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Author	Topic: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
JediNemesis Registered: Mar '03	Date Posted: 1/6 2:57pm Subject: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Title: Eleven Summers Author: JediNemesis Era: 7000+ years pre-TPM Genre: Bizarre little creepy vignette. Characters: OCs - Juillanen, Ionnàs' apprentice and successor, who had his first outing in A Disquisition On Hell, and Djanimilane, who starred in The Serpent's Kiss. Notes: The eighth story to be set in my growing far-past miniverse. This one begins eighteen years after A Disquisition On Hell. DISCLAIMER: The universe is the property of George Lucas; original characters and settings remain mine. No money has changed hands. Médou cracked in the red heat of summer; Médou blackened and Médou burned. Red dust filled the air in the little outpost city, laying a fine caul like dried blood on every surface, and tasting of clay and rust. The limewashed walls of the viceroy’s palace and the high domes of the temples were white only at their summits, their lower layers turned dirty brick-orange by thrown-up dust. Even the sound of the temple bells, their sonorous tones counting out the long stifling hours, seemed muffled and choked by the dust. The sun was a white-hot coin nailed to the copper arch of the sky, a little below the zenith, and the hours passed as hotly and slowly as in hell. Juillanen sat in the shade of an awning to one side of the baking street, and waited with catlike patience for the sun to go down. Nobody came near him. The business of the market went on on all sides without any of the participants ever seeming to notice the waiting Dark Lord, or step inside the small circle of empty space that surrounded him. He was cloaked and cowled despite the heat, the curve of the cowl throwing into shadow the dreadful pallor of his face, with its sharp bones and deep, bruised-looking eyes. It was a face that perhaps, years before, had been handsome in an androgynous way, but had been wasted by time and harsh living into an angular monochrome mask that might have pared out of paper. His hands, and the small wicked things they usually held, were hidden in the wide sleeves of the cloak. From a distance, swathed in cloth and lost in shadow, the pale, watchful gaze under the hood could have been that of a leper, or an alien; or there might have been no face at all. Towards the end of the long day, when the shadows were beginning to stream out along the dusty ground, he had a visitor. A child, perhaps eight or nine years old, with a bundle of wiry dark hair tied at the nape of her neck and huge round eyes that were just as dark. Her skin had the same deep tone as the polished wood that ornamented every artefact on Médou. She carried a ragged homemade doll under one small arm. She sat down, raising a puff of red dust, and put the doll carefully in her lap. Two sets of eyes, the black button imitations and the inquisitive real ones, stared curiously at Juillanen; curious, but not afraid. Juillanen stared back, unblinking, until eventually the little girl wrinkled her nose and looked down. She fiddled self-consciously with the doll’s woolly hair for a moment, then asked shyly “Why is your face like that?” Juillanen lifted his hood back over his shoulders, to give her a better view, and ran one considering finger down the sharp edge of his cheekbone. “Because I like it this way.” The child digested this, and then announced “I’m Djanimilane. You can call me Djani.” She held out one hand. The Dark Lord shook it with deadpan solemnity, and said “I’m Juillanen. You can call me Juila.” “Yuhila.” She had the accent of the red plains, harsher than that of the mountain country, and said the unfamiliar syllables carefully. “Close enough.” Juillanen rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, looked at Djani consideringly, and waited for her to say something. “You’ve been in the market all day,” Djani said after a moment’s silence. “I watched you.” “Well done,” Juillanen said dryly. “Are you waiting for someone?” Djani asked. “No.” “What are you doing, then?” Juillanen unfolded himself languidly and leaned back against the rough white-washed wall. “I’m here to kill someone.” The child did not seem overly disconcerted by this. She transferred the little ragged doll from one arm to the other, and said interestedly “Why?” “Because I want them to be dead,” Juillanen said simply. Djani looked at him owlishly, and then said “Are you special? Maman says I’m special.” “I’m very special, Djani,” Juillanen said easily, and leant forward again, chin on hands. “Why ask?” “Because,” Djani said with a hint of accusation in her voice, “I said to Maman to look at you, and she couldn’t see there was anything there.” Juillanen smiled, and said nothing. “You were making her not notice,” Djani said critically. Juillanen shrugged, and again said nothing. “I can’t do that,” Djani said petulantly. “I want to do that.” “What can you do?” Juillanen asked quietly. Djani looked down, and said unwillingly “Maman says not to show it to strangers.” “You can show me,” Juillanen said, and though his voice was gentle it had gained harmonics that had stopped monsters in their tracks and squeezed reluctant informers dry. Djani looked blank for a moment, her eyes unfocused, and then nodded excitedly. “Look.