Saga Green Silk (OC vignette)--Repost

(This was a story I deleted several weeks back. I'm giving it another go...well, just 'cause...)

Title: Green Silk
Author: leiamoody
Timeframe: 0.6 ABY
Genre: Vignette, Drama
Characters: OC’s (Nalieza Fejier, Paurilis Fejier, mentions of Maiena Isoderi)
Summary: The discovery of a wedding dress prompts a daughter to reflect on a strange connection with her deceased mother.

Other relevant information: This is another character vignette about my OC Nalieza Fejier, who was also featured in The Distance of Homecoming and Another Role.
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It was after midnight, and it wasn’t quiet. Beneath the calm gaze of the indigo and navy sky, the sounds of the humming mantis mingled with the breeze that slipped through the almana trees, up the dead-end street to one ancient bungalow and a half-open bedroom window.

Nalieza was awake. In the midst of the ghost hour, it wasn’t just the retired Lit professor’s blaring holovid that prevented her from sleeping. The green silk dress lay on her bed, stretched out with flared skirt spread across the white quilt. A young woman had purchased the dress over twenty years ago in a boutique on Lacace for her impromptu nuptial ceremony.

The green silk dress once belonged to Maiena Isoderi, Nalieza’s mother.

The professor’s holovid from next door made another unwelcome intrusion through Nalieza’s window. Going over and asking him to turn down the volume never worked since the elderly menace always claimed his rights were being violated. So the neighbors on either side were forced to endure poorly scripted dialogue from the daytime holodramas and the pointless banter from Stars Revealed! every night. It was more reminders about mother and daughter’s past lives (that empty world of visions of dreams other beings collectively lived while sitting in front of a flat, glowing screen on their walls).

Nalieza got up and closed the window with a sliding thud.

She looked over to her mother’s wedding dress. Of course there was another reminder of a life that belonged to someone else, yet was also possessed by the young woman who shared not only DNA but also something ephemeral with the wearer of the green dress. Nalieza found the dress tucked inside a storage box in the hall closet. She had seen the box several times in the past sixteen years they had lived in the house. But it was only two days ago she felt some weird urge to pull the box down from the upper shelf. When she opened it and discovered the contents wrapped in tissue paper, Nalieza intitially thought it was a table covering left behind by G’mata Fejier after she returned back to the old homeworld. But Nalieza realized its true nature (pleats, a long skirt matched by a fringed belt, and two straps attached to a V-neck bodice) when she released the silken garment from the box.

There was a static holo that hung above the bed in her father’s room. Younger versions of Maiena and Paurilis stood under a black metal filigree arch gaudily decorated with strings of gold lights and bright pink artificial flowers. Nalieza remembered her parents had an impromptu nuptial ceremony at some all-night venue Lacace the morning after they arrived on Lacace. It was her father’s idea to propose on the vessel carrying them away from Ultraia. It was her mother’s idea to have their legal joining occur in a converted storefront overlooking the riverside esplanade. But the young couple lacked the proper attire, so they wandered into a fancy boutique across the street and found some off-the-rack fancy clothes, including the green dress.

Nalieza moved away from the window and sat down on the bed. The seven years after Maiena wore this garment were complicated. She left acting behind to focus upon the personal moving images of other beings when she became a dreamworker. But troubles find everyone no matter where they reside, as the old Ultraian saying went, and Maiena realized a quiet life was impossible. Her depression became an inescapable grief that seemed to follow an unbroken line of darkness in harmony with the galaxy. Even the chance for another child couldn’t bring her any hope…and even that possibility was denied to her. The miscarriage was the last page of a descending story arc that ultimately ended when her mother jumped off a bridge at three o’clock in the morning.

Out in the hall, just beyond the door that separated her bedroom from the upstairs hallway, the floorboards creaked as her father walked downstairs. He was probably done grading all those end-term reports on the Battle of Remis. Nalieza wondered if he would be upset should he discover the dress went missing. She wouldn’t even know how to explain what pushed her toward the closet, because she had no idea where that impulse emerged. She had been fascinated with her mother for years, judging by her eight years on the same holodrama where Maiena had once held court as the sculptor and radical artist-who-suffered-because-she-wasn’t-Empire-compliant Selan Rone.
Her onscreen daughter was Niddry Rone, the questioning teenager who like her mother had a rebellious streak which plunged her into a self-destructive quest for some other way of life. Her storyline took a controversial twist when Niddry ran away from the home of her maiden aunt who raised her after Selan’s mysterious disappearance. It was a ratings success and the most convenient way to explain Nalieza’s hiatus from the show.

If the past was tragic for her mother, did that mean history was inevitable? It sometimes felt like Nalieza was pulled toward making certain decisions by something unseen over which she had little control. At ten years old she decided to become an actress, just like her mother. On her fifteenth birthday her father presented her with a copy of the Universal Tome of Dream Symbology after she made an unplanned appearance in one of his dreams to help guide him through an ongoing personal issue. It felt like Maiena had some influence even though she had been dead for nearly two decades.

