Rhea Kaylen
Jul 6th, 2004, 08:48:48 PM
OOC: I have submitted The Application to its appropriate thread and been accepted. So...I post here next, correct? If so, then everybody jump in who wants to!
IC
Ugh, jet lag was a horrible thing. Really, really awful. Rhea Kaylen glanced at her wrist chronometer and did some quick mental calculations around a yawn. Something like...what, four-thirty a.m., Imrani time? She hadn't been up that early in months.
The sunlight was glinting off pristine transparisteel and gleaming reinforced metal girders with a cheerfulness Rhea found difficult to tolerate, let alone imitate. Coruscanti sunrises were generally unpleasant things: in the lower levels they were more like gradual, greenish illuminations, and in the upper levels were so brutally reflected off of building surfaces and atmospheric smog they nearly blinded residents every morning. Rhea squinted through the brightness, yawning again, as she clambered out of the air taxi and proceeded into a heated debate about her fare with the cabby.
Five minutes and twenty-five and a quarter credits later, Rhea strolled down a large, glistening white-stone thoroughfare painted rosy by the rising sun. As it was only about seven-thirty local, there were very few other souls out and about yet. The street Rhea walked, leading to the infinitely majestic, towering Jedi Temple, was atypically silent, actually peaceful, which was quite an occurence in this part of the city. Of this, Rhea was very glad. She needed the time to think and clear her head.
She was very nervous about what she was about to do. Six months on Imran had given her time and opportunity to come to some realizations about herself and her life to this point. What she'd come up with was a really pathetic lot of...well, nothing. She had left her six-year life behind on Coruscant when she went home. But when she'd arrived, she'd found out there was nothing for her there, either. Oh, her uncle and his new wife, Rhea's extended family, old friends had all welcomed her, made her happy with their smiles and hugs. But later, when the homecoming was over, there was nothing. No job for Rhea except to do whatever she could to help her uncle with young Tayadhara Ramanuja's training. And that wasn't a lot, considering Rhea wasn't well-trained, herself.
And, in the silence of living from day to day, when people around her thought her ears were closed, the whispers had begun to ring loudly again. They were the same murmured echoes of a horrible past that had driven Rhea from Imran at the age of twenty, buzzing, poisonous lies mouthed in ignorance that had tortured her otherwise happy childhood.
Mutterings of the curse, the imagined taboo on Rhea's family that had made most of the Imrani Rhea had ever met keep their distance from her.
Not all those people were malicious. Some were genuinely frightened or concerned, even more were simply curious. But whatever their individual reasons for carrying on the ridiculous rumors, their words had done more harm than they could know. Rhea had not wanted to leave Tayadhara behind on Imran. But she could not have stayed another moment.
She had needed to get away from the memories she could not escape. She'd needed to get away from Imran.
By now, Rhea had reached the enormous arched, tooled metal doors leading into the front area of the Temple. Beyond these doors was a new life, a new reason to live--and a hundred new things of which to be unsure.
Gah, she was getting nowhere just standing here gawping. And it was cold out here.
Rhea entered quickly, not giving herself another moment to argue with herself. She was going to do this, now.
The high-ceilinged hall on the other side of the doors was empty and dim and quiet. For a moment Rhea thought that perhaps she shouldn't have come so early--maybe no one was about yet. Oh, well, if no one was up (Rhea couldn't help thinking that she shouldn't be up at such an obscene hour), she could wait.
Rhea's scuffing footsteps and meek, tremulous voice echoed softly in the hall of the Recruitment Center as she walked in.
"Hello?"
IC
Ugh, jet lag was a horrible thing. Really, really awful. Rhea Kaylen glanced at her wrist chronometer and did some quick mental calculations around a yawn. Something like...what, four-thirty a.m., Imrani time? She hadn't been up that early in months.
The sunlight was glinting off pristine transparisteel and gleaming reinforced metal girders with a cheerfulness Rhea found difficult to tolerate, let alone imitate. Coruscanti sunrises were generally unpleasant things: in the lower levels they were more like gradual, greenish illuminations, and in the upper levels were so brutally reflected off of building surfaces and atmospheric smog they nearly blinded residents every morning. Rhea squinted through the brightness, yawning again, as she clambered out of the air taxi and proceeded into a heated debate about her fare with the cabby.
Five minutes and twenty-five and a quarter credits later, Rhea strolled down a large, glistening white-stone thoroughfare painted rosy by the rising sun. As it was only about seven-thirty local, there were very few other souls out and about yet. The street Rhea walked, leading to the infinitely majestic, towering Jedi Temple, was atypically silent, actually peaceful, which was quite an occurence in this part of the city. Of this, Rhea was very glad. She needed the time to think and clear her head.
She was very nervous about what she was about to do. Six months on Imran had given her time and opportunity to come to some realizations about herself and her life to this point. What she'd come up with was a really pathetic lot of...well, nothing. She had left her six-year life behind on Coruscant when she went home. But when she'd arrived, she'd found out there was nothing for her there, either. Oh, her uncle and his new wife, Rhea's extended family, old friends had all welcomed her, made her happy with their smiles and hugs. But later, when the homecoming was over, there was nothing. No job for Rhea except to do whatever she could to help her uncle with young Tayadhara Ramanuja's training. And that wasn't a lot, considering Rhea wasn't well-trained, herself.
And, in the silence of living from day to day, when people around her thought her ears were closed, the whispers had begun to ring loudly again. They were the same murmured echoes of a horrible past that had driven Rhea from Imran at the age of twenty, buzzing, poisonous lies mouthed in ignorance that had tortured her otherwise happy childhood.
Mutterings of the curse, the imagined taboo on Rhea's family that had made most of the Imrani Rhea had ever met keep their distance from her.
Not all those people were malicious. Some were genuinely frightened or concerned, even more were simply curious. But whatever their individual reasons for carrying on the ridiculous rumors, their words had done more harm than they could know. Rhea had not wanted to leave Tayadhara behind on Imran. But she could not have stayed another moment.
She had needed to get away from the memories she could not escape. She'd needed to get away from Imran.
By now, Rhea had reached the enormous arched, tooled metal doors leading into the front area of the Temple. Beyond these doors was a new life, a new reason to live--and a hundred new things of which to be unsure.
Gah, she was getting nowhere just standing here gawping. And it was cold out here.
Rhea entered quickly, not giving herself another moment to argue with herself. She was going to do this, now.
The high-ceilinged hall on the other side of the doors was empty and dim and quiet. For a moment Rhea thought that perhaps she shouldn't have come so early--maybe no one was about yet. Oh, well, if no one was up (Rhea couldn't help thinking that she shouldn't be up at such an obscene hour), she could wait.
Rhea's scuffing footsteps and meek, tremulous voice echoed softly in the hall of the Recruitment Center as she walked in.
"Hello?"