|
Orientation
Part 1
Written by Sailor Coruscant
Andrei, sleeping lightly after Sesame left early in the morning, woke up to the tolling of the miniature bell she had on the inside of her door. He stretched for a minute or two, then shuffled out of the dark bedroom and found her watering an herb garden in her pristine kitchen. A bell-shaped glowpanel, with an unusually bright setting, poured white light onto every gleaming surface. Her bag was still swinging on the hook next to the door, and her shoes were lined up neatly next to his. "Good morning," she said serenely, orange pitcher in hand. Its sheen nearly blinded Andrei under the high-power glowpanel. "Don't I have the most comfortable bed you've ever slept on? It's a Shaieo cushion. They're very expensive, usually, but my uncle is a designer at Shaieo, so I got a very good deal."
"I was under the impression that you weren't speaking to me," Andrei said. There was a leftover grain pastry wrapped up on the counter. He moved it, then put his palms on the counter and lifted himself up, planting his butt where the pastry had been. He unwrapped the pastry and started nibbling on it. "Hey, can you make me some tea?"
Sesame continued watering, being careful to give each herb the same amount. "You deserve the silent treatment after forcing me to wear that enchanted hat. I'm probably possessed by half a dozen evil spirits now. In fact, maybe it wasn't me that refused to speak to you this morning, but one of those spirits? Yes, now that I think about it, that was probably the case." Sesame finished watering the last orange pot in the row, then poured the few leftover drops down the drain. She dried the pitcher with a kitchen towel that hung next to the herbs, then placed the pitcher beside the first orange pot. She turned to Andrei and held him in her gaze, smiling slightly, then suddenly gasped quietly and covered her mouth with two fingers. "Oh dear, where are my manners? Would you care for some tea?"
"Yes I would," Andrei said. Sesame was being either sarcastic or inattentive, but he disregarded it. "You shouldn't be ungrateful," he said as she filled a large jar with hot water. "I have given you a wonderful gift. Don't you understand that?" He finished the biscuit and dropped the wrapping onto the counter. Sesame had whisked it into the garbage chute before he'd even blinked.
"No," she said, flipping her hair out of her face with a flick of her head. She turned back to her tea preparation and spooned several measures of crushed leaves into the water, then carefully screwed on the lid. "I don't understand it at all. You haven't explained a single thing about this Sailor whatnot." She slipped two cotton mittens over her manicured hands and picked up the jar.
Andrei opened his mouth to reply, but paused when Sesame began violently shaking the tea.
"It's quite simple, really," he said when she set it down next to the sink basin and removed her mittens. "You transform. You have some special powers. You use them to fight wrongdoers, bring justice to the oppressed, all that loveliness."
"Sort of like one of those, what-are-they-calleds?"
"A Jedi?" Andrei suggested, watching as Sesame struggled to unscrew the lid. "A little. I don't know all that much about them, but I don't think they do the transformation bit." Once the jar was open, she dropped in two green tablets from an unmarked container. They dissolved in the tea with noisy fizzing sounds and a few distinct pops. "What kind of tea are you making, anyway?"
"Secret kind." She stirred the concoction with a long wooden stick, poured some into a tiny porcelain cup, and slid the rest of the jar down the counter to Andrei. Using a different kitchen towel, she removed any loose water droplets from the counter in one quick fluid motion, then returned the towel to its hook. She picked up the porcelain cup. "So what if I want to use my powers for my own gain, to pursue my own ambitions, to collect riches for myself, et cetera?"
Andrei shrugged his shoulders with a quick jerk. "Whatever," he said. He sniffed the tea and took a tiny slurp. Sesame was watching him closely, sipping silently from her own little cup; he offered her no nod of approval, but almost immediately after his first sip, lifted the jar to his lips again and took a long drought. Half gone, he set his jar on the counter and wiped his mouth with his forearm. He looked at Sesame. "But you... You wouldn't...you couldn't use your powers that way... Could you?"
