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bakerstreet2016-02-29 10:45 pm
cornichaun) wrote in bakerstreet2016-02-29 10:45 pm
The Desert Caravan Meme
The sky is unimaginably large. Infinity as a pale, blinding blue, never a cloud. Your eyes always sting from the sand and from the bright, painful light.
This is the desert. It is the desert that lives in poetry: the shifting, formless sea of white and gold and red, in slow, sinking dune-waves. This is the desert of scorched cliffs and ancient stone; it is the desert of vast, eternal wind, bringing the bite of grit to bare skin. Sun’s heat untempered by mercy and parched land flickering with false hope of oasis.
This is the desert of legend: the desert that hides prophets tucked in endless emptiness, where djinnis whisper on the winds and magic wells from the sands themselves. This is the land that can trap you and drain you, of memory, of past, of weakness; the land that secrets treasure away in caves and holds salvation in hidden water. This is the land that bakes you and cures you, lets the soft clay of your soul shape into something new.
The desert is a place forever between, broken with paths, sliced and scarred for the sake of trade. But the desert is a place itself, too, home for the nomads, the caravanserai, the dotted strips of live eked out of the dry. Home to the snakes and the birds and the twisted, thorny scrub, the camels and the horses.
It will seduce you with the rapture of quiet, the beauty of an emptiness that is never truly empty. But it will deceive you, too: a mountain days away that seems close enough to touch; a camp close enough to hear, but hidden in a fold of the dunes. If you lose your way, you could die of thirst an arms length from salvation. Dunes shift; paths bend. If you do not know the desert, it will kill you.
Who are you?
A traveler, trusting in the grace of a guide to bring your caravan safe to the other side;
A guide, walking by stars and distant hills through the land you know by heart;
One belonging to a caravanserai, an enclave of the desert, by precious water, gleaning a living from the harsh land and the travelers passing through;
A bandit, preying on the slow, plodding merchants;
A nomad, with the desert in your blood, watching the intruders pass through;
A hermit, solitary and empty, grown accustomed to the silence;
Or a creature of magic: a djinni, a sorcerer, a witch, a prophet?
What has happened?
An ordinary, exhausting day of travel, your mouth dry as dust?
Have you lost your way, straying, along and baking in the sun —
A raid by bandits, to take money, goods — people?
War, over territory? Over water?
Strangers arriving in the caravanserai?
Happening upon a celebration, of life, water, harvest?
A rainstorm, for the first time in years? A sandstorm, deadly, and far more common?
Or something else?
rather unbelieveably, they keep him sane.
Shade sounded like a welcome relief, even if he would have preferred the dark of his sleeping cavern. Walking back into the main trading area it got noisier, but the tent they settled under was empty except for them, at least for now. He glanced around as he dropped onto his haunches, sliding his pack off his back and to the sand.
He dug around in his pack and last and pulled out a list. It was written on paper, of all things, but no paper that Rey might have ever seen, scavenged from some ship: it was thick enough that it almost didn't bend.
The piece of paper was covered in strange letters - it certainly wasn't Common. He glanced from her to his list then back down again, before pulling out another writing instrument - a pen. He made two careful marks on the list, then pulled out the carrots and potatoes again, offering her half a dozen of the carrots and two potatoes for the two parts.
He needed an assortment of things, parts being just one of them, and he couldn't trade away all of his crops to this scavenger girl - he needed shadecloth, and seeds, and a new water basin - the ground filtered his water for him, so that was fine, the deep pool in his cavern system filling yearly from the runoff more than enough to water his plants and himself for a whole year. Still, he didn't bathe in the pool, and his basin had cracked a while ago, so he'd been having to make due.
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She dug into the mesh sack of scrap to dig the items out, brushing off any residual dust and sand from them, before handing them to him in return for what he offered. Rey was inordinately pleased with both herself and with the shrouded stranger she'd bargained with — to have barely known someone and yet made a successful trade like this inspired something akin to a modicum of trust on her part. She so badly wanted to believe there was something good in people, something of value in even the simplest of interactions.
She pensively eyed the young man up and down over his coverings — because he was young, if the skin he'd bared while he'd eaten had suggested anything — before leaning forward again. He may not have had the luxury of words, but he seemed to be able to communicate effectively without them, somehow. "How did you get here, to Niima?" she asked, gently. "Where are you from?"
