Saga Aerena, with her sun eyes (Post TPM drama on Tatooine). Complete 5/26.

oqidaun:

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. It's definitely helped me reflect on my story in good ways.

You've done a nice job clarifying what it meant to go through those doors into the other reality. It's a complex idea and you're handling it quite nicely. I always grin like an idiot when I read your stuff, because at every little turn and twist I'm floored by the imagery you use.

I think it's important to remember that the stepfather is trying to explain something to Bria/Aerena that he doesn't really understand himself. He only knows what happened to him, years ago, and what he can see happened to her. His situation is pretty simple though--he bet a lot of money on Sebulba, and Sebulba lost. Now, like his friend says, he needs to pay up. Or someone calls in the Hutts.

Well, on the other hand, that *is* pretty sinister.

I don't trust them either.
I really don't trust them.

I have to admit here that I didn't mean for Leda and the Angel to come across as untrustworthy as they clearly have. Well, you never know how people are going to respond to your work. I actually thought of them as fairly benign, and that they genuinely wanted to help this girl they found lost, dazed, and confused out in the middle of the desert. I've also thought that they have every reason to be wary of her, since they don't know who she is, or what she's capable of doing.

But apparently the subtext, or my subconscious, know better than I do. *shrugs.* Like I've said before, you can't control how people respond to your work, or what they see in it.

Naboo isn't what it seems--pretty on the outside and less so on the inside. The fact that there's no poverty or crime, but the queen can/will dig up beggar children for a photo op. Hmm...

Well, the Angel does have a biased view of his homeworld. There are reasons for that, as I made up a bunch of backstory for him, almost none of which I could use for this story, because there was no way that Aerena, the first person narrator, could know it. That scene in the cantina is where you find out everything I could reveal about him, because I had to keep in mind what, realistically, he would want to tell Aerena.

But let's just say that when he says he's not what she thinks he is, he's not referring to any criminal activity or anything so obvious...

The build up and kiss put me on the edge of my seat. This was fabulously well done. Bria's inter-monologue is compelling, but the Angel's actions (as seen through Bria's eyes) are equally captivating. I have to agree with Amidalachick--this is so damn intense.

Well, she may be making a mistake here, but she chose to. The Angel doesn't push her into anything. This is what she wants. (Hence the fact that she goes into kissing the Angel with her eyes open.) She is not a sheltered American teenager, and I do get the feeling that childhood tends not to last very long on Tatooine...

--

The next post will be the conclusion. I should be putting it up...in about a few minutes.

 

Well, this is the last post.

I started this story way back in September 2005, and it's gone farther and stranger than I thought. So here's a shout out for my readers and my lurkers.

And if we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended...


-------------------------------------

Sister Hope looks the same as she did before. She squints as she waits for her eyes to adjust to the inside light, but then she looks at us. Angel gets up to find another chair, and drags it back over. She drops down into it, with a heavy yawning sigh, and stretches her legs out. Angel returns to his seat, and pushes his plate towards her. She smiles, amused, and she doesn’t need to tell him why. Still, she starts to eat the steak, chewing too fast and hard.

“So how did it go?” he says.

She swallows, and wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Well enough. Let’s just say we came to an agreement. Not that it was that difficult. Really, I think he expected me to charge more. We just need to ship this stuff to a few cities way, way over on the other side of the planet. Nothing off-world, and, let’s hope, nothing the Hutts will find of interest.”

“Let’s hope,” Angel says. “And…”

“And if he actually pays us on delivery, we will be able to get off planet. Not just that, we’ll be able to buy our own ship. So why don’t you just think about where you want to go while you’re waiting to fall asleep. Maybe you’ll dream about it.”

“I’ll do that, dear,” he says.

Sister Hope goes back to eating the steak, and Angel waves over the now droopy eyed waitress to get her that drink. I’m not paying attention to them. I know that if they do manage to go away off world, I won’t go with them. I don’t know where I’ll be, but I know, finally, that this is something I can’t say. For once, I know not to say anything. Perhaps it’s best that I leave them now. I should go find the step-father, who is probably having a few beers with the credits he talked Mum into giving him. Yes.

Yes, that would be best, the voice in my head says, with a finger shaking sigh. Go back to your old life. Go back—

I know why I haven’t gone to find him.

