trans_9 | space & creatures [closed]

Current Location: obs deck

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space & creatures [closed]

Arha leaned over the tub her Little Maker had been confined to and hummed something that wasn't exactly a tune and yet was. It was rhythm-less, but it seemed to help ease the Shai-Hulud's distress. He was uncomfortable confined like this, much in the same way she was. Her fingers, too, helped, as they brushed along the sand-smooth hide.

Arha did not feel well. Unbalanced was a good description for it. Hot was another. It was not illness.

Yet today, the racing flipping colors outside that had fascinated her made her wish to vomit quite violently in the utmost of non-Fremen ways. She, like one of her training could, ignored the impulse and sat with her back to the lightshow, with her fingers gliding over the Little Maker's head as he bumped his tri-sectioned mouth into her hand. Arha closed her eyes and lay her head against her arm.

She was not so sure she liked space.

Perhaps it would pass.

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"Too wet, maybe," she murmured. "Not enough space. Too much space." Maybe it was the worm, the worm she'd absorbed, broken down, returned to the sand. The worm that had given her its knowledge and given her the desert. The water aversion must have something to do with it, her reaction. And yet, she could bathe. It didn't make sense.

"You're not used to space travel, are you?" he asked gently. He could see ow the swirling colors outside the observation deck would make someone used to tan sands and washed-out skies uneasy.

"There is little travel involved," Arha said. "The Guild Navigators fold space from one point to another. No movement, just planet descent. No colors."

"Fold space? You mean they use hyperspace?" Luke was trying to distract her from the swirling colors with conversation, though he was genuinely curious about her world. Both her home and his sounded so similar. "But even then there's time involved. A long hyperspace jump can take hours."

"Instantaneous," Arha said softly, focusing through the way her very bones seemed to want to crack open. It would pass, given time. "No time, no movement. Just here and then there."

"How do they--" Luke stopped himself, grinning at his own enthusiasm. "I'm sorry, I should do more to help get your mind off what's wrong, rather than pry. Is there anything I could do?"

"Spice," she said, sinking down against the tub as she tried to force her body to accept the new environment yet again. It worked for a few days before she had to do this all over again. "They do it with Spice." Arha was still for awhile.

"It is not a mind thing. It is a body thing, and the mind bends the body," she finally said, teeth grit. "We need to try the city. If there is danger in it, so be it, but such is preferable to this space." There was a hissing grumbling that came from the pen. "I shall need to get him down there as well."

Arha forced herself upright and lifted the awkward pot-like pen. It was definitely heavy with the weight of the container and the creature within. She felt, for a moment, like she was suffocating in the air, in the water, this ship, this place, and she stood there, shaking, clutching her last remaining physical link to her home.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

The shaking stopped, though the physical strain did not.

Worried, Luke held out a hand, exerting the Force to wrap around and support the little pen the worm was in. "Let me," he said softly. "You can let go of it, and I can support it as we walk. You don't look well enough to lift a bantha cub, let alone anything else."

"I could carry it to the ends of the sands and back, though this place would drown me with its water," Arha said fiercely. She let him have it though, her point made. "I am not pleased with the humidity of this...this Thinking Machine."

She paused in her moment of tirade.

"...what is this...bantha cub?" she asked, flicking a glance at him. Arha was unhappy with the fact that she had no stillsuit to collect all the moisture she was leaking and it was all sliding down her cheeks and into the suit and it was wrong, like she was going to lose it all and there would be nothing but sloppy skin and bones left. She controlled her breathing, focused,and let the fear go. This was no time to completely lose her mind.

She had survived the Agony, she would survive this, too.

Luke began to get the idea that perhaps she wasn't ill, but unaccustomed to any air but that of the dry desert, and the marked humidity inside the ship was too fast a change for her. He kept his hand out, levitating the tub in front of him as they walked, his use of the Force opening him up to more of her swirling, turbulent emotions.

"It's the cub--the young of a creature native to Tatooine," he said as they walked. "Come to think of it, you probably couldn't even lift a womp rat right now, you really ought to rest."

"You will have to show me what it looks like, in the...Thinking Machine's light room." Arha moved less fluidly than she had before, but carefully, trying to save as much of her water as she could. The dripping would have to stop as it irritated her. Had the worm changed her insides as much as it had changed her mind?

"I will rest when this is finished," Arha said calmly. "No sooner."

"Stubborn," Luke muttered, but he was grinning as they got to the Hub; Luke reached out and grabbed the sandworm tub before he walked up to one of the tubes and looked in curiously.

"I guess this place wouldn't have elevators if it's living," he said absently. "These tubes are like its arteries and veins in a way."

"Survivalist," she shot back.

Arha looked at him and then at the tubes uncertainly. She didn't especially want to go down (up?) there, but she was fairly certain it had to be better than dying where she was. The only verbal opinion she had on the matter was a soft curse about thinking machines.

