#writing:all

[izzyovercaffa-blog]

It was not love at first sight. It was barely a word of conversation. He’s convinced he blew it -- not even really sure what “it” was, but it’s done.

That’s not how Laseema remembers it -- but it makes for a funnier story, so she lets him have his embarrassment as a badge, a stripe of self-deprecation to wear whenever asks after how they get together.

Another story: the first time he held her hand she cried. She could not have guessed someone could be so gentle, much less with her.

Atin didn’t panic, though he maybe felt the urge to come and go. He simply waited for her to speak, if she chose to speak -- because sometimes she didn’t, because sometimes she chose her voice with such care it took many minutes to get there.

He could wait, he realized.

It was the least he could do.

But Atin still asked her, all the same: with his broad shoulders and height, so used to simply taking up space -- suddenly aware of how much he crowded the room when beside her -- why was she not afraid? Had seemed to have lost her fear around him?

Questions easily answered, when he thought about it.

Sometimes, it comes as a surprise (always disguised, a widening of eyes, a press of lips, the way they said him?), that she gravitated to the sharpest one of the group. The one with the scar, who carries his history in his shoulders and the tight press of his lips, present in the focus of his eyes.

But it made sense, to her.

After all, for a long time she carried her own burdens in her spine, in the twitch of her lekku, in the shrink of her frame -- in the catch of her voice in her throat because what if she spoke too loud, called attention to the fact that she stood right there?

What if, what ifs.

No one ever gave him the relationship talk -- always flying just under Kal’s radar: enough to be loved but not to gain attention (and the attention he eventually learned he did not want).

A connection made in accident, coincidence, and suddenly they were together and it was righter than everything gone wrong in their life. Somehow they made it work. Somehow, it came naturally to them -- to be the presence that felt like coming home.

[izzyovercaffa-blog]

ii. plain

The first time his message comes through, it’s from a channel she doesn’t recognize, over the secure link she thought dead for the total dearth of calls she’d stopped receiving.

And, perhaps, unsurprisingly, she’d been in her off hours and at home when it rang for the first time in months.

Besany Wennen did not hurry for other people, and she certainly did not trip over her throw blanket, bang into her side table, and spill a cup of caf over her three month old plain basic rug in her urgency to answer.

“Cyar’ika?” “Ordo--”

She was a hard woman, hardened by years of surviving a difficult, unfair, workplace in a difficult, unfair world. It made her sharp, unbending, and rarely prone to emotional outbursts.

But seeing his face, however skewed by the quality of the holo...

She pressed a shaky fist to her lips, her knees giving way to lower her slowly to the floor, as her cold and terrible moments, condensed over the past months, spilled out past her eyes.

“Bes--Bes please don’t...”

And, it seemed, she was not alone in this reaction.

[izzyovercaffa-blog]

You said you might be open to drabble prompting? If you ever have the time and inclination, I'd love to see some of Besany on TripZip after O66.

YES yes 

consider this an “intro” to the AU (at least, one nicer than any on the blog I’ve ever done) I plan to do a series for whenever I have time :x

i. vivid

What’s felt, long before the screams, the smoke, and the fire in the sky, was the knot at the pit of her stomach.

Months later, it still tightens – small, terrible trembles that call to wake in the middle of the night.

She would say she’d grown accustomed to its presence: a temporary made permanent accompaniment neatly situated in her day-to-day – a burden of anxiety she would surely miss as easily as she’d come to loathe its presence.

And if it had knotted tighter the morning of, could she have identified it as any different?

Logic dictates there was nothing she could have done – if she’d ever learned the importance of bad feelings, nor what to do with them. 

Now, two months – fifty three days exact – after the fact, and it’s like the glass had never shattered over her head. Like the skies had not caught fire.

Like the duracrete of the hundreds of thousands of walk-paths that webbed Coruscant weren’t blown to hell and back in the descent of the skirmish out of orbit and into the crowds.

Like the family she’d worked so hard, too hard, to cultivate now existed under the line of Hunted, somewhere far on the other end of the galaxy, while she, promoted to Head of Internal Audit Investigations, now found herself responsible with conducting hunts.

For others, of course, unrelated to the family she’d adopted – that adopted her – but the irony could not, would not, be lost on her, no matter how she wished it on some late, late nights.

Fifty three into fifty four days after the fact, it no longer mattered.

Regardless, if she didn’t get some rest, she’d suffer in the office tomorrow later.

[thehurtvector-blog]

and the sand gets everywhere

The walls of interlocked chains tremble under the overhead roar of the crowd, the thunder that cracks in scattered breaths of a thousand angry souls screaming out from the black. Waves of sand ripples under the bandages that hold her feet together, pressing tight the bones and joints to lock in even when her muscles are ready to give.

Days from now.

Lines of brown creep out from the pools of fresh red. She drags the back of her half wrapped hand over her lips, a half smile—all bite, all malice treading the line of absolution, of ecstasy. The breath off her lips falls wet to the dust clouding the air, fading to the bright gold sand trickling down between the cracks of duracrete.

Her mouth tracks to the loosed bandage of her wrist, and with the pull of clenched teeth and a jerk of her head away from her hand the bandage tightens sharp—returns to its rightful role.l. The delicate bones of her wrist and knuckles creak against each other, held rigidly in place by fraying cream streaked red to brown, like her feet, like the sand.

Her chest heaves, sucking in hot, overheated air — too dry, for her kind. A handicap in favor of the mammal circling her, blended into the dust.

The chatter of the creature reaches her ears the half beat before he strikes. Wicked claws. Polished fangs. The whirl of long, too long, fur and dual tails—both broken, torn, from the earlier rounds.

The dust parts. Sand jettisoned in the air.

Hands slap rough to the ground, splitting open once more on the sand as he sails overhead. The thunder of a thousand heartbeats pounding in sync—beating as the drum of Nar Shaddaa’s song, beating off the rhythm of her own beneath her ribs.

Her toes scatter the sand as he lands, screeches in a sharp turn that hooks his tails sharp through the air. The seconds tick, eons from now as he rounds to meet her once more, the voice of the Hutt and the Bimm in her inner ear.

— " Execute him, his time is up. "

The shadow of his life finds the reach of her hand. His claws fly out, clips her already short hair. The second finds her side—splitting open her tunic and spilling red in sharp red lines. The wicked quiver of his life blinds white hot against the hunger of her anger. He comes again, setting the opening she left for him.

He strikes —

                      — misses .

Sliding under, between his legs, to grab hold to both tails. The tremble of the crowd rises like the tide through the sand, tearing up her legs as she   t e a r s   both tails free.

Scream.           screaming       screaming

Yain comes up, tails held as whips to break down upon his head and wrestle him to the ground.

She doesn't know it yet…                     … she laughs as she snuffs out the light from him.

[thehurtvector-blog]

Artemis: my character goes with yours on a hunting trip.

Artemis: my character goes with yours on a hunting trip

"Trackin' a man ain't much different than maybe y'remember.""It's nothing new to me."

The urban landscape is strange in its distant familiarity—a stone and some from the Hutt-poisoned influence of Nar Shaddaa, yet similar in its many layered foundation of crowding beings together in too tight a space by sealing them, vertically.

The press of voices in her inner ear, sensitive to the sound beyond the average range of hearing, wrapped her conscious like a never-ending flood. The ebbs and flows took within her the sense of self she worked so hard to develop.

It spoke of home, of safety and comfort in sheer scale of numbers to drown out her voice in a symphony of lives.

"You were saying about the Refugee District?""Reminds me of there." She touched the comm at her ear. "But, here's what special 'bout Nar Meda."

A hiss whispered to the rich atmosphere as individual suit seals tightened and released. Her glove came free to the heavy thick atmosphere.

"Yain, what—"

The grime-caked metal stacking container shifted under the gentle push of her hand, reacting to the warmth of hot-blooded skin as she did—and the gentle suggestion to the gears just beyond the reach of the surface.

Thunk thunk thuthuthuthuthunk— as the metal frame caved in on itself, the walls bowing in and splitting open.

Out burst violence, loud, ripping apart the peace under heavy armor and thick scaled skin, it's roar following half a step behind. Claws slashed at her helmet, clattering off the plates of her chest, reached for her exposed arm—

Dodge to the right and a leap back.

Whump.

Soft spray of green out the back of its head. And crumple down like a sack of meat.

"Nice shot.""Not going to complain I stole your thunder?"

She looked to Boss' approach in her HUD's 360° view, then back to the target.

"Dead's dead." She replaced her glove. "An' I ain't. S'all 'at matters."

[thehurtvector-blog]

Suspected Associates: Cujo the Hutt

// accessing entry . . . : Cujo ya Hatta // Loading . . .

Section I. The Story

Born to a low ranking Hutt known only as the Gatekeeper, Runt was considered abnormally small and unhealthy, and therefore regarded as prey and trash by the Hutt community at large. The Gatekeeper, already the brunt of many jokes, mockery, and outright abuse from the Hutt Cartel, received twice more the shame.

In an attempt to redeem its former status as barely respectable, it attempted to dispose of the creature it birthed, by swallowing it whole.

For a time, Runt was believed to have been dead—killed in a fashion brutal even for Hutts, who generally found cannibalism squeamish, despite holding no qualms for swallowing other species whole.

That is, of course, until one day, several weeks later. On this important day, the Gatekeeper had been lined up to be gifted a sector of Nar Shaddaa to secure an alliance with another Hutt. Surrounded by the inner circle of the Cartel, the Gatekeeper gripped its stomach suddenly and screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

The Hutts, amused, enthralled, and irritated alike by the sudden lapse of sanity, decided to watch… until it became evident that it was no mental break. No, much worse unfolded before them.

The Gatekeeper’s stomach rumbled and expanded, stretching as the seconds ticked by. Black slime leaked from the Gatekeeper’s mouth and eyes as the screaming ebbed to silence… until finally his stomach burst apart, spewing blood and pus and the creature it had birthed several weeks prior—larger now, and a horrifying shade of vomit green.

And thus, on the broken sanded podium floor, Runt was birthed a second time, and given the name Cujo, along with the gift of the same small, dwindling sector of Nar Shaddaa, as guarantee he would never come to collect on the debt that caused him to be eaten in the first place.

Or, you know. That might just be a story.

Happened so long ago, it’s hard to find anyone not a Hutt to corroborate.