But: “I’ll back in a few minutes,” I say, standing up. “I just have to go do something.” Sister Hope looks up, and both she and Angel nod at me. The lamp glowing hot behind us makes Sister Hope’s eyes reflect almost red. They must think I’m being discreet and excusing myself to use the fresher. And maybe I am.

“You’ll be back, won’t you?” says Angel.

“Of course she will, Sweetie Pie,” says Sister Hope. “Really. You’d think she was about to disappear into thin air.”

Behind the cantina, there’s a wide hallway, with a single rattling white plastine door that must lead to some storage room. I hear someone looking around inside. I lean against the wall, and shut my eyes for what has to only be a minute. Then, I walk down the hallway. Perhaps I’ll go out into that courtyard, where Angel and I were not more than thirty minutes ago. There’s the door, and without thinking, I open it—

*

And there’s that hallway, with the polished clean floor, and too much sunlight everywhere. I must gasp, but I can’t hear myself. My heart jerks and writhes too hard, and. It’s over. I can’t stop it from being over, and different. I can’t. I look down, and down, the hallway, because I already know what I’ll see. It’s the doors. There they are, the one with the little girl’s hand doorknob keeping it shut, and the other one made of death black wood. I don’t know how, but suddenly I know this is the wood used to make the funeral boats for the dead, on a far away world I’ll never see. There isn’t anyone else here, or (it seems) anywhere nearby. No, I have to face the doors.

“Aerena,” someone’s voice sing songs behind me.

I don’t know who it is, until I turn around, slow and wary, to see Sarai. She smirks. “You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” she says, walking towards me, and doesn’t wait for me to answer. She should look different, yet she doesn’t. Not really. She has long, blood red dyed hair, and wears a bronze mirrored brassiere, that clenches her breasts too tight. Her eyes are blacked up with kohl, and, though she says she isn’t dead, her throat was slit and sewn back up with pasty white thread. She doesn’t seem to notice that.

“What do you want?” I say.

“Me? I don’t want anything. It’s you, Aerena.” (And: Aerena, Aerena, Aerena seems to echo and echo away.) “You know you want to see what’s behind those doors. Maybe this time, you’ll even get off planet. I’ve heard Alderaan’s a nice place. Maybe that’s where you’ll go, if you’re lucky. Or the garden of Naboo.”

“It’s not that easy,” I say. “Don’t you know that? The doors don’t work like that. I couldn’t reach Alderaan through them if it were the last place in the galaxy.”

“But do you know that?” she says.

I don’t answer.

The doors are still there, down the hallway but never, never far enough away. I almost think I hear something rattle behind one of them. Sarai makes her eyes wide and cooing innocent she walks past me, and I can smell her sweaty perfumed smell, but mostly, she smells like blood, her monthly periods and something else. She smiles, though not at me. “You don’t know, Aerena. None of us do. But you want to find out, don’t you?”

Don’t you?

“No,” I say. My voice stamps down hard, hard. “I’ve found out enough. Go ahead through the doors if you want to, Sarai. You won’t like what you find.”

“Fine,” she says. “But there isn’t any other way out of here, Aerena. Remember that. There is no door leading out to an alley, not anymore. You’ll see.”

And she flings open one of the doors, and then, she’s not there anymore. Beyond the door, there is only a black hole. I sigh, in mother annoyed disgust, and go to see what she’s doing. She’s my sister. Even if I don’t want to save her, I should find out if she were ever here with me to begin with. I have to know if I really saw her. I shut the door, though there seems to be a pushing, heavy wind that keeps me from that. Still, I shut it. The hallway is quiet. She’s right. I turn, and open the other door, with the child’s hand:

*

And I see a tall girl with long, swinging rope braids and a wilted brown flowers tattooed around her arms. I don’t know who she is at first, as she walks through a deserted, rocky landscape, with a red sun glowing up in the sky, and then I know. It’s Jamilla, my sister. She’s changed, but I can recognize her. She looks back, and I see she has a night black blaster, strapped in her belt. A few men come up to join her, and though I can feel the whistling dry winds of that place, I can’t hear what they’re saying.

I step back.

