“And that’s the last one. Break time,” Diyrian said to herself with a relieved sigh as she sat down the encrypted datapad and the plethora of reports she had been slogging through. A huff from her lap drew her attention down. “Yes, walk time, Pirle. Anything not to look at another file for awhile.”
Diy reached down and gave rosy-white scales a good rub. The growing young akk dog rumbled to the attention, pressing into the desk in a stretch from where she was flopped over the Kiffar’s lap in an absolute lounge. A snap of her fingers was followed by Pirle sliding off onto the floor more than hopping down. Diy grabbed the leash while her pet scooped up the rubber ball she had lost to the floor ages ago. Together the pair made their way out of the Consul office and to the courtyard for a much needed stretch of legs.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
The tapping of hard-soled shoes against the Citadel’s stone walkway alerted Diyrian to the presence of someone else. If she bothered to tap into the Force, she would have felt the familiar presence of Bril spreading throughout the courtyard like the life-giving warmth of a campfire. He was dressed in formal attire, a dark blue suit with a shawl draped neatly across his shoulder, its precious gold and black fabrics arranged into complex geometric patterns typical of Iridonian ceremonial textiles.
“That went better than I expected,” he announced while dabbing his forehead with a black handkerchief to clear the thin sheen of sweat that had gathered there. It was starting to get hot again on Selen, and his attire made that all the more noticeable. “Chief Walota agreed to join The Kērawa Initiative. None of this would have been possible without Chieftess Txecolani’s insight and her good standing amongst the Selenian people. Her endorsement will help bring a lot of local leaders to the table.”
Bril’s eyes briefly shifted to Pirle, and he smiled.
Pirle caught the sound of footsteps before Diyrian did, her nervous pauses in walking drew the Kiffar’s attention. Diy reached down and brushed an assuring hand over the albino akk dog’s scales, her gaze scanning the courtyard. When her aquamarine eyes landed on the familiar, well dressed Zabrak, she straightened up and smiled, standing in place for him to meet up with. A quick command settling Pirle between her feet.
“Glad to hear the Initiative is going well, and good job again with your talks with Chieftess Txelcolani. I knew you would be well suited to such a task, and am thankful for your volunteering.” Her greeting smile may have faltered a bit once she realizes the content of his words were more business. Good business to be had of course. She had to shift, mentally, to accommodate or try to. “Hopefully it continues to be fruitful?”
She welcomed the hug, never one to usually deny physical touch from friends, allies and the like. Her finger tips pressed into the intricately dyed and woven fibers, the golden and black threads giving way to glimpses of the past. Several Zabraki figures that shared some resemblance with Bril. The image of a man with prominent cheeks and a wisen beard wrapped in the ceremonial cloth greeting others.
Diyrian eased back out of the short hug with the fading feeling of tenseness and accomplishment from what she assumed was Bril’s earlier meeting. The breeze and warmth she had envisioned reflected the present reality. There was a notable pause before the Kiffar flashed a smile and replied, not much of one but enough that someone familiar with psychometry would notice.
“Really should some more, don’t worry about it too much. We’ll find some time, eh?” Diy reached down and gave Pirle a scratch. The young akk dog had warmed up to the Zabrak’s presence and had scooched to sit between them. “We were just out takin’ a walk, no real plans. Welcome to join and catch up. What you’ve been up to?”
As they separated from their mutual embrace, Bril gave Diy a knowing look. She’d seen something. Being on the receiving end of the ability that he used so instinctually, as if it were no different than breathing, left him feeling a little exposed. There were worse people to feel that way with, though; she was one of his oldest friends, after all.
Reaching down to pat Pirle on the head, Bril shrugged his shoulders. “Besides the usual government business, I’ve been trying to make strides with the Erinos. It’s been … difficult, to say the least.
"Other than that, just continuing to deepen my connection to the Force. I’ve learned a few new tricks, especially as it pertains to psychometry.”
“Hmm, sorry to hear it’s been difficult with that lot. I can’t imagine they’d be able to resist your charm for too long,” Diyrian attempted to reassure after a brief purse of her lips. Pirle pressed into Bril’s hand and stumbled after it, loosing her balance. Her owner kissed at her and gestured for the small group to walk through the courtyard.
Diy’s brows raised and she grinned lightly, “You caught my interest. New psychometry tricks, eh?”
Bril folded his arms behind his back while walking alongside Diy. He nodded. “Right. The best way I can describe it is using a metaphor. When you have a data chip, the information within it can be encrypted or corrupted. And there are slicers who can unravel that to make sense of it all, right?
"Well, there’s a similar process involving Force echoes. The Dark Side can cloud and twist echoes, makng them difficult to decipher and, in some cases, actually dangerous to connect to. I’ve figured out how to ‘clean’ them.”
Diyrian listened along as he shared, nodding slowly to the slicer example given. Dark Side clouded items made her think of Karran’s shrine and why she avoids it, a healthy boundary. She had crossed enough times with objects soaked in terrible events that she wasn’t tempting fate touching that stuff. Diy chewed her lower lip while thinking, fingers rubbing the leash in her hand.
“Hm, I’m guessing dangerous means more than some bad karking memories? What’s the risks? And how do you clean that? Not really a code to rewrite with psychometry.”
