Well…hello there!

[Lilla Syrin]

Lilla wondered what was going on. She’d been dangling for quite a few seconds now and the Tusken showed no signs of killing her.

Although she could not see his eyes, given the Sand People never expose flesh in public – she sensed they were staring into hers. As if weighing her up (no pun intended). Defiantly, she did not avert her gaze and instead locked her violet hued irises with where she approximated his eyes were.

After what felt like an hour, but was in fact a minute, the Tusken gently lowered her, said something incomprehensible in a low guttural voice, bowed stiffly and then swiftly walked away.

Lilla stood there for a few minutes more, wondering what had just happened and what might happen yet, her mind oblivious to the bag attached to her belt.

 

[Lilla Syrin]

Eventually a combination of fatigue and bemusement took over from her inertia and she managed to place one foot in front of another and then another, as she headed to the hut. She was too tired and therefore vulnerable to attempt the walk back to her makeshift home and decided the building in front of her was the safest option for tonight.

She wedged whatever she could push in front of the door in the hope that it would serve as a barricade. The lock was definitely no longer serviceable.

Then she sat on what she presumed was a sofa, sand going everywhere as she sat down, and Lilla undid the string that held the bag to her belt. In her tired state, it took what seemed an eternity and she put the bag next to her on the sofa, whilst she closed her eyes for a second – to rest them before examining the contents of the bag.

And sleep took her.

 

[Lilla Syrin]

Her dreams were vivid. Entirely illogical and alien – yet at the same time entirely comprehensible and familiar.

There was a baby. And an eopie. And blue milk. And a small green sentient that Lilla could not recognise.

And countless other images flashed into her subconscious mind. Planets she recognised from holovids – and others she did not have any understanding of. A planet that was also a city, a planet covered in lava and a cave full of crystals that glowed.

It was a fitful sleep, yet Lilla awoke refreshed. And the incongruences did not end there. She was at once confused and enlightened. She comprehended nothing yet knew that understanding was close.

Her eyes snapped open and she remembered her own recent past. The well and the Tusken.

And the bag.

Carefully, almost reverently, she loosened the drawstrings of the purple velvet bag that hid the item she’d almost lost her life twice for.

The anti-climax was palpable. It was…a cube that fitted on the palm of her hand. It was ornate and she sensed valuable, but it did not speak to her or suggest in any way she was destined to find it.

It was as if the box had called to her by accident, expecting someone else. And now the box was silent. Petulant almost, as if pretending it had never called to her at all, and she must have been mistaken in her belief she was supposed to find it.

 

[Lilla Syrin]

Lilla spent the remainder of the day and night in the hut. She considered the cube. There was no way to open it as far as she could tell. But someone hid it, and she knew that she’d not found it by accident. One day she’d understand what it was all about. Not yesterday. Not today and probably not tomorrow. But one day.

Then she reflected on the Tusken. He’d seen something to make the decision to allow her to live. Was it linked to the fact a clan was effectively protecting this abandoned hut?

Her logical mind and her emotional mind agreed on a likely solution. In some way, she was the lucky recipient of mistaken identity. The box thought she was someone else, as did the Tusken. But who?

And was it a good thing or a bad thing?