But that world stays far away from me, as one of the men grins at Jamilla, and she slaps him hard on the shoulder. Good boy, her mouth says.

Jamilla must be at least twenty years there, and so years have passed. She’s joined some sort of revolution, but I don’t know what she and these, and a woman who has come up to join them, want. I wait, and finally I hear what she’s saying: This isn’t the time to be proper. We’re too dirty for that. There are still some aristos living. Kill them all--

*

I blink, and then I see a white palace rising out of a green world, with jagged heavy black mountains off in the distance and the sweet pale blue sky. I step forward, and I’m standing there, in a garden, and there are plant smells, and the squealing of red and white and purple flowers everywhere. I step forward, and though I don’t believe it, it seems to be real. There’s a pond nearby, glossy as a mirror, but the surface keeps wrinkling and shifting in the slight whispering breezes. I shut my eyes.

“Bria!” a little girl calls. “Where were you?”

I turn around,

but someone else is walking up the white pebbled path to meet the little girl I heard, who had long, long neatly brushed dark hair and wears a red velvet dress. It’s a woman who looks like me—because she is. She has short dark hair, that gleams dark bloody and copper red as well in the mild, kind sunlight, and she wears a black dress. Her arms are bare and pale. She’s pretty, though it takes me a few minutes to think that. Does that mean that I am? She knows where she is going, and that she belongs in this place. She meets the girl, who is talking, rapid and excited, and she answers, but the air between us, between me and them, is turning hard and cold as glass—

*

There is only space, and a planet slowly turning and shifting, a brown planet with the halo of the atmosphere around it. Tatooine. I blink, and the space is still out there, endless, with scattered, burning up stars that are suns to other worlds. I open my mouth, and everything I could say has turned hard and black spiky—

*

No. I only see Sarai, sitting in piles of grown out hair, which has turned brown again. Her skin is underground cold and pale, though not truly white, and she smiles. Her pupils are swollen dark from smoking some sort of spice. Another woman, a worn out almost human with fish sickly skin, passes her a hookah. They giggle. There’s a grunt above them, and I don’t have to look to know that Jabba has tugged at her chain. His voice lumbers in Huttese, and Sarai only smiles. Her voice answers.

*

Then there is only the desert outside Mos Espa, coming closer and closer. The suns are burning and frenzy far away in space, but I make myself not look at them. I make myself, because my eyes will burn up and away, and that wouldn’t be good. No.

*

I can see Sister Hope meeting up with a man I almost recognize. He has long, long, black hair pulled back in a tail, and his face is powdered white. I know him from my childhood, or from several tear blurred hours I don’t need to remember. The street behind them is fading and blowing away, so I can’t see where they are. There’s a statue of a woman, a goddess no one believes in anymore, right behind them. It’s the same color as the desert, tired and brown and dusty. Its breasts are filled with cracks and scars. Sister Hope smiles, perhaps a bit nervously. In this world, she’s wearing a pilot’s costume, with tight pants and shined black boots. The man gives her something, but I can’t see it.

Can’t see.

No:

I see Mum and the kids, back in what at first seems to be their house. Our house, once. The kids are playing out in the yard, and there are a few neighbor children with them. They shriek loud and sharp like birds. The house tilts, as Mellia walks out, with her hair braided and wrapped around her head. She wears a red velvet dress that seems too loud, too much, in that room. Mum yells at her, but she doesn’t seem to be really angry or annoyed. The step-father is outside, smoking his pipe as he watches the kids. Just as he watches Mellia as she walks past, to meet a Someone waiting in a speeder.

Angel walks down a hallway towards me. Towards the open door that he doesn’t see. Behind him, there is a window filled with the night, and the glowing, too close stars. I can’t look away. He sips at his silly, ridiculous, pink drink, that of course, I recognize. This is where I first saw him. He looks up, and even though I don’t know what he is, and never will, I lunge forward. I must have decided I like him, after all--

*

And then:

I see myself, dancing and flailing in the desert, my eyes almost stuck and fluttering shut. The suns are beating and throbbing too hot, but I don’t know it. I don't know anything. No, I just keep moving, and leaping up onto my toes, around and around. (She keeps moving, I tell myself. That’s not me.) I’m wearing that pale, wilted flower dress that I had on earlier, when I woke up in this reality. My hair looks heavy and sun warmed glossy. So does my skin. My arms and shoulders are already stiffened pink with sunburn. There’s nothing but desert all around.

