Shadows of Bankor

Verse, unfamiliar with Rygor as she was, had been attracted to the colorful; if impoverished; buildings and their rooftop gardens. Not knowing whether there were any rules against it, and not being one to consider such matters as much as she should anyway, she found herself one of those gardens and climbed her way into it. It looked pretty empty, a perfect spot where she might go unbothered. It was not the fruits or vegetables that the residents might be growing there that she was interested in. No, it just seemed a good place to meditate, and try to reflect on what had happened recently.

She adopted a traditional seated pose; her silhouette playing against the evening sky; and closed her eyes as she opened herself up to the Force...

...but it was difficult. She hadn't done this properly in a while. Years maybe even, come to think of it. And this place, this place wasn't exactly a happy place. Opression and poverty rarely produced happy emotions and energies, after all. She considered pushing through it, immersing herself in the darkness instead, but that was a notion soon rejected. No, she wasn't going to do something like that, not unless she had no other choice.

Sense: 1eF 1 Dark Side

"You're a rather poor thief, laowai," a woman said with a soft hearted laugh.

"Perhaps this is not the path for you."

Verse opened her eyes and looked up at Sister Hulia with a somewhat... dumb... expression. The Force had been clouded indeed, or else she'd have noticed the woman approach, surely?

"Uh... I'm not a thief. I'm sorry, I just... am I not supposed to be here?"

Well, at least she didn't look like an Imperial soldier, or worse, an inquisitor.

Vaya was rather more familiar with Rygor in general, as a resident of several years. She'd made no deep connections among the Anzuri, not really being the type to make friends easily and not wanting to make herself visible by being forward enough to do so among the justifiably suspicious residents. But being of an anthropological bent, she'd learned a thing or two. So when after an atypically thrilling morning, feeling out of sorts, she wanted a quiet space, she thought of the rare patches of green on the roofs of the Enclave.

She'd read a lot about meditation. She'd even watched it happen. But she'd never quite sure that she saw the point, or if it was for her. But resolved on trying, she found a likely door with a likely local behind it, spun a plausible (and basically mostly true) story about being an off-worlder longing for some quiet, and offered the right amount of credits that, whether or not they felt the need to accept it, they would feel like she wasn't poor enough to steal their fruit, nor offering suspiciously much that she might be Up To Something.

As it happened, she didn't get around to the meditating part.

"Anzuri do in fact have non-communal property," she said dryly, from the entrance to the stairs. "And they usually expect people to come in by te front door. At least the sky-called ones, I don't know as much about the ones out in the Sea."

“Well you are where you are but maybe ask next time, we will gladly share all we ask is that you give in return and well you are not Aznuri, so we always have to give you some of the witch eye,” she stated flatly.

She looked at Vaya and said, “Welcome, well I am bound to be a good host, shall we share water?”

"Yeah, let's," said Vaya, informal but friendly, coming over to approach the seated woman and the... hostess? Not the person she had talked to on the way in, but someone who carried herself with authority. She looked down at the other outsider. Something about her position on the ground, the calm air...

"Were you... mediating?" she said, accidentally making it sound like she had caught her at something very personal. "I mean, uh, that's fine, of course."

ooc: Any especial cultural significance to water-sharing that Xenology or Lore might reveal?

"Maybe we can sit inside and not in Sister Hanibu's garden, as pleasant as it is," she said.

OOC: Sharing water is a way of offering friendship, it's just part of being a good hose and usually means they will feed you as well.

"Oh," she blinked, "I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with this world and its people," she said, "this area just seemed a bit more colorful than the rest of the place."

She looked between them for a moment then.

"That's why I tried meditating here, yes. But I will follow your lead, of course."

“I am Sister Hulia, laowai, and what do your people call you?” she said to her guests.

“You would call me, farseer… future teller? I seek to see future strands and help the people make their way along the river, sometimes I calm the waters and sometimes I do not, understand?”

She poured water and set out fried bread and mixed fruits and meats.

"I'm Verse Aura," she said, then listened to the explanation of what her occupation was. She understood, or at least she thought she did. Those who could see the future were many among the Jedi, after all; even if Verse had never seen more than just glimpses, even back when she'd immersed herself in the Force rather than ran away from everything.

"That sounds like a dangerous thing to be these days. The Empire hunts people who can do things like see the future, right?"

"I do not have the Gift, I see it in the cards and the stars," she said honestly.

"Vaya," she said, and, "thanks," taking the moment of waiting for other introductions to grab a piece of frybread, which was, in her experience, cross-culturally delicious. Her chewing slowed as she listened.

Sister Hulia wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 25, 2020 10:18 pm

“You would call me, farseer… future teller? I seek to see future strands and help the people make their way along the river, sometimes I calm the waters and sometimes I do not, understand?”

She kept her face composed, a cynical sure, and I'm sure you're great at the three-card trick warring with a scholarly fortune-tellers play a valuable social role in many cultures, both washed away by a vivid recollection of a high-vaulted cavern, shaped by nature and ancient hands. A river had flown through that space, too, its passage changed by those same hands to be sometimes calm, sometimes churning white, it rapids echoing in the large space. There was no third coherent thought, just those sense impressions, but they left her mind feeling like still water.

"That sounds like a dangerous thing to be these days. The Empire hunts people who can do things like see the future, right?"

She turned eyes and antennapalps to the other woman, regarding her. "And dangerous even talk about the fact that they are," she says, without thinking about what her participation in the conversation revealed, or could be taken to mean.

"Yes, well..." she paused for a moment, "I don't like the Empire. They're afraid, and so they try and make others afraid too. And they're too good at it."

"That's not the only reason," she said to Verse.

"Oh?" She was intrigued by what kind of answer the woman might give. "What other reason do you believe they have?"

Vaya's tranquil mind felt increasingly dizzy -- after all, fast running water can still be smooth, if nothing disturbs it. She had come here on a whim, chosen the building more or less at random, and come across these two strange strangers having this conversation. Her antennapalps swayed like hypnotized snakes between the two.

Verse Aura wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 25, 2020 11:32 pm

"Oh?" She was intrigued by what kind of answer the woman might give. "What other reason do you believe they have?"

"I was speaking about you," she removed a deck of cards from a purse and added, "You did not come here by chance."

"Oh..." she thought about it for a moment before replying. "There are those that say there's no chance. That all is as the Force wills it."

Part of Verse wondered whether she was being a little too revealing, but that part was tiny and outvoted by the part that didn't see any harm whatsoever in talking about things so long as she didn't just outright say she was a Jedi.

"Rivers always flow downstream, but you may or may not have filled your lungs with water by the time you get there," said Vaya, head still spinning a little. Suddenly self-conscious at having intruded the sentiment into the gravity of the conversation, she shoved another piece of bread in her mouth.

She placed a card down that had two predators and said, "You are being hunted."

"Wait," she looked at the card... *two* predators, not just one. "What do you mean? People like me, or *me* specifically?"

“I was not aware there was a difference,” she said tapping the card.

“If they hunt you, they also hunt those like you, would it not be so?” the woman offered.

“This represents those that hunt you, but they are also specific, it is unclear.”

"Things often are," she said, "especially these days."

She didn't know if the fortune was real, or if she'd just figured things out the old fashioned way and used the cards as a way of laying it all out.

"Do the cards know how to deal with being hunted? I'm tired of running."

She flipped a card, it showed a figure handing a fruit to a smaller stylized figure. Hulia said, “You do not stand alone, this one of the helping. Like parent or teacher, the fruit is an offering often teaching or things you must know. They can provide guidance, you understand?”

Vaya watches in silence, body still, eyes tracking the cards, antennapalps tracking the speakers.