Shili Stay or Shili Go Now? (Slender)

There was a slight look in his eyes, as if she'd said something wrong. In all honesty she probably had, but if it was dramatically 'off' to the point he couldn't understand, well then she had to figure he'd correct her on it. Most people did. Or else they stared in this sort of surprised look. Of course she was just as glad when he didn't say anything, it freed her up to pour her pitcher into the tall glass next to it. It was a subdued gold color, lightly carbonated, with not much of a head. She took a long sip of it, enjoying the fact it was ice cold. Perfectly welcome on another dusty day in Cover City.

Bekk was right though, his work sounded monotonous. Most work in this city was, in her opinion at least. It was all about staying in the boring confines, occasionally straying to the outskirts where litter liked to catch itself on small, scraggly trees. It was the same thing day in and day out, and you never really felt right about it. Especially trapped in one location, enduring both the oppressive dry heat, and the rainy season's torrential flooding. Why the Empire had seen fit to make a minor trading outpost here into their garrison was unknowable to her. She suspected it was some kind of capricious decision made by the fools toting maps of places they'd never been.

That actually summed up her thoughts on the Empire pretty well.

He was right to feel apprehensive about the crash. It was odd, and the Empire being so fast to respond, well that was concerning as well. Her gut instinct to get away from that site had been valid, she didn't second guess her instincts. And this exact instincts that warned of predators nearby or unsafe water was quietly screaming as soon as he mentioned something odd under the seat. That kind of phrasing wasn't reserved for kilos of spice. It wasn't reserved for a suitcase of fake IDs. It was reserved for the truly and deeply problematic, the kind you picked up so it would follow you around and haunt you.

Naturally he'd picked it up and taken it with him.

What he probably wasn't counting on was that Raasha recognized it immediately. That was obvious from the sharp hiss of inhaled air. Also from the utterance she made. Togruti cursing was a bizarre grab-bag of animal terms, pre-industrial curses, and implications about mothers. In this case it was probable that no literal translation of what she said would suffice. Most closely it was this: Your montrals are faulty through your mother's copulation with an especially deviated animal, subsequently your entire genetic lineage is thimiar-shit to the tenth generation.' It was surprisingly concise in Togruti, and translated more or less to "Holy shit, this is bad."

"Put away," She urged in Basic. "It's not safe to show. Not touch button."

Her sense of urgency had done terrible things to her grammar and her pronunciation.

The look on Raasha's strangely angular face was suitable to break weak hearts. Her brow was tight and furrowed, obviously affected by fear, but worse was the look in her eyes. It was the exact look of sad confusion over why she was being ignored. She'd said and done everything she was supposed to from the second she saw the lightsaber, but she practically had to fight back angry tears when he flat out ignored her desperate pleas and did the stupidest thing she could possibly think of. Brows knit with anger, eyes that were sad and misty, and hands balled tightly into fists didn't delay. The second he'd jumped and was asking what it was, Raasha sprang into action.

She grabbed him very forcefully by the arm, pulling him out of the booth with shocking strength, speaking angry Togruti as rapidly as she could.

"Whatthehellwereyouthinkingyoudumbsonofabitch!" She hissed, her fingernails digging into the skin.

She realized he wasn't likely to get all of that.

"Run, NOW." She clarified in Basic, a thousand angry thoughts flashing through her head as she dragged him through the door with her. She didn't delay her words. True to them, she broke into a run, half-dragging Bekk behind until she was sure he'd follow. The quiet flapping of her feet in the dark dirt of the street wasn't likely to attract much attention. They had time. Still. For now. Not much though. Not much at all. The cloaked man, the speeder, the troopers. The Empire had found a Jedi, and they knew he was a Jedi. By taking the lightsaber Bekk had put a big target on his shoulders. And by doing that right in the full view of everyone... He'd put it on hers too. And not just her.

No, if the Empire found her, they'd stumble onto everything her village had done quietly to help escaped Jedi. All that long history would end in blaster bolts, and it was all thanks to this... this... STUPID foreigner.

A quiet seed of resentment sprouted momentarily, filled with angry thorns, but Raasha swatted the xenophobia down and focused on running, on planning. They had to get to her shop, it wasn't far at all... Around the corner, through the alley, there was the speeder, there was the door. She cracked it open, stepped in, pulled the Zabrak behind her, slammed the door, and then gave him a good hard slap across the face.

"You-you EEDIOT!" She condemned him as harshly as she could muster, having unfortunately small knowledge of Basic cursing. "What were you be think?"

She seethed through grit teeth and realized slowly that the problem was absolutely that he didn't be think. He didn't even remotely be think.

