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Succession
Part 1
Written by Sailor Coruscant
Suspended between skyscrapers, Sesame Cassise stared down an anonymous Coruscant corridor till the lights and shadows mottled together in a dusky gray-orange haze. She wondered briefly if it was the curve of the planet that stopped her from seeing further, but then decided that various forms of pollution had created a closer horizon.
She refocused her eyes and studied her own reflection in the glass covering the photograph. She liked the way she looked, juxtaposed over the twilight city-scape. Somehow her sleek pale hair and fair skin, flushed a little with her morning walk, looked beautiful when blended with monstrous glass buildings and vague sky. She looked into her own black eyes. "No denying she's Mirali," the grocer's assistant had teased earlier that morning. "Check out those peepers, boss. Eyes like that... she must be the daughter of the Shikha." Sesame had smiled and said nothing about the fact that the Mirali on Coruscant hadn't given their leaders the title of Shikha for about fifteen hundred years.
Outside, a delivery boy jangled by in a speeder adorned with all sorts of bells and bangles. Sesame turned her head at the ruckus, looking away from the photographic version of Coruscant and out into the real thing. It was late morning, though no sunlight graced the tops of the buildings. The walkways outside the tiny art gallery were packed with businesspeople, tourists, and university students. On a whim, Sesame had dropped out of the rush and stepped into a quiet studio apartment papered with "gallery opening today!" signs. She looked back at the photograph. The anonymous corridor was signed with an extravagant flourish in the lower right-hand corner.
She slung her grocery bag over her shoulder and moved on to the next piece. Another photograph of Coruscant, this one was edited so that the faint figure of a woman shone over the city. The woman had few clear features, but Sesame could make out tall boots and a short skirt or a ruffle around her waist, and an unusual collar or cape. It was signed with the same flourish in the corner, plus a title printed in tiny block letters. Sesame bent to read it. Female Sailor, Coruscant.
She straightened and surveyed the room. A blonde man in a knit cap, who looked to be in his thirties, was standing in the back next to a table scattered with little cards. He was looking around nervously at the few people examining the artwork, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his bright white pants. Sesame approached him. "You're the artist?"
"Y-yes," he fumbled, bowing a little and trying to wrench his hands out of his pockets, looking intensely at Sesame. "I- don't move."
Sesame froze in her path towards him. Not taking his eyes off her, he reached into a bag under the table and produced a camera. "Just... like... that," he said, and snapped the picture with a blinding flash. "One more."
Sesame stood still and bewildered as he took one more after that, and a few more after that. Most of the other visitors, distracted by the sudden indoor lightning storm, were looking curiously at them instead of at the art.
"Thank you," the artist finally said, and set down his camera. He offered her his hand. "I'm Andrei Bloom."
"Sesame Cassise," she said, blinking away the flashes and finishing her walk towards the table. She took his hand. Andrei squeezed it briefly before dropping it to write her name on one of the cards littering the table. He put it in his back pocket. Sesame unconsciously straightened some of the other cards into neat little piles. "I wanted to tell you that your work is interesting. Beautiful, I mean." Andrei nodded as if it were understood. Sesame stared at him for a second. "You do portrait work too, I guess? I hadn't noticed any here."
"No, not often. But thank you for the compliment. And thank you so much for stopping by," he said. Andrei spoke very quickly, with a somewhat nasal tone, and used twice as much inflection as a typical human did. He scattered the careful little piles Sesame had just made and then offered her one of the cards. "If you're interested, here are some of the exhibits I'll be participating in."
"Thanks," Sesame said, accepting the card and turning away. "Good luck to you."
"Are you leaving?"
"I have to go to work soon," Sesame said. She smiled demurely. "We can't all get away with snapping candid photographs of strangers and then selling them for astronomical amounts to rich people who need to decorate their guest rooms and don't know any better."
Andrei blinked and opened his mouth. "Wait, I thought you said my work was beautiful?"
"I'm only teasing." She grinned and began to walk away.
"I see," Andrei said, continuing the conversation as if she weren't actively leaving. "So what pure, righteous, blameless, blue collar factory job do you have?"
"That is none of your business, sir," she said lightly, opening the door.
"Where do you work?" he simply asked again.
"Mr. Bloom, how nosy!" she exclaimed, and let go of the door. A woman in a bright pink muumuu, silently condemning their gallery-wide conversation, turned around to glare at her, and then at Andrei. He blushed. Sesame giggled. "I work in a few different places. Today I work at the Finn Charity Resale Store."
"How philanthropic of you," Andrei said.
Now Sesame blushed slightly. "It's fun," she insisted. "Plus, I get first dibs on all the donations."
"In that case, how selfish of you."
She smiled and shook her head, then finally let herself out. "Goodbye, Andrei Bloom."
"Tell your friends about those other exhibits I'll be doing!" he called after her as the door closed.
