tell my thoughts over others' unless I speak them. I mean, it's not a problem! It's just... a little... empathic gift I work through. Separating my mind from others is coming easier, I've never really been around Jedi other than Coryth Elaris and she taught me... I'm going to shut up and walk and think about tea." I shove and push at my mind, separating out the strands of others until the only emotions in my head are my own: tired, frenetic emotions guided by recent events and the necessity to learn what I can.

Lipsec should not have happened. I should have been able to put Mikhail out for longer than a minute, and if I had? I'd still be pregnant and Jared wouldn't have needed new internal organs. I'd have nothing more to worry about than telling Jared he was going to be a father, picking outfits and studying the Living Force with a greater and greater frequency. But, life doesn't work on past chances and today I set it right, so the situation never happens again. The quiet drifts, I sigh and flick my hand through my hair, away from the spot it had been occupying on my fallow stomach. "Anything you want to talk about in particular, or is chatting up the common universals the flavour of the day?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

"A Jedi Temple..." he mused, as if he were chewing on the words, "...it has been some time since I last set foot in one of the old temples. I was a much younger man."

As for the rage? Well. He filed that comment away as evidence for other things. Confirmation, further, of what was apparent. Food for thought in his daily meditations, which were taken up with adherent faith, up to five times daily. His relationship with the Force and the world around him held a deeply spiritual bent. He smiled to [member="Anders Sivas"], a smile that reached his eyes, where they crinkled at the corners - a wordless response to her thanks.

Yes, her, and a fact he did not let on knowing about. It was irrelevant to the moment, now, before, and to come. There was more to her than the concealment of her birth-given gender. The condition of her body was of some interest - the points at which it had healed apparent in the intangible outer shell of her natural aura - as it appeared to be very recent. He would have questions. He noted, and shook the hand of her companion droid before returning his own hand to the position of being folded behind his back with the other hand.

"I would like to talk about you," he said, glancing towards the door through which they would enter the compound, and find tea to drink, "and why you are here. What is it, Knight Sivas, that drove you to seek me out?"

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Never went back. Ended up in the Fringes." I shrug and walk on, glancing [member="Ilias Nytrau"] up and down. "Much younger man, what were you seven back then? How much younger can you get?" Maybe my medical eye is a bit off, but I can't tell with this one. There's an aura around him, a hard-won peace ability and contentment I crave. I'd rest within it, that same tranquility I felt with Sargon Vynea while he taught me on Bakurah how to slip into the inconsequence of being and come up to touch oneness with the Force. I'd seen flickers of vision then, and somehow Voss reminds me or maybe it's Ilias Nytrau that reminds me of the wonder and awe of those early meditative experiences.

My meditations lately have been made of fire and caustic shudders. I pull my arms to my chest as a sting hits my belly. I trip on a root, my hips still not locked back in their pre-pregnancy place, nor would my ribcage if not for the bacta and reconstruction. There's no illusion that can make different the way a woman walks, the way her hips displace through the weeks but I'm hoping misdirection is enough to keep me in my androgynous safety. We walk and my face goes numb starting at the tip of my lips, my jaws clench together and I stand in this new place fighting the nakedness of mental and emotional exposure. Bucket sticks by my side, gives me fair bits of gladness that the droid is here and growing. Oh the nature of the mind.

"Me? I. . ." My neck muscles tighten, I glance up at Ilias and I know he's in my eyes, he's peering down through them into the cacophonous caverns of my many-personed mind. He's seen through to the core of me and he just keeps looking. Doesn't he? Is that my insecurities or is it true? "I always intended to seek out Healers to learn from, I was born on Naboo and raised as an artist and picked up paramedicine in my travels. Seemed the right thing."

My lips shut and my jaw tightens. I splay my hand across my face and drag it down to centre the pit in my stomach. "As I said, I live in the Fringe Confederation. Most everyone I know there is honest, well in their way. Honourable, maybe? They're Dark. I'm one of the only handful of slim pickings who even attempt to commune with the Light Side of the Force and I've got an impressionable mind. Made my way of it, patching wounds and getting elected to the Fringe High Council on a fluke. Recently..." My mind flickers.

