Life's a Beach

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]​

​

There was an air of familiarity around the Praxeum now. Vera had been here long enough that she had gotten to know the many people around the grounds on a first name basis, which to her was amazing. Silver Rest had been so huge that she hadn’t even been able to remember half the people’s names, but here they all felt a bit like one big family; close-knit and warm. It reminded Vera of home in a sense, and while the thoughts of her mother and father were still prevalent she felt that they no longer were as intrusive as they had been when she first got here.

She had people around her to fill their place. People who came from all different walks of life, and when one of those people got knocked down they would find that the collective as a whole came around to pick them back up. Harper, Alden’s friend, was no different in that regard. As Alden’s apprentice it surprised Vera how little time she had managed to spend with Harper, but given the nature of what had happened around the time she was brought in it wasn’t really all that surprising at all.

Harper had seen hell, and she had marched back home afterwards for better or worse. The part where she had suffered would end, and now came the part where she would get better. With time, it would be a bad memory and things would return to what they once were. Or so Vera hoped. To hope was one of the few things she could do given the nature of it all. In the end recovery was up to Harper herself, and that was something Vera could only help affect to the degree which Harper would let her.

At least that’s what the Masters around the praxeum grounds had said. Vera let a careful knock sound against the door to Harper’s room before she reached for the door to open it up. Her tiny white-haired fox was with her for this one and Vera wouldn’t have it any other way. In her hands was a tray with a warm water kettle, two cups and a wide assortment of teas. It was what her mother used to treat her children to when they were sick, and while Harper wasn’t sick Vera hoped that she would find comfort in the beverage much like she did.

“I’ve brought you tea.” Vera said and beamed a smile at the injured blonde. “And company, if you don’t mind.”

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Harper had been assigned to one of the actual rooms in the infirmary, after their initial assessment. While the Praxeum couldn't afford full bacta tanks anyway, their inability to utilize even small amounts in this case had meant that there were no short cuts to healing for the young woman. While a few of the Jedi with a greater predilection for the healing arts had done what they could, including [member="Alden Belmont"], it wasn't magic. Mostly, what Harper needed was time and rest.

Something Harper was in no way adverse to.

Usually she wasn't very good at it. She'd get restless quickly, push it before she was ready. But the Harper on the other side of all of this was subdued. If not timid something close. She hadn't pushed back against the instructions given her, accepted them without argument or her usual degree of sass or stoic bluntness. Just a quiet agreement.

Harper was in the bed when the knock came on the door. On the side table was a holocron Alden had left for her to work with while she was recovering, but she hadn't been doing much with it yet.

Grey-blue eyes looked up, then down at the small fox creature, then back to the young woman with the tray. Vera, Alden's apprentice. They had met, briefly, but that was the extent of it. Verana had arrived right before Harper had been taken.

"Both would be welcome," Harper said with a smile. If the smile was wan and hollow, perhaps it could be forgiven.

It was the best she had at the moment.

She was propped up in the bed, but she struggled to shift up a bit, enough so she wouldn't just spill the tea all over her like an idiot.

"I.... don't drink a lot of tea," she said, eyeing the array of options dubiously. "Got a recommendation?"

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

The tray ringed as it touched down against the end table. The assortment of teas was a two story shelf with four packets of mixes on each that gave away the girl’s fascination for the hot beverage. She hadn’t shared it with many except those that were close to her, but there was so much that she could say about it. From the way the peach-flavored mix was a sweet but bitter sensation on the tongue to the way the minty one just refreshed the heart and mind no matter the mood.

“Excellent.” Vera’s smiled kept beaming as she moved a nearby chair over to the bed. “Don’t worry, I have you covered.”

Vax, the fox, took a seat under her chair with a curious look up at the blonde before he laid down. His attention didn’t really break, this was a fascinating moment and he was a peculiar extension of Vera’s own mind at this point. He found strength in her, same as she found strength in him. That was why they hadn’t been forced to separate at this point and Vera wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact she had made that quite clear when the Silver Jedi brought her to the Silver Rest that she wouldn’t leave without him.

Regardless, Vera began her guide through the teas by poking at the lid of a blue box.

“This is a very orangey flavored tea. It’s great for slow, rainy days.” She seemed very excited to go through her teas. Her finger poked against a shiny black plastic box of the same size as the blue one. “This is just pure black. Bitter, but great for when you need a kick of energy to get you through the day.”

She continued to mention the minty green box, the very sweet and peachy pink one, the sour but still good purple one, the yellow one that she only gritted her teeth about and waved her hand up and down to describe, the white one that was very mild but soothed your throat just fine with a slightly lemony tinge to it…

And then there was the engraved wooden box. A moment of hesitation caused Vera to pull her hand back for a second before it inevitably touched against its lid.

“And this one is from my mother.” She felt her warm smile grow just ever so slightly weaker. “It’s a mix of all the things we had at home. Wild roses, grass even, but the taste is just like home and I love it.”

She shook the melancholy and looked back up at Harper once more with the bright smile. “Anyway, you have so many choices and I can’t do any of them, or you, justice by picking for you.”

“Go with your heart!”

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Harper was a little overwhelmed for a moment by the sheer presence of Verana. Or maybe it was the number of tea options offered. Either way, she sat quietly, absorbing both the choices and the young woman next to her. There was warmth and care in spades- she could feel it moving around like a pleasant mist. A certain energy, contained but effervescent.

The choice, once she finished explaining, was an easy one.

"The last one, please," Harper said quietly, smiling. "If you're willing to share. I can't go home, but I'd like to know what yours is like to you."

It wasn't just the words she had used to describe it, but the feeling the empath had caught when she had. The melancholy. Something bittersweet. Harper knew that feeling all too well.

As Verana poured, Harper tilted her head, looking down at the fox like creature under the chair.

"What's their name?" She asked quietly. She'd seen them together, but hadn't had a chance to ask yet.

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

Even if sharing the mix was something Vera wouldn’t usually do she found that breaking her habit was for the better. Harper was a good friend of Alden, and Alden was a man that Vera respected immensely since their troubled murder investigation. He had been a good master, a bit ‘lax, but good nonetheless. Vera poured up a cup and placed a teabag of the homemade tea within the water and watched it sink to the bottom.

“Huh?” She seemed surprised at the question. “Oh, that’s Vax.”

The fox got up from the ground and jumped up to paw at Vera’s knee. She plucked him up from the ground, crossed her leg over her knee and placed Vax within her lap to give him a quick pet before she prepared the tea for herself.

“I found him at home on a hunt once.” She said and put the teabag in her own cup. “He was abandoned. No one else around, all traces of his family lost in the winter’s heavy snowfall.”

She poured up water for herself and gave him another smile and a nuzzle before she looked back at Harper.

“I… Felt his presence, under a small tree.” She began to stir the contents of her drink. “Hungry, tired, alone and afraid.”

“So, I picked him up. Brought him home and decided to nurture him back to health, but… We bonded? That’s what the Masters amongst the Silver Jedi called it. I feel what he feels, and he feels what I feel.” Her brows perked and she leaned to the side. “Of course, I tend to feel the emotions of most animals around me, but… He just kind of called to me. Like a lightsaber crystal is supposed to.”

The first sip down and Vera already felt at home. She could feel the smell of the small homestead they had. From the rose bushes that were almost overgrown to the berries they foraged. Her eyes closed for a second to visualize it all, and it was almost like being there again. Eyes opened and she felt the same kind of peace that the tea usually brought her.

And at least this time her brothers hadn’t ‘accidentally’ put the jerky into this particular mix. That was a bonus.

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Harper accepted the cup, but Vera did most of the work to get it into her hands. Her arm hadn't simply been broken, it had been twisted until it shattered. While for now it was cast and immobilized, from shoulder to the base of her fingers, they still didn't know if it would heal properly after being left untreated for the week she had been at Lola Sayu. Time would tell.

She held it clumsily, the way she was situated, still largely reclined the only way she was able to get the cup up to her face. Her eyes closed, breathing in the warmth and the fragrance. She didn't have the burst of nostalgia the other woman had, but it was pleasant, evocative of a simpler life. Not the same one that Harper had come from, but something similar at the very least.

The blonde listened as the story of Vax unfolded.

"That's quite a talent," she said, a wane smile all she could manage, but offering it nonetheless. "It sounds like both of you are lucky to have each other."

She blew on the tea, sending the steam skirling across the amber surface of the drink. She didn't sip yet, mostly enjoying the way it felt on her finger tips, the warmth of it as she breathed. The time at Lola Sayu, it's thick sulfuric atmosphere caustic and ever present, had left her mouth, nose and throat raw. Those would heal, they had assured her, but this was the most relief she'd had from that particular discomfort beyond the simple fact of the clean, cool air on Eira Pechal.

"Is it just animals specifically? Or people too?"

So many of the Jedi she had met had a particular gift. Oh, Harper had her own, one not dissimilar to Vera's in fact. Though she mostly felt the emotions from the people around her.

