Private Where Control Slips

[Lumiya Dara]

The desert stretched without mercy. Endless dunes rolled beneath a pale, unbroken sky, their shapes carved and recarved by a wind that never seemed to rest. There was no shelter here. No concealment. Only distance, heat, and the slow erosion of anything left exposed for too long.

The transport had not been meant to fall into it. It's descent had been violent; less a landing than a surrender. One engine had failed first, coughing into silence before the second followed in stuttering protest. The pilot had fought it - briefly, desperately - but the sands below had already claimed their trajectory. The impact came hard. The vessel struck at an angle, skidding across the dunes in a shriek of tearing metal, plumes of sand erupting in it's wake. It dragged, buckled, and finally collapsed into stillness half-buried, it's hull split open to the relentless sun.

Silence followed. Not the quiet of peace. But the quiet of aftermath.

Lumiya did not rise immediately. Awareness returned to her in fragments: heat first, pressing insistently against her skin. Then the weight of her own body, grounded and unmoving. Then pain that was sharp, localized, and inconvenient. Her eyes opened to light that was too bright, too direct. For a moment, her vision swam. Not from disorientation, but from the body’s attempt to reconcile itself with survival. She inhaled slowly. Measured. Controlled. Assessment came before action.

Her arms responded when she willed them to move. Her legs followed, slower but functional. Structural integrity intact. Nothing broken. Then her gaze lowered. Blood. Not much. A shallow tear along her side where metal had caught and dragged, staining fabric in a dark, uneven spread. It should have been insignificant. But it wasn’t....

Her breath faltered just slightly. A flicker that was brief, and unwelcome. The sight of it: it's color, it's contrast against the pale fabric; pulled at something instinctive, something beneath discipline. A momentary lightness edged into her awareness, the world tilting not physically, but perceptually.

No. Her jaw set, subtle but firm. This was not pain. Not injury. This was reaction. And reaction could be controlled.

Lumiya closed her eyes; not to retreat, but to refocus. Breath in. Slow. Precise. She did not allow the sensation to expand, did not give it space to become something more. It existed. It was acknowledged. And then, it was diminished.

When her eyes opened again, the moment had passed. Efficiency had returned. With deliberate care, she reached for the small medical kit secured at her side. The motion was practiced, almost automatic. She retrieved a sealant patch and antiseptic, working without hesitation; cleaning the wound, sealing it, and reinforcing it with a compact dressing designed for exactly this kind of contingency. No wasted movement. No excess thought. The bleeding stopped.

Only then did she allow her attention to move outward. The transport lay broken around her, it's hull cracked open like a carcass left to the elements. Sand had already begun it's work, creeping inward, softening edges, erasing distinction. And beyond it there was nothing. No immediate movement. No figures. No rescue. Just the horizon, shimmering faintly in the heat.

But not empty. Her gaze lingered there a moment longer than necessary. Someone would find this. The wreck was too visible. Too exposed. It was only a matter of time.

Lumiya rose at last, steady despite the lingering tightness at her side. Whatever came next - whether scavenger, passerby, or something less predictable - she would meet it as she always did. Prepared and composed.

Tag: Syn

 

[Syn]

Lumiya Dara

The sun did not always warm him; it led him. Syn moved through the blistering haze of the sand sea with a gait that was neither hurried nor labored merely inevitable. At six foot eight, his silhouette warped the horizon, a slender column of shadow cutting through the shimmering, liquid distortion rising off the dunes. He carried two hundred and ten pounds of dense, kinetic stillness, wrapped in flesh that was the color of a lightly tanned forrm: a mottled topography of ochre and umber, with streaks of raw sienna running like dried riverbeds along his cheeks. THe jedi master felt it overhead, he couldn't see it... the force flashed and something was coming down which had drawn him out of his hunting sithspawn.

The wind, sharp with grit, found the short, dark brown spikes of his hair but could not move them. They stood in stark, stubborn relief against the blinding white of the sky, as rigid as his posture. A length of sun-faded, ink-black cloth was bound tightly across the upper half of his face, concealing the smooth, hollow void where sight had never resided. It fluttered only slightly at the edges, tugged by a current of dry heat that would have blinded any other man. He often enough traveled across the galaxy seeking other dangers and creatures. His movements with Lyra and Serra aiding him in getting through much of it so he could fight the beasts.

He did not feel the heat as discomfort, but as information. He felt the vibration of distant dune collapses through the soles of his feet, the life-force of a burrowing sand beetle flickering ten meters to his left, and the whisper of quartz grains scraping against the shell of an old wreck buried deep below. And there, on the high ridge of his cheekbone, etched into the yellow-brown canvas of his skin like a maker's stamp, was the blemish that mattered most. It was no longer wet; the desert had baked many others but he rarely showed it. Turning with the sounds as he moved through. His sabers on his hip and field kit.

The broad swath of his back was bare to the elements, the ridges of muscle along his spine shifting like tectonic plates under a sheen of sweat and fine, clinging dust. He was not a statue here; he was a piece of the desert that had simply decided to stand up and walk. He paused at the lip of a steep dune, his head tilting not to hear a song of the force when he could see someone was alive in the crash in the distance. He didn't rush, running towards it and them would likely scare them or cause a response that would be less then helpful in such a situation. He would approach briskly and make sure that they were able to see him coming with no weapons in his hands.