I'm in Lipsec and [member="Jared Ovmar"]'s there, his kiss shattered the atomic cloud of my being and left me vacant and fulfilled but the room was wrong. I don't realize when I start speaking. "Shorn had Jared's entrails in his hand. Mikhail Shorn tore straight through my body to get to Jared's and I wouldn't let him die. Not Jared. I spent every ounce of my gift on putting Jared's gut together. I bled out. . . we . . . we lost someone. If I'd have knocked Shorn out cold like I'd tried earlier, it wouldn't have happened. It's my fault. I should have been able to stem the violence. It never would have happened if I'd have been able to put Shorn under and keep him there. Jared wouldn't have nearly died and our. . . I can't keep flickering like a candle in a stiff breeze. I'm not a violent person. Not built for it, no disposition of it. All I've got is what I am. . . I should have been able to diffuse the situation and it's my fault I couldn't. That can't happen again. I'd gladly do what I have to do to ensure it never happens again. Thurion said you were the one to come to, you're the one that can level me out and grow me up. I'm already in deep and I'm not leaving the Fringe without a Healer, but I need to be strong enough, resilient enough to patch them back together each time they come back in bits. Will you help me?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

How much younger could he get? As an answer to this mostly rhetorical question, he merely smiled. A mild smile, saying everything while he said nothing at all, for this young individual from Naboo was not the only one in this conversation whose physical looks hid the truth - the only difference being choice or compulsion, and in his case, genetics. On the matter of loss, he has a very educated guess as to what [member="Anders Sivas"] means, but out of respect for privacy he does not press it - it is up to her how much she gives, and in what way she shapes that gift of information. The privilege is his, to listen and be trusted with it.

Processing her words, considering their weight and meaning, Ilias turned towards the entrance to the facility, knowing [member="Anders Sivas"] would follow not through any sort of prescience - though that was well within reason - but the simple knowledge of typical human conduct. It is not something he is thinking of, his mind on the conversation and what words he will give next.

"I can help you, young man," he says on purpose, content to leave her with her with as much of the blanket of security as she has managed to retain, at least for the moment, "as for how much, or how far? That remains to be seen."

As they approached the entrance the doors gave way, hissing softly open, and he stood by, allowing the knight to pass through the threshold first. Then he followed, and the door fssshed shut behind them once they were far enough away from it.

"This way," he said, indicating a corridor to their left, continuing to walk "and one step closer to a nice, hot cup of tea. Now, I would be interested to hear what it is you mean when you say you have an 'impressionable mind'."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

A hiccup rises on my lip as [member="Ilias Nytrau"] calls me a young man, but the lips shut. The image plays in my ever-coiling mind: my father on Naboo shaking me by the shoulders and telling me to hide. Always hide. Conceal and survive. I was too impressionable a thing to be a twelve year old girl out in the universe, but a twelve year old boy? Maybe... Maybe... Maybe it didn't turn out quite like the old man had planned. I'm following and walking through the doors before I realize I'm in a completely unfamiliar place with nothing but my considerably equipped battle droid and the prayer and hope that this Master is a Man of Grace.

"Th-thank you. Appreciate it." What a farce is Gender, a piece-meal collection of biological trait and cultural condition shouldn't bother me as much as it has in the latest weeks and months. That it matters at all is shocking and a sober reminder into the nature of beings. Classified and quantified, we have to be light or dark or definitively grey, a piece, a part, a significant portion codified and quantified lest the rest dispel their securities. Nytrau doesn't seem to mind.

The mind's the thing, isn't it? In this case, it most definitely is. Can he open my mind up like flower petals and save the pollen for later inspection? "I was born so empathic that my infant mind warped depending on who the strongest mind in the room was. Usually my Mom. She lost my brother while I was still growing in her belly and it must've been some kind of event 'cause I could taste how much she missed him. I became him. As close as I could get from the memories and sensations Mom and Dad kept in their heads and I'm like, two. I didn't know what I was doing. Thing is, it didn't get better as I got older. I'd be within the range of a strong personality and like a snapping twig in the dry season, I'd switch. By the time my Dad realized... he threw me out in space when I turned twelve. Maybe being alone in space would help, you know? Help me find my own mind, but it didn't. Being Anders has been a process of becoming and begetting. Of experiencing the fluid intimacy of someone's unguarded mind and becoming that. . . for a time. The disconnect would happen usually when they realized something in themselves, or the game changed, or I got too far away to hear them. Wasn't till I turned what, nineteen? Twenty? I met someone who helped me push the others out. I still gotta work for it, every day and it's exhausting. They're all there, every persona and symbiotic trace is settled in my mind like stars in a midnight sky. I guard against it, mostly by being comfortable with who I am intrinsically and indelibly, but the potential is still there. Sometimes I let myself do it, sometimes the person just needs so badly to be understood it became a screwed up way of fixing their voodoo. But it worked. Ask the question my Dad asks, though. What would the wrong powers do with a force user who could become anyone? Kinda proud of myself for staying in the Light of the Force in a place full of Sith and Dark Siders. Haven't been tempted once, and not for lack of things to try my resolve. . . What's the cure, Master Nytrau? Draw and Quarter the mind-witch?" I laugh and it's lost, but getting it off my chest feels better at the very least.

