Anja Weiss (sciencequeen) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2015-07-24 17:04:00 |
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Mara truly didn’t mind patrolling the graveyard. It had felt a little strange at first but over time, she’d gotten used to it. The people who arrived were usually scared out of their wits and she did her best to use the Force to comfort them a bit while explaining where they were and getting them to someone who would take them on the next steps of their journey. And there was the fact that she never stopped looking for someone from home. She hadn’t been on patrol the night Ben had arrived and she would have given anything to have been there although she probably wouldn’t have recognized him as a grown man but his signature in the Force, there was no mistaking that. Every time someone appeared, Mara found herself holding her breath, hoping to see a pair of bright blue eyes and a lopsided grin but so far it hadn’t happened. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be here but she never stopped looking for Luke, she was never going to give up on the chance that he might appear here. Tonight it was quiet. There hadn’t been anyone arriving in several days and she wondered if the Seal had decided the earthquake was enough for now. She was just about to walk over to another part of the graveyard when it happened. The familiar light and then a person taking shape in front of her. This time she got her wish. No, it wasn’t Luke but it was someone from home, someone she knew and liked a great deal. “Danni Quee?” she asked, just to be certain it wasn’t someone who merely looked like Danni although she could sense that it was indeed her. “It’s Mara Skywalker, are you okay?” Okay was an interesting choice of words to be used in conjunction with what had just happened to her. Danni had been on the Jade Shadow, in the unexplored regions, and then it had all simply disappeared out from under her and now she was left somewhere that didn't look like anywhere she was familiar with, but the voice that was now talking to her she was remarkably familiar with. Danni turned around, the confusion obvious on her face. "Mara? What in the galaxies - is this Zonoma Sekot? Where are we?" As she looked around she had to admit that this didn't look much like a living planet, in fact the place where she was looked very much like it was a graveyard and while she supposed it was possible that there were beings who died on this mystical planet and that it might, therefore, have graveyards, it seemed an odd discongruity with what they had been looking for. Perhaps more likely it was that this wasn't Zonoma Sekot at all. AND maybe not even Mara - was she dreaming? Danni tentatively reached out in the Force, an ability she wasn't particularly well-versed in for this particular type of activity, but she'd worked with the Skywalkers before, and recently - this seemed as if it was Mara Jade Skywalker. "I don't understand," she said softly, looking around. "I was on your ship and then it just disappeared from around me." “I know, that’s the way it happens,” Mara replied. She spoke gently, knowing that Danni was bound to be disoriented and also very confused. “This place is on a planet called Earth. It’s not in our galaxy and I haven’t been able to figure out just exactly where it is in relation to home but the country is called the United States of America. It’s divided into sections called states and this,” she held out her arms to encompass the area around this. “is Kansas. No one knows how we end up here and there isn’t a way out unless the Seal decided to send you back.” She paused for a moment. That was probably more information than most people could handle at once but Danni Quee wasn’t most people. If anyone could process it, she could. “it’s a long story, a lot of good versus evil, demons, angels...things you would never believe. I’ll take you into town, there’s a place where for new arrivals and we can talk on the way. I do have to warn you that we had a huge earthquake about a month ago so the town is still kind of a mess. It actually is a nice place when it’s in one piece.” Danni listened as she tried to reorient herself to where she was. While everything she was being told was fantastical sounding, it didn't really feel like Mara was deceiving her, or that it wasn't Mara and so she straightened her shoulders and looked around. There didn't appear to be any immediate danger, and with that settled Danni decided to simply follow Mara's lead and keep her eyes open. "The Seal?" She grasped onto the first thing that Mara had said that seemed to have a question that she could explore. The planet name, the location of where they were - those were simple things that might be unexpected, but were explicable and factual - presumably. The Seal - she had no idea what that meant. "What is the Seal?" “Honestly I don’t know,” Mara said with a shrug as they walked toward the gate. “It has something to do with this planet’s religious beliefs. Heaven, hell, demons, angels. They worship one god and these other beings are either aligned with heaven which is the good afterlife or hell which is the bad afterlife. Or that’s kind of what I’ve pieced together.” she sighed. “This Seal has something to do with the apocalypse, the end of time as it were and for some reason it’s been pulling people here to help fight the war of good and evil for about six years now. It also will send you back with no warning as well. People come and go all the time.” They reached the gate and Mara let Danni step out first so that she could close it. “My first reaction