Shadows of Bankor

Sinnya stopped in at one of her regular crash spots to strip, clean, break down and restow her poor abused blaster rifle, then throw every stitch of her clothes in the sonic cleanser and herself in the shower. Degrimed, she wanted nothing so much as a nap, but she knew she was too wired and too uneasy about... things... to sleep any time soon.

Instead, she got dressed again (alas, sonic-cleansed clothes didn't have that crisp feeling they got from laundering with real water, but Sinnya wasn't made of money, at least not this week), and headed through one of the outdoor markets on her way to the Aznuri enclave. She couldn't exactly comm ahead, but she knew of a few places that were good bets for running into Sister Viati. The enclave wasn't that big, after all.

Viatai was found cleaning some clothes, she had a pleasant smile on her face while working with the other men and women many of them gossiping about the goings on in the enclave. They get quiet as the half-breed draws near.

Many excuse themselves, but Viati at least said, “Welcome, little sister.”

"Sister." Sinnya made the greeting gesture, but it was probably clear from her expression that her mind wasn't entirely on etiquette--something was troubling her. "Do you have time to talk? I had..." She rubbed the back of her neck, lekku-tips twitching uneasily. "A dream I don't understand. It might not mean anything, but... I trust the wisdom of my mother's people about this stuff."

Well, that was mostly true, with some qualifications.

She waved off the rest and said, “I will listen, little Sister. What has troubled your dreams, so?”

"Some kind of monster." Once she had said this out loud, Sinnya felt rather silly. But even the realization that she sounded like some little kid afraid of a dark storage closet didn't dispel her uneasiness. Nothing for it but to press on.

"It was... a dark figure like a demon from the songs, all black shadows, with an eye like coals and a flaming sword. Does that mean something?" She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. "When I have a bad dream, most times, it's made out of things I recognize, but I've never seen anything like this."

She bit her lower lip, showing a pointed incisor for a moment. "The only thing in it I recognized was... you, sister."

Viati said calmly, “Think carefully recall all that you saw… if this is a dream from the Gift they are often true in a manner… time is a river and sometimes what is to come can be reflected in our dreams.”

“But like all dreams it will be true and untrue.”

Viati's calm manner helped Sinn focus. It seemed she was neither being laughed at, nor being treated as a harbinger of imminent doom and ill fortune.

Unconsciously, Sinn's fingertips toyed with one of her necklaces as she closed her eyes and tried to piece the details of the nightmare back together in sequence. It was the intricately carved wooden snake pendant that had been her mother's, the carving pattern accented with glow-paint that had mostly rubbed off on the raised parts of the piece but remained in the crevices between the carved scales.

"This demon was... somewhere, and it was following you. It was hunting you. Whenever you weren't there, it killed all of the People it could catch. It was horrible." Sinn described as many detains of the dream as she could recall. Some parts of her recollection were fuzzy, like an ordinary dream, while others were strangely clear. Those parts made her lekku quiver with a dread she couldn't suppress. "Then at the end, after it killed all the People, it caught you too, and it finally said something in this terrible voice it had... something like The girl is mine. But I didn't see whatever girl it was supposed to be."

Viati sat quietly and said, “I have had similar dreams of growing intensity. I believe something dark is coming, but I cannot know when but something dark and the people will suffer. I will suffer. I have told Hulia this, and she agrees that the Aznuri will Endure, but this may be something larger than even we could see or understand.”

“I believe you have seen my death, my return to the Force and my journey to the Calm.”

"Not just your death," Sinnya protested. "I dreamed the demon killed all the People, every last Aznuri. And anyway, I don't want you to die!"

"We all have our time, little Sister," she said darkly.

"The Aznuri must Endure, that is all that matters."

Sinnya couldn't find it in herself to be quite so philosophical. Viati had been kind to her when she had nobody left to turn to but the Aznuri, and in any case things were bad enough on Bankor without demons roaming around murdering people.

Unless the demon was a metaphor? Either way, murder bad.

"We have to do something about it, right?" she pressed. "Find out what's coming, stop it from getting to us. And why me? Am I supposed to do something? Or will I... am I going to die, too?" Now there was a thought that hadn't occurred to her before. She didn't much care for it.