“ Juillanen watched as she held the doll up in one hand, jamming the thumb of the other firmly in her mouth. “Say hello to Yuhila,” Djani said to the little rag doll. Her brow furrowed with concentration, she waved the doll from side to side. “Dolly says hello.” And the ragged line of stitching on the cloth face began to curve upward in a smile, and the limp straw arm to wave in greeting . . . “Oh,” said Juillanen, and narrowed his eyes. The illusion crumbled at the first touch of his power, and the little girl stood frozen, clutching the doll protectively to her chest, and then said plaintively “You can’t do that!” “I can do anything I want to, Djani,” Juillanen said softly. He held out his hand, and the doll rose from her clutching arms and floated noiselessly through the dusty air. “I can do what I like, and you won’t be able to stop me.” The Force shaped itself like a needle in the delicate grasp of his mind, finding the seams where the doll had been inexpertly put together and carefully, with infinite precision, working them apart. One button eye came loose, and fluttered to the ground trailing its thread like wings. “Stop it!” Djani wailed. “You make it stop,” said Juillanen, and with a sad little sound of fraying thread one of the doll’s arms swung loose on its stitching. Straw drifted downwards and lay in the red dust. Djani grabbed for the floating doll; her hand closed on empty air, and Juillanen shook his head. “Not like that, Djani.” She took a step back, helpless tears already swelling at the corners of her eyes, and glared at him with the venom of a child. “I hate you!” “I know,” was all Juillanen said, and the doll’s arm came off entirely and spilled its load of straw and rags into the dust. The remains of the doll twitched, and a pair of furred forelegs emerged from the torn shoulder. An unnaturally huge specimen of the Médouais crown-of-thorns spider pulled itself free of the straw, all eight eyes bright with hunger and poison spines glistening - Juillanen made a motion as if brushing away a fly, and the spider vanished. Djani bit her lip, her eyes red. “Better,” Juillanen said, and began methodically to take apart the panels of the doll’s dress. One by one the fragile scraps of coloured cloth caught the light and fell, floating lazily in the heavy, scorching air. A spark caught in the straw, and a fireball grew from it, engulfing the dry straw and rags and spitting shards of heat into Juillanen’s face and hands - The flames flashed into nothing at another flick of the Dark Lord’s fingers. Djani screamed, less in terror than in what was now flaming, incandescent rage, and threw herself bodily at Juillanen, the doll forgotten. Laughing like a child himself, Juillanen caught one of her wrists in each hand and held her nails away from his face. Then, while she wriggled ineffectually against his grip, he turned her round, sitting her on his knee, and pointed out across the deserted marketplace, to where the sun burned low on the horizon and the dart-shaped silhouettes of spacecraft flashed across the sky like shooting stars. “You see those ships?” Juillanen whispered into Djani’s mass of dark hair. “One of them is called the Vaza. Say it back to me.” “Vaza,” Djani repeated, mesmerised. “She lands here every summer,” Juillanen said. “Every summer, when the days are longest and the viceroys meet in their council, and she leaves again when the red dust blows. When you’re old enough, buy a passage on her and she will bring you to me.” Djani nodded. “Come to me,” Juillanen said softly, “and I’ll teach you how to pull the lightning from the storm clouds, and spin illusions to make the children of the abyss cry.” He lifted her off his knee and stood up, brushing away the caul of fine red dust that had settled on his robes, and looked down at her, his face thrown into shadow by the black fall of his hair. “Goodbye, Djani.” Without another word he walked away. Djani watched him until he was out of sight, the long shadows of sunset seeming to reach out and gather him in. * Eleven years passed, and then one howling night on Ythnyn the Vaza struggled to a landing in a storm of dust and ice and sharp-edged splinters of stone. And a little while later a group of figures, cloaked and cowled and hunched over against the storm, passed the outer wall of the town on the black rocks and began to make their way up the long lamp-studded path to Failtemadh. Juillanen watched them from one of the slitlike windows high in the mountain’s side, his still-long hair snapping around him in the breeze. He was nearly sixty now, ageing by any measure of human life, and yet the Dark Side had done strange things to him as it had to his master, slowing and stretching out his span beyond the limits of nature. Little had changed in him in eleven years; little more had changed in him in all the twenty-nine since he had acceded to the throne. He was still thin, still restless and sickly pale, and still his white face seemed all cheekbones and hollow dark eyes. Every year for those twenty-nine years the Vaza had brought news and tribute from Médou, and, every