My hands flail up and around like birds’ wings, but

It’s no use.

Then, I see myself turn, and I open my eyes. They flash too bright, one of them a sun glaring with light. I shouldn't look, but I can't see anything else. Can't see. This girl, who was me, doesn’t know what she’s doing. Or that her eyes are what no one can see. They’ve become the suns. She spins and jerks away, and I can see the flash of a speeder coming, as

*

I fall back, and someone is catching me against them. I gasp, and my face is damp with glass cold tears that I never felt. It takes me a few minutes, though it seems like more, to see where I am. It’s the hallway behind the cantina, and outside the windows, it’s nighttime, filled with humming insect voices. Sister Hope is standing a few feet away, and she’s been talking, but only now can I hear her. Angel lets me go, but my legs wobble and shake as though they’re made out of mud, and both of them have to catch me. I can feel Angel’s hands at my waist.

“There!” says Sister Hope. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” I say. “Yes, I’ll be all right.”

They look at each other, and I know, now, that they aren’t sure if they should believe me. Angel says, “What happened to you? You were gone for hours. We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find you. Then, we come out here, and you seemed to just come flying out of that wall. I don’t know, Bria. It’s not possible, but you did.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I say. “I don’t think I-- ever will.” I sit down on the floor, but I am beginning to feel better. After a few minutes, I try to stand up again, and this time, I can. My bones have become bones again.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” says Sister Hope. “Anyway, we looked around for you, but finally, we decided that you must have wanted to leave. After all, we don’t know you very well, and-- We just hoped you were all right, wherever you were. But the server at the cantina overheard us, and she insisted that we should find you. Before it was too late. Well, I hoped it wasn’t so very dire, but she insisted on helping us search. We were about to go back to the room when this girl showed up. She said she was looking for you, and-- Well, she says you’re her sister.”

“Is she still here?” I say.

“She should be,” Angel says. “She did have to go check on her father. I gathered he’s weeping in his beer over the credits he lost on Sebulba. Plenty of that going on. But she came back about ten minutes ago. I think she was one of the flag bearers today at the race. You must have noticed her.”

Mellia.

“She said her name is Mellia,” he says. “Is she really your sister, Bria?”

“She should be,” I say.

Angel almost frowns a little, but more out of puzzlement. His eyes, when I look inside them, or him, are still-- Guileless. That’s the word. “She did call you by another name, though. Aerena. That’s it. It’s a nice name, really. I think it comes from an air spirit on Naboo, actually… Anyway. Is that really your name?”

“It was,” I say. “Are you surprised?”

“Bria,” says Sister Hope. “Do you think Sister Hope is my original name? No, I chose it out of a holobook right after I left the order. You can be Bria, or Aerena. It doesn’t matter. Names should be something we decide on. Don’t you think?”

They understand that. But still, they’re confused, and I know that. But there is nothing I can tell them that will make this, any of it, real. I do wonder how Mellia came to this cantina to find me, after she stopped to see the step-father and (I have to assume) he told her he had seen me that day, her long ago and lost and possibly dead sister. She must have just started searching all the cantinas and streets, hoping to maybe, maybe, find me. Yes, that must be it.

“Perhaps I should go see her,” I say. “Then, I’ll know.”

They nod.

And: I know that when Mellia, because she is sitting out there in the half empty cantina, will know me, and address me by the name that is still mine. Aerena! she’ll say, and I will know who she is, though she is taller, and different, than she was before she leapt through one of the doors, before I went after her, but did not follow. Angel and Sister Hope will find out where I came from, and I wonder what they will think. I’ll find out. Perhaps. Mellia will smile, clumsy nervous and looking down still. If she does remember Angel, she won’t say anything, and I’ll never know. She’ll talk about Mum and the kids, on their way back home. I’ll listen. I’ll be polite.

