trans_9 | Meet-n-Greet

Entry tags:

Meet-n-Greet

After being released from stasis, having the slime removed from their bodies and clothed in the creepy, pulsing leaf-suit that everyone wore, and being taken to the Weapons & Possessions lockers to collect their belongings, the new arrivals would find themselves standing in the Observation Deck. Round windows lined the fleshy walls, revealing the bright display of lights that was inter-dimensional travel. They would also discover that there were people--members of the command staff and crew that had woken earlier--waiting for them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luke nodded in understanding. He couldn't hear these sandworms 'speaking'; Arha couldn't hear the Force as he could. In this strange place where every universe seemed thrown together and told to survive, it made sense.

"It seems that way," he replied. "I've met people who know me but who aren't from any planet in the galaxy that I know, and there are others with abilities that I've never seen. Then there are some that seem to have powers that are similar enough to the Force for me to feel--but it's like yelling down Beggar's Canyon to the other end, I can tell that someone's speaking but I can't make out the words. It doesn't make any sense."

He sighed; he could feel the frustration mounting in him and worked to calm it. That wouldn't do for the Grandmaster of the Order to lose himself.

"I feel it, too," Arha said, letting her fingers curl against his arm. "It is frustrating to feel and not interpret, to be aware and unknowing when all you wish to do is understand." Her thumb brushed out soothingly, absently. For no reason she could understand, she felt a surge build, the kind that came when she was healing. It was prickly, buzzing like the thing she sensed coming from him. She could almost touch it, now, the effect stronger with touch.

Arha could sense frustration and knew it was not her own. The prickling that shot up her arms smoothed and became a flow, soft, reassuring as it flowed through her fingers. Calming, easing, kneading the emotional knots away like her fingers would have done to muscle. She was meant to help.

This was the way of things.

Luke could feel it now, radiating outward from her touch. It was that same feeling he got from the others--that sense of an echo of power, and in that same breath, he felt something--the first sip of caf in the morning, the one that made all the cells in the body align perfectly, perhaps. It seemed to soothe and relax him, as if she were pouring calm into the Force just as he had done to all those who had seemed to despairing in the other rooms they'd just left.

Arha, though not Force-sensitive or even knowing what the Force was, seemed nonetheless to serve it as he did. "All I really wish to do is sleep," he said with a laugh. "I think things will be come more clear if I'm not covered in alien goo and breaking my concentration every time this strange suit has a particularly strong heartbeat."

He smiled up at her, grateful that he'd found someone so good. She reminded him a bit of Teneniel Djo, the Dathomiri Force-sensitive who had married Prince Isolder of Hapes, or their daughter Tenel Ka, now Queen Mother. It was in the way she spoke and the quiet dignity she had about her.

"It has been an effort," she said, leaving her fingers against his arm as she let out a breath, "to synchronize myself with it so it no longer bothers me, but it can be done." Weariness pressed spots against her vision and she felt the beginning swirls of hunger. It took a half second to suppress it, a slight narrowing and focusing of her eyes the only indication she'd had to expend effort at all.

That she blamed on tiredness in general.

Her answering smile, though, was small if warm.

"I'm sure it can. It's just very new right now, I'm used to more loose-fitting clothing." Luke stared up at the sky; nightfall in a desert was sudden and complete. The stars were bright, as he hadn't seen in many years. Coruscant's lights drowned them out there, and when he was in a StealthX he didn't often concentrate on the beauty of the stars, just picked one as a reference point.

It was her red hair that reminded him of Tenel Ka too; and of his beloved Mara, with her flaming-red hair that had been passed down to their son. The old sorrow hit him still, making the smile slowly fade from his lips. Luke doubted anyone would ever take Mara's place in his heart.

A wave of exhaustion hit him suddenly, making it difficult to keep his eyelids open. "We should rest like we said we were going to," he murmured; the desert stillness wasn't to be broken for anything.

"Then it is time to sleep," she said. "It has been a long day and much has become unfamiliar." Arha rose and offered him a hand up, politely, her movements fluid and easy. She caught the way his face changed and acknowledged the sorrow. Loss. Such a thing was unavoidable in the Universe and it was nothing she could soothe.

Still, Arha found herself wishing to anyway, before she cast it aside as foolishness.

"When you wake," she murmured, "I will show you what parts of this place I have discovered. There is time."

He took her hand up--again getting that sense that she could 'hear' echoes of what he was feeling--and stood, brushing grains of sand from his suit (it pulsed beneath his palms, definitely too much like an ooglith masquer) and eyed the lip just beyond the cave entrance. He hadn't tried to make a leap like this in some time, and he wasn't as young as he'd been when he'd made the jump from the speeder onto Jabba's sand barge, but...

With a gathering of the Force, Luke sprang lightly off the ground and, in two smooth leaps, made it to the ledge where the cave was and turned to look back down at Arha.

Amused, she watched the leap, tilting her chin up at him. Interesting. Feeling a touch playful, rare enough for her, she flashed a grin and moved. There was a blur and she seemed to appear next to him, two fingers on his shoulder and soft laughter on her lips.

"It is The Weirding Way," she whispered and moved soundlessly back into the cave, not a single stone disturbed.

Luke followed her, contemplating the surge of energy he'd felt when she'd... moved as she did. It had come to him, in its echoing way, still more wild than the Force was. Not more primitive... but less controllable.

Laying down on the pallet that he'd chosen before, Luke rolled into the blanket and listened to the silence, a blessed relief after the din of the weapons and possessions lockers and the Observation Deck after that. He was tired, exhausted to the core of himself. He missed Ben deeply, missed his sister and Han and even the droids.

With a sigh, Luke sought to quiet his mind in preparation for sleep. It wouldn't be very restful if all that came to him were nightmares.

Arha ate a spice cake, which ostensibly was the protein mash spat out by the ship, and felt better for it. She made little sound as she moved to cover the luminescent moss filled baskets (they were not real either, but it felt familiar and right) to do so. After drawing the door flap down and securing it tightly so the sand wouldn't leak in, she sat cross legged, close enough to be a comforting presence.

She could feel it, still, the lingering sense of energy or power, like a thing half glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Something silvery, possibly blue. Her palms itched with residual energy, like the calming she'd done wasn't enough. Arha massaged her palm with a thumb and frowned gently. She was the Watcher this night.

When his mind was sufficiently calmed, Luke cracked his blue eyes open a moment and stared into the darkness. He was warm and comfortable, surprisingly.

"Arha?" he called softly. "Thank you for letting me stay here. I know it must be odd to have someone else in your sanctuary."

"You are welcome," she murmured. "It saw no one but me when I was there. For once, it is good to share it." Her knuckles brushed out, just barely grazing his temple. "It is good to find comfort in a place that wakes one so rudely. Sleep. I will be here still when you wake."

His eyes closed again, amusement flooding him; after spending an indefinite amount of time in a pod, asleep, here he was scant hours after awakening going back to sleep.

"Get some rest yourself, Arha, you're tired," Luke said quietly, before dropping off.

Arha didn't reply with anything more than a soft hum.

She did rest, but she didn't sleep. Not truly. Arha dozed sitting up, her eyes open, and her senses sharp. So much as a pinprick would snap her into a fighting stance, should it be necessary. It would not be necessary, but still, a Watcher was prepared. It was not precisely the right term to use, but it suited the occasion. Arha was not at all bothered to sit this still.

It gave her time to order her thoughts, to speak to the mothers-within, and to test her senses.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Meet-n-Greet

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject