Tarisian Meet-up (Salvor Arnex)

[Slot 16]

Keturah laughed a little. "Really? Well, it's a color that makes you feel happy or at peace. Something that comforts you. Sometimes for no reason at all. Does any color like that come to mind?" She asked him.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

Something that made him feel happy. Many things made him happy, a warm bath, a soft bed, a good meal, a good fight and the hunt but none of these were colors. Something that made him feel at peace. He struggled with that one, peace was not something he was accustom to, even now here in this place of beauty as he searched to find peace through the force it eluded him. The time he felt most at peace was in combat, it forced him to be calm to rely on his training and not his emotion, emotion was used to fuel focus not take precedent over it. This question was much harder than it needed to be, all he had to do was pick any color and she would be satisfied. He would not be however, he now wanted to know the answer to this riddle, what was his favorite color? He thought hard and came back to all the things he had enjoyed, the meals, the bed, the baths and it all had one color in common.

“Grey.” he said after a moment of contemplation.

 

[Slot 16]

"Gray?" She asked. It wasn't a mean sort of question, though. She was merely curious. "Why does gray make you happy, Salvor?" She said. She studied his face. In some ways, she could think of how gray could be comforting. Gray was the color of smoke as a warm fire burned, and of fog on a cool autumn morning just before the sun breaks through it. But everyone's reasons are different.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

“Chuba stew.” he answered simply, with a genuine smile on his face chuba stew was his favorite meal back on Hutta when he had been a slave. There was nothing he liked more than coming back from a hard day of training or from a satisfying hunt and sitting down to a warm bowl of chuba stew and good chuba stew was always grey, he didn’t know why but that’s the way it was. Many outlanders looked at the cuisine with distaste but to Salvor there was nothing better.
The thought of chuba stew had Salvor in a surprisingly good mood despite his new found hunger, and he had Keturah to thank for that, he had come to Taris full of nervous anticipation and anxiety but some how through meeting her, he had found a way to relax. The force was a mysterious master at times. Salvor focused on the yellow flowers Keturah had pointed out and using the force plucked one and floated it over to her setting it gently into her lap.

[member="Keturah X"]

 

[Slot 16]

Keturah thought for a moment. She'd actually tasted chuba stew before. It had made her grimace and ultimately regurgitate, but for a short time it didn't taste half bad. Plus, she saw they way Salvor smiled when he thought about it. It must've truly been something he loved. She gasped in surprise as a yeloow flower floated into her lap. She picked it up and smelled it, amazed. "How did you do that?" She asked excitedly.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

He had made her happy and for some reason that made him happy.

“I am attuned to the force. That is why I am going to Coruscant, so I may begin my training to master it.”

[member="Keturah X"]

 

[Slot 16]

Keturah beamed. "You're a Force Sensitive? No way! That's amazing, Salvor!" She said. Often, she found herself wishing she had the ability to move object with her mind, or meditate and hear the Force speaking to her. But alas, she wasn't blessed with such a gift. "What's it like? To be able to feel the Force?" She asked him.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

the light-hearted afternoon suddenly became very serious atleast for the moment as Salvor tried to explain the force to Keturah .“Terrifying, invigorating, empowering and hard. To be blessed with such divine favor is not easy.” Salvor thought often of his affinity, he had grown up not having any idea what it was let alone what it meant but over the course of the last few months after being purchased from Valturla by the young sith who had been so strong and so confident, he spent a lot of nights awake pondering what the force was to him.

In the brief moments that the apprentice whose name Salvor never learned discussed theology with him, he expressed his view of the force being a tool and that true master learned to bend and shape the force to his will, was the young man right? It was not for Salvor to say. On Coruscant Salvor would find the truth, the force had told him so, certainty like that was frightening, but his mind would not waver, the force guided him and it was guiding him to Coruscant and to the One Sith.

 

[Slot 16]

"Sometimes I wish I could use it," Keturah said. "Maybe then I could actually start solving some of my own problems." As she said this, her mind wandered to her father on Coruscant. That man. Ever since she could remember, he had been nothing but cold and controlling toward her. He kept her locked away from the world, never let her have friends or see the beauty of the Galaxy around her. No. All she was ever allowed to see were the walls of her bedroom. She wasn't even allowed to go out on the balcony in the living room. There were guards posted at every exit to make sure she could never leave. She was nothing more than a possesion in his eyes. Maybe if she had the Force, she could stop running from him. Make him see her as his daughter, and not some pricless trinket.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

Something troubled her, but everyone was entitled to their secrets.
“Sooner or later we all run into problems we can’t handle on our own.”

