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Dorcas Vyre
Apr 29th, 2013, 05:35:20 PM
The thing you had to remember about Castis was that she was simple. If you didn't, you wound up being terrified of her eerie, high-pitched voice and distant eyes the colour of clouds before an electrical storm. She had the mind of a little child within her grown frame and a sweet nature, for all that it had only slippery ties to reality. It made her easy to forgive, easy to love. When the ship's planking thrummed beneath her feet she laughed and clapped her hands in giddy delight and whenever they left port - hundreds upon hundreds of times - she wept enough to fill a thousand tomorrows with her tears. Castis was a delicate slip of a thing. Utterly harmless.

So long as you remembered she was simple.

"I met your Death today," Castis said cheerily. She hummed a few minor-chord notes that seemed to tremble in the air for a moment before they caught on the tangle of yarn she was playing with.

Dorcas' hands stilled in their brushing of the other woman's long black hair as she tried to formulate a response that wouldn't result in an argument. Castis didn't like to feel as if she were being patronized. It made her mulish and petty, difficult to be around. This was a problem on a ship as small as The Fledermaus. The last time she'd gone rocky, Sy had threatened to vac' her out of an airlock. It had been a rough week for all of them.

"Did you?" Dorcas supplied after a brief pause, gathering up the thick hair in three glossy ropes. She began to twist it into a plait. "Was it kind?"

"Oh, yes," Castis laughed. "Clear and sweet, like birdsong."

Dorcas smiled at their reflections in the mirror. She finished twining Castis' hair together and tied the end with a length of yellow cord, then leaned forward and kissed the crown of her head. It smelled milky and clean, as pale as Castis was strange - simple. Simple, not strange. It was so easy to forget.

Setting down the brush, Dorcas stepped aside to the control panel on the wall and dimmed the lights in the cabin. This was the only single-bunk room on board. The rest of them slept two-or-more to a quarter but Castis had fitful dreams if anyone else shared with her. Even though they were pressed shoulder to shoulder like tinned fish, no one seemed to mind the seeming disparity of privilege. A small bit of give led to a large amount of peace for everyone involved.

"I'll wake you for morning stargazing," Dorcas murmured, a soft half-smile creeping hesitantly across her face. "Try and sleep well, friend. No talking to the air tonight; you need your rest, else your pretty smile will bend the wrong way."

Still playing with her yarn, Castis whistled a little tune. It probably meant she'd try.


- ~ -

The whole thing might have been funny if not for the fact that three weeks after Castis had seen Rorch's Death, he abandoned them in Kaachtari.

On a local news holocast, just before they were out of range, they heard of an unknown foreigner with three fingers found in an alley, split open from stem to stern. A vibroblade, most likely. Further details had not been released from the coroner's office.

Dorcas still shivered every time she thought of Rorch lifting his thumb, index, and middle finger in his jaunty version of a salute, even if Sy said the bastard had deserved his bad end.


- ~ -

Mama Freyda always said the first rule was: Never leave the family before your time.

The second: Do not cry when it comes.


- ~ -

For a time after Mama Freyda's Death had come to claim her, they were uncertain how they were to know whose would come next. She had always been the guiding force behind their every move, their salvation and emancipator, collecting them when no one else had wanted them. Freyda had given them all a home, a life, only setting them free when the appointed time made itself known to her. Without the old woman, they were simply a chain of spare cogs and spinning wheels that didn't know how to fit together in order to make the engine roar.

Then Sy had found The Key. Between that and Castis' sight, the way was found again.

Dorcas had been uncertain for a time, of course. She was the storyteller, the one who pulled from the others their fears and hopes without meaning to, who could paint images and intentions into their minds like magic, so deeply that it was as if they had always been there. Dorcas took to life with a cautious hesitance and always felt things a shade sharper than the rest. How could they be sure, she wanted to know, how could they be certain that these were not just delusions of grandeur and the trappings of grief leading them astray?

They lost the twins next. Edvard and Kliester had always done everything together. When they found a little secondhand comm shop for sale on Corellia that matched Castis' description and the coordinates that The Key had printed out exactly, even Dorcas had to admit that everything was back in order.

And so, life went on.

Or didn't.


- ~ -

The youngest of them all was Lemuel. At ten, the Dressellian ought to have been old enough to put himself to bed but they had long since fallen into the habit of a nighttime tale. Dorcas liked weaving stories for him as much as he liked hearing them. She could still remember holding him as an infant, wrinkled and warm in her arms. She'd scarcely been older than he was now but even then there'd been a hypnotic pull to her voice.

