Burning

Written by Sailor Stroiketcy

Carmelle Cherry listlessly fingered the simple, metal urn. The gleaming 'silverite' urn, freshly purchased and filled, contained the remains of one Garyn Maco Cherry. He'd been dead nearly four days; she had returned from the crematorium, just shy of three hours ago; and exactly ten minutes ago, she had decided that no amount of alcohol would make the urn go away.

She felt like she was frozen to the barstool, as if, were she to move, the dam would burst and she would have to face the events of the last four days. She had never felt like this before... she was completely alone in the universe now. Everything had changed, everything was going to keep changing and now there was no one to cushion the blows.

Garyn hadn't been a perfect father, although he had tried his best. He'd even tried to date the sort of women that were good with children... but they were hard to find in the lower levels. In the end he'd had to go it alone; and he had raised her to be as cold and as hard as he was. 'Everyone has a hidden motive; they'll cheat you as soon as look at you'. 'Don't accept charity; never be beholden to anyone', 'don't let anyone touch your business, personal or professional'. 'If you get cheated, it's because you were stupid enough to let them in'. 'Never let them in'.

The lessons she learned from her 'Kappy' would stay with her through her life; they would guide her, keeping her strong and her walls high. She would accept no charity from anyone. She fought tooth and nail for everything she had, and was fully capable of killing anyone who tried to take it from her.

The pain pulled her from sweet sleep. It felt like burning hot knives were stabbing into her abdomen - and carving into her flesh. The darkness of her room revealed no source for the pain, which had slowly moved up to her chest and upper arms. She choked back a scream and lashed out, her arm connected and a scream that only she could hear rattled the walls. She crouched atop her bed, closing her eyes and using the rest of her senses to find the the spirit. They had a distinct odor that flavored the air, their movements caused almost unnoticeable breezes to flutter against her skin and, despite being dead, they often felt the need to breathe rather heavily. The only thing she couldn't yet do was see them... at least not always.

There, she could hear it; it was still by the door. She smirked silently. It didn't have a chance.

Carmelle had not been raised in a spiritual house. Once, when Cherry had suffered a particularly bad year, she had been shuffled to a foster home. One of the many places she lived that year was the home of a lonely old woman; she had given Carmelle a 'Thora dem Keirum', which she had quietly whispered meant 'book of the gods'. It told of ancient deities, small circles of gods forming a larger pantheon of power. The youngest circle, the gods most in tune with the keiro - the mortals - was the Xiexue Keirum, the gods of music. They had been born when the first mortal gurgled a song from her crib; and ever since that day they had loved and cared for all mortals who honored them. Those they loved best were gifted with divine talent, and others were blessed with the appreciation for it. Nine-year old Carmelle had spent hours reading, and rereading, the tales of their adventures. Although the beings in the portraits were long-eared, gray-faced and green-haired - much like her caretaker - Carmelle felt kindred to those creatures, more so than she felt to most of her fellow humans.

Although she had remained with the woman for only a few weeks, Carmelle held that book as one of her most precious possessions. She took her devotion to the Xiexue very seriously; she believed that proximity to what she considered 'bad' music would cause the gods to become displeased with her, thus she avoided upper-level music shops like hell was hidden behind their neon signs.

Her beliefs also caused her to place numerous signs around Cherry that declared - in very clear letters and several languages - any musical attempts from the clientele would result in quite a bit of violence towards their person, from Carmelle or from the droid she had programmed solely for the purpose. Garyn had always thought it hilarious, but knowing that Carmelle would fulfill the threats with or without the signs, he left them up.

Music filled a gap Carmelle's soul that she'd never known existed; she thirsted for it the way most beings thirsted for water. She really didn't know what she would if she ever displeased the Xiexue... she just prayed it never happened.

For the Solude in her twelfth year, Kappy gave her a holoreader and a concert chip, the only piece of recorded music that they had ever owned. She wore it out within three months, and every Solude after that she received another one, hidden somewhere in her room for her to seek out. She loved Solude, because it was the one day when she risked the gods by allowing herself to sing, and sing with her Kappy, despite the utter lack of talent in both parties. On Solude, they could forgive her.

Her sixteenth birthday had been the best day of her life. She loved her Kappy more that day than ever before, because he had given her the best gift she could ever dream of. He had scrimped and saved for two years, and he had bought them a pair of round-trip tokens from Block HLQ, Level 275, to Block A, Level 1. The first place to be given an official location code back during the Rezoning; the infamous Coruscant Gardens.

Located on the top of Monma Center, it was the highest point on Coruscant and the only place on the entire planet that had an un-obscured view of Coruscant Prime.

On her sixteenth birthday, Carmelle received her first glimpse of sunlight atop a clean white balcony in Coruscant Garden, and she never forgot that feeling. The warmth she felt on her face that day kept her going through many a cold nights in the dark depths of Coruscant, months after her sunburn had faded. No artificial light could ever reproduce for her that moment, when she stepped out of the dark into the sun for the first time. While she stood there, her face tilted upward to the light, her father watched her from the shadows and cried.

Carmelle looked around the room, her brow furrowed slightly. Seeing Cherry torn apart was not unusual at closing, but her father never went to bed before righting it. She glanced at the chrono on the wall and nodded to herself, she had estimated the time right. She keyed in the lockdown code for the bar's blast doors and stepped further into the bar. "Kappy?"