when I arrived was to look for the Yuuzhan Vong,” she said, pointing the way down the street. “People come from different points in their time lines too. I should explain that. The war with the Vong had just ended where I came from, Luke and I had just been reunited with Ben who was six. Ben is here by the way but he’s eighteen, he comes from twelve years into my future and I’ve been dead for two years in his world.” It still felt strange to think about that or to speak of it but Mara knew she had to. She to accept that her life at home was not going to be the long and happy one she’d envisioned. “Jacen, my nephew is here too,” she went on. “he’s been here for some time. He’ll be older than you remember him. I’m not sure how old he is but I think he’s in his early thirties.” Danni wasn't certain if she felt more bewildered by the fact that she had seemingly arrived from whenever and wherever she had, or now by all of this new information she'd been given. While religion might not have been an exact interest of hers - she was interested in the beliefs that cultures gave to explain things that might not be otherwise explicable and this Seal seemed instantaneously to be one of those things - probably there was some sort of scientific explanation for it that had simply not been found. That was something she could look into, possibly after - "Do they have caf here?" She turned to Mara. "I think I desperately am going to need a cup of caf before I go much further. Your son is 18? And Jacen is 30? But he's here?" The idea that Jacen would be here when she was standing and talking to Mara was less startling than the realization that if Jacen was 30 then he would be significantly older than she was. If he'd come from a point in her future then he might know a bit of what happened to them. She was definitely going to need some caf. “They do but it’s called coffee. It’s not bad actually if you get the right kind. Ben and I have been experimenting with some of the things available here. There is also a large selection of tea if you prefer that,” she knew that all this had to be hard for Danni. It had been hard for her especially since she hadn’t known anyone from home was here since Jacen had shut himself down in the Force. “They also have alcohol if you want that. Putting it in the coffee sometimes helps. Someone did that for me when I first got here, I couldn’t sleep.” She didn’t want to say anything else for fear of frightening Danni. Not that she frightened easily, Mara knew that. She had survived being captured by the Yuuzhan Vong after all and not just anyone could do that. “I’m taking you to a place where they get people settled,” she explained as they walked along. “right now things are kind of a mess because of the earthquake but there are places that are taking new arrivals in. Ben and I are staying with a friend of his because the building we lived in was destroyed in the quake. She has a very big house, an estate really. We’ll let Jacen know you’re here, I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.” It was a wild guess on Mara’s part since she really had no idea what Jacen would or wouldn’t want. She was still having a difficult time figuring out her own feelings about her nephew. "Coffee. That's similar enough to be remembered easily," Danni said trying to take it all in and remember what Mara was saying but to be honest there was a lot and she might need this conversation again once she'd had a bit to sleep on it. But it gave her some hope that Jacen was here. Older or no, he'd been a good friend and she could only hope still would be even if trying to visualise a man that was nearly ten years older than the one she knew was a bit difficult to do. Well, she didn't need to try to imagine that - the facts themselves would present themselves naturally when she had the opportunity to say hello to him. And she was unreasonably grateful that it had been someone familiar that had found her tonight. And this, well she had done this before. Not precisely in such a bewildering way as this but exploring a new planet had been how she had spent the past few months of her life. She could certainly handle whatever this Kansas would throw at her. Or so she hoped. "Are there many new arrivals?" “It varies,” Mara replied. “we’ll go for some time without getting any then have several show up at once. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern. Not that I’ve noticed. There are a few people here that have always been here, the Winchesters, Ruby, this is their home but I don’t think they’ve ever figured out how it works either.” They were getting close to the area that had been set up for new arrivals and Mara looked over to smile at Danni. “I’m very glad to see a familiar face. Ben will be too although you won’t recognize him. I still have to shake myself and remember that he’s not six anymore. Which is what he was the last I remember.” She opened the door and let Danni inside. “I’ll stick around while they’re talking to you and then take you wherever they find for you to stay.” Danni nodded. She certainly would have expected that there would be people who were native to this planet, and while the names meant nothing to her she supposed that they would come to mean something in time if this was to be her new home. That was a very bizarre thing to think about but it seemed as if Mara had been here long enough to understand it and make some sense of it. "Thank you very much, Mara. I'm sure this will take some getting used to, and I'm sure I'll have more questions for you, but I can save them for a bit later, perhaps with some of this coffee." |