“Right,” replied Bril, whose eyes drifted away while he instinctually moved a hand to his midsection where the tuk'ata scars were. Diyrian had seen them before. “Honestly, physical wounds are among the least troubling ways the Dark Side can harm us,” he paused to tap a finger against his temple, “It’s the mental effects that are the most pernicious, in my opinion.
"You and I have a very potent gift, but that can open us up to things that can change the way we think and behave, and, even worse, even subsume our very being if strong enough.”
Her gaze tracked his movement with but a glance and a small subconscious nod, those scars conjured in her mind and the tale that went with them. She grimaced at the wording of calling psychometry a ‘potent gift’, something therapy has said was a result from some past event. It was one of the best skills she had though that she probably indulges in too karking much if she was honest. Exhaling, she halted and pivoted to a stop.
“Okay, I’ll bite. How do we do it? Like I don’t know if I can, I’ve done been trying to to more with the Force, but I doubt I can to do that much. But I do know that I very much like my being not being subsumed.”
Bril nodded. “I can show you two ways that work best for me. You may end up developing your own method, though.”
The zabrak stepped closer to Diyrian and took her hand so he could lead her to the center of the Citadel’s courtyard. “Close your eyes,” he said to her, his voice becoming flatter in its cadence as he relaxed. Force users, especially those of thei rank and experience, were plenty strong on their own, but together? Well, there was a reason why his people stressed the importance of collective ritual so much. It was an approach to invoking the Force’s power that he was still learning, and his excitement with the novelty of it all rang clearly to Diy as a warm, almost electric sensation that buzzed faintly across their burgeoning mental link.
“Listen carefully with me. Let’s first see what stories this place has to tell.”
She followed his lead, welcoming the guidance as she was but a novice with the Force despite the years of psychometry use. It was still a bit of a surprise to feel the buzz of energy emitting from where their hands were joined, without touching a ring or sleeve in the process. Diy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened her mind to listen.
Many memories lingered there, a thousand thousand individual paths united into a collage of weeks, months, years of experience. The Force ensured that these memories, these echoes, felt real in a way that holorecordings never would; they weren’t merely snapshots of the past, permanently frozen in time and space – to him, they were alive in their own kind of way, still able touch the minds of the living in a way that sometimes felt … intentional. It was a mystery he’d yet to solve.
From the veil of silence that had settled in the courtyard broke through a voice unfamiliar to him:
“Don’t touch me!”
It echoed with anger born from fear, from the sting of loss and abandonment.Brief flickers of a fair skinned Mirialan scooting backward across the ground appeared in that space. A woman walked toward him, resonating with … understanding? Compassion? Or perhaps, pity.
Those images faded, quickly replaced by the sight of that same woman’s fist crashing into the man’s face like a landspeeder collision. Their minds quivered with the swelling of pain produced by it.
“You aren’t the only one who lost her!”
The air grew thick with the weight of the emotions there; grief and raged churned and roiled, buffeting their minds like the terrifyingly powerful storms present on many monsoon worlds.
Bril gripped Diy’s hand tighter while taking a deeper breath. “Steady yourself first. Weather the storm,” he explained to her, eyebrows knitting together as he marshaled his concentration, “Then, search for the knot, the place where the emotions are most intensely tangled together in the Force. We have to carefully unravel those threads.”
What seemed so real and preserved in time to the Zabrak was more a fog of emotions and lingering feelings of presence to the Kiffar. The mist left behind after an early morning squall, the haze of a heat wave or the sense of someone in the room with you, watching. It deepened as they stood joined and she focused, yet the surface tension hadn’t broken.
“Steady yourself first. Weather the storm.”
“What storm–”
The crash of grief and fear, anger and pity crashed into her like a speeder. Her knees nearly buckled in shock with how intense it was, hands tightening around his back. A past memory of Eleceos and Satsi flashed through her mind. Vivid echoes like this she was used to, but it has always been through connecting physically to where they were embedded. Never had she connected so thoroughly mentally as now.
Diy took a deep breath. In, out. Repeat. She pressed forward into the storm, the recollection, like forging through the tangle of jungle vines until she came to the core of it all. The knot.
It was fire, hawt to stand near and too bright to look at. Threads, Bril mentioned threads, yet she couldn’t distinguish what was what from the mass. Her throat tightened as a rising flight urge grew.
Breathe, Diy, Breathe.
“I don’t…show me how?”
“I’m confident it will be,” he replied. Although he’d intended to say more on the subject, the glimpses of hesitation and stress that he sensed with the Force just before Diy’s reply was enough to convince him that business talk was better left aside, for now. “I’m sorry. We’re friends first, right? I should act like it. Bring it in,” he opened his arms for a hug and, once Diy gave him a visual okay, stepped forward to pull her into a tight hug.
“We don’t hang out nearly as much as we should.”
Bril felt his leader, his friend stumble a bit, and quickly tightened his hold on her to help keep her on her feet. The symbolism of that moment struck him despite it being a relatively small gesture: he’d made a life out of lifting people up, especially his loved ones. And Diyrian certainly was that.
“Reach out with me and pluck one of the threads,” he explained, trying to find the words to explain what at this point was more instinctual, “Feel which ones are taut and which ones are loose. Try to work out where they lead, and we can unravel them together.”