Jay Mayhem
Hawthorn. A thorny shrub or tree of the rose family. It's also the name of a woman’s freighter.
The ship drifted in the ocean, that sea of empty space between the stars so far apart. A speck.
A dot. A pinprick of movement. In the expanse so vast, her vessel was just an ant as it turned.
Centered, dipped in, toward the atmosphere of a targeted planet, as its pilot turned her neck.
Craned her gaze before the naked space, as her cockpit’s console registered other planets.
Moons, stars, asteroids—all manner of astronomical objects. Worlds, and some inhabited.
Others were vacant, void of sentients, yet her vision wasn’t limited to what she saw but felt.
If I were a Jedi right now… The ship’s captain sighed in the light, in the dark—in heaven, hell.
Maybe her feeling would be deeper, a sense for existence, rather than some existential crisis.
Instead, it was all the woman could do to tilt her head, both time and space frozen in the ocean.
In moments, she glimpsed life and death, her own and others; screams at high pitch, or so silent.
Life. Death. Words were echoes in this doctor’s head. Stars are born. Die. A Jedi with emotion.
She snickered to herself. The day I open the door to the Force will be when stars no longer war.
They ever did, however, as if the universe was cursed in conflict. All she wanted was to explore.
To learn, to render her services to those in need. Forever burdened by the grief of Jedi and Sith.
She couldn’t quite blame the former, truly knew little of either, but the latter clenched her fists.
The Brotherhood of the Maw was a culprit of war. During if after, many fled a number of planets.
Worlds of all kinds, for that matter, that were conquered or ravished or destroyed by the poisons.
A toxic hunger for power, the dark side forever craved. What a shame. A waste. The doctor drank.
A bit of whiskey in her caf, to soothe her tune, though no alcoholic. Damn them. And their hands.
Swinging lightsticks was one thing. Chemical warfare? Whole other matter. It required surgeons.
In the Outer Rim, on the planet of Genbara, such a practitioner was needed. She flew downward.
Clouds break as Hawthorn hovered over green forests, verdant and vast, and the grey mountains.
Toward a refugee settlement, and its disease outbreak—where Dr. Jayrenel Metrum would serve.
Cithria Zratis