First Reply Fresh Air

[Capris Halcyon]

Alderaan.

Capris didn't have very many hobbies.

Being pitched from one end of the galaxy to the other on an endless mission to keep herself fed and isolated left little room for that to be honest. Sure, this was a self afflicted conundrum, but a conundrum nonetheless.

At the very least she still had her sketchbook.

Leather bound and yellowed, it was the only remaining holdover from her days as a Jedi. The first time they'd met, Kahlil suggested she invest in one to practice her runes, and from the dog eared pages and fraying rim, it was clear she followed that advice. Loyally.

With the sketch book propped up on one knee, the girl sat at the crest of a hill. It was part of some well manicured park in the midst of the cityscape. Not a place Capris would typically find herself, but whatever, her lungs needed a break from perennial smog.

With a loose strokes, Capris workshopped a sequence of runes. The pages were almost bled through with ink, varying experimental lines sealed into the paper.

For the first time in recent memory, the wanderer genuinely seemed relaxed.

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon | Feat. Halifax Hewitt
​

“You’re a slow walker,” her grandfather chastised.

It wasn’t her fault, not really. Halsia’s wardrobe was built for the duracrete of Coruscant; her boots were less walking boots and more ‘day out in the city’ boots, matching a cute skirt, crop top and jacket. It was such a nice day out. How was she supposed to know her grandpa would want to go to a park? With dirt and grass? Insane.

She huffed on up behind him, carrying their bag up the hill. This was her first time on Alderaan, a little trip he’d planned to help her figure some stuff out, teach her some things. She’d spent a childhood fascinated by the stories the elder Hewitt could tell about the galaxy, about the wars and adventures and characters of old. Hearing them again she’d begun to realize she wanted to walk the same path.

The pair reached the crest of the hill, spotting a girl sitting near a tree, sketchbook in hand. Halifax came to the top first, a slight look of annoyance crossing his face for a moment, before Halsia came up. They were close enough, and it was only polite, “Good morning,” “Hi.”

Halifax paused, looking at the tree, but Halsia looked at the girl again and tapped her grandpa’s shoulder. “Hey, isn’t that,” she rummaged around in her bag, pulling out a leather-bound notebook of the same make. It, too, showed the wear of good use, but Halsia held it like it wasn’t hers yet. She laughed, he smiled. “Nice sketchbook. What’re you drawing?”

 

[Capris Halcyon]

The sketchbook closed with immediate urgency, as if magnets were embedded into the sides instead of a4 paper. A massive overreaction to be sure, but that was something Capris only realized once she whipped around to face her new company.

"I uh-" Her gaze bounced from the girl, her grandpa, then back to the girl, reaching for some dialogue option that didn't sound incoherent. This was her first bit of socializing in… longer than she cared to admit.

"Sorry- I startle easily." A lie. Well, partial lie. "Didn't realize anyone else would be up here."

Her gaze fell to the sketchbook in the girls hand, nearly identical to Capris. That's pretty much where the similarities ended. The wanderer couldn't help but regard Halsia's choice of fashion with both admiration and a pinch of jealously.

. “Nice sketchbook. What’re you drawing?”​

"The city…" Capris's words trailed in a way that didn't pack much confidence in her answer. She was a bad liar. God awful. And now someone's grandpa probably thought she was out here drawing suspect images in broad daylight like some troubled hoodlum.

To make this interaction survivable, Capris let her sketchbook fall back open, revealing a page that couldn't be defined as a city even in the most generous of terms.

"It abstract." She confirmed with a serious nod.

She then gestured to the other sketchbook for a much needed distraction,"You draw?"

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

The old man seemed to have some minor change of heart after studying the girl's nervous offering. Halifax Hewitt knew suspicious; this girl was not it.

Instead he went to his granddaughter and put a hand out. "I'll get set up. You sit."

Halsia looked a little surprised. "Uh, yeah," and gave him the long, cylindrical bag slung over her shoulder. She raised the notebook slightly. "Can I...?"

"Yeah yeah," he waved her down, then meandered over to the opposite side of the tree where it was nice and shady.

Halsia went to sit down next to the girl, struggling a bit to lower herself with the high-heels of her boots, but seemed comfortable enough when she got her butt on the ground.

