Shadows of Bankor

The Enclave was a wasteland of half-destroyed buildings patrolled by speeders full of troopers. A dead place. Its borders, though, were as clear as when it had been alive: on one side, destruction; on the other, intact apartment blocks and warehouses no more battered than yesterday. From the roofs of the buildings nearest the former Enclave, a person could see the whole mess spread out before her, like a carpet on which a child's city of blocks had been roughly kicked apart. And then set on fire.

Sinnya sat crosslegged on one such roof, a glass jar of cactus moonshine open within easy reach. And she wasn't alone...

---

Viati was tired of resting, and then when she wasn’t resting she was looking after Hulia whose condition had not improved but she was still alive. She had seen darkness but what befell them was something out of a nightmare. Despair seemed the only option but her people looked to her for leadership and guidance. She didn;t have the luxury of despair and self-pity.

So finding herself on this roof with the little sister seemed a relief from the expectations of the people. The Aznuri would endure but the wound was deep and she was unsure if they would ever recover.

Then there was the monster in the sky, they called it the Dictator, another display if power from the Empire.

"It's hard to see how things could get any worse sometimes," Ru'ni lamented as he approached the two women.

Pausing to place a gentle kiss atop Viati's head, he sat beside her taking her hand in his.

"Good Evening Sinnya."

"Brother Ru'ni." Sinnya favored him with a glum nod. "Drink?" One thin hand offered him the jar of desert firewater.

She was silent for a few beats and then said, abruptly, "My Ma never taught me the mourning songs."

"Maybe she thought I'd never have anybody I needed to sing them for." Sinn's face was nearly expressionless as she stared out over the wreckage, but the tips of her lekku twined themselves together. "She forgot herself."

"Later I had to go to the Enclave and ask the people to come sing for her instead of me. Sister Viati found some who would. And I still don't know all the words."

"It is hard for some to visualise their own mortality. For some of us it's harder to think of anothers." He squeezes Viati's hand gently as he accepts the drink with his other.

"But the words aren't all, I'm sure I probably got some of them wrong. It's the emotions, the intentions and the rawness that power those songs. I doubt even a third of those spectators knew the words or the translation, but they ALL knew the message."

“Do you think they really did?” Sinnya helped herself to another mouthful of the strong local spirits. Some might say the stuff was an acquired taste.

"Did anybody understand the exiles? Not the other people in Rygor, and not the forest tribes, not completely." She leaned her folded arms on the low barrier around the edge of the flat rooftop. "Probably not me. They tried to be in-between, and..."

And as Ru'ni had discovered a few days ago, he had not really acquired it, but still he sipped at his drink in solidarity.

"Every life has its dangers and it takes great courage to walk away from one to carve out your place in another. The Exiles, they all came here for different reasons, personal reasons, but they formed a community, their own tribe. Now that tribe is gone." Ru'ni hung his head in sorrow as he raised his cup to the sky.

"It must be difficult to be between worlds as I assume some of them were, pulled between civilization and their roots. I only hope that now their souls have found the peace they were looking for in life."

Yeah, it's not easy being in between. But it's harder being dead.

"The Empire wants the city folk to remember them all as terrorists." Sinnya glowered at the wedge-shaped behemoth marring the night sky above Rygor. "Lies.They shot children. I never thought they could go that far."

In Sinn's experience, the powerful killed, maimed, and tormented regular people by neglect, not with such willful hatred. Even her well-cultivated cynicism hadn't prepared her for this.

"We must not let the people forget that they lived, and lived well. This Empire is a blight, and we must never forget what our kin suffered," she said before laying her head on Ru'ni's shoulder.

Ru'ni ran his fingers through Viati's hair as he mused her words, formulating his own thoughts before speaking.

"We also must not let the survivors think their suffering has gone unnoticed by their kin. The Aznuri endure, but need not do so alone." He stated, his malaise now overcome by purpose.

"Pass the word, if any regret their leaving the Sky Tree Sea, if any wish to return and seek refuge in their homeland, even temporarily - I will take them."

"Will the people in the forest take them back?" Sinn knew better than most that some of the Exiles had complicated reasons for living in the city.

"Yes," Ru'ni answered unhesitatingly. "I will convince them."

He knows that he has failed his people once, underestimating this invading Imperial force. He also know he will not fail them again. "Either we stand together and triumph or we stand apart and fall. I cannot permit that to happen, the Elders will see the wisdom in this. Maybe not all of them, but enough."

"What does triumph even look like to you?" Sinn glared at the underlit shape of the Star Destroyer a moment longer, and then flopped tipsily back to sit on her heels again. "They've got blasters and lightsabers and... that. And whole planets full of soldiers. They can do yesterday as many times as they want." She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilly as the other two cuddled up closer together.

"At this point?" Ru'ni let out an exasperated sigh, even as he removes the VIsybara cloak from his primitive outfit and hands it to Sinnya.

"I'd say survival of our culture. Modest aim by most standards, but as you say..." His gaze turns upwards towards The Dictator. "We're not exactly working from a position of strength here."

"Yeah..." She took the fur with a wordless nod of thanks and snugged it around her shoulders. "I thought before that there was nothing they'd want in the forest. That the people there would be safe, anyway, whatever went down in Rygor. Now..."

"Whenever anyone has anything, there's always someone else who wants it. Most species harbour jealousy among their emotions."

""Who knew we had something for a kriffing Galactic Empire to be jealous of? Not me."

Sinnya considered pitching the now-empty glass jar in her hand over the side of the roof to punctuate this statement. Reconsidering, she set it down with slow, tipsy deliberation instead.

It tipped over onto its side anyway.

"Viati said that the squad leader of the attack was asking about the Calm. Seems word got out, what she wants with it though I have no idea. All I know is she can't have it."

Thinking of the caliber of person it takes to do what the 13th did, Ru'ni fantasized for a moment about what might happen if she tried to attune to the Calm.

"No. What use is it to the likes of her anyway?" Sinn scowled. "What use is killing all those people? What do they get from all this?" This line of perhaps-rhetorical and definitely-inebriated questioning was followed by a vulgar hand sign at the hovering Dictator.

((We might want to wind this down in the next few? If only because it's far enough back at this point that it's getting a bit challenging to channel Session 1 Sinnya...)))

"Death should have a purpose. WE kill to eat, to clothe ourselves. But these Imperials..." Ru'ni let out a scream of frustration.

Standing, he raised his cup to the sky. "To friends no more." He said softly.

Sinnya flinched as Ru'ni's primal yell split the quiet of the night. "Friends..." She fumbled about for her jar, found it tipped over and empty. She drained the last few drops anyway.