 

[Slot 16]

"Yeah. It's a little more than once in a while with me," She said, giving him a sad little smile. She looked down at the flower in her hands. Then, she looked over at Salvor. "Um, Salvor? Is it alright.... If I ask where you got your tattoos?" Her voice was hesitant.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

She asked about his tattoos sounding almost embarrassed to ask, it was a sort of personal question but he could understand her interest, they were beautiful to see if he wasn’t being modest.

“I was twelve and my Ma-…” he cleared his throat. He caught himself about to call Valturla his master, and that slug was no longer that and he did not want this girl to know he had been a slave. “I was twelve and had just completed a right of passage...” he didn’t explain that his right of passage was surviving a kill house. A house used for training only the hardest of mandalorian soldiers, it had multiple staircases, winding corridors and all manner of places for the trainers to hide and pop out shooting to kill. He lost his cousin to one of those houses when they were nine but when he finally made it through that house, covered in his blood and the enemy’s, well that was the proudest moment of his life.

“…and earned my tattoos.” he took her hand in his and helped her trace each pattern. “This one means courage or more literally heart in Iridonian, this is cunning or brains, and this, this means savage.” That one was always his favorite, Valturla was many things but he certainly knew how to instill a sense of self pride in Salvor.

 

[Slot 16]

Keturah watched her fingers, guided by Salvor, trace the tattoos on his goldish-yellow skin. She blushed unknowingly as it happened, but was fascinated. "They're so beautiful," Her tiny voice breathed. She almost wanted one of them.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

His heart raced in his chest as he ran her fingers across his tattoos, it tickled and comforted him at the same time. He gave her hand back. “They are beautiful.”

 

[Slot 16]

"And there are so many, " Keturah marveled. "It must've hurt to get them. Especially the larger ones." Her big eyes continued to trace the thick blackj patterns that covered his skin. She could only imagine how it would've felt.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

They had hurt. They had hurt terribly when they inked into his flesh, and Salvor remembered the resolve he had to not show the pain , he had earned those tattoos by guile and blood and he would not sully his accomplishment with tears, his cousin Ravi had died trying to earn his tattoos, his memory would not be tainted.

“Pain is the price we pay.” the words came almost automatically. It was a phrase he knew well, the man who trained him, who had sent him into those kill houses, said it often it was a mantra of sorts, he said it to him as he was tattooed and he said it as he cradled a young grieving Salvor after Ravi was killed and ever since that day Salvor has found comfort in the words.

 

[Slot 16]

"The price you pay for strength and power, right?" She said almost instantly. Among the millions of things she'd read on the Holonet, Keturah had come across a similar philosophy at least a dozen times. What perplexed her was how much some people were willing to sacrifice just to be considered "better". Was it truly worth what they lost? She herself didn't know the answer, and probably never would.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

Her assumption was not without foundation. Many strived for power and for strength, Salvor himself yearned to join the sith who to wider galaxy appeared to want nothing more than that. Salvor himself did not. He already had power, he longed for control, to master his power. Salvor had strength, he survived where others had died, he was a slave and a killer yet he did not let it break him.

“It’s the price we pay for life.” one did not have to be an assassin or a soldier or a sith to know that every life was full of pain, be it physical, mental or physical, it could be big pain or small, constant or fleeting but life was built on pain.

 

[Slot 16]

Keturah looked up at the sky, contemplating this. There was much truth to it. You couldn't live without pain, because it was always there, lurking around the edges of everything you had. Even she had experienced pain. Though, it was quite small in comparison to Salvor's. "I'm sorry that you had to feel pain. I'm sorry that anyone has to..." She said quietly. There was a sadness behind her words that hung in the air like a cloud around her.
[member="Salvor Arnex"]

 

[Salvor Arnex]

[member="Keturah X"]

“Do not be sad Keturah and do not feel sorry for me, feeling pain means your alive. With out pain how would we know joy?” Salvor could not have predicted having an existential conversation in the park today but it was good to be introspective at times.