Raasha tried to be angry. Certainly she was while he said it was just something he had to do. If that was the case, then surely every child had to touch the fire to see if it was hot, or to be cut on a knife to ensure it was sharp. It was the sort of thing that had a steep, steep learning curve. But... What was still more shocking to her was that he was a mechanic, someone who dealt with these items made of metal and electricity on a daily basis, and he still didn't know what it was. In contrast, her, the hunter-girl from a remote tribe knew precisely what it was.

That felt strange to her, like wearing shoes that were the wrong size.

Her seething slowly died down, her jaw became less taut. She'd have to explain.

Her hand picked up the cool cylinder from the floor, carefully, and she eyed it carefully before setting it onto the table.

"This is the lightsaber," She explained in a much softer tone. "Jedi weapon. Also, the reason Empire was here."

The subtext of her statement, which she knew fully that she couldn't express in Basic anyway, was that by extension since he'd used the damn thing in the bar in full view of a dozen people, it now extended to them. Both of them. It was probably deadly serious... Or maybe it wasn't real to him. If he didn't know a saber, maybe he didn't know about the Jedi, or he didn't know about the things the Empire had done, or how serious this all was. She didn't want to overstate anything, but on the other hand she felt the need to explain just why he should feel bad for dragging her into it.

"After today, they will be look for us now. And if they find us, they will kill us."

The statement wasn't delivered with any kind of dramatic relish or any delicately-expressed fear. It was as candid and flat as describing the policy was no refunds, or the soup of the day was corn chowder. It was absolute certainty, and she was completely convinced of it. She moved over to the bench, and shook out her tall, grey boots before pulling the cool leather up to her thighs. The fact was that she might need them if they were going to hide. It was late in the season already, and by the time they reached her village, the cold would be very real.

"Take whatever is good, we need to go quick," Raasha politely ordered as she rose to her feet and began rummaging through her large pack, filling the last open pockets with a few more essentials.

The scent of fear was close enough in Bekk to the species she knew it in that it did register with Raasha. The Togruta knew he was scared, and that was strangely reassuring to her. It probably sounded off, but only a fool wouldn't be scared at least a little. It meant he had a good sense of self-preservation, which she respected. A sure sign of a bad hunter was running headlong into dangers without respectful fear. Fear was normal, fear was healthy, as long as you controlled it and it didn't control you. It was another one of the little helpers inside, keeping you safe, keeping you moving.

She slung the pack from the floor over her back, and picked up her trusty blaster rifle from the corner, plus a bandolier of powerpacks. The laminate wood stock felt smooth and cool in her hands and she wondered briefly just how good it would do against the troopers wandering around home planet at that very instant, probably searching for her already. It wasn't how she'd have planned things. Maybe there was even time to do some planning, but the place was in the safety of the badlands, away from prying eyes, and in terrain the Empire was likely to dismiss as an outlet of escape.

Quickly Raasha made one last look at the shop, mentally verifying she'd left nothing behind to reveal her home village, no directions, no pointers, no maps apart from the ones in the pocket of her well-worn vest. Then, she headed through the door, Bekk close behind. She tossed her backpack lightly into the open compartment of her speeder. It was a converted Arrow-23, open to the air, with a few roll bars and canvas covers for bad weather. There were several rusty patches, and no doors on the cab, but it was obviously kept functional. She set the rifle into a rack next to her seat, and started up the vehicle.

It rose into the air with a whine, and it promptly shot off with a dull roar, kicking up small clouds of dust as she took the back alley out of town.

There would be a time for discussions, there would be a time to explain all the things the man didn't seem to know. He couldn't be expected to simply know everything. And now... Well, the truth was that he was guilty of nothing more than benign stupidity, and even if she had been able to avoid guilt by association, she still might have done the same thing. This was no real fault, no true error. It couldn't be expected for a random person to be killed for poor judgment. She glanced at him through the corner of her eye, a soft sort of glance.

No, she'd take care of him. At least for a while.

The speeder streaked out of Cover City, and into the scrublands, wind whipping through the cabin as the darkest night of the year plunged the planet's surface into a sedate black.

By the time the sun rose, the landscape was dramatically changed. Outside of Cover City was flat, immensely so, with tall grass and a sedate brown dirt. You'd be hard-pressed to find a tree for instance. If you did, it was liable to be a small, scraggly sort of plant, pitied by other plants for the harsh life it led and the lack of self-respect that kept it close to the ground and mopey. Other trees were liable to be displeased at how it slouched and didn't stand up straight. It was certainly no surprise then that other places had more dignified trees.

