The Elegy & Storm

[Seydon of Arda]

“Reckon that I snore on account of someone putting me to bed too well,” Said Seroth in cheeky counter, earning himself a somewhat narrowed stare from Rosa as she took a determined sip of her fresh brewed caff.

So their breakfast began. Her lad rose and traded conversation with her, hustling busily back and forth in a constant pace. There was a glimmer of just bridled energy beneath the motion of his strides… As if sitting still too long was an abhorrent concept. It was something of a truth, considering Seroth often snuck out of the Tython compound in the evenings to simply go tree climbing. He had a hand of some experience in cooking. Ordinarily, caught beneath an awning beneath deep snows, dinner was whatever was suitably edible, nutritious, and close at hand. The boy was a hunter-gatherer by ordinary trade. He could make do with sawdust and puddle water, if it meant staying alive, and on his feet.

He looked up from the contents of a cookbook holo, noting a hesitant word on the cusp of Rosa’s lips. “...Let me try. If nothing else, Rosa, you can remember me for terrible cooking, an awful snore, and…”

...That small, bastard grin of his seemed out of place on his otherwise plain and kind features. “...And elation.”

A half hour on, sprinkled with batter and spritz of cinnamon, breakfast was served. Seroth sauntered over with Rosa’s plate, piled high with Corellian styled flatcakes, eggs the colours of sun yellow and rheumy ochre, an ordinary cut of ordinary hog back bacon, and a fresh refill of her dwindling caff. Complete with a helping of creamer and Zeltros sugar. Saw what they would of the lad… But he had a heart to please and did so with consummate gusto.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa’s heart was singing, her worries utterly forgotten as she watched Seroth with a careful eyes as he made them breakfast, idly sipping on her caff as he did, holding back on shrewd remarks as he stumbled in places over the recipe. By the time it was done her stomach was grumbling loudly and she accepted the plate beaming.

She caught his face between her hands and kissed him before tasting her food. “One last kiss...just in case you poison me.” she teased. Though the boy would make her eat her words when she took the first bite. She shook her head, refusing to give him and instant response. “Well, what do you know, not only can you take me to heights I’ve never reached, but you make a good breakfast to round it off.”

She made him sit still for a short while, long enough to share breakfast with him and finish her second cup of caff. There wasn’t a moment between the pair that wasn’t lit up by smiles or musical laughter. Rosa collected the plates and set them in the sink, as she chatted about Qae Shena and the friends she had found in Spencer and Ashin, of all people.

As the bubbles collected before her a wicked smile crossed her face and she scooped a handful up blowing them in Seroth’s face as he brought her the rest of the dishes.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

It did him proud to do well by Rosa’s word. With both a pan and his… ahem, ‘physicality’. The lad had grown into a silent, humble streak as the years wore on from his juvenile summers, always seeing himself as simply… Seroth. No more, no less, just a man who’d loved to climb as a boy, found the pace of combat addictive, and struggled just as hard with many great questions. Most of which surrounded his existence as both Jedi and exile, ranger and runaway. He never got around to thinking much of his abilities, physical or spiritual. There was only practice and practice, despite the adage, never made perfect. No one demanded more of himself than his own conscience. If being born into the Force was a grand privilege, then he owed the rest of sentient-kind his very best effort.

...Then Rosa blew soapy suds up into his face and caught a handful of bubbles up his nose. Seroth shivered, sneezing. To his credit, he didn’t drop the plates. But he did hurry up to sit them in the sloshing, hot sink water before he turned to sneeze once more. It didn’t exit his mouth and nostrils so much as roared. The lad looked up, between a face of wry humour and indignation. Slowly at a measured gait, he came up to Rosa’s side. A finger dipped wetly into the soap waters and then drew back. It wasn’t until there was a warm soak running down the inside of her shirt that Rosa glanced and saw Seroth leaning his hand over, dripping swiftly from his fingertip as it hovered over her collarbone.