When she unlocked her apartment door, Anything was waiting for her. She clearly wanted something, but received no acknowledgment from Sesame, other than a sneeze. She turned around and locked the door, then fastened the bolt. On the inside of her door hung a gaudy filigree ornament. The tiny golden figure of a strong man stood in the center of the filigree above a delicate bell; he had one large eye made from a black gemstone. His name was Fontan, the protector of Mirali homes. Sesame tapped Fontan's bell once with her finger.
Turning around again to face her apartment, she stepped out of her shoes, hung her bag on the hook to the left of door, put her keys in the basket on the table below it, and stepped over Anything to carry her grocery sack into the kitchen. She put away the refrigeratables first, then the other items. She folded the empty bag into a perfect triangle and placed it in another grocery bag with dozens of other perfect triangles.
Anything meowed and hopped onto the counter. "No," Sesame said firmly, not even looking at her. Anything hopped back down. "What do you want, anyway?" she said, glancing at the cat's dish. "You have food." Sesame sneezed again.
Anything walked towards the bedroom, then looked back at Sesame. She went a few steps further and looked back again. Sesame was filling a pitcher with water, since the next thing she always did when she came home from the grocer was water her herb garden. But today, she obliged the stormy gray feline. She turned off the faucet, set aside the half-full pitcher, and followed her cat.
When they were both in the bedroom, Anything went into the closet. She came back out carrying a tiny gray kitten by the nape of its neck. She dropped it at Sesame's feet. It squeaked.
"A kitten," Sesame observed. Anything went into the closet again and came out with another newborn kitten. Sesame sighed as Anything went back to the closet a third time, and sat down on her bed to watch the kitten parade. Apparently Anything had chosen Sesame's clothes basket as her ideal birthing place. She was glad she'd done most of her laundry yesterday.
When she'd moved into this apartment two years ago, Anything had come with it, free of charge. Sesame didn't particularly care for cats, and in fact was mildly allergic; but after only a week, she'd had pity on the little gray one that hung out on her windowsill begging for food. Sesame's first cat.
She looked at the little pile of squeaks on her bedroom floor. Now, she had seven.
She gave up on her laundry basket and the few towels she'd left there, and moved it into the sitting room, where she converted it into the designated kitten bed. "Fine," she said when mother and babies were comfortable. "I dub you Basil, Coriander, Parsley, Thyme, and Dill." Because all five were solid gray, she knew they'd all be Basil within a day or two.
She pointed at the only calico kitten, a bit of a runt. "And you are Rosemary." With that, she went into the kitchen and finished watering her herb garden, a straight line of little orange pots under a bright white lamp on the counter.
Andrei stood in front of the Finn Charity Resale Store later that morning. He was holding a round box patterned with large red flowers, tied shut with a white ribbon. He checked the name on the card he was carrying, took a deep breath, and went inside.
A hefty woman was sitting on a rickety stool behind the register, yawning.
"I'm looking for a Miss Sesame Cassise," he said.
She squinted at him. "I can't help you," she finally said.
"But doesn't she work here?"
"No."
"Uh... are you sure?"
The woman looked at him sharply. "Of course I'm sure! You ain't gonna find her here. Get on with your life, young man."
"So... she doesn't work here?"
The woman got off her stool and walked out in front of the register to face Andrei. She put her hands on her hips and looked as if she were trying to appear tall. "It is none of your concern where that young lady works. Your only concern is that I don't find you lurkin' around these premises again, you hear me? Now you best leave."
"Okay, okay, I didn't mean to upset you," Andrei said, looking down at the stout lady, not sounding very repentant. He met her stern gaze for a moment and finally backed away hesitantly. "I'll just be going," he sighed, rolling his eyes.
The woman watched him stroll to the door. "Now don't you come back," she shouted as it slid shut behind him. He glanced back through the glass at her for a moment, then continued on his way.
There was a drop-box on the outside of the storefront, under a sign reading "donations." Andrei stopped and looked at it for a second, forcing pedestrian traffic to detour around him as he contemplated the donation chute. He set his flowered box down at his feet, opened it and took out a round white cap adorned with a blue ribbon.
He pulled the lever and pushed the hat in, then changed his mind and snatched the hat back just before it slipped away down the chute. "Too risky," he muttered. "Starla would beat me to death with my own boot when I told her."
The next day, he woke up in a dumpster. His first waking thought was "well, at least I'm still alive." He groaned as he pushed himself up, gagged when he noticed the stench, then reached up and removed the short round hat that had remained perched on his head all night. For a moment, he felt guilty for wanting to pass experiences like this on to anyone else, but when he slipped on a particularly slimy piece of garbage and ended up with his face in discarded faux-nerfloaf leftovers, all guilt evaporated. "I am done with this," he vowed as he struggled to his knees. He looked at his hat and shook it violently. "Done!"
He walked straight to Finn's and stood again before the donation chute. He looked at the little round cap, then glanced around. It was early morning: light traffic. The few people who were already out avoided him because he was covered in garbage and they could smell him from across the street. He looked back at the hat, then stuffed it in the chute. Still holding onto it, he squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a few words, then finally let it go.
"There," he said, letting the lever swing back into place. "It's done. It's in the hand of fate. Starla can take my boot and shove it."