"A little. But, uh, this isn't mine, it's my grandpa's," she gave a little nod to him. The sketchbook was a little thicker than the other girl's; it was stuffed with other papers and notes. Halsia opened it up to a random page. Stuck inside was a picture of a pretty rough-looking Duro exiting a speeder. Margin to margin there was a mess of notes and scribbles. A couple of doodles, lots of connecting arrows, half-hearted page numbers in the corners.

"He used to be an investigative journalist, sort of a legend in the space I guess. But he's like, super old school, like thousands of years old school type shit. Takes old digital photos like this- well, he's gonna teach me how today. Anyways, he has like, twenty of these old journals- is that where journalist comes from? Whatever- and he's been letting me dig into them, since I'm sort of trying to start doing the same thing."

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Oh, she sat down.

Capris readied herself to bullchit through polite small talk, only to genuinely take pause as Halsia revealed pages worth of mad scribbles and theorizing.

That was legitimately pretty neat.

"Oh." She tossed a glance back towards the girl's grandpa in slight disbelief, "That's kinda insane actually. Would I know him from anywhere?" Unlikely, considering her knowledge of both current and past events was zilch. Her news exclusively came through clickbait snippets from the holonet, but that was neither here nor there.

Either way she studied the photograph pinned to the paper. Old fashion may have been right, but hey, clearly that hadn't stopped him from gaining traction.

Her gaze drifted back up to Halsia a moment, curious.

"What uh- What do you want to investigate? Or are you already like a journalist journalist." She asked.

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

"Oh. Girl. I am not shit. I've got a personal blog and two columns on TriNebulon. Calling me a journalist is a stretch." She laughed.

"But yeah, I mean- I want to be like him, I guess. The one and only Halifax Hewitt." Her grandfather was setting up a tripod, and gathering something to mount to it. "He's done the whole media circuit. Anchor, field reporter, interviewer- he actually had a sixty minute interview with the Chancellor. But that was a while ago.

"Anyways, he mostly did investigative stuff. A lot of financial and criminal scandals, lots of stuff with the corpos in the Senate. So... I think I want to do stuff like that. Truth to power type beat." She started to flip through the notes. Pages with cutouts of documents, scribbled notes, more pictures, seemingly on the same case as the Duro she'd flipped to originally.

"I'm, uh- Halsia. Hewitt. Four letters off Halifax, so close."

 

[Capris Halcyon]

"Damn, sounds like a stacked resume."

Capris briefly wondered what it would've been like to trade out her lightsaber for a pen. Not like she could write for chit but still—Capris nodded along in approval with Halsia's vision. "Mhm. Down with the institution." What institution was she talking about? She couldn't say, but it sounded like the right buzzword.

Her eyes then fell back to the sketchbook as the girl, Halsia Hewitt, flipped through. The bounty hunter was starting to pick up a trend of alliteration amongst everyone and anyone she'd interacted with as of recent. Odd.

"I'm Capris. Which is like-" She paused as if to do the mental math, "Not even remotely close." Returning to the picture of the Duro, the girl pointed it out "I'm assuming this dude is bad?"

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

Halsia laughed once, twice, thrice- and a fourth time, whatever that one's called. "Yeah, yeah. He was, uh- one of the main fixers for a big embezzlement scheme, whole thing around military and Trade Federation contracts on Duro, Corulag, Alsakan, couple other places. This guy, uh- Chorr- he's still in prison, pretty sure, it was like... fifteen years ago? Yeah.

"Grandpa- he, uh. It was ninety percent combing through financial documents. But then part of it was finding a whistleblower, getting an interview, and collecting a bit of hard evidence. The pictures, all these notes, are the exciting part. But the narrative is important, and this is how he liked to organize it." She smiled, flipping through a few more pages.

"Anyways. You gonna show me some of your stuff? The actual stuff, not your abstract city sketches." She kept a playful tone, hoping Capris didn't take it as an insult. Her curiosity was genuine.

 

[Capris Halcyon]

"Yeah, definitely an arsehole." Capris remarked, studying the man's face as if that would miraculously dredge up memories of something she hadn't paid the least amount of attention to. Considering she would've been like.. 4? And still living a hole in a desert somewhere.

"Uh." Capris cast a glance down at her own sketchbook before it bounced back up the Halsia, "Yeah suree."

She thumbed through the pages until she found something sorta resembling an image. Well- a string of cryptic looking symbols with sharp, evil looking edges.

"So like um- It's kinda occultic and stuff, but there's meaning behind it. It's a language I'm learning."