The speeder was parked on top of a particularly large foothill. There was a nearly sheer face of red rock behind them, and small blades of pale green grass trying to grow out of the damp, reddish soil. Towering over them were several tall conifers, leaving a bed of fallen needles below them. The trunks were thick, indicative of the kind of old growth that had outlasted most civilizations and potential dangers, and was now concerned more with gravity as a limitation than with logging. Under the branches, Raasha had gathered up fallen branches, dead bits of wood, and started a fire. She had a bedroll laid out next to it, but was nowhere to be seen.

It was a fact known to every Togruta from the age they could bite it and kill it, that the ubiquitous little rodent on Shili, the thimiar, was most active at dawn and dusk. This had led to meal conventions in most of the tribes of eating breakfast after the sun was up, and dinner after it was fully set. This had more to do with practicality than anything else, because no matter how many you took, the thimiar population reproduced itself almost instantly. There had in fact been researchers in many prior decades who'd come through to study ecology under the Republic, and they'd codified the results in some sort of journal. Without the Togruta eating them profusely, the ecology would be imbalanced. Other predators could of course help in that goal, but Togruta were well-suited with their thumbs and their acute hearing.

Raasha had bagged four of the rodents. Not precisely a feast, but a good and nutritious start for two people. Her gut told her the man wasn't up to being served a raw one, least of all a live one, so she'd given them all swift bites one at a time as she caught them, and when she did make it back to the campsite, she scraped out a small hole, and with the wickedly-sharp knife she carried, the slender Togruta woman gutted and skinned the animals. She dropped those parts into the hole, and covered it over again with dirt. No sense begging for predators to come along.

She was just skewering them and placing them over the flames on a makeshift rotisserie when she felt Bekk stirring.

He grumbled upon waking up, and for most of his stretching and steps over. Raasha could hear him quite clearly. Her hearing was very good after all, and out here sound tended to carry very well. In places, sound carried further than electronic signals could. She didn't make out most of the words or sounds though, because of lack of knowledge. Still, she smiled back when he offered a courteous hello, and turned the roasting thimiars. "Good morning," She returned the polite words. She was glad to see he seemed calm again. They'd need that.

She listened to his question carefully.

"You say roots twice," She offered helpfully, mentally stuck on trying to process what he meant. Most anything you could eat. She could grind up the bark, mix it with water, and that would fill a stomach. But a few days of that would be very, very bad. There were a few berries they used for sauces or for small snacks. Sometimes they fermented them. There were also fruits. But as far as she'd heard, nobody ate roots. A few they made into teas of varying kinds. Maybe that was what he wanted? She had a general sense of confusion that wouldn't go away. It was lingering, and buzzing about like a small insect that liked to remain near the head.

"You want me... to make tea?" She asked, uncertain of the answer. He said he wasn't used to eating meat, had he given it up for some sort of ritual?

"I can look," She amended. "But wrong... season, time of year?" She said, thinking to the distinct lack of berries here at the end of the growing season, before the onset of winter. There were also no fruits. In fact berries and medicinal roots would be about all she could find, the former if she was lucky.

He dropped the lightsaber. It was either clumsiness, or he was a little bothered by some part of what she said. Further attempts to analyze were confused that he didn't want tea, but he did want water. Tea was just water with other things... Her brow furrowed as she tried to figure it out. Why one and not the other? It was odd. Also there was the other issue of survival. She liked to keep the water jugs in the speeder as full as possible, and boil up water from the area. Into tea usually. Surely he knew that though? You couldn't always rely on good waters.

She did stop for a second to think. There wasn't a spring nearby that she knew of. Water it was then. But she'd still have preferred the tea.

Raasha gave him a nod and moved back over to the speeder. She rummaged in the compartment and tried to find the container. She rarely paid it any attention, since in survival situations she'd prefer to hunt and eat what she found. But she still kept it around for picky human clients. If it was still there... Her fingers deftly found the right box under a seat, and she slid it out. It was a small plastisteel container, and she pulled off the lid. It was still there, mostly full. Numerous brown packages, in some kind of polymer, smooth, sealed. They were some kind of 'survival food bar,' or so she'd been told. She never cared for the taste, it was like eating dirt.

She lifted the pack out, along with a full canteen, and she set them both before the Zabrak man, returning to the fire. Somehow she suspected he wasn't going to eat any thimiar. She slid the stick off, and let it cool in her hands. She sat cross-legged next to the fire, the stick of thimiars resting on her knees. She cocked her head and watched him holding the lit saber. He liked it. What was more, he looked strangely appropriate with it. They'd have to talk about after all. If she was a stickler for anything, it was for careful planning.

"We should talk. Please sit?"