*

And now? I’m lying on the wide, heavy bed in the basement room next to Angel and Sister Hope. The heating pipes have stopped creaking, or making hard, pot slammed bangs, and it’s starting to get warmer. Next door, the father, or is it the mother, gives a long, wheezing snore, and then stops. It’s almost quiet, but I don’t want to fall asleep, at least not yet. I don’t want to shut my eyes for more than a few minutes, because I don’t want to spend all that time, hours, sunk deep in the blackness of sleep. Angel is lying next to me, and he is asleep. His face looks innocent, and peaceful. I suppose that’s the right word, since his eyelids are pale, only twitching once in a dream.

Of course, I know he’s not innocent.

Maybe he never was.

I roll, or rather, flop onto my side, and let my eyes fall shut. I can smell the rusty wool heat smell starting up. Go to sleep…

Angel has rolled over closer to me, in the midst of his sleep. I don’t mind. It’s much better than having to sleep in a bed stuffed full with kids, with their sticky fingers and drooling always nearby. His hand, sand heavy with sleep, brushes past my hip, and then, he twitches awake, looking at me. The room is just lit up from one of the moons, heavy and full and so huge it seems to hang right over the town.

“Huh?” he says, his voice heavy and thick footed.

“Go back to sleep,” I say, and he’s less confused now. Oh. I think he sees that I’m here, instead of the dream he was stuck in, whatever it was.

I think. Of how earlier, Mellia had been waiting in the cantina for me, sipping neatly at (wouldn’t you know) a pink drink, with a frilly papersilk umbrella. Things went as well as I could have hoped. She’s staying in a droid parts closet that was made into a room, upstairs, with the step-father and a few of the kids. This whole building is packed full tonight. Maybe I’ll see her tomorrow. Maybe I’ll find a way to sneak off world, to the gardens of Alderaan or Naboo. I don’t know what will happen, but maybe.

Maybe.

Angel is lying up against me, and I can hear his heartbeat thump several times, before the heating pipes start hissing again. I’m glad, almost, to hear his breathing, even if my thoughts are louder and bee sting swarming. The room turns dark and quiet when I shut my eyes. Yes, I should go to sleep now, and-- In the morning, I’ll wake up here, and the dreams I had when I was locked up in sleep will be gone. They will. I tell myself that they won’t become real, and maybe, I won’t even remember them. Maybe.


*

At the moment that you wake from sleeping
and you know it’s all a dream,
well the truth can come in strange disguises
never knowing what it means…
--Kula Shaker, “Tattva”

 

Completed? Last post?
Already?????

You start your last post with the most famous lines from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that was just classy.

I know how our characters and stories get away from us (I'm a big ol'post modernist myself), but to me Angel and Leda just had this vibe. Perhaps it was in the names. Angel seems like a name people hide behind, while it comes across literally as "good" often times the people using it fall short of the mark. Additionally, Aereana always refers to him as "The Angel" which is more of a descriptive moniker and laden with her perceptions of him. Leda makes me think of the story of "Leda and the Swan" and I'm not only left thinking of the girl exploited by Zeus, but also the popularity of the motif in the nineteenth century in the Romantic movement and the later cabaret culture--it just comes across as dirty velvet and rouged cheeks in my head (which was further compounded by the descriptions of the Angel's clothing). Sorry if I've over analyzed, but I got on a role there and you've given me so much to think about.


The lamp glowing hot behind us makes Leda?s eyes reflect almost red. I like that.

I really like the urgency conveyed by the tempo of this paragraph. It has kind of dark Alice in Wonderland feel to it.

And there?s that hallway, with the polished clean floor, and too much sunlight everywhere. I must gasp, but I can?t hear myself. My heart jerks and writhes too hard, and. It?s over. I can?t stop it from being over, and different. I can?t. I look down, and down, the hallway, because I already know what I?ll see. It?s the doors. There they are, the one with the little girl?s hand doorknob keeping it shut, and the other one made of death black wood. I don?t know how, but suddenly I know this is the wood used to make the funeral boats for the dead, on a far away world I?ll never see. There isn?t anyone else here, or (it seems) anywhere nearby. No, I have to face the doors.

The spinning through the different realities or unrealities as they might have been was brilliantly executed. I wanted to comment on each one, but I could tear my eyes away long enough to articulate my individual thoughts. What an amazing series of possibilities. I love the way that you've structured this--kind of reminscient of Hesse or Joyce. Fabulous!