"Even survivalists know their limits," he said seriously, and stepped forward into one of the tubes, the container with the worm firmly gripped against his body. He could feel its impression in the Force, squirming through the sand as they plummeted and were pushed out onto the city level. Using the Force to cushion the transition, Luke set the container on the floor and levitated it again, waiting for Arha to come out of the tube.

Even only having known her for a few days, Luke fretted about her. She hadn't seemed like this when they'd met, sweating and uncomfortable, and as with anyone he cared about even a little his heart went to her, wanting to do what he could to alleviate the pain of someone close to him.

Oh just go.

The thought wasn't her own, not really. It was one of her mothers-within. She wasn't scared of it, of the falling, of the landing. She moved carefully, wanting to scowl as she stepped forward, but she didn't. This was highly annoying as a means of travel. She did not exit as well as she might have liked -- certainly nothing befitting a Reverend Mother.

The heap of limbs was not at all attractive, but she stayed there for a long moment. The air was better, at least.

Luke had to suppress a chuckle; it wouldn't do to let Arha think he was laughing at her. "All right?" he asked, holding a hand (his right, incidentally, the cybernetic hand) out to her to help pull her up.

She took the offered hand and pulled herself up, tight lipped and quiet. Her eyes flicked to his and she mumbled something that probably wasn't gong to magically form words. She figured if she was still breathing, she was fine. There was a part of her that wondering what was amusing about emerging from a tube in a mess -- she could tell he was amused half by touch and half by naked observation.

"The day I cease to breathe," she said solemnly, "is the day I am...not...all right."

"Fair enough," Luke said, and drew his hand back after she'd gotten her feet under her. "That's a good way of looking at it, really."

He carefully tucked his amusement back inside. While he'd landed himself in far more ignominious positions with far less grace (usually while wounded or fighting) Luke could understand if her pride had been damaged by his reaction.

"Where to?" he asked.

"I could do no better than close my eyes, spin, and point," Arha said with a slight sigh. "We go that way." She pointed to the left with a dubious look as she didn't trust this Thinking Machine ship named Stacy at all after that...tube thing. Even steps would have been appreciated, not this whooshing disposal like drivel.

"Hopefully it will be a place of quiet."

"Hopefully," Luke said, and, with the pot levitating in front of him, led the way.

The silence stretched on for a few minutes, not awkward but simply the silence between people who have nothing to say and need not speak. Luke was never one to try and fill the silence with empty words, but he did want to make conversation--hopefully it would help her feel better to talk and get her mind off her own queasiness.

"Tell me more about where you're from," he said. "I saw a little with the images your sandworm showed me, but tell me about it from your point of view."

"I stayed away from most of the conflict," Arha said, frowning a little. "When Paul Mua'Dib called Shai-Hulud, I stayed at Sitch Tabr and healed the wounded. There is very little that will stop a worm, so relatively few came to me for healing. The Fremen are a proud people, skilled in combat -- more so when Paul came and taught them The Weirding Way. I saw a great deal of death, but the battle was relatively quick."

She shrugged slightly.

"I prefer the sands and peace, which is why I retreated to the desert as soon as I could."

"After a war, I understand. I've seen my share of it and it..." he paused, sorrow welling up in him again. Obi-Wan, his father, Chewbacca, Mara, Jacen.

"It always takes those we love," Luke said softly. "It's too high a price to keep paying over and over."

"I did not have anyone close," Arha said, glancing at him for a long moment. "You had more than a few. It is a loss that should never be borne. I grieve for your losses. They are always too many, too great. I have pulled loved ones from bodies I could not get to in time. You never truly heal. Some walked into the desert afterward and did not return."

This was something she could not ease and it troubled her, though her fingers stretched out to soothe anyway. They did not touch him.

He was quiet a long moment, collecting himself. "The Jedi of the Old Republic were forbidden to form attachments," Luke said after a moment. "Sometimes I understand why. When we lose those we love or have people we wish to protect, it doesn't stay a matter between families but too often becomes an interplanetary incident."

Not to mention that it sent those who lost loved ones dangerously close to the paths leading to the Dark Side. Fear of loss--Anakin Skywalker's folly, and Jacen Solo's. Anger, revenge--his own. But Luke wouldn't trade his son for the entire galaxy and he would fight wars to keep things that way.

"It is a powerful thing," she said quietly. "For one with your gifts, I can see how it might become tempting to strike out in less civilized ways in order to exact revenge. I could see how that might effect others on a greater scale." Her fingers relaxed and felt back to her side.

"And yet," Arha stared ahead, "those without attachments are often solitary, alone, and lose touch with their...humanity. You cannot care about the Universe without being part of it. There must be something to fight for, even if it is simply a group of people you watch over as best as you are able."

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