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He tucked the parts into another part of his pack, then returned to his slate. Instead of miming or trying to write a message, he drew: a small figure walking through the sand from a rough approximation of a cave - the mouth of which looked nothing like his own cave, of course. He drew four suns in the sky - four days' walk. Then he turned the slate to the girl, showing her.
If he showed any interest in her appearance, he didn't much show it. Still, he was happy to sit and talk with her - communicate. Too much noise gave him a headache, but these times when he was out of the caverns was his only time to hear voices that were speaking words he could understand - if the rats had a language, he hadn't yet been able to figure it out.
He took the slate back after a moment and wiped the drawing away with his sleeve, looking back up at the girl, watching her closely.
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And then something suddenly occurred to her: "...But wait — if the rains are coming in three days, and it takes you four to get back to your cave, you won't make it in time before the deluge hits." She eyed him with concern; the man was still a relative stranger to her somewhat, but they'd made a successful trade and he seemed a bit starved for companionship, or at least for dialogue and conversation at the very least.
"...I have a speeder. It would take you only a few hours to reach your cave, again."
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Almost instantly he turned it back and wrote out in careful, clumsy Common, DONT STAY and showed it to her again.
As far as her offer to give him a ride to his cave... He knew better than to let anybody else into his cave. Last time that had happened, that he had been naive and trusting enough... He shook his head a little and looked down. It was nothing personal to her. It just wasn't safe for his way of living to let anybody know where he lived.
He wiped the slate clean and changed the subject with a drawing of another part - a hinge, with the dimensions marked in a numerical system she likely wouldn't recognize.
A quick dig around in his pack and he came out with a length of knotted string - his ruler.
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"...Don't stay," she read, and nodded, amused. "Your cave floods, then."
He went back to drawing more, sketching out another piece he was interested in, and in the interim Rey took another orange root out of the bunch he'd given her and snapped off a bite. She couldn't get over how delicious it was, torn between wanting to savor it but wanting to shove it all into her mouth at the first opportunity.
The next piece he sketched out was a hinge of some sort, but the dimensions were unknown to her. Even so, she had several such pieces of various sizes in her own collection.
She shook her head as she chewed. "Not here, though," she informed him. "I don't have that piece here — it's back in my dwelling." She would have to go retrieve it and come back, which wasn't an impossibility but it would take a bit more time...and there was her home to secure down before the rains came.
Again she studied him with an assessing look. "Where will you stay, then, during the rains? Here in Niima?" There wasn't much cover at the outpost, not against the torrential downpour that was likely to hit.
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She didn't have one, but it was possible one of the other scavengers or traders did. He shrugged at the question then wrote awkwardly, WHO EVER TAKES IN. He had no real problem staying with strangers - the biggest problem was always the noise. He was used to sleeping in silence, and the sounds of other people, especially their breathing, could be bothersome.
He wrote below that message MORE TRADES TO MAKE then turned to start closing up his pack again.
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Rey wondered just how many travelers and traders who frequented Niima Outpost willingly took in strangers during something like the torrential rains, even ones willing to negotiate beneficial trades. What if no one did? He'd be left to fend for himself during the deluge and flooding with no cover, nowhere to keep himself dry.
You shouldn't care, a cold, callous, survivalist part of her whispered, the thought stilling her as he closed up his pack; you had one trade with him, that's all — a business transaction. You owe him nothing.
...Remember what had happened, the last time you'd trusted someone. Fellow scavengers Devi and Strunk had used her for her mechanical expertise, absconding off-world with the downed 690 light freighter after Rey had repaired it with parts they'd supplied, instead of selling it to Plutt as Rey had planned. Her own project, that she'd spent months and months repairing and fixing for an enormous payoff, and they'd left her with nothing.
It was the recollection of the betrayal she'd experienced that stayed her hand when she would have stopped him from tying up his pack; instead Rey watched him, still chewing slowly on her orange root, the look in her eyes torn and conflicted.
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Instead, he reached into another pocket of his pack and pulled out a small canister. He opened it and set the canister on his knee then carefully started to unwrap the fabric from around his hands and fingers.