Lemuel quaked like windswept fields against Dorcas' senses. The Dressellian youth always made her feel lonesome somehow, as if all she had ever done (the entirety of her existence) was yearn for a far off place that was not here. Consequently, Dorcas liked to tell him stories of villages and towns, solid places that didn't move all the time as they did.

Tonight was no different. Tucked close together in his narrow bunk, their voices filtered to a low hush so as not to wake Bonne in the bed above, Dorcas murmured of small and quiet lives; of homes.

"It would be a tall house made of stone, one that can't be seen for all the trees - unless, of course, you stand just so on the street beyond the portered wall. If fortune smiles, you might be able to catch a glimpse of a window set in the very highest slope of the roof."

"Is that my room?"

"Would you like it to be?"

Lemuel nodded. He was aching with a want so fierce that it rattled in Dorcas' bones.

"Then so it is, pet," she whispered, holding him close and closing her eyes so she could send him a picture of anchors and warm, soft beds that never swayed. "Your very own."


- ~ -

When finally it was quiet and all the others were in bed, Dorcas padded to the galley. The overhead lights were off, perhaps burned out entirely again, but there was enough of a glow from the glowstrips stuck to the bottoms of the hanging cupboards to cast a warm, inviting hue to the space. Dorcas preferred this subtle illumination to the starkness of the main lights. It felt less clinical.

Sy was sitting at the table with a mug of stimcaf, like she'd known he would be. They were the oldest on board, both in age and seniority, and they always closed the evening by migrating here. Even when they were exhausted and fit for little else but sleep they somehow managed it, an inexplicable pull drawing them into this little ritual.

Sometimes Dorcas wondered if they were in love. She didn't think so, though a better explanation had yet to offer itself up. They'd kissed once, just to see what it was like. The experience had been so strange and unsettling that they had never tried again. Certainly they'd never bothered to attempt copulation after that, though Dorcas knew that Mama Freyda had always entertained hopes that one day they would.

Without looking up at her, Sy motioned toward a cup set across from him. No matter how late she was, he somehow always knew exactly when to brew her tea so that it was the perfect temperature when she arrived. Dorcas smiled a little as she crossed to slide into the chair opposite him and leaned down to breath in the pungent steam rising from her mug. They'd picked up this particular brew in their last port and it was an unfamiliar one, made from crushed loorblaur leaf. It made Dorcas' tongue prickle and she wasn't fond of the taste but it was better than the splitting headaches that caf brought on, so she was grateful for it. They'd all learned to make do. A little bit of subpar tea was hardly the worst sacrifice she'd ever made.


Folding her hands around her tea to absorb the warmth, Dorcas said, "Castis saw my Death."

The only indication that Sy gave of having heard her was a flickering stiffness in his shoulders. There and gone again. He lifted his mug and took a careful sip, rolling the liquid in his mouth before he swallowed. A couple of weeks of not shaving had begun to gather together in a ginger beard, the rusted hues making the tiny flecks of amber in his brown eyes stand out. Dorcas wasn't sure if she liked it. He looked older, harder.

Sy tapped a finger on the table, picking at a stain that would never come out. "Was it good?"

"She said so," Dorcas nodded. She tucked her hair behind her ears and blinked, willing away the sandy press of sleep. "I don't think she'd have told me if it wasn't. She likes me."

"Not enough to lie about a Death," Sy huffed. There was a tightness in his jaw and like strips of iron curling away from welding torch, anger rolled off of him. "That's not allowed."

They had both known this day would come around. It was as natural as anything and there was no point in getting upset over it. Dorcas wanted to remind him of that. They'd been traveling together for as long as either of them could remember and so it was only natural that they would have hoped to go on to the next step at the same time. Desires rarely matched with reality, however, and her preceding him didn't mean anything. His time would come, too. It was only a stroke of chance that he was the one having to survive her Death instead of the other way around, which was unfortunate for him but -

But she couldn't find the right words to express this. Everything that came to mind seemed insubstantial, flimsy. It was a new experience for Dorcas. She didn't like it.

Suddenly feeling awkward an uncomfortable, Dorcas shrugged. "Maybe she's wrong. There's a first time for everything."

Sy looked up and met her gaze. He stared for a long, long time. He hadn't looked at her at all until that very moment and the absence only made his doing so now feel all the more significant. Dorcas knew what he was reaching for even before he pulled a thin strip of duraplast from the inside pocket of his cardigan. He tossed the rectangle onto the table, let it clatter in the space between them.