Spelling it out. . . oh gosh, I spelled it out! He's never going to want to train me now! Oh no! What've I done!?

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

He shook his head, sharing her laughter, however brief, as they wandered down the passageway, and he lead her around another corner to a right-hand passageway. Over the course of his many years in this life, he had encountered empaths of many different stripes, and each had coped with this oft-times harrowing ability in their own unique way. Some were trained in the ways of the Force, following one philosophy or another, and others simply lived their lives outside of the structure of a Force-centered organization, their positions in life granted by the structure and beliefs of their cultures.

"I cannot bring judgment down upon you, cannot fault you, for adapting, for coping in whatever ways nature and circumstance have dictated. What works for one may not work for another, Knight Sivas," he informed, aware that such a saying was likely common, even in these times, "I frequently meditate, among other reasons, to maintain my relationship with the light... out of necessity. The truth is this: what I am, young man, appears to predispose me to an attraction to the darkness. "

Finally reaching the entrance to the kitchen he stopped at the doorjamb, long since freed of any actual door, and wordlessly invited her in. It was one of a small handful of places on Voss that he found himself frequenting, in the small measures of time he spent upon the world - his secluded cabin on Laekia being the most preferred of his small number of modest abodes, dotted here and there in territories where his kind - the Jedi - were welcome.

"Some would say that, because of this, fate or destiny means for me to take up the cause and philosophy of the Sith. Tell me: does this make me any more subject to the hand of judgment than you might be, in your own mind?"

He was interested to hear her thoughts, for often wondered how others saw him, not as a measure of validation, but out of curiosity. Once some measure of knowledge and insight into who and what he was came into play, how one reacted gave the ancient a great deal of insight into their psyche, upbringing, and more besides. Unwittingly, at some point, he had become some sort of anthropologist.

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I walk into the kitchen and it's a far more honest and regular place than I was expecting. So I thought there would be a sous-chef with seven arms and a penchant for cutting vegetables in midair. I didn't know what to make of the Jedi and this one was staring me in the ruddy face telling me to call him on his predilections.

My lips mashed together and I found a counter to lean on. He took what I said in the stride of a man who'd seen everything and it's coming to me that [member="Ilias Nytrau"] has indeed seen everything - or close enough to it. "Master Nytrau, in my time in this galaxy I've seen Spice Dealers taking a fourteen year old girl under their wing, feeding her first and keeping her safe from rape gangs. I've seen housewives threaten their kids with knives because they didn't keep their rooms clean and I've seen the faces of evil, insidious men curl up with smiles as they gave presents to the next generation of Varanins. I haven't seen everything and I don't know much, but you and I, we've got predilections that could control us bloody murder.

I'd like to think we're not at fault, but we are. We are still responsible for the things we do, which is why we need to work harder than others for our bread, peace and wine. You meditate. I found you before I turned into a Sith Mimic." I toe the ground, the flashing memories of Lipsec splashing upward to my face and the air between Ilias and I with a tangible thick and gooey coating in the air.

"There's only one thing in this universe I cannot give up on, and that's grace. So what if you have to struggle more for that grace of your internal self. So what if I have an outward mouldable mind. Grace has been given to us. The Light hasn't left us and it won't. Now it's our task to make sure that grace is well founded, eh?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

He followed her into the kitchen, making straight for a kettle set at one end of one counter, lifting it from its heating base and taking it to fill it with water from the sink tap while [member="Anders Sivas"] found a counter to relax against, in some small measure, while forming a reply to his query. When she began to speak, he listened with a keen ear, bringing the kettle carafe back to its base, setting it down, and switching it on to boil. This done, he ceased in his moments, resting against the counter with palms flat on its surface behind him, taking in her words with their weight and meaning, and distilling from them the depth of her character.

There were several moments of contemplation between when she ceased to speak, and when he made his next movement, whether of mouth or body... and body it was, as he gently pushed off from the counter, turned, and moved to the cupboard holding various cups and mugs, selecting two and setting them on the countertop.

"Indeed it is," and that was the sum of his response, as he continued on, selecting seven small canisters stuck with hand-scribed labels and setting them on the counter beside her. "Here we have Kopi, Ch'hala, Ansionian, Tanque, Cassius, Sapir, and H'Kak Bean teas..."