Nalieza twisted the tasseled belt between her fingers. Her latest decision was not influenced by Maiena’s life. Six months ago she left acting behind to attend university. She felt limited in her continuing role on New World; the plots had become generic due to general disillusionment among the cast and crew. Every show on the holovid and every film in the holocinemas were all created with the sole purpose of glorifying the Empire. The majority of those working the industry were indifferent to the regime, but several, including Nalieza, hated the current galactic oppressors. There was no chance of creative expression while complying with the guidelines set up by the Bureau of Propaganda. So many beings like herself were leaving and going into other professions. She ran away into the relatively anonymous life of a university student; scripts were exchanged for term papers, camera angles for seating angles in classrooms, costars for classmates. It was another role to play in life, guided by choice and something more ethereal.

A knock sounded on her bedroom door. “Do you want some tea?” her father asked.

Nalieza picked up the dress and hid it under the quilt. “How about some brandy instead?”

“How about no?”

“Just a little glass. You can have the big snifter.”

The door opened. “Just tonight, and only because you passed all your classes this semester.”

“I’ve still got three more weeks, Dad”.

“Then I’ll rescind my offer.”

“Of course you won’t.” She got up from the bed. It was nearly one hour past midnight, late enough for a drink, but too early for secrets. The matter of the green silk dress could wait for another day.

 

I love the details here. Beautifully written; I can see this dress in my mind. How hopeful Maiena must have felt on that wedding day, in her dress in its springtime green. The past may be repetitive but it need not be tragic for Nalieza. She has the advantage of seeing the path her mother made.

 

Wonderfully poignant. Nalieza's musings about the past repeating itself - very insightful. She certainly isn't locked into the outcomes her parents encountered in their lives. Maliena's tragic end is heart-rending. You can feel, as symbolized by the gorgeous green silk dress and the spontaneous nuptials, that of course she wanted a happy life.

I like the thought of Nalieza also not being a tame sheep when it comes to tamely following after Imperial propaganda.

 

I had started replying to this on the day you first posted it, after giving you a "like" in advance and now I wish I had kept that reply. LOL. Anyway, here we go again - a green story after the red story.

I am yet to read The Force Chosen, but from what I knew of Nalieza after reading The Distance of Homecoming and seeing the timeframe, I assumed that she would be haunted by the ghost of the past again.

But this time, it brings tears. This bit in particular made me cry.

Nalieza moved away from the window and sat down on the bed. The seven years after Maiena wore this garment were complicated. She left acting behind to focus upon the personal moving images of other beings when she became a dreamworker. But troubles find everyone no matter where they reside, as the old Ultraian saying went, and Maiena realized a quiet life was impossible. Her depression became an inescapable grief that seemed to follow an unbroken line of darkness in harmony with the galaxy. Even the chance for another child couldn’t bring her any hope…and even that possibility was denied to her. The miscarriage was the last page of a descending story arc that ultimately ended when her mother jumped off a bridge at three o’clock in the morning.

We knew that Maiena had taken her own life away, but in a story where everybody was at another person's funeral, it wasn't hitting as hard as it does here, where Nalieza is sitting with the dress. Powerful, powerful, powerful.

This is the point where I am asking if Maiena had been addicted to sonhar. The colour that dominates the story and the reference to Dreamwork make me think so, but I could be very, very wrong. With addiction mechanism working differently in different people, it seemed probable.

Also, how did the Empire allow this holodrama where both the mother and daughter starred, at all? Was it on their list of "scarlet works"?

Love the phrase late enough for a drink, but too early for secrets, too.

 

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to have to leave detailed responses for this weekend, but I wanted to go ahead and answer one of EP's questions about the show Nalieza and her mother were on. I've had an entry posted over at SW Fanon for ages about the show which gives some background on the show: New World.

Basically, it was a very Empire friendly show.

 

The idea of the green silk dress really appeals to me; I've always been very fond of the color green. And I like how it has a particular significance, that its unusual color and design reflects how Nalieza's parents were married in an unconventional (for their place of origin) way. And her thoughts on the series that she and her mother both appeared in are fascinating, particularly that they actually played mother and daughter, and both seemed to end up in the role of mildly rebellious cautionary tale for the Imperial kiddies. Sounds as though they both ended up leaving for similar reasons too. It's really interesting to see the push-pull of Nalieza's bond to her mother in these tales; we see her heartbreaking (but almost comforting -- it's almost like Maiena is her imaginary friend/guardian at times though at others her memory brings pain) need to know and be loved by this mother she never knew, combined with the uneasiness over her mother's fate. I do wonder if her own relatives' reactions may have fed this sense of superstitious worry with their own baggage. Somewhere I remember reading that people whose parents died young feel really weird about passing their parents' age of death, and I can definitely feel that kind of uncertainty in much of Nalieza's developing adult life. Still, it all ultimately feels hopeful; she's got the challenges and discoveries of being a student ahead of her and seems to be able to connect with her father too. I too liked the line about it being "late enough for a drink, but too early for secrets."