His palms and nearly the entirety of his fingers were covered in a thick white scar. It was part of the reason for his clumsy writing, he could hardly bent his fingers. Carefully, he scooped up small bits of the cream from the canister and rubbed his palms together, then his fingers, humming in relief as the tightness of the skin started to ease.
This had been only part of what happened the first and last time he'd trusted somebody to know where he lived, allowed somebody into the cavern that was his home.
It was the same incident that left him unable to speak, and more scars all up his legs and back. He looked up at the girl then sighed a little. He understood why she wasn't about to offer him the chance to stay with her - he was an unknown, as strange a creature as one of those that lived in the deep desert, weeks and weeks of travel from any sort of settlement.
He'd find somebody else to give him shelter during the storm, somebody to share the food in his pack with. There was always somebody.
oh nooo, poor Ben. I was thinking he'd just taken a monk-like vow of silence or something. :c
Now she understood the imperfect letters he'd been writing — he could just barely bend his fingers enough to hold the utensil, much less do anything else that required intricate hand-work. An injury...and given how hard life was on Jakku, most likely not self-inflicted.
She looked pointedly at his hand, his scarred fingers and palm, before looking back into his eyes through the shroud. "...Did someone do that to you? To your hands?"
Something clicked in her mind, falling into place at witnessing this quiet, scarred, lonely man, and she came to an almost immediate decision. "...If I give you shelter where I live, during the rains, I promise you that I won't hurt you." Her words were accompanied by a sincere nod. "I swear it to you."
nope ): (he can make noise, but not easily)
He nodded after a moment, but kept his attention down on his fingers. He pressed his left thumb into a lump of scar tissue. It hurt, all the way up his arm and into the back of his skull, but it was better than the usual tingly numbness.
He listened to her talk, turning the words over in his mind. He wondered, quietly, how old she was. How long she'd been out here in the desert, scavenging at ships to try to keep enough food in her belly to work to scavenge parts.
His cavern was large enough, there was enough rich dirt held captive, he could-- no, he couldn't. He'd thought he could so long ago and instead he'd ended up how he was - damaged, muted, scarred to the point of near incapacitation. There's enough dirt to support two of us, and have extra, he thought anyways.
But this wasn't about his home, it was about hers. She was offering her home to him. She probably saw his scars and felt sorry for him. He couldn't blame her, he'd sent a long time feeling sorry for himself.
He nodded again after a moment and behind the fabric, he smiled.
He finished rubbing the cream into his hands and re-wrapped the bandages, then returned the canister to his pack. From yet another pocket, he pulled out a small box. He peeked inside, then closed it. She was going to take him in, he was going to make sure she was repaid that. This was just the first of what he could provide during his stay.
He wrote on the slate, KEEP CLOSED. OPEN WHEN HOME. AS THANKS then passed the box over. He then stood, slipping his pack back on. He needed to make more trades before the stalls closed and no doubt the girl needed to settle things as well.
poor guy. also np about the changes!
Alongside it came an innate desire to protect; if his hands were compromised, he wouldn't have much chance of defending himself were he to be attacked again for his wares.
Rey accepted the small box curiously after the stranger had rewrapped his hands, wide-eyed first and then wrinkling her nose in bemusement as he stood and slung his pack over his shoulder. Open when home. As thanks. A gift, and she hadn't even let him inside, yet.
"...You're not going to tell me what it is?" But she was grinning. She'd never received a gift before, not that she were ever able to remember, and giddy as a child she tried to guess what was inside it, holding it to her ear and shaking it gently even as he watched. She couldn't see it, but she imagined a smile underneath the shroud covering his mouth.
It was high time she headed back to Plutt to collect whatever meager rations he deigned fit for her salvages, so she stood as well, gathering her wares and placing the small gift box in the separate small pouch slung low across her hip. "I'll meet you back at the south entrance, when you're done. I won't take long."
The parts she'd gathered that day were apparently valuable enough to Plutt to warrant worth three quarter portions, even though Rey had estimated their worth at five. Strangely, Plutt had the audacity to ask of the companion she'd been seen talking with, but Rey had in not-so-polite terms told the blobnose to bugger off, that it was none of his business, and her trade made she headed out to the outpost's south entrance without further delay.