He smiled, wordlessly imploring her to select one, with a gesture.

"...common enough varieties, and some of my favourites. Outside of these, I do tend to dabble in fashioning my own teas from the local plantlife of worlds I have visited, now and again, with a variance of results."

It was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the ginger master and his love for tea... the closest thing he would ever have to what was commonly known as a 'vice', if addiction was ever a possibility for one so well in tune with his own body as he. The breadth and depth of his herbal knowledge was applied far more to this pursuit than anything else.

One could go so far as to call it a hobby.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"I'll take the Cha'hala tea, thanks. Something about a tree that changes colour is exciting, you know? Reminds me of me and I'm fond of me. Kind of. Some of the time. Ah, I hear it's good." A hand crawls up and messes with my hair, I'm dealing with a nervous tick and it's hard to knock out the reason in its particulars. [member="Ilias Nytrau"] is a Master of the Light because he chooses to be, because the alternative is far too easy for a man of his genetic nature. It makes an odd kind of sense, me being here.

Does the Force move in such mysterious ways? Bonding together two individuals with freaky aspects and getting them training in the Light? "Remind me to grab some exotic plants the next time I'm in the Fringe. There're tons of planets with interesting flora. I saw some well, they looked like seaweed to me but they grew in a planet of wind. Out in the Nihil Retreat. I was searching the area for Nihil Smokestone, you know, to increase my telepathic powers and all and the plants were growing near the smokestone veins. Didn't end up able to grab any, I ah, got attacked by the wind. Yeah. Spooked the folk with me right out. So, how long have you been training students? I'm not the first crazy one am I?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

He smiled, and collected the tins up from the counter, once [member="Anders Sivas"] had made a decision, depositing her choice on the counter next to the kettle, which was getting close to a boil. He put the remaining canisters back where they had been retrieved from, electing to have the same tea as the knight, and pulled two mugs from another cupboard, already set with infusers, smiling at the reason for her choice, otherwise listening in contented, contemplative silence as he measured the loose tea into the infusers in the mugs.

Plants? Remind her? Certainly! He took in her little story about the smokestone, wondering what other adventures this life had seen fit to draw her into. At her pair of questions on the tail end of her tale, amusement crossed his facial features, and the kettle came to a boil in an entirely separate event.

"Just over eight-hundred years, and no, you are not the first unique individual that has graced me with their presence. Far, far from the first, and certainly not the last. I have a good many years still ahead of me yet, if my current physical condition is anything to go by."

He glanced at the young knight with pointed look, perhaps to gauge her reaction to the length of his tenure as a Jedi instructor. He had been knighted at eighteen, and became a Master within the next ten years after that. The life of a Jedi was quite literally all he knew... but that was far too broad of a generalization to begin with.

"And allow me to be clear - you are not crazy, Knight Sivas. Far from it."

And he lifted the kettle, pouring water into each of the mugs until they were reasonably full, the scent of the tea becoming just a bit stronger with the first steaming hit of boiling-hot water. That being done, he took note of the time. The tea would be steeped soon enough, even if it might be slightly too warm to drink right away.

"Now I... I have stared into the abyssal soul of true insanity and lived to tell the tale!"

With that, he grinned.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Jaw drop. Okay so I didn't drop my jaw, but I did drop my chin and that's nearly the same thing. "Eight hundred years." I coughed, my shoulders rocking and my eyes growing wide. How is this guy not a shrivelled up little green thing? He must have some strong genome. "You look amazing for eight hundred. Like, wow. I hope I look that good at one hundred. Is it . . . is it a proprietary secret Jedi thing or were you born with the best genetics in the universe? 'Cause the only other guy I know that's like, eight hundred is this Echani dude that's friends with my . . . ah . . . friend and he doesn't look that good. He's like a walking ambulance patient. Manouka Sex Toast or something. Only met him once, but his physical condition made the medic in me cringe and want to give him a cup of broth and a warm blanket. And this? Right here? Is me talking too much! Hah! Oh yeah, it happens. . . ah, I'm gonna stop now."

My head shakes as I chuckle a warm, comforted sound. Hearing that my new Master is eight hundred years old somehow makes this entire situation more believable and more right. I'm not the oddest commodity in the room, with my overactive empathy and my compartmentalized experiences of gender. Maybe it's a smoothing point, a break with the nerves 'cause even Bucket's looking more relaxed as he sits on a chair and kicks his pneumatic feet up on a crate of spices, herbs and kitchen wares.