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

Vera nodded in appreciation at the compliment. She had always considered herself very lucky for the connection she had to Vax and the creatures she surrounded herself with. Once her mother had heard of it she hadn’t really questioned it either as much as given a contemplative ‘huh’ as if it had somehow explained so much about Vera growing up. At this point Vera had tried to perfect it, but mostly towards animals.

“I try not to.” Vera frowned at the question for a second before she took a sip of the tea. “People are too complex and have so many more emotions than animals seem to have.”

“Actually, no, what I mean is…” She took a deep breath. “People are more passionate in their feelings. Hate, anger, fear, love, happiness, joy… I find it hard to block it out in bigger crowds, but I try my best. The Silver Jedi told me it was both a blessing and a curse, at least in a sense.”

She paused for a moment and let her smile linger as she looked at Harper drink from the tea. She knew that it was a bit of an acquired taste but it really grew on you. Or maybe that was just the rose-tinted glasses Vera wore around her little tea set speaking. It was rather indecisive in its power struggle for which flavor was looking to be the most prominent. Some sips it was the lemongrass, in other sips it was the roses. In the end every single sip brought her home and with time she would likely have to ask for a new batch.

She dreaded that day. Delivery would be slow and while Vera was a patient little girl she treated anything from home with the same kind of reverence anyone over there had for the planet they lived on. Those days in transit would feel like months.

“What about you?” She asked Harper with a warm smile. “Do you have any sort of talent like that?”

“My friend Irma who traveled from Kiara with me to the Silver Rest seemed to be really good at making plants grow. The masters had a name for it, but I forgot, and it was amazing to see. So I figure everyone has something they are just a little better at than the rest.”

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Oh, Harper understood exactly what she meant. The way she nodded, the motion small and conservative but intent, told her that. It wasn't the casual nod of someone simply listening and making certain the other person was aware of it.

"Mmm same," she said, taking another sip of the tea.

"I mean, basically the same thing. But I can't really.... hrm. Turn it off. Or selectively choose. I only realized recently just how much the emotions of the people around me effect me. Influence me. I didn't even realize how much it effected every decision I made. I'm still not sure I know anymore...."

She trailed off, thoughtful for a moment. Looking for the right words.

"How many of the decisions I made my whole life were influenced by the way the people around me wanted me to decide things," she admitted. "It wasn't on purpose, no one meant it. But it's normal.... to hope that people will do the things you want them to. And when it's a whole family, well."

Her chest ached for a moment, throat tightening slightly. When she talked about it, there was no bitterness.

In truth if she could have all of those people around her again, right now, she would in a heartbeat.

"So... I get..... why you'd focus on animals," she said finally, head tipping back to rest against the pillows again.

"Gotta say, that plant thing sounds incredibly useful. I am... was.... a farmer. My family- yeah, that would have been incredible, no lie."

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

Vera couldn’t turn it off either. She tried, she desperately tried, but it was hard to not let it affect you one way or the other. In the end she was just thankful that her life had been spent with people who wanted her to be independent, people that were kind to her and wanted what was best for her to be able to live on her own one day. The Silver Jedi had shown her a few ways to at the very least attempt and hold it off, but even then that was hard. To learn that Harper was aware of the struggle made the girl smile in appreciation.

“It was very useful. Her family has been instrumental and helped our small community survive some of the harshest summers and winters.” Vera nodded and watched as Harper leaned back in her bed. “They had the farmland, me and my family had the hunting lodge.”

The memory caused Vera to smile even wider, somehow.

“If you don’t mind me asking, do you remember what it was like to realize your emotions weren’t your own?” Vera moved her chair closer to the bed to let Harper lie down without having to turn her head to look at her. “I just… I’ve heard so many stories about it and it fascinates me to hear them every single time.”

It wasn’t a lie. Irma for one had found out because the window to her room kept getting themselves covered in a thick layer of vines every morning that she found out. Michel, one of the other Kiarans brought to the SIlver Jedi, had found out about his abilities when he accidentally ran head first into a wall when he tried to break into a sprint. Broke both his hands, apparently.

Each story was always so peculiar.

“I found out when I was on a hunt once.” Vera frowned. “I got sloppy, shot a deer off-center…”

“Felt everything.”

“It was painful, but it gave me a greater sense of respect for what it meant to be alive. What it meant to bring mercy upon something that suffered and the repercussions of my own actions.” Vear opened her mouth, tilted her head and let in a deep breath to make the point. “After a while, of course. I was overwhelmed and scared at first just like the deer had been.”

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Harper was quiet for a minute, turning the cup around and around in her hands. The movement was awkward with the cast on the left arm.