“...Hehehehehehe…”

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa blinked and looked at Seroth with a wry smile before looping one hand around his neck and kissing him. “This is a fight you can’t win, dunderhead.” she said, pulling away just enough to speak before kissing him again, with enough ferocity to keep him occupied. Her free hand found purchase on a cup in the sink behind her, she smiled through the kiss as she lifted the cup up and over pouring its soapy contents down the back of Seroth’s head and back.

Then she was away, slipping from his grasp and scampering from the galley before he could retaliate, childish laughter ringing in her wake. Sliding through the bedroom and into the bathroom, she snatched a glass from the stand next to the sink and filled it with icy cold water, spinning as Seroth caught up with her and dousing him again.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

...Extended experience with Rosa Mazhar’s particular brand of humour should have and did in fact warn him against taking off after her fleeing heels. However, the lad hadn’t been prone to run when faced with a gut instinct to curl up and stop. Standing in a sopping shirt, bangs flaxen across his dripping brow, he was committed to giving an answer to his forced dereliction of dignity. Not that, arguably, he had much of any to start out but he had been dunked on his head with a glassful of hot, sudsy water. He pivoted on his heel and ran hard on the blur of Rosa’s heels.

Something blinked in that hard, quiet spot in the back of his mind. Not… a split moment of ‘Danger sense’ but… He was about to walk into something otherwise wet. Flashes of silver glass. Liquid rolling forward in a chaotic blur of motion. Landing very coldly across his nose and chin, streaking rivulets that dripped with icy speed down his chin scruff. His state of dress was begging for dryness. Seroth had only thrown on his old pair of beaten, green slacks and a roughened belt of leather stuck through with chew marks.

“...You have made an easy mess of me, Rosa,” Seroth said, strolling forward as Rosa backed up against the glass panelling of the shut-in shower stall. “Then, I have always been an easy fool to play. I know it. But…

“...You really ought to have been careful just where it was you decided to hole up in.” The coarse, reinforced denim of his slacks was beginning to cool to a quite damp, uncomfortable temp. Seroth blinked, smiling with a whole expression of tender youthfulness. Only a boy of his unassuming quality and earnest endeavor could make stripping down to buck bare skin something both tempting and flattering, blushing more to himself than anything at Rosa’s arched gaze of appraisal. There was an audible, if wonderfully raw and human sound of something… ahem… Noticeably heavy knocking against his thighs.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

There was a gentle clink as Rosa set the glass once more on the side, her playful smile taking on a more alluring edge as Seroth undressed before her. Eyes drank in every curve of his body and limbs before settling once more upon his grey eyes. There had been a plan to win this, somewhere in her mind and he had made her forget it, by simply undressing.
She cleared her throat “What exactly is wrong with my choice of hideouts hmmm?” she pressed, moving forward, closer to him. “I have you right where I want you I think.” A nimble foot moved behind her, flicking the glass panel of the shower to one side. She tilted her head, finger finding the buttons of her blouse as she slowly began to undo them, eyes never leaving Seroths face. “Didn’t you say something about a shower?”

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“...At the moment…” He pushed his tongue to skip over a brief stumble of otherwise coherent words, watching Rosa’s eyes bore like hot steel in through his own. “...I cannot remember if I did…”

Dimly, he recalled a hot day with winds gusting sand and grit up through the belly hold of the Iron Snake, whistling ‘round the fortifications of a burning Jedi Temple. Figures were rushing beneath. Small. Vulnerable. Covered in soot and debris, bloodied and hurting. It’d been Omni’s day. He just acted the small role of whisking down to take them into his vessel’s berth and travel high and far away from the scene of exhaustive battle. That was when he first remembered noticing her. Hair frayed, nursing small, inconsequential cuts across her chin and cheek, smiling a little and thanking him for a timely exit. He could not remember what it was precisely that he said in return.

