Forgotten

[Cai'rn]

Caamas


Mine is a forgotten world. Destroyed by an Empire in the name of obliterating the remnants of an older age. I was a child then, barely able to comprehend the horror that was occurring. My family were not natives and I was not born on this once vivid planet. Though that hardly matters now. After the Firestorm that reduced the once lush greenery to a desolate waste those that survived and were able to fled. I was not so lucky. I remember the skies blanketing. I remember ash and sickness. I remember hoping and dreaming of rescue. I remember when the planet was struck again, as if the very hands of fate wished to wipe clean all that remained. It failed.

Those that survive do so only because we have no other choice. Human, Ithorian, Caamasi - reduced to nothing but roaming tribes. Resources are scarce. Our air is poison. Lives are empty.

Hope is gone.

And yet I remain.



****


The sandstorm raged across the wastes, assaulting the lifeless earth and any of those unlucky enough to be trapped in its path. A lone landspeeder clung to the inner edge of one of the planet's many craters, half burried beneath the relentless sands. That would need to be corrected, but for now the heavily modified Aratech piece of junk that a man named Cai'rn called home sat still, its lone occupant more focused with attempting to cough out the debris clogging his airway from when he had raced back as the storm had abruptly moved in.

A pair of well worn goggles were pulled up from his eyes and tossed to the floor before Cai'rn fumbled for a bit of scrap he had been attempting to scratch a rough map into. There were settlements out here, some to be avoided at all costs, others that could be reasoned with. Turf wars and holdouts. These things were important to know. He squinted at the rough scrawling and muttered something unsightly under his breath before reaching up and attempting to wipe some of the grime from the speeder's scratched and aged transparisteel canopy with a tattered sleeve of what had once been his father's coat. It was a lost cause. Even if the speeder had been pristine as the day it had come off from its production line, the storm's cover blocked out most of Cirius' light and the sun was now as good as worthless.

His stomach growled at him in protest and for a weakened moment Cai'rn looked towards the dwindling supply of ration bars that had been left from when an attempt was actually made at relocating refugees. They were old, stale, tasteless. Life sustaining. A snarl crept its way from his throat as he redoubled focus on the map. No, he could manage another day or two. His water supply however...

A hand banged against the metal container that took up a large portion of the back section of the speeder. An ominous empty reverberation answered back. It was hard to tell some days what was the faster losing battle, keeping himself alive or keeping the landspeeder running. If one gave out, so would the other.

Cai'rn ground some of the remaining grit between his teeth as he looked back to the roughly scrawled map. The nearest friendly territory was several klicks away, he could make it on foot if the storm let up after dawnbreak, but that meant using more water and some of a ration bar. It would have to do, compromises had to be made. His tongue ground against his top teeth, enhancing the already bitter taste in his mouth as it was thought over. No choice.

Now to just find something to bargain with.

[Cai'rn]

Nothing was useless when looked at in the proper light. Scraps of metal from old housings and abandoned or damaged transports were worth more than all the credits in the galaxy to the right person. No matter how scarred or tattered, anything other than dirt was of value.

The landspeeder was far from roomy, but over the years Cai'rn had learned how to move in the cramped space, its innard mess perhaps meaningless to anyone but its owner. He braced his knees against the passenger side seat, its back rest long removed and re-sourced. He felt his back touch the canopy above, spine pressing against layers of clothing that kept him too warm at times and barely comfortable at others. It was a familiar if not uncomfortable position, one that allowed him to pull together the poorly welded scrap of metal that made the box of items he considered at least somewhat expendable. If Cai'rn had his way, all of them would be hoarded preciously, and in a way they were.

A few power cells for blasters he didn't own, various scraps of fabric, an actual aid kit that he'd only opened once to take full inventory upon acquiring but couldn't himself to actually think of as his... The last item was held in his hands as his brow furrowed. If he took it it would have to be guarded heavily, used as a last resort and he better get enough water, food, and fuel to keep himself going for the rest of the plant's rotation. Maybe some of those illusive bacta patches he kept hearing about in hushed whispers whenever he managed to get to one of the larger settlements. Unless the kit contained those...