"Wish I had a good answer for you on that," she said finally. "There wasn't one lightening strike moment. I grew up in a really small community. A lot of people will similar values and similar reactions to things when they happened. I was aware that I could pick up on the emotions of people around me pretty young. But it was never an upsetting thing, not when I was a kid, you know? I was mostly surrounded by decent people who loved me. So there aren't really any stand out memories. There's no aha moment."

She took a sip of the tea, swishing it around in her mouth a little.

"Like I said, it was kind of recently I realized just how deep it went. I'd always been aware but I had assumed that it was mostly surface. That my feelings were mostly my own just with a shade or two of influence. But then we went to Nib- Niblu-"

Harper stopped and made a face.

"I still can't pronounce it. Anyway. Planet that had been within the influence of the Ancient Eye. When that collapsed things got really messy and a couple of us went to see what we could do to help. I started to get really agitated and frustrated, and it took Ember pointing it out to me for me to realize just how much the effect of the people who were there were influencing me on it. And....."

The young woman breathed in through her nose and out again in a rush.

"Made me wonder just how much it had happened before. I just don't know."

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

Vera frowned at that too. There had been a situation when the hate and anger in the air had caused her to feel the frustration of a situation at a far greater impact than she would have otherwise. Vera had killed and she had thrown away what was supposed to be her most important possession as a jedi because of it. Even if what she had killed was a creature of wrath and hate, corrupted by the Sith, it still felt so wrong to her. The thoughts that had circulated around her mind at the time was not her own and the realization of just how much care Vera would have to take when she was faced with situations like it again.

Her head too began to nod in understanding of what Harper had talked about.

“I know what you mean.” She said and continued to nod. “I have just been lucky to surround myself by animals in that regard.”

Vera took another sip of her tea to retain the calmness she felt within her. To know that she wasn’t alone was a very calming thing in itself. Like a shared bond between an empath and an empath. The fact that she was a friend of Alden’s was a blessing as well.

Alden’s friend who had been through hell and come back worse for wear.

A look of worry spread on Vera’s face. She gave Harper a moment to herself before…

“How are you holding up?” The girl asked and put her teacup down on the nearby end table. “Is everything alright with you?”

 

[Mariel Dawnrider]

Her thoughts had gone a little distant. The wondering.

She had always wanted to be a farmer. To grow up, marry, raise her own family in the same farm house, on the same land, as she had grown up in. With the arrival of the Sith Empire, she had lost that. All of it. It ached, a hollow space in her chest that never truly went away. But how much of that feeling was influenced by the people around her? By a loving family that of course wanted her to stay? By a small, tight knit community? She had been tempted, once or twice, to go.... and each time she had been with [member="Alden Belmont"]. Listening to him, his yearning for the Jedi and the stars. Each time, those feelings had been muted when she'd gone home after.

Had the desire to stay on Dellalt been real? Or those moments with him?

Or none of it. How much had everything thing she had ever done been a reflection of the wants and feelings of those around her?

She didn't know.

The experiences with the Sith had left her a different kind of hollow. A hollowness that they had filled with pain. With fear. With guilt for being unable to keep the secrets she had tried so hard to manage.

Verana's question brought her back to the moment, her hands tightening slightly around the tea cup.

"I....."

She took a sip, clearly trying to decide what she wanted to say.

"I'm better than when they got me back," she finally said. Her voice dropped a bit, quieter. "I don't think they are being completely honest with me," she said with a grimace, "I.... I don't think my arm is going to heal the way they hope it will. I think they want me to think positively but it's hard when I'm pretty sure they are full of chit."

[member="Verana"]

 

[Verana]

[member="Harper Kade"]

Nostalgia. Uncertainty. Maybe a hint of fear.

They both knew that they would be aware of one another’s feelings. Something inside of Harper seemed to shift and change as Vera glanced at the woman who seemed to be absent for the time being. Not physically, of course, but mentally. At least if the ripples of the force was anything to go by. Vera could only imagine what she had gone through. To be a bit absent was only natural. What mattered was that they moved on. That was what Alden and Vera were there for along with the rest of the Praxeum.

As Harper finally came back around and sipped on her tea Vera would do much the same.

“I see.” Vera nodded her head up and down in understanding. “Then you could always make plans for that. You know what could happen, and you are smart enough to come up with solutions for it.”

The kid took another sip of her tea and put the cup down on the end table to look at Harper.

“Even if your arm doesn’t get back to normal it will only be a temporary setback before you come back around into your natural groove again.” It was as reassuring as Vera could get. “You are a strong woman, Harper. Even if they would have had to cut your arm off, do you think anything would have changed that?”

“I mean, you met with the Sith’s alpha male and lived to tell the tale. That says a lot about you. More than an injury ever could.”