Meanwhile, a blouse and dress had fallen to the floor and it was not simply eyes that each other had upon one another. The shower stall slid closed with a racket of slamming aluminum and glass. His hands fumbled past her hips, stroking the water valves until a powerfully invigorating mixture of heated rain-fall poured down and soaked them instantaneously. Seroth whispered sweet promises into Rosa’s ear, holding on to her hands. Their life would be good. And it would be fun. And he would never give her cause to regret. And then he stopped whispering, all conversation ceasing entirely. There were far more important matters to attend to.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa sat on the bed, damp body wrapped in a towel, hair still sodden, the water dripping from it running down her back. Witha a smile she fell backwards, uncaring of the fact that wet hair would make the bed damp, it was beyond saving now anyway, unless she was willing to put more time and effort into rescuing the bedroom from the carnage that had ensued.

Not now. Now she was content to just lay back, at let the warm feeling spread throughout. Eyes closed for a moment and she dozed a smile set on her face only to be woken with a start as a chime rang once throughout the ship. She sat up frowning, a sense of something dark lingering over her.

“Something’s wrong.” she said softly, rising from the bed she moved swiftly to the bridge dropping down into the pilots chair she activated her comms. A hologram flickered into life into the familiar nautolan face thats was Qae’s but there was no welcoming smile, it was taut with the lines of stress.

“Our security has been compromised. Expect an attack at any moment, likely from Sith sources. Make sure you wipe your navcomputers and have a safe haven ready to go, because our skies are no longer clear.”

Rosa paled. A sith attack? On the vagrants? Rosa hit repeat on the message once more before sighing. “Ashin,” she thought aloud “Someone knows you’re still alive.”

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The bulked shadow sleeping in resounding rest by her side prior to her rise was stirring like a voracious viper. Rosa’s voice had fallen from a groggy morning’s greeting, filled with a familiar tone of immense personal satisfaction, into a worried murmur… and then an outright hiss of breath. Not scared but measured with motes of heightened alarm. Seroth watched her rise and then stood himself, dressing. An old set of battered tunic and slacks, lacing over belt, sash, and a secondary waist harness. Thread-bare gloves requiring copious repair patches fitted onto his hands as he stooped to watch Qae’s coded broadcast.

“Can no one simply leave one another be…?” He grunted.

They took to a last embrace at the footing of the Golden Rosa’s descended entry ramp, briefly washed in a hot glare of supremely clear, true-blue skies glazed warm by a single sun. Seroth wondered if his dreams would be filled with itching sand beneath his toes, Rosa’s laughter breaking over him in time with the surf-scuffs and wind. Perhaps dreams of rapturous storms would come to embrace his sleepy state, reminding him that it was not lightning strikes that brought paired cries and shouts in the too warm darkness. ...He didn’t wish to depart. They could stay, perhaps. Weather this latest conspiracy from the comforts of a fully stocked vessel, swimming, cooking, playing, loving until the year was up and over. Pragmatism seared that idea with practical knowledge. They could be found here, now. And they could be hurt.

So he tried to tell Rosa. Better to be lost in the stars and comet dust than knee deep in trapping sands. Seroth didn’t believe it himself. Yet they couldn’t tarry and paranoia gnawed at his senses. The cloudless skies blanketing overhead seemed too pregnant with chance vessels screaming down to rake them with cannon fire. Their goodbye wasn’t verbal… He simply held her in a close, high dip and kissed until he felt hands push at his jaw for breath, maybe mercy. One more kiss… A little peck that sealed their affection. The obsidian ring gleamed bright and black upon his collarbone.

The lad turned, to where the sleek, dark lines of the aggressive Iron Snake sat in temporary repose. Rosa’s midnight elegies of panting cries echoed blithely in his ears. While, far away to the western horizon, dark thunderheads rolled and jousted. Spears of lightning could be seen cavorting from air to water. Seroth regarded the coming storm for a short, steeled moment. There was daylight on the other side of that writhing horror, that he knew. It was only a matter of surviving through to see the light and warmth break through…

~Fin~