The card fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. Etched on one side was an image of three triangles, intersecting at their apexes and framed at their bases by a hexagon. It matched the tattoo on the inside of her wrist perfectly. When she flipped it over to the other side, there was a single word: Ossus.

Dorcas stared at this, her fate, and ran a finger across the fine, fine print.

"I'm not afraid," she said.

Sy's foot bumped against hers under the table. "Good," he replied as he got up to rinse his mug. "That makes one of us."


- ~ -

Though it meant bending the rules a little, they made the journey last four weeks. Time was needed for all of them to adjust, for Dorcas had been on The Fledermaus for so long that she had acquired a natural rhythm of duties that would need sharing out. Over the weeks she encouraged Lemuel to take more initiative, showed him how to read the navcomp so that he could be a help to Sy and feel as though he were being useful. The boy took to the task with a devotion that relieved Dorcas; it made it easier for both of them to forget that soon they would not see each other.

She tried as best she could to teach Bonne the little intricacies of caring for Castis. Without a buffer, she warned, Sy would almost certainly lose his temper and do something he'd regret. It was important to keep hostilities from arising. Keep them both content and grant both their space. Yes, it took effort and cost energy, but it was a far sight better than the cost of the alternative. Everyone would suffer without a mediator.

Bonne seemed to pay attention and she had a good heart, which would serve her well in the daunting task. Still, Dorcas worried. The younger woman was at that peculiar age where everything was tenuous and she was teetering on the edge of understanding large and life-changing concepts. Adding anything to her plate right now was tempting catastrophe but what choice did they have? The best chance they had was to hope that Bonne could manage and that sooner rather than later they'd pick up another lost soul who could help her.

When the ship landed (Sy's grim laughter at having been granted clearance echoed down the corridor), Dorcas found that she was so dizzy that standing up required leaning against the wall and bracing her hands around a support bar. Saliva swelled beneath her tongue, sharp and metallic, and for a moment it seemed almost certain that she would be sick. How grateful she was that no one was allowed to see her on the day of her departure; it had always seemed like a cruelty from the other side, but she could understand now how merciful it was for the one marching toward their end to be spared the pity and concern of those whom they loved. Dorcas would have broken under the weight of their selfless interest.

There was only one bag set at her feet, dwarfed by the supply containers in the cargo hold. It held what few worldly possessions she had and a flask of water. Though she suspected she hadn't been meant to find it until later, Dorcas had already discovered the flat plastic chip with her identification symbol on it tucked into the bottom of the bag. Sy's woven bracelet had been looped around it. Now the faded band of red and ivory fibers was tied around her wrist, a tether to where she'd come from as the belly of the ship opened up to admit her to where she was going.

Before she could begin down the ramp, Dorcas felt a hand grasp the back of her sweater and tug.

"Castis!" Dorcas frowned as she twisted around and caught the woman's empty, flapping hand in her own. A knot formed in her stomach and she shook her head fiercely, deep-set eyes shadowed and nervous. "You're not supposed to be here. It's against the - "

"Shh," Castis whispered. As unperturbed as ever, she merely leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Dorcas'. Her skin was soft and cool, a balm against Dorcas' own sweat-damp brow. Despite the total inappropriateness of her presence, there was something utterly reassuring about it all. Simple. Dorcas didn't have it in her to send Castis away.

She sighed. "I have to go, friend. It's my time."

Smiling widely, Castis nodded. Her eyes were bright as she trailed a finger down Dorcas' cheek. The edge of her nail tickled faintly as it skritched lightly against the skin and then Castis leaned closer, pressed her lips to the shell of Dorcas' ear.

"Sometimes," she whispered, "A Death is a beginning."

Before Dorcas could reply (before she could think), Castis kissed her on the temple and then laughed. Two spry hands were planted on the center of Dorcas' chest and then suddenly she was tumbling backwards, a hearty shove driving her down the ramp and out into the bright light of day. It happened so quickly that doubt was driven away and replaced instead by a startled shock. Caught off guard by the push (where had such strength come from in so slight a figure?) and given no chance to prepare for the violent momentum, Dorcas' right foot hooked on the back of her left ankle and she pitched forward, landing hard on the ground.

A few seconds later, her bag sailed out and landed with a thunk on the earth beside her.