 

It's the hallucinogenic used in Dreamwork, as per leiamoody's fanon post. I should've linked to it in my comment, didn't even think of its obvious meaning in our galaxy. D'oh. >_<

 

Thanks again for all the replies …and now it’s time for replies to your replies.

Nalieza does have the advantage of hindsight, but also maybe has a certain amount of influence from something elemental left behind by Maiena.

I tend to like writing about the theme of the past and its rhythm of repetition. When it comes to how this plays out in Nalieza’s life, the lives of her mother and father becomes a learning experience (like it does for any child, whether good or bad lessons are learned).

Maiena definitely had plans for her life…that’s why she left her home planet and went to the “Hollywood planet” (one I created called Lacace). She wanted her own claim to happiness because she never had that kind of experience growing up in a repressed household and on a world with outmoded (by GFFA standards) concepts of acceptable life paths for women. Of course she wanted to get married and have children, but she also wanted a career in a public venue. There are very few careers considered acceptable on Ultraia…a dreamworker is one of those, although it was considered socially unacceptable to pursue that type of work while also being married and having children.

Nalieza is just like her parents in that regard. Maiena left the show after several years in part because of the Imperial oppression and how it affected production values on Lacace. Her father, Paurilis, harbors no love for the Empire due to its restrictions on freedom of speech.

Of course Nalieza has that past looming behind and over her, but her particular entry in The Force Chosen is really more about her making choices for the future. (I also wrote that particular story a few years ago when I was trying to map out her fictional future before delving into her fictional past).

Maiena actually didn’t use sonhar very much in her dreamwork. I mentioned in the fanon post that some dreamworkers possessed Force sensitivity, and that was the case for Maiena (and is the case for Nalieza, which comes in handy under extraordinary circumstances in her future). Mother and daughter both prefer going the non-hallucengenic route, but that was frowned upon by the Guild of Aidents, which was yet another reason Maiena left Ye Olde Birthworld. (It’s not to say that other dreamworkers don’t become addicted to sonhar…it’s easy to imagine someone becoming addicted because it might become harder for them to experience their own dreams, etc.)

Nalieza’s relationship/pseudo-relationship with her mother has some unusual qualities, in similarities and the depth of its intensity. Maiena has functioned as some sort of invisible motivator…guardian, perhaps, if the influence of memory of someone you never knew in life has that kind of power. (Is there any literal influence from Maiena over her daughter’s life? Well, there is definitely a very active, physical afterlife in my GFFA, and I assume Maiena might have been watching over things from the Otherworld…maybe Nalieza gets to meet her one day?).

Her other family members probably did get weirded out by the similarities between mother and daughter. I imagined that Ultraian culture has certain taboos against the deceased, like not naming children after dead relatives, etc. That adds to any superstitious ookiness on Nalieza’s part, plus there is the whole matter of Force sensitivity that was passed down in the maternal line (the Ultraians had a love/hate relationship with the Jedi and Force users in general).

Again, there is my little fascination with reminders of the past. I suppose Proust probably snuck in there…maybe I need to go for the direct pastry route next time.

The holovid show was Nalieza’s easiest way to connect with Maiena, other than the myriad of holoimages and home vids that showed her a remote vision of the woman who used to be alive and was her mother in the Living World. But you can’t find the real person in those fleeting reminders; you have to go out into the universe/galaxy/world and uncover the clues within yourself which ties you to that person. So Nalieza eventually discovers her connection to Maiena by ultimately creating her own version of a worldly existence, strange as that may sound.

Oh, and I apologize for the relative lack of creativity when it came to making up a word for something that induces the dream state. But "sonhar" does have a lovely sound to it, and I did base some of Ultraian culture on Brazil, so there goes the Portuguese influence...

 

Maiena actually didn’t use sonhar very much in her dreamwork. I mentioned in the fanon post that some dreamworkers possessed Force sensitivity, and that was the case for Maiena (and is the case for Nalieza, which comes in handy under extraordinary circumstances in her future). Mother and daughter both prefer going the non-hallucengenic route, but that was frowned upon by the Guild of Aidents, which was yet another reason Maiena left Ye Olde Birthworld. (It’s not to say that other dreamworkers don’t become addicted to sonhar…it’s easy to imagine someone becoming addicted because it might become harder for them to experience their own dreams, etc.)

This makes a lot of sense. And the whole thing is ironic beyond belief, a good example of a tradition that could be improved if it was less, err...traditional.

 

Well, that's the trouble with tradition, it's so traditional.