so often, a few wild-eyed travellers desperate enough to escape their homeworld that they would risk the barrens of Ythnyn. Every year they had come. But it was only for eleven of those years that he had taken to watching the landing party struggle up the winding path, cloaks streaming in the black wind, and studying the cowled figures looking for the one. When they had reached the mountain, and climbed through the endless caverns and winding stairs to the throne room at its dully glowing heart, he was there waiting for them. Not sitting in the iron throne - he had never felt easy there; the presence of his old master still clung too close to it - but waiting silently behind it, stroking the heavy haematite with one long-fingered hand. There were four of them: Aki Hayuketake, captain of the Vaza for two hundred years, who had been world-weary when Ionnàs of the green eyes had been new in his power; two cringing men in the ornate robes of ambassadors, travel-stained and afraid; and a girl - no, she was a woman now, tall and straight as the azinwoods of her homeworld, and with skin as richly dark. Another man might have said she was beautiful; a lesser man might have fallen at her feet and called her goddess. Juillanen looked at her for a few moments, enough to find the outlines of a child’s face in the woman’s before him, and said to Aki Hayuketake “Leave me.” One of the ambassadors said something; Hayuketake silenced him with a whispered word and a sideways glance. The man blanched and made no further objection to being escorted away. The three sets of footsteps died away down the winding stairs, and left Juillanen and Djani alone. “You came,” Juillanen said, and there was a shadow in his voice like a child wondering at the fulfilment of a promise they had thought long since forgotten. “Juillanen,” Djani said, and with a whisper of skirts sank to her knees on the stone, her eyes dark and hungry. “You promised me the lightning from the skies, and phantoms to make the children of the abyss weep. Will you teach me?” His name in her mouth sounded strange and different, and for a fleeting moment Juillanen caught a glimpse of the child she had been, tiny and fiery and defiantly unafraid. “Yes,” the Dark Lord said at last, “yes, I can teach you.” He crossed the throne-room and took her hands. “Rise then, Djanimilane, Dark Lady of the Sith.” “Master,” Djanimilane said, and for a moment they were not in the stone-cut heart of the Sith mountain, but standing on hard-baked clay, and the long ragged shadows of sunset streamed around them. The illusion was wide and perfect, and when Juillanen looked down he saw, as he had somehow known he would, the shreds of straw and ragged cloth lying at his feet, with the red dust of eleven summers glittering in the folds. Feedback welcome as always Nem -----signature----- BeTS Best Author '08 NEW Bad Dreams - http://boards.theforce.net/a/b1/29893091 Eleven Summers - http://boards.theforce.net/a/b1/29657584 Into The Shining Day - http://boards.theforce.net/a/b1/29224914
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NYCitygurl Title: Manager of SFFBC, C&G, NSWFF, and Icons Registered: Jul '02	Date Posted: 1/6 3:42pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Wow, very cool!! I love it -----signature----- I agree with RJ Officially Idri's Muse
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dianethx Registered: Mar '02	Date Posted: 1/6 8:04pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Your world building as always is incredibly good. I loved the image of the red dust and how much it was like blood. I also loved how Juillanen manipulated the girl into rage and avarice. A great way of seeing if she was worthy of his training. Great job. Loved it. -----signature----- Betrayal - http://boards.theforce.net/s/b1/10935143 updated 9/22/09 jedidas3's Master Merlin - Diplomatic Immunity - http://boards.theforce.net/nswff/b10808/30459852
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furrylittlebantha Registered: Dec '05	Date Posted: 1/6 9:42pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Ack--darn you, Nem. With every oneshot you draw me deeper into this world. What's frustrating is that there are only the oneshots. Could you, would you, please write something long and delicious? This world fascinates me and I love to spend time here, here in the rich imagery and moral complexity and the people, the people. This awesome Sith people who take what they want and are soulless but draw you in and force you to admire their cold brilliance. -----signature----- Master of tjace and bi0nic. In mourning for the one year, nine months, and five days it has been since The Souls of Demons was updated. sob
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DaenaBenjen42 Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 1/6 10:41pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Clicked in here on a whim, just to see, and... wow. I like it, even if I have no idea who they are... am going to have to read the other ones now... Well done, Nem. -----signature----- "Say it with me now. Postcard. Zoo. Not. Shopping." master to jackyyy17, micky-nikki, & Trimaj e-sis to BrightFeather All cats are leopards after dark.