Serena Laran
Apr 30th, 2013, 12:13:53 PM
The medical facilities on Ossus were better than they had had in the Wheel convoy, if only because everything and everyone was in one place, instead of scattered throughout several different ships. They didn't have proper walls yet, but a large pavilion that had been sprayed with an insulating plastic. It was strong enough to lean against, kept out the bugs and wind, but it wasn't precisely sterile or permanent. A prefab medical building was under construction, but for now the pavilion would do.

Inside there were sterile operating rooms created with inflatable plastic rooms and various venting systems, clumped in the middle of the tent like glowing cubes. Blessedly they were, at the moment, unoccupied. Examination rooms were separated from each other by curtains, strung on criss-crossing wires set at about seven feet off the ground. And the ground, of course, had been sealed off completely with a quick drying and self-leveling compound. It was thick but clear, leaving the illusion that one was floating above native grasses and the occasional wildflower.

Serena walked out of the medical tent, a burst of air in her face as the double door 'air lock' vent system ensured that no errant pollens or microbes entered as she exited. A quick walk to replenish her mind before her afternoon appointments was what she had in mind, and she found herself heading toward the landing field.

Landing mud pit was more descriptive, of course. A duracrete pad was in the process of being put down but it wasn't big enough yet and a majority of the ship traffic unloaded and loaded on the dirt. Thankfully today it was dirt, but if it rained the entire area was churned into thick mud within minutes if a cargo ship was being emptied. Serena looked on as a young woman was ejected from a ship, her bag landing beside her. The sensation she got from the girl, from even so far away, was one of sadness and loss.

Dorcas Vyre
May 4th, 2013, 03:52:35 PM
Dorcas lifted her head. She thought it was best to start small and work up to more ambitious things. This was her first time being Dead, after all. It would be unbearably mortifying to fail at it - though just what constituted a failure was difficult to ascertain. The details on how to die were regrettably scarce. She had only ever been on the other side of the equation, a participant of the grieving ceremony and a borrower of sorrows that only compounded her own personal sense of loss - a pale grey thing, shifting and twisting like a cloud within her mind - so that she was forced to keep to herself for a few days, put some precious distance between her mind and those of the other's just so that she was not wholly crushed beneath the sprawling sense of confused regret that always followed a Death.

It was so much easier to be alive, Dorcas realized. When the ship (oh, that wonderful little nest of durasteel and cables and spanner-driven care; she'd never understood until just this moment what it meant to her) was back amidst the safety of the stars, the others would step easily into their roles. Sy would erase her name from the manifest. He would be alone now, a captain well and true. The responsibility - the burden - would be good for him. It would be good for Lemuel as well, who still had so much growing to do but who would know to pick a small and innocuous star to name for her, a celestial tombstone with coordinates that would be scratched onto the little panel that hung in the galley. Bonne would jettison what few things Dorcas had left behind and scrub down her bunk, and Castis would sing the farewell melody. There was no doubt for them.

Not like here and now, for Dorcas. She blinked a few times before she could muster up the certainty to sit back on her haunches, palms coming to rest on the flats of her thighs. Though her wide-eyed stare seemed to be taking in everything around her, Dorcas was actually only acutely aware of the pressing in of a singular thread of attention. It was like a needle, one that was only just beginning to test the edge of a scrap of fabric in preparation to plunge in. Benign as it was, the sensation of being watched was unmistakable. Dorcas knew it intimately. She was a people-watcher herself (whenever they docked, she liked to peer out at the milling spaceport and watch all those bodies slouching to and fro; her eyes would land on a pair of hands interlaced and she would wonder if those two souls were twined together, too, like delicate tulles of choking vine; wonder if there really was such a thing as souls at all, or if that was all just a nebulous hope stowed carefully in the collective nest of traveler's dreams.)

Squinting into the distance, Dorcas lifted a hand and held it out. Her palm pressed toward the... woman, yes, definitely a woman, with fingers fanned to stripe the air. She peered through the space left between the knuckles of her index and middle finger. They were swollen slightly, knobbled joints inflamed by the cold of The Fledermaus. It made them look like the whittled fragments of a tree branch. There was no room for pride here, yet Dorcas couldn't help but smile a little at that small, lingering token from the only home she'd ever known.

But: Death waited for no one.

With a resigned sigh, Dorcas abandoned her stagnant attempt at a wave and instead climbed to her feet. She left her bag where it lay, unsure of whether or not she would need it. Things seemed rather immaterial at the present moment.