"It's good to know I'm not crazy." Why have I not discovered Ch'hala Tea earlier than today? 'Cause that smell! It rocks more than my socks. It rocks the universe. I hop up onto the counter to sit, my feet dangling in the brown army boots Sargon Vynea bought me on that very first day awake. "That is a tale I'd love to hear. Obviously it has an ending that doesn't include 'and then I died', so that's good right? What did you do, Master Nytrau? How'd you handle it?"

 

[Ilias Nytrau]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

His head shook, a smooth and rocking motion from side to side, eyes closed with the motion; he looked to be calm as he was in a great many things. The centuries had given him a starkly different perspective to the ebbs and flows of life and death in both its statistical norms and epidemic reductions. The matter of his genetic makeup and all its trappings was a mixed blessing, a curse to some and the answer for others. He drew in a breath through his nostrils, the scent of the steeping tea traveling across his olfactory senses along with the cool, miniscule sweetness of the Vossian air that permeated within and without.

"Whether it is the 'best' is a matter of perspective. I would imagine it takes a certain mental fortitude to weather the ages, particularly through the ravages of the Gulag plague and four-hundred years that followed. Half my lifetime to date of what was largely silence, the quietest the reaches of the Force had felt when the plague had finished running its course, bringing to an end the wash of life being ripped away slowly from the fringes of my senses like skin being peeled back..." a faint shudder worked across his form as he let that particular thought fall away, his clear, pale-blue eyes slipping sidelong to rest on the much smaller form of his new student, "...a test of sanity like no other, Knight Sivas. One I pray that you should never be burdened with. The wastes of war pale in comparison."

Eyes drifted away and settled on the nearest wall. Another slow, calm breath, bringing a ghosting smile along to play. There was a name he'd not heard mangled since long before the plague had done its worst.

"As for how? Meditation, and lots of it, at the very least," a satisfied nod, "so Manu Xextos lives on," the thought and words brought with them a mild measure of surprise, but no disbelief - he had known where the old Echani had been left, and it had taken a great deal to let him lie for all those years, having resigned himself to some tenuous belief that the plague had taken that life too, with all that it had wrought and everything he had seen from it. Memory after memory slipped across his consciousness, of the family of his friend, of all they had done in the company of one another, "That is good. Very good to hear."

He had not expected that any he had known in those bygone times would have managed to hitch a ride to this age and yet... Manu had was not the first. The Force works in mysterious ways, indeed.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"You know Master Xextos?" The words drift whisper-soft across the space between. I'm sobered by the fact that such giants of the Force are humble beings drifting through bearing the weight of a loss of years. "I'd heard he was some sort of relic, but. . . dude he's barely alive. Like, I can't tell how he's still alive. You might want to go see him before. . well, before his luck runs away with his moxy. He's building up a planet in the Fringe. Sabarene, I think."

I hold the mug of tea between my hands, my mind resting on the cacophonous and dissonant surge from culture to quiet the Gulag Plague must have disseminated across the Galaxy. Makes my own loss feel minuscule and it is. There was nothing great about what happened, but there wasn't anything life changing. . . wasn't it? I want to open my mouth, to unravel, to talk about it. Jared Ovmar is gone, Mikhail's in the wind and I'm barely recovered. "Master Nytrau?"

Loss of life. It's got its cost and that cost should be something many are unwilling to pay. "There was this. . . incident. People got hurt, they shouldn't have but there was a psychotropic in the air and . . . I tried to take out this Sith Lord by knocking him out. Thought if I put him under I could resolve the situation. . . you know, without blood.

It didn't work. I couldn't do it and some-" I choke on the words. My chin tips down, I stare at the dregs of my tea as the images of Lipsec play across my active, empathic mind. My eyes rim with red. Is there an illusion to protect a young mother from crying over the loss of her child? My shoulders roll up and I sniff. A doctor, or force healer would be able to work through the illusion. I was nearly bifurcated by Mikhail's arm, and that sort of damage leaves reconstructive scars on someone so newly put back together. It's my hope the flimsy illusions I keep up to protect myself have held. Anders feels safer than the frail and hurting Andra.

"It was my responsibility and I toasted it. Someone died, but I saved another person's life. It all could have been prevented if I had the power to diffuse the tension by successfully putting the moron brigade to sleep. How do we do it? How do we go against that level of violence and come out of it without meeting it with its like kind? What did I do wrong, that I couldn't keep Mikhail asleep?"

[member="Ilias Nytrau"]