Kraaasssttt... He rolled his eyes skyward to the reddish tint that was ever darkening above. The last thing Cai'rn wanted to do was open that kit and find himself actually needing the contents. He tried to not think about what the air alone was doing to him on a daily basis, never-mind the scrapes and scratches that he earned on a daily basis.

Then there was the possibilities that occurred to him of what could transpire on his trip. No, he decided and placed the med kit back within the box, dragging a piece of what looked like the relatively complete remnants of a woman's dress over the small white tin. As if the planet itself spoke to him, the winds changed, turning the relatively ignorable whistle that came from a thin crack at the very edge of the canopy when it was locked down now suddenly became a howl of inconceivable proportions as if all the spirits of the dead of Caamas were squeezing through the thin slit to blame him for surviving when they all hadn't. Who is the true fortunate here?

A low growl left him, a warning for the spirits to back off and find some other pour soul to antagonize before his fingers dug into the soft fabric of the dress and unceremoniously crammed it against the offending leak. He held it there with his hand for a while before his position shifted, settling himself back into his proper seat and lifted a tattered boot to shove against the cloth to keep it in place.

The answer was now staring him in the face. Not his boots - you didn't give those up. But the dress. Clothing was a premium, especially anything from the old days, even if it had a few missing patching and tears. Fine. He'd take the dress and the damned kit. Start with the easy bargain and pray they didn't want more. He didn't need much to get away from this sector, after all.

That was bad, though. That bit of the old world was his go to when the winds got mean, which meant without it there would be a few more sleepness nights in his future. Fair exchange.

[Cai'rn]

Waking was a truly miserable affair. If Cirius didn't pry his eyes open by shining down like the accusatory finger of an almighty deity, then the nightmares did him in. Today it was the later, though they at least had the courtesy to do it when it wasn't still pitch black and left him wondering if his eyes had been consumed by some parasite in the middle of the night. Still, in that brief moment between the world of the living and of the untold dreams, Cai'rn had lashed an arm out and it had struck the landspeeder's interior with far more force than he would have liked, elbow colliding with bulkhead that forced a shout of anger that he barely kept from evolving into a feral howl of rage.

His fist collided with the console in front of him and the canopy raised, sluggish under the weight of sand that had built up overnight and ages of use. Cai'rn followed it, his back hunched until he could stand up straight. It hurt, but in a good way as he attempted to undo what the cramped space within the landspeeder had forced upon him. The storm had settled, leaving a still landscape before him, though his vision mostly encompassed the crater and the long shadows that Cirius was drawing out in it as the sun rose.

Cai'rn nodded his head, the day was still early enough he could probably make it to the outpost and back before nightfall unless another storm came up. He shook out his arm and let a stream of air blow out past his slightly chapped lips as the pain flared in it. Bad start. It should probably have served as a warning from the galaxy but he never had been one to listen very well.

With a heavy breath, Cai'rn fell back into his seat and grabbed the tattered hide pack that was usually tucked under the remains of the passenger side cushion. The goggles he had tossed aside the previous day were tugged on over his head and left to hang near his neck as he began searching for the dress that must have fallen from where he had wedged it. Once found he turned to glare accusingly at the med kit that sat in full view atop the pile of other objects in the scrap box. He probably stared it down for a handful of ticks before it was rather violently grabbed and shoved as deeply into the pack as possible.

A small container of water was collected from the metal drum and he broke a ration bar in half, then repeated the motion again to further break it down and placed the smaller of the two pieces in his mouth. A quarter there, a quarter on the way back. That was the deal he made himself. Everything afterwards was meticulously slid back into it's proper place before Cai'rn finally hoisted himself out of the landspeeder and closed the canopy back in place. He loathed to leave the landspeeder alone where he could not keep an eye on it, but with any luck he would be able to move it again tomorrow.

Luck, Cai'rn allowed himself a laugh. Cruel mistress.