"You have done something, and our people will be ready," she said honestly.

“But... it sounds as if I only told you what you already knew,” Sinnya said insistently. “How does that help? If the people are in danger, there must be something I can do.”

She chewed her lip, fingers still wrapped nervously around her mother’s necklace. “Is the demon... person... the one I dreamed about... Do you think it’s real or just some kind of symbol my mind invented? If it exists, we can find it.”

She frowned and said, "It is the ancient Darkness, the Sith."

"The Sith!" Sinnya's tone was half appalled, half skeptical. "I thought that was just a story. A fairy tale about the before times, to give people chills around the fire."

"The Sith are ancient evil, but evil all the same and very real," Viati said seriously.

“And they’re coming for the Aznuri.”

It was a grim prospect, yet at the same time a vaguely absurd one. For years Sinnya had believed in the elders’ stories, but she believed them in the sense that she trusted they conveyed some deeper truth beyond the bounds of the factual. She’d taken them seriously, but not literally, and she’d somehow assumed that even wise ones like Viati did the same. What if she didn’t actually understand her mother’s people—her own people—as well as she’d thought?

“In the old stories the people couldn’t fight the evil powers. We weren’t strong enough. Jedi ones helped drive away the evil powers and saved us... But that was so long ago!” Sinnya sounded plaintive, almost as if complaining to Viati might make the wise Sister take it all back. “They say Jedi became corrupt, and now they’re gone, too.” No use asking the government for any kind of help, either.

“I think you should hide, Sister. Go deep in the forest, no outlander will be able to find you there. Or if you’d rather go underground in Rygor, I can find the right people—“

“I will not hide while the people suffer, I am a Peacewalker my place is with the people. The Jedi helped us, and perhaps they shall do so again, but we must Endure and evacuating all of our people in a single night is not possible. Some would not survive the journey, we have children, we have our elders…” she said firmly.

“No, my place is here.”

“To hide like tuka lizard would betray our people, little Sister. There would be no place for me in the Calm, I would be lost in the river… a lost soul,” she said sadly.

"But the Sith devil can't get what it...he? wants. We can't let them." Sinn frowned fiercely. "Promise me you'll take care. And call on me if you need me."

"Don't you think... maybe I had this dream, this warning, because the Calm wants you to live? I'm nobody special, but maybe it's because I know you..."

"The Calm wants us both to live, death is not ending," she said calmly.

"Isn't it?" Sinnya belonged to an omnivorous species; she had often hunted game to put protein on her table or for money. Something went on after a living thing died--molecules, stored energy, the raw materials of life--but she was pretty sure it wasn't one hundred percent of the same thing as before.

"I mean--something ends, anyway. The people need your wisdom, not... not some glowing blob in the Calm! Whatever is coming, I'm not going to just sit back and watch that happen."

The Calm was a really abstract sort of thing to Sinnya. Spirit-touched people went there, mostly, and goodness flowed out--but as she didn't think of herself as a member of that special group, the concrete reality that Viati was here now, helping people (including Sinnya herself) felt more... tangible.

Viati thought on that and said, “People die, it is a sad time but also a time of celebration as they have completed their journey. All things end, it is natural, it is also natural to want to live as death is unknown even if we do return to the Calm, we do not know what that will be.”

“Yet you are of the people, and I pray you shall return to your ancestors and they shall be waiting for you just as mine will be. That is why I do not fear, my passing will feed the wisdom of the tribes. Fear is natural but to submit to it is dangerous, drives us to do darker things justify evil for our own selfish desire... it is the path the Sith choose, the demons.”

“I am afraid, but I know that I must be brave little sister. I must be brave and face those fears and know they will pass.”

"I wish I was anywhere near that brave," Sinn sighed. Though really, surely taking some precautions in the face of horrible danger out of an ancient legend wasn't incompatible with bravery.

"You'll be careful, though, won't you, at least? The people all need to keep their eyes open. If only I knew who the 'girl' was, that the Sith was hunting in my dream..." She chewed her lip. Too much to hope for another helpful dream to explain the first one, probably. "I'll check on you again tomorrow, Sister. I can't be at ease about this. That dream was too real."