Ultraviolet

[Ellie Mors]

I Walk The Line

Solitude was pleasant, sometimes, to just divorce herself from the rest of reality - to walk through the mists of the past and ponder on what could have been if she'd chosen a different path. There was little in the galaxy that could tether Braith down these days, not much that kept her attention for more than a few days, not since the morning she woke up alone on Tatooine. Though she preferred the company of Braxus to solitude, she couldn't just use him to replace that feeling in her chest, and despite his attempts to bridge the gap between the two of them it would be as difficult and daunting as the path that led the two of them to each other.

Being alone was why she found herself on Maena, a world that she'd known hardly anything at all about. It was a world that Braxus knew of, however, which was the only relief he found in her venturing alone on the world without some form of escort - though he knew well enough that she would never need someone to protect her. Breathing in the humid air beneath the cover of night was her opiate, each inhale a reminder of a time that she'd never get to reclaim, and through the numbing sensation of depression that it brought in waves, she found solace in knowing that she had experienced what many others never would.

It was a pitiful justification for keeping herself together, perhaps, but she had a simple outlook on the way her life had unfolded - she was raised by those that cared for her, taught by those that respected her, she lived a fulfilling youth on Pax Insul until her internment within the tomb in her temple. Even upon being freed she was exposed to a relationship that had been foreign to her before, lived a life - if only for a little while - that she never would have known if she had not made those enemies that locked her away. And today, even with the knowledge that she had lost her lover and her culture, she knew there was something else there that would replace it with time. Whether it would be settling down with Braxus or something beyond the scope of personal happiness, she did not know.

And, while lost in her existential curiosities, that was how she stumbled upon [member="Aria Vale"], simply walking through the grass.

 

[NightSister]

Reaching a calm state of mind, for Aria, was a task that invariably required a measure of reclusion. Even better if she could, in one way or another, pretend that the rest of the world was altogether separate from the one she inhabited, but she'd decided that it was to her benefit to at least try and ground herself somewhat - to get her fill of solitude without having to escape reality altogether as she so often liked to do - and so lately, when she needed peace, she took to a nice quiet spot untouched by city for the comfort she drew from being alone with her thoughts. Even such a planet as Maena had its places where she could wander undisturbed any time she needed to clear her head - or even when her thoughts were untroubled and she wanted merely to enjoy the outdoors, although the former tended to be her reasoning behind her regular outings, of course.

Today was no different. Aria had been out and about, doing what she could to evaluate and sort out her recent situation; always just as confusing a task. As much as the dark side had helped her - and it had, truly. Even living in a planet where its presence ran high boosted her ability; becoming able to use it had undoubtedly been good for her - she was smarter than to pretend serving it was enough to solve all her problems. When the Echani had first sought out the Dark side, her desire, however initially subconscious, had been for freedom; that, at least, she'd achieved. Now, her struggle was her identity. Simply naming herself as among those who used the Dark side helped, of course, but that was only a start. She'd need a much clearer idea of who she was and wanted to be before she could turn her focus to some other faraway goal. It'd been perhaps the only merit of the Jedi; the simplicity. By the end of her time on Voss, it'd been just about all that kept her where she was. Now she was without it, and she'd need time to work around that. She was confident she could, though. On that front, at least, Aria was optimistic.

But she'd always need time to herself, regardless of how smoothly she had her life running, because that was her nature. Today had even been a relatively uneventful day; she simply had a lot of thoughts that she needed to work through, and she worked through her thoughts by taking to the fields, strolling as she thought things over. She thought a lot about the Sith these days, especially now she lived on Maena of all places. Not that she intended even to attempt to join their ranks anytime soon, of course; the notion had merely crossed her mind, and Aria was quick to entertain it.

She was mulling over just that when she passed [member="Braith Achlys"]. Automatically, her head turned to study the brunette with the same mildly curious analysis that was typical of Aria; it was a moment before it even occurred to her that she'd bumped into the woman, and probably ought to say something.

"Oh, hi! Er, sorry."

Smooth.

 

[Ellie Mors]

The casual exchange of skin-to-skin contact generally left someone slightly miffed, perhaps disgruntled, at the thought that someone else was too careless to see someone else walking in the same space. Many more, still, perhaps ignored it as an accident, perhaps apologized, and went on their way. Few, even in a galaxy dotted by force users, took meaning to these accidents, and few still encountered visions doing so. Among the millions - so small a percentage was the minority of those who used the force to those that could not or did not - there were collective dozens who could say they waded through the ripples and waves in the flow of the force, and perhaps even less that could make coherent sense from what they saw - what they felt.

She was a flow walker, one who walked forwards and back through the waves that people and events left in the force, like an echo that was still reverberating from long ago or was building up and yet to happen. It was complex, an ability that could drive one insane if they did not know how to take in the possibilities of catching glimpses or even observing entire moments in time that had either not happened yet or had occurred in the distant past - an ability that was not only, or perhaps not always, a conscious decision. Coupled with visions and psychometry, the ability to flow walk created intense and bizarre moments in the witch's life, and even her dreams took her to events that had transpired in the real, waking, world. It was that simple contact, that brushing of skin against skin, and the slight trip in her step that triggered it.

The rapid change of imagery and the cacophony of voices and sounds that rushed through her head was like an intense migraine, one that she could have said were unlike any other if this had been the first time for her. Much of it had made no sense to her, flashes of perspective memories from someone else's life, and the rapid change, an entire lifetime flashing before her eyes in the blink of an eye, made it hard to discern what it was that she was seeing. But she caught glimpses of familiar faces - Braxus here, or there, even the faces of Jedi who had attempted to push her and another apart from each other. Perhaps it was the glance from the woman that had triggered the momentary jump, but even as [member="Aria Vale"] spoke she felt herself drifting back to the present, time having just barely passed from the moment she'd corrected her step mid-trip to now

"Who are you?"

The words likely sounded a bit more hostile than she'd intended, or at least the way she'd directly asked rather than brushing the incident aside. The look of anger on Braxus's face lingered like a fresh wound in her mind, knowing quite well that it had meant she'd been looking through the woman's eyes at an enraged Sith lord. The witch didn't quite believe in coincidences, however, which did not quite lend well to their incidental, if inopportune, meeting.