Sesame raised her eyebrows, gazing from behind her teacup. "You don't know anything about me," she finally said in a quiet, almost sing-song voice. "Why choose me, a total stranger, to receive these ambiguous 'powers?'"
Andrei had recovered from his vulnerable moment of almost expressing concern. "Well, you can't possibly be more self-centered than I am," he said, rolling his eyes. "And I never used my powers to try and take over the planet." Andrei downed the last gulp of tea. "That's not to say I never ever used them to get free stuff, or to get into invite-only parties, or -- "
"Are you finished?" Sesame asked, offering to take the tea jar off his hands. She immediately cleaned it, dried it, and returned it to its assigned spot on her shelf. "I want to go see this Starla today. You promised."
The duracrete walkway was lined on one side with an endless series of illuminated poles, intended to keep airborne vehicles from crashing into pedestrians. As they walked, Andrei touched each one, flamboyantly bouncing his hand along the row, from one pole to the next. Sesame was silently counting them, without really meaning to. It annoyed her, but she couldn't break her counting habit unless she was quite drunk; so she usually went with the lesser of two evils. "I didn't choose you," Andrei said. "I dreamt about you, for months before we met. I even painted you, remember? That was you. Over the city, remember? Hey, if you want a print, I'll do it at cost."
"At cost? Wow. You must like me."
"And then you walked into the gallery that day, and the rest is history," he went on. "Now you're the hat-wearer."
Sesame looked upwards, conscious again of the enchanted hat he'd insisted she wear. It was currently masquerading as a red knit cap. "No, I still think you chose me," she said, mostly just to be argumentative.
"No, Destiny chose you," Andrei said, unincensed, dodging a stout delivery droid with somewhere urgent to be. "Hey, have you ever been to a planet where you can walk on the street in the sunlight?"
"Yes."
"That's something, isn't it?" Instead of bouncing his hand on it, he kicked the next guard-post. "Coruscant so lacks charm sometimes. Imagine if we were walking in the sun on a quaint city street in early spring, with no leaves on the trees yet -- yes, trees -- and the sky is painfully clear and the ground is all wet from the melting snow, and it actually smells like melting, like the first almost-warm day of the year. They wouldn't even have to have antidepressant-radiant lighting systems installed. We'd probably fall in love! Everybody must be falling in love constantly on planets like that."
"If that were true, why would anyone choose to live on Coruscant? A lot of people choose to live here, even immigrate from other planets -- planets with sunlight. Economic opportunity, I suppose?" Sesame mused. "Even you seem to like the place well enough, to feature it in your art." Andrei didn't respond, largely due to a passing group of shrieking junior high school students trying to hear themselves over the noise of a shoe advertisement that kicked on as soon as it's AI unit detected beings from its target age bracket walking by its billboard. After they passed, Sesame's eyes lingered in a storefront window beyond the billboard; there was a concert recital taking place inside. The crowd was small, but the music sounded pretty from the walkway. She caught their reflection when someone swung open the door; Andrei was so tall, and Sesame so short -- she looked like a child walking next to him. "So who is Starla?"
"Years ago, she was what you have just become," Andrei said. He suspiciously eyed a young couple that slipped between them and shot a glance over his shoulder once they'd gone by.
"Before you were? So did she choose you, then, or did she dream dreams too?"
Andrei laughed, although his giggle was muted by a passing speeder. "She wouldn't have picked me if I was the last kid on Coruscant."
"So you think Destiny chose you." She turned her head away from the storefronts and looked at him as they walked. Flashing lights from a nearby sign were coloring him pink, green, pink, green, pink.
Andrei's opened his mouth for an automatic yes, but stopped before any sound escaped. He closed his mouth and looked at Sesame. A different sign had taken over, flashing at longer intervals blue, then off. Blue, then off. "No, not Destiny. Destine."
"What?"