The stranger was waiting for her, as agreed upon; the sight of him stirred something in her that she vaguely recognized as anticipation, coupled with the still ever-present apprehension at extending her fragile trust toward someone. She'd never had a guest before now, in the meager shelter of a hollowed-out AT-AT that she called her home; not even Devi or Strunk had been allowed to visit her there.
I should ask him his name. Referring to him as a stranger, even in her head, seemed inappropriate if he would be staying in close quarters with her for the next several days.
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By the time he was done with the trades - or most of them, there was a handful of things that he hadn't been able to collect but could be brought in the next day - he was tired enough that he just wanted to curl up into a ball in the sand and sleep. He was about to lay down when he saw the girl coming - she was hard to ignore, now that he'd met her.
He watched her approach. His pack had taken on new cargo - in addition to the parts he'd traded for, there was also a large plastic water basin tied over the entirety of the pack, almost large enough to be bumping into the backs of his knees. He lifted a hand to greet the girl as she drew closer, but had trouble straightening - he was sore, and exhausted, and the heat was getting to him. He longed, more than ever, for the quiet cool comfort of his cave.
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"That one's mine." He'd apparently made more trades by the look of what he was carrying, although she couldn't deduce what the plastic basin could be for. Nevertheless as he approached her speeder and she'd finished hauling the remainder of her salvage into the hauling tarp on the vehicle's side, she nodded at him. "Yours'll fit, as well. Pack whatever you can onto here, and then climb on." A stern look. "No matter how tired you are, hang onto me tightly — it goes very fast."
She fixed her goggles and her shoulder-wrap around the lower part of her face and hoisted herself onto the seat, waiting for him to join her.
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He nodded when he felt secure enough - his face was pressed to her back, she'd be able to feel it.
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The thought was banished almost as soon as it had floated into her mind and she started up the speeder, cautioning him to hold on.
It was a half-hour's ride across the sands — past the Imperial wreckages of both the Ravager and the Inflictor, great carcasses hulking in the distance — to her dwelling, and by the time they'd stopped Rey could sense her passenger was even more drained than she'd sensed earlier. She climbed off and unpacked their combined wares, hauling his in addition to her own without another word. She may have appeared lithe, but she was wiry and strong from her years of climbing and scavenging.
The entrance to her little home within the hollowed-out AT-AT was a large cannon turret that could be sealed off with a durasteel cover for when the rains came, effectively proofing the insides; she clambered inside, motioning for him to follow. Inside he would see that while the quarters were cramped, it was indeed possible to stand to full height, even his; she'd cleared the floor path of most of the consoles and equipment left over from the machine's use, so it was surprisingly easy to move around as well. There was a rudimentary stove and cooking utensils off to the left, a sleeping compartment off to the right, and several containers of something packed tightly into the compartments against the foreground wall. It was quiet inside, cool and dark, no sound penetrating the hull save for the door that was opened.
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He himself was much slower clambering down, and by the time he got his feet on solid sand again, she already had his pack in hand and all he could do was follow.
The inside of whatever kind of vehicle or fighter she'd made her home in was large enough on the inside, and it was insulated from the heat outside by whatever it was made of and the sand.
He peered around the little home she'd made for herself once his eyes had adjusted - it was cluttered, but functional. It was also clearly not designed for two people. He blinked, then settled in the first bit of open space that was not directly in some sort of path, taking his pack back. He rested his chin on the pack then looked at the girl, watching her even while he blinked tiredly. He was too tired to even ask what kind of machine this was, how long she had lived here, his slate seeming a thousand miles away even though it was right in front of him in his pack.
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"It's not much, I know, but it's been my home for the last twelve years — since I was six or seven years old. Before that, I was living at Niima Outpost under the care of Unkarr Plutt, the junk dealer." She shook her head as she moved about, lighting small oil lamps in some of the darker corners of her residence as dusk encroached outside, the shadows growing longer. Her lip curled in disgust. "Detestable being. I could never shake the feeling that he was always looking for an opportunity to slobber all over me, first chance he got. I struck out on my own, and found this place." She looked up at the low ceiling fondly, musing to herself. "It used to be an Imperial war machine, and now — now I can't think of it as anything other than a shelter. My home."
