Saga Aristine: A trilogy of vignettes; Aristine, and Thryst (OCs) timeframe: between RotS and ANH

This is a series of vignettes about one of my favorite OCs. All three of these stories are actually posted elsewhere, but the first two don't have their own thread, so I'm creating this one for them, and re-posting the third for ease in finding it. Also, there is a very good chance that I'll add on, so this is for my own benefit, as well:
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Explorations

?But what is it?? Aristine asked, peering curiously up at the glowing square of rock within the larger boulder.

?No one knows,? the guide said. ?Some say the Jedi put it there to warn people away.?

Aris closed her eyes and felt for the rock through the Force. No?that wasn?t right. It was something else; something good - majestic. Not a warning.

Technically, Aris wasn?t a Jedi. She?d never had formal training, or a master, or a lightsaber, for that matter. But she definitely had Force powers, and her mother, a mystic healer in a backward village on an even more backward planet, had taken it upon herself to train her daughter in the rudiments of the Force.

Her mother had died the year Aris?s training ended. Aris immediately left her home, never to return. A life as a small time healer was not what she wanted for herself.

So she had started wandering. Her first stop, four months ago, had been Coruscant. But the bustle there was too much for her after living eighteen years in a village where everyone knew everyone else, and the biggest news was that Alpho Ronz?s crops had failed for the second year in a row.

Then she had gone to Tattooine. That was the exact opposite: too barren and empty. She felt lost in the magnitude of the desert planet.

Then Aris had come to this little temperate rainforest planet. Here, she had hired a guide to take her into the wilderness.

This was what she liked: the comforting closeness of trees, the buzzing of thousands of insects, the drip-drip of the rain that fell most of the time. Aristine?s mother would have loved this.

The guide broke through her thoughts with a nervous cough. ?What would you like to do, mistress?? he said, his antennae waving anxiously above his blue face.

Aris looked up at the mammoth structure before her. No one could hope to find out what it was from this angle. It was too huge. She glanced at their surroundings, and noticed that the ground behind them sloped up, first gently, and finally, almost in a vertical slope to a peak high above the man-made structure before them.

?We?re going to climb the mountain.?

?Climb? The mountain?? the guide croaked. ?B-but no one?s ever made it up Ashtherion! It can?t be done.?

?Then we?ll be the first.? The finality with which she said the words left little room for argument, so the guide followed Aris wordlessly, wringing his hands.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The climb was a hard one. Well over half of the waist- to shoulder height shrubs that covered the nominally rocky slope were thorn bushes, with large thorns that caught at anything and everything. More than a few times, Aris and her distraught guide had to backtrack to find a do-able route.

After nearly three hours of ceaseless climbing, the blue skinned humanoid sat down on a relatively flat rock and burst into tears. ?I am sorry, Mistress, but I cannot go further. The ascent of this mountain is impossible.?

Aris took pity on the man. Indeed, he was hardly fit for strenuous climbing, in his impractical guides? dress, and extra folds of fat against the coming winter. ?Sit here, then,? she said kindly, ?and wait for me. I?m afraid that now I?ve started up this bit of rock, it?s going to take quite a bit more than this to get me back down before I?ve seen the top.?

The humanoid opened his mouth to protest, but realized his good fortune that she wasn?t forcing him to follow her all the way up (most employers would have) and nodded gratefully. Turning her back on the guide, Aristine started up the steep slope on her own.

An hour later it started to rain. At first, just a drizzle, but finally, a downpour so

 

Beautiful. I've seen the last part in your OC Dueling Circle Entry and two sections leading up to it were fabulous.
I really like these OCs. I was trying to visualize Master Thrysst yesterday and I'm glad to get the dragon/lizard image solidified in my head. What a keen OC!