Serena Laran
May 7th, 2013, 05:21:50 PM
Serena continued walking toward the lone figure as she struggled to her feet, and raised a hand in a slight wave. They approached each other, the ship forgotten in the distance. No one else seemed to be coming off of it.

"Welcome to Ossus," she said, inclining her head toward the young woman. Questions about cargo delivery, or what the ship's purpose here was, fell away before she could give them voice. The girl looked utterly lost. Abandoned? The ship was spinning up it's repulsors, getting ready to take off. No cargo, then. Just the girl.

"My name is Serena Laran. Do you need a place to stay, child?"

Dorcas Vyre
May 24th, 2013, 03:20:58 AM
For a moment she contemplated the absurd idea of revolution. What would the others do if she simply refused to accept what lay before her? It would be no work at all to turn now and run. Dorcas could feel the power in her thighs. She knew that if she demanded it of them they could carry her across the landing field and provide enough thrust to leap up and slip through the closing sliver of the ship's ramp before the chance closed off entirely. It went against everything they knew to be true but that didn't mean that it was impossible.

Her heart thumped in an arrhythmic flutter, at once both thrilled and terrified by such boldly unlawful thoughts. Was this how it was for all who met their Death?

Mama Freyda would have been disappointed in her. She had not approved of the world outside their own. It was too dangerous, too loose, too reckless. Beings got hurt out there, she said, for reasons no more substantial than the half-misted remnants of rainclouds. Keeping fast hold to the rules of their little community (their protection, their hope) had been paramount to the old matron and even considering going against their ways was dangerous. That philosophy had settled firmly in Sy, whose steady anger and resolute determination made it natural for him to believe in things and latch on to them without flinching. Dorcas had been no less swayed but there had always been a flickering wisp of fearful curiosity in her that encouraged furtive wondering.

Dorcas stared openly at the woman as she approached. It took effort to keep a fragile smile on her face but she found that she could no more easily wear blankness, for she was filled with such a restless, rolling energy that her muscles demanded form and shape. Dorcas dipped her head to one side, considering.

"I don't know," she finally confessed, slowly. A small line appeared in the space between her eyebrows as they drew together. "But this is where we - I - were meant to go, at least. Are you the End of All Ends?"

Serena Laran
May 24th, 2013, 11:58:40 AM
Serena considered the question for a moment; pondering it as a philosophical query and comparing it to known Force religions. The girl did not appear in robes or anything that would blatantly indicate a Force sect or cult, but the question seemed posed in the context of one (keeping in mind where she was asking it), or perhaps something else entirely.

"This is the end of many lives," Serena said gently. "The end of the old and a new beginning. Not the end, perhaps, but an end." Philosophically a sound answer, though perhaps a little poetic and obtuse. "Do you know where we are?"

Dorcas Vyre
May 24th, 2013, 01:20:25 PM
Dorcas breathed out slowly. It was the same sort of exhalation that she'd issued when Lemuel was smaller and given to foolish things like wasting an entire week's worth of amino powders simply because he liked the way they fizzed and liquefied when mixed with a drop of water; a touch of patience smoking through a greater field of tired impatience. It felt strange to not be understood after living so long with people who trundled along to the same rhythm.

Disapproval did not sit well on Dorcas' features. They were too young and untested to bear such starkness for more than a few seconds. The lines unfolded accordion like from her face as she shook her head.

"No, not this," she clarified, gesturing with wide-spread palms to the earth and sky that surrounded them. A knot of worry was beginning to thread itself together in her chest. "You. Are you the End of All Ends? There's meant to be a guide. Or at least, I think there is - I've never Died before, you see."

Dorcas' lips drew together in thin contemplation. It made her cheeks round oddly, as though she'd tasted something sour, and in the gesture she could hear the echoes of Castis laughing.

"Maybe we were wrong," Dorcas said slowly. The thought was a terrifying one. They had never been wrong before. "This is Ossus. That much is correct. But maybe we were wrong about the rest and it's not meant to be me."

Serena Laran
May 24th, 2013, 03:20:15 PM
Serena's forehead creased slightly as the young woman spoke. When she paused to take a breath the Jedi interjected, "I am a Jedi Master, of the Jedi Order here on Ossus. I have never been called the End of All Ends before, but I can certainly be a guide for you here in the camp."

She paused, not wanting to increase the girl's distress but not knowing if she was mentally ill or just confused made it difficult to know what was the right thing to say. "Who is 'we'?"