A glance over at her companion again showed her just how bone-tired he was, chinning himself on his pack, and her dark eyes softened slightly. "You can remove your headscarf, if you wish, the air is plenty clean, in here." Her request was as much born of selfishness as it was altruism; she wanted very much to see another glimpse of his freckled cheeks, that soft mouth.
While she had his attention, she lifted the two red potatoes he'd given her as payment for parts in her hand for his view. "Do you cook these? I'll let you rest and get some sleep very soon, but first you should eat something."
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He sat up a little then sighed again, before he reached for the knot at the back of his head. He carefully worked it free then let the fabric fall into a pile around his neck that he had to lift off. He did, piling it into his lap, then lifted his head to look around the little shelter again.
His hair was long and dark, tied into a loose knot at the back of his head with a bit of string, and it framed his pale face and dark eyes. There was a thick scar, the same white as was on his hands, that started at the side of his head just in front of his left ear, swept down over the front of his throat, then down into the neck of his robes.
He blinked slowly, then looked down at his pack. He carefully pulled out his slate and his stone then wrote BOILING EASIEST. before turning the slate to the girl. He reached into his pack again and pulled out four potatoes, offering them out.
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She'd been right with her initial assessment of him. Pale cheeks dotted with freckles, a full, sensitive mouth, and pitch-dark hair that made his features stand out all the more in contrast. He had a strong nose and a furtive, expressive look to his dark eyes, but she couldn't help but notice the scar running prominently down his throat as well. Rey wondered who'd been responsible for the extent of the damage to his skin; she made a mental note to ask him at another time, when the question wouldn't perhaps seem as intrusive and prying.
She took the additional proffered food, nodding to him in thanks. It was to be a shared meal, then, and spontaneously as she set water on her little stove to a flash-boil she decided to throw in the orange roots along with it. They were delicious raw, but most likely just as good cooked.
"What's your name?" she asked, hoping to keep the conversation going. If he wasn't up to writing with his stylus for very long she would cease with her questions, but she hoped to at least get that out of him before he was too tired to comply.
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Finally he shrugged. Maybe if he thought about it, he would remember after a while. He wrote instead, YOURS? and looked up at her.
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There was a moment's debate where she considered not asking, but then she found she couldn't help herself. "You don't have a name? — Or you don't remember it?"
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ILL HAVE TO THINK ABOUT. YOU SHOULD OPEN GIFT. He smiled up at her. He knew she would like it. He'd yet to meet a person - a human, especially - who didn't like what he kept in boxes like that.
[The answer to 'what's in the box' is strawberries, just fyi ;) ]
lmfksgj oh man prepare for all the amazement :D
"I'll need to call you something, though," she reasoned, somewhat good-naturedly when he wrote the rest of his message, encouraging her to open his gift now that they were indoors. "Or perhaps I'll make something up." His smile was convincing though, as much as it was distracting, and she nodded and did as he asked.
She removed the little box he'd given her in Niima from the knapsack she'd left in the corner, glancing at him with an anticipatory look before she opened it. Inside were a glistening bunch of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen; they were plant foods, as were the others he'd shown her, but they were small oval ones, the most vibrant color of red she'd ever seen anywhere on Jakku, speckled with tiny seeds and crowned with green stems.
They filled the room with a sweet aroma when she'd opened the box, and her lips gaped as she lifted her eyes to his once more, even as her mouth watered at the scent. "These...these are to eat?" They looked too beautiful to eat, if she'd had to be honest.
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Strawberries were one of his favorite crops. And not every plant managed to make it through. This was the best of his batch for the year, the most beautiful, the most perfect. The less-ripe ones, the ones that weren't as beautiful, he'd turned into a mash kept safe in a jar, for the coming year. It was just as good as what Rey had in her hands, but not as beautiful.
He sat up a little, then reached out and took one of the berries. He tilted his hands to show Rey how to remove the stem, then offered her the berry itself.
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sorry for the delay! rl has been a bit crazy.
No worries, I know how it goes!
<3 hopefully my tagging speed will get better soon!
maybe mine will too :P
no worries, no worries!
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