"It's funny, actually. It wasn't Destiny, it was Destine."
Sesame looked blankly ahead, wondering if she was missing something. The pair approached a crowd of people standing on the walkway in a loose horseshoe shape around a young girl playing an acoustic instrument and singing emphatically in a language neither of them knew. "Every evening single girl," she suddenly sang in Basic, then switched back to her native tongue for the rest of the song.
"Destine D'eclair," Andrei said, speaking low. He and Sesame stopped walking, standing apart from the rest of the crowd. "She was Sailor C. before me. She chose me as her successor."
"Destine D'eclair? Are you serious? Sounds like the name of a holovid star...or a...something..." The street musician ended her song with a wailing high note. Someone in the crowd called out a request and she started playing immediately. A few teenage girls with shopping bags walked away; a young mother with a toddler stopped to listen.
Andrei didn't laugh. "Destine was beautiful, and sweet. Such charisma, too. She could have been a holovid star, you know." He sighed. Even in sincerity, he couldn't omit the melodrama, Sesame thought. Finally he grinned a little. "Or something..."
The singer's lyrics switched to Basic again: "I love Coruscant, but there's nothing to do here."
Sesame again looked pointedly at Andrei. "Were you in love with her?"
"She was my sister, you sicko!"
"Sorry," Sesame said.
"That's okay," Andrei said. "I was lying, anyway."
Sesame rolled her eyes. They started walking again and the young girl's song faded into the traffic sounds and sirens. "So, were you?"
"What?"
"In love with Destine?"
Andrei watched his feet. "I was only fifteen," he said. "She was a bit older. Starla did not like her protege hanging around with an idiot kid like me, but Destine always did whatever Destine wanted. She was killed in a battle -- or rather, was wounded pretty badly, gave me her hat, and died soon after. I've fancied that maybe she only gave me the hat because she wanted me to hurry up and join her into the afterlife." He kept his head straight, but found Sesame with his eyes. "It's a dangerous life," he admitted. "I don't know why I was destined to live so long. Luck, maybe. And mean old Starla's annoyingly good advice."
Sesame tried to take these comments gracefully, but couldn't suppress a small frown. What insane cult had she been roped into, that would probably end up leading her to an early death? What they fought for, who they fought against, and how exactly this fighting was done still remained a mystery. Andrei gestured toward an alley staircase leading to the next lower level, then trotted down, cheerfully greeting a beggar sitting by the top step, facing the main street. Sesame paused at the top, apprehensive but intrigued. She sighed and followed, discreetly dropping a coin in the beggar's hand as she passed. The din of the main corridor faded drastically after she'd gone down the first few steps.
"Here we are," Andrei said when they reached the bottom of the long staircase. It deposited them into the middle of an old commercial district. It was still lively, although "historical site" signs had popped up all over the place. At this time of day, the streets were speckled with business people on their lunch breaks, enjoying the architectural sights and devouring the local specialties. Sesame was so disoriented she came to a full stop, while Andrei sauntered on down the street before he realized she wasn't behind him.
A businessman in casual day clothes was coming toward the staircase with a large datapad under his arm. He caught Sesame's eye; but since he said nothing, neither did she. Those were the rules. Next time he came for tea at Blackspace, though, she was sure Mr. Jihennsen would ask why he'd seen her standing next to an amenity shop looking so dazed.
"What are you doing?" Andrei demanded in his shrill voice, appearing by her side again. "What's your problem?" He took her by the arm and led her down the path he'd already walked once. But Sesame hardly needed to be led around this part of the city; she knew it very well. The route by which Andrei had brought them here, however, she did not comprehend. She glanced back at the dark entrance of the staircase as they walked away. Of course, she didn't spend a lot of time exploring alleyways behind convenience stores, either.
When they came to a tiny storefront of aged, thin glass and heavy gray curtains, Andrei unlocked the door and held it open for Sesame. After regarding him or a few moments with a very perplexed stare, she entered.