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amidalachick Registered: Aug '03	Date Posted: 1/7 11:36am Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane) - Date Edited: 1/7 11:37am (1 edits total) Edited By: amidalachick
	The illusion was wide and perfect, and when Juillanen looked down he saw, as he had somehow known he would, the shreds of straw and ragged cloth lying at his feet, with the red dust of eleven summers glittering in the folds. Wow. That was creepy, and beautifully written, and just incredible. I loved it. -----signature----- "So I can open my own can of pudding, can I? Shows what you know, Marge!"
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VaderLVR64 Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Feb '04	Date Posted: 1/8 8:22am Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Wow. I say that a lot when I read your work. Just...wow. “Yes,” the Dark Lord said at last, “yes, I can teach you.” He crossed the throne-room and took her hands. “Rise then, Djanimilane, Dark Lady of the Sith.” “Master,” Djanimilane said, and for a moment they were not in the stone-cut heart of the Sith mountain, but standing on hard-baked clay, and the long ragged shadows of sunset streamed around them. The illusion was wide and perfect, and when Juillanen looked down he saw, as he had somehow known he would, the shreds of straw and ragged cloth lying at his feet, with the red dust of eleven summers glittering in the folds. Your talent never fails to amaze and awe me. -----signature----- R.I.P John, Alex, Jason, and Christian Never forgotten Soldiers' Angels http://soldiersangels.org/ 2114 soldiers waiting for someone to care
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Qui-Gon_Reborn Title: Qui-Gon's Personal SWC Modsaber Registered: Dec '08	Date Posted: 1/10 2:25am Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Wow. Just...wow. What an incredible tale you've got there. I'm simply astonished. Probably one of the best I've ever read. -----signature----- To be a true poet is to become God. - Dan Simmons Now bring me that horizon. - Capt. Jack Sparrow High Priestess in the Holy Order of the Circle-in-the-Sky Worshippers
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ratna Registered: Mar '07	Date Posted: 1/11 4:39pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Not just the paradoxically compelling characters who draw our hearts even while they are truly evil. But also your fine ear for the cadence of myth. These two elements make your fiction truly unique. Like FurryLittleBantha, I long to see all these vignette dots connected into a fully realized canvas. If Lucas guys ever hire you to write SW prehistory, I will pay to read! -----signature----- “What we measure affects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things.” Joseph E. Stiglitz
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ardavenport Registered: Dec '04	Date Posted: 2/2 6:14pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Aaaaah, very atmospheric and very, very Sith. Especially tearing apart the doll. Such a simple, trivial bit of cruelty, subtle but direct, when he wants to test the girl out. And why does he want to kill someone -- because he wants them dead. Simple. Direct. Very good. -----signature----- Links to all fics -- http://boards.theforce.net/Message.aspx?topic=25405090&brd=10304&start=26223917 The Heart of the Jedi -- http://boards.theforce.net/b/b1/26013327 ---- Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, JA and everything you wanted to know about lightsabers
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the_wandering_shadow Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 2/2 6:52pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Awe-inspiring as always, Nem, but it looks like I'm going to have some catch-up reading to do. Ionnas, I remember, but I must have been on hiatus for these other people. Regardless of my ignorance, this was easy to slip into. “Come to me,” Juillanen said softly, “and I’ll teach you how to pull the lightning from the storm clouds, and spin illusions to make the children of the abyss cry.” That was my favorite part. Absolutely wicked and again excellent job. -----signature----- Daniel Paul Harms (1958-2007) Seph Danthar's diary @ http://boards.theforce.net/the_saga/b10476/29688948/p1/ lordmaul13's partner in crime
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azizah Registered: Sep '06	Date Posted: 2/3 12:02pm Subject: RE: Eleven Summers - one-post, creepy/horror, OCs (Juillanen, Djanimilane)
	Wow! All I can say is beautifully written. You write these wicked characters so well, that while I can’t say I care about them, I certainly want to know more about them. I love Juillanen’s total honesty with Djani and how he treats her like an adult, until he takes her on his lap and makes her repeat what he has told her. Positively creepy. And the last line was perfect The illusion was wide and perfect, and when Juillanen looked down he saw, as he had somehow known he would, the shreds of straw and ragged cloth lying at his feet, with the red dust of eleven summers glittering in the folds. Wonderful.
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