Then the names come back to haunt me (you're a sneaky one, you ):
The Angel almost frowns a little, but more out of puzzlement. His eyes, when I look inside them, or him, are still-- Guileless. That?s the word. ?She did call you by another name, though. Aerena. That?s it. It?s a nice name, really. I think it comes from an air spirit on Naboo, actually? Anyway. Is that really your name??

And Leda says that she named herself. My little brain is reeling when I add that back into my earlier naming comments.

Wow.


And the ending...
Back in the bed in the basement with the loud pipes and the not so innocent Angel. I love this scene. It's so very real and yet unreal. All I can say is "well played" !

What a neat story. I love the complexity and sophistication of this piece and have been enthralled by it since September. I am sad to see it finished, but it was such a good story that it really got the ending it deserved. Good to the last drop is an understatement here. What a gem.




Don't be shy about PM'ing me whenever you post a story or vignette. I really admire your work and don't want to lose sight of it.

 

It's late, so I hope some of this makes sense.

You start your last post with the most famous lines from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" that was just classy.

I aim to please.

"Midsummer Night's Dream" isn't one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, probably because I've yet to see a good performance, but I have always liked Puck's final lines.

I know how our characters and stories get away from us (I'm a big ol'post modernist myself), but to me Angel and Leda just had this vibe. Perhaps it was in the names. Angel seems like a name people hide behind, while it comes across literally as "good" often times the people using it fall short of the mark.

That's a good point about their names. I think they both started out the way Aerena does in this story: They left their old lives behind them in the dust, with no intention of looking back, and changing their names was part of that process. For Leda, I think she picked the name just because she liked it. She probably isn't very well educated, and wouldn't know what it meant, or even really where it came from.

Of course, *I* do. I think the name works for me on the level of the maiden ravished (and Robert Graves tried to convince us Zeus "married" those princesses. Huh. Maybe he defined marriage differently?) by Zeus in the form of a swan, because it reflects on the way Twi'leks are represented in almost all Star Wars fic, pro and fan, and the movies, too, really.

But the dirty velvet and rouged cheeks are there too, the tawdry side being right there in the Twi'leks' image.

The Angel does make his half way unbuttoned shirts look *good*, unlike, say, Tom Jones. Not so much chest hair or cheez. Though Jones' cheezed out song "Sex Bomb" does occasionally start playing when he enters a room... Just kidding.

The Angel's name is a bit more complicated. It is, indeed, a name that he hides behind, though there isn't any way that the narrator, Aerena, can really know why. As a story telling device, it serves another purpose: The Angel comes from Naboo, and his name is a play of sorts on the fact that Padme is Anakin's Angel from Iego. While she suits her name, he... Well, he does something else entirely with it. She is Naboo's favorite daughter, while he is one of its least favorite sons. He's the one person who couldn't fit in Paradise.

Originally, I was going to call another character the Angel--a bounty hunter, who made a too obvious, or so I think now, mockery of his name. He was known for being pretty, yet deadly. Slightly based off a Serbian ladies' man assassin on the first season of "24." But when I saw this character wasn't going to fit into this story, another, and different character, became the Angel. I do wonder if his far off, more sinister origins still have an impact, even if it's one I haven't noticed.

Additionally, Aereana always refers to him as "The Angel" which is more of a descriptive moniker and laden with her perceptions of him.

That's true. I think Aerena never fully understands those perceptions she has of him, but in the end, she seems to just accept that. Or: She doesn't always know if she likes him, but damn!, he's so hawt.

The spinning through the different realities or unrealities as they might have been was brilliantly executed. I wanted to comment on each one, but I could tear my eyes away long enough to articulate my individual thoughts. What an amazing series of possibilities. I love the way that you've structured this--kind of reminscient of Hesse or Joyce. Fabulous!

I like doing this sort of spinning thing, as though each reality, is a quick snapshot of imagery. It kind of ties together, for me, what happens with the doors.

It's also the closest I have gotten in fanfiction to most of my original work. Actually, my original style isn't that different, but the narrative styles and structure are a lot more, shall we say, complicated.

Back in the bed in the basement with the loud pipes and the not so innocent Angel. I love this scene. It's so very real and yet u