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

Halsia nodded sagely. "I have no idea what any of this means."

A grin broke her face.

"Sorry, uh... what language? Never seen anything like this." She leaned in a bit to look more closely, but everything seemed to indicate that she had no clue what she was looking at. Then she leaned back, giving a mock-suspicious look. "Occultic how?"

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris heavily considered dropping this conversation. She wasn't entirely sure how to talk around the material in her hand. It would be a bad idea to use runes in broad daylight, right?

She sighed, tossing a cautionary glance behind them. Feth it.

Abruptly flipping to a clean page, Capris etched something out, a flex of energy preceding the sudden eruption of a tiny blue flame. Interestingly it didn't seem to burn the paper around it "Occultic like that."

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

Halsia's eyes widened, jaw half-slacked. She looked at the notebook again, at Capris' sleeves, all around, trying to find some explanation for what she just saw -- until she figured it out.

"That's- kriffing cool. Are you... are you a Jedi, or something?" Surely she wasn't a Sith, but Halsia didn't know too much about all that. Her point of reference was the Jedi. "...is that the Force? I thought it was all... mind stuff, and swinging a laser sword. I don't know."

 

[Capris Halcyon]

"Something" She decided on the latter option with a definitive sharpness.

As for her explanation…

"Kindasorta. You're not wrong about laser swords and whatnot, the Jedi are pretty flashy. But the Force is conduit for a lot more than telepathic party tricks." She flipped to a new page with an existing library of runes. It almost appeared to be a cipher of some kinda.

"These are like- Ok so well, they’re technically a Sith art, but I'm not Sith y'know?" Truly a great defense. "Anyway they’re called runes, and they help concentrate what I want the Force to do. Like a cheat code almost.”

Why was she telling a virtual stranger all this? She couldn't say. It was better than reciting it to her droid for the 50th time.

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

"Wow. Cool." She was starting to get a little worried about the whole Sith-not-Sith-art thing, but Capris' only flaw so far was being a little awkward. She put her hand out to the flame, feeling the strange heat coming off it.

"Yeah. I mean- I don't know if you've watched the broadcasts of like, those times the Chancellor was fighting in the war, but she can do some wild shit." She was trying to find something interesting to say, but honestly had very few reference points about the whole Force thing. "I'm, um- sorry, this is like, kinda... I've never met a- well, that's not true. But, I've never seen this sort of thing before. It's- I don't want to say weird. But kinda weird."

Suddenly she felt very small, realizing the girl she was sitting next to could probably go become some sort of galactic hero. Grandpa Hewitt came in clutch moments later.

"All set up," he called, ambling over to get her.

"Oh, awesome," she started to get up, "um, Capris, do you want to come try, too?"

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Weird. Capris paused moment before conceding with a nod. Yeah that was a good choice of words.

It was then Halsia invited her to try whatever her grandpa had been occupied with. So she hasn’t been entirely put off by Capris’s bumbling conversation? The girl blinked in pleasant surprise. Awesome.

“Yeah sure.” Capris shifted to stand alongside Halsia, letting her sketchbook close with a thunk. “We’re just uh.. taking photos?”

Come to think of it, Capris couldn’t think of the last time she’d seen not to mention taken a photo of herself. She didn’t have any from childhood for obvious reasons, and she didn’t have anything she necessarily wanted commemorated as of recent. Not great to have strong digital footprint as a functional criminal.

Either way she followed Halsia.

Halsia Hewitt

 

[Halsia Hewitt]

Capris Halcyon
​

"Yeah. Gotta learn how to take pictures of grimy Duros criminals."

"We're starting with the city," Halifax corrected.

"Pff. Okay."

They wandered over to the tripod and cam, where Halifax explained the basics. "You're gonna wanna bend in and look through the little thing here, but every time you take one it'll show up on this thing," the main screen, "that's also got a whole bunch of settings we'll talk about later. For now we'll just go like this," finger on the button, "you gotta push it fully down, the first bit gets it ready, preps the flash if you've got it on, but this thing's got the nighttime fix if you don't want the extra light.

"Adjust the lens here- try it. Yeah, you can get pretty focused. Take a couple." She did, and got the hang of the focus by number five. The long lens gave an incredible quality even at a distance; she could see across the park, and capture it for her grandpa and Capris. A few more tries, then she gave Capris a shot.

"You ever done anything like this?"