She could feel every hair on her body suddenly stand on end, and her heart started beating so fast she thought it would burst. "Kappy!" It was barely even a word, merely long syllables of senseless horror. The twisted, broken body of Garyn Cherry was hanging in the corner, his wide-set black eyes staring blankly into space.

She, who had seen so many deaths over her lifetime, fell to her knees and vomited onto the worn tile floor of Cherry. She sobbed, curling into a tight ball and rocking herself mindlessly. She couldn't look again, she wouldn't look. She could sit in the corner and pretend it wasn't there. Kappy would come find her, he would make this better. Kappy wasn't hanging from a broken ceiling light, no, no, not her Kappy.

She didn't remember how long she sat there, rocking herself in a horrified stupor, but eventually her mind began to return to her and she had to look. She almost lost it again, but managed to hold to her sanity by a thread.

Slowly, her mind began to move in well-worn patterns, she began to analyze the room and take in the situation. The door had been locked when she came in, and no one could have locked it from the outside without knowing the code. She doubted a murderer would have bothered to lock up the crime scene.

So that left two options: A, the murderer had found another way out of the bar - unlikely, considering that Garyn had spent a good part of his earnings every year adding layers of security systems; or B: whoever had killed her father was still in the bar.

She felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle and a low, sultry chuckle came from behind her father. A soft glow seemed to emanate from the corpse and Carmelle caught her breath - only to see the light mist through her father's body and coalesce into a very female spirit who wore a twisted smile on her face.

The ghost had been lovely once, that was obvious. Years of hardship had worn her down to a shell, and she wore the look that Carmelle had seen on many an old streetwalker. The ghost smirked, and floated forward. "Well, well, well. Little Carmie, all grown up. Your Kappy loved you didn't he? Loved you to the end."

"You killed him," her voice was flat. "Why? Will that be what lets you cross over?"

"Yes, I think so," the ghost smirked. "Don't you see? He ruined my life! I was going to be a star, but because of him I never got anywhere! I had to stay on the streets and live off of nothing, all because of that good-for-nothing!"

"He was not a good for nothing!" Carmelle shrieked, her voice rising in pitch as well as volume. "He was my Kappy!"

"He was nothing to you! He took you in because he knew what you were, because he was one of them! Do you think he was really raised here, in this filth? That I was? Nothing good could come from here! They sent him for me! He kept you because he knew they would kill me if they found out - but of course they knew! And look at me now!"

"What the HELL are you talking about?"

"People don't like watching their gods fall, but the gods like it less. Your precious Xiexue will fail you; you'll realize that they, like all the rest of us, are nothing but the dreams of pathetic people who can't live without a higher being!" The spirit was breathing heavily now. She opened her mouth to continue the tirade - and froze.

Carmelle's eyes were burning. She wanted to blink, she tried to generate tears to cool the heat, but she could do nothing but stare. She didn't realize that her pale-grey eyes were glowing white; nor did she notice that she was floating a good six inches above the ground. She felt her mouth open, but didn't hear the foreign words that escaped in a voice not her own.

A fleeting expression of panic crossed the features of Coco Cherry, and then the ghost was gone, leaving only a wisp of foul-smelling smoke and two destroyed lives in her wake.

Carmelle's eyes slowly returned to normal, and her feet once again touched the ground. For a few long moments she stared at the body of her father.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she did not wake for some time.

Her pitten mewed softly from the seat beside her. The tiny, almost-black creature was, of course, not a real pitten; those had become extinct with the destruction of Alderaan so many centuries ago that no one bothered to count anymore. No, Illa was a genetically engineered reproduction, one of the failures born in a custom pet lab above ground. Carmelle had found her wandering below the exhaust of said pet lab and taken her back to the apartment. She'd nursed the small pip back to health, and finally allowed herself one creature in the universe that she could love.

"Hungry Illa?" Carmelle whispered. The pitten hopped to the top of the bar, and immediately slid across and fell off the other side. For some reason the silly thing always forgot that her bones had melted away long ago. Carmelle chalked it up to the genetic defects which had led to Illa's 'release', and gave very little mind to the fact that her pip seemed to have developed the consistency of Bothan Rum Pudding. She leaned over the bar and looked at the 'splatter' that was her pitten. "Want something to eat love?" she called quietly, waiting for the pip to mew its reply.

A small 'kerr' returned from the other side, and slowly Illa flolloped her way back up the bar. Carmelle had long ago decided that 'flolloped' was the only accurately descriptive word for the way her pet moved, hopping and oozing and generally looking very disgusting as she flolloped about. However, today she very nearly did not flollop but merely slid to her owner's side.

"I'm okay Illa," Carmelle murmured, gently stroking the hairless skin of her 'pudding pip'. "You don't have to worry. Kappy is happier; the Xiexue will guard him for me." Her voice broke, and a wet sob escaped her. "I have to be brave Illa; no one will help me now."

The blue-black pitten mewed softly and curled her appendage-less body around Carmelle's hand.

"You're right," she smiled a little, though her breathing was still wet and ragged. "I have you. As long as it's the two of us we'll be alright, won't we?"

The creature stretched herself up Carmelle's arm and gently licked her cheek. The blonde smiled and kissed the pitten's head gently. "Let's find dinner my love." She stood and started to walk away, then paused. Her eyes were drawn back to the metal jar, and her hand reached out for it. "Time to go home Kappy," she whispered, picking it up and gently cradling it in her arms as she walked up the stairs to the silent apartment above.

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