(no subject)
Memoryshare. A writeup of some of what happened in Walkabout.
The first thing that hits you is the heat.
It is intensely, oppressively hot, so much so that the heat is a physical thing, as if you're submerged in liquid. It suffuses you totally. The endless expanse of yellow sand radiates it back up at you, so it hits from below and all directions as well as above. You're pouring sweat, but it's such dry heat that sweat on your skin evaporates instantly. The only thing that saves your clothing from being a horrible swampy welter is the fabric, which wicks it away and leaves only a faint, persistant dampness.
But you're used to this. As soon as the suns rise in the morning, you stop paying attention. After all, you've known this heat every day of your life. Regularly, rhythmically, you take a swallow from a canteen of water that is warmer than your own blood; you do this so often that you hardly notice that, either.
The second thing is the light.
There are two suns in the sky, low on the horizon - you don't have to look towards them to know this - and they beat down, both of them, stinging the exposed skin on your face and hands. The light bounces back off of the rock and the endless yellow sand; it is bright, it tries to stab your brain right through your eyes.
But you're used to this. This morning, before the suns were up you smeared a little kehal over your eyelids to cut the glare. There's only so much it can do but, well, you're used to the light. Once full morning starts each day, you don't really notice it.
The third thing is the sand. That same yellow sand that radiates the heat and reflects the light. Some of it's coarse and glassy, but some is fine, and it gets everywhere. Literally, everywhere. It's in the toes of your boots, gritting up your navel and the wrinkly skin between your fingers, in your hair, crusting to your nostrils and ears. There are grains of it in your mouth and clinging to your eyebrows.
You're used to this, too. You don't hate the sand. What would be the point? It's everywhere. Always. Even in the cool darkness of night in the homestead, even once you've cleaned yourself of the day's sweat and kehal, some sand remains. The sand itches and abrades a little, enough that it's at the edge of your awareness, but you don't pay it any attention.
You're hit by these three things and the fact that you're used to all three in one instant of awareness; on its heels come more epheremal things, like where you are, who you're with, what you're doing. You're out on the rocky edge of the Jundland Wastes trying to reach Ja-Mero Ridge on the back of Huey the dewback, with your friend Windy in the saddle behind you. Often you feel slightly antagonistic towards Windy, who is what your best friend calls "a follower" and who can be very annoying.
Most recently he's gone and fried the comlink, so you can't call for anyone and a sandswirl - a local storm - is boiling up. Huey can weather these things without cover, but even with goggles on and cloth wrapped around your faces, the humans will have trouble. And Huey's restless. You're steering him through a narrowing canyon, which cuts the light from the descending suns, though it's still plenty bright enough to see. The wind picks up; you touch your heels to Huey's sides, hoping to find shelter, and he obediently breaks into a faster pace.
It's a bone-jarring ride. You and Windy and all the supplies fastened to the saddle jerk and lurch wildly, almost flying off, but even as you go down a slope you're hanging on, right up until Huey reaches the bottom and smells something he doesn't like. He's young, he spooks easily. With a whining, disturbed snort, the dewback actually rears up onto his back feet and heavy tail, shaking his whole body, and you and Windy are thrown. Windy screams as he hits the rock. You grit your teeth and look up in time to see Huey disappear into a narrow, dark ravine, saddle and supplies still jouncing.
Being thrown stings, but nothing's broken, either of you. You stand and try to help Windy up, but he shoves your hand away and scrabbles up himself. "This is your fault! It was your idea to come here!"
What is wrong with him?! "Well, you fried the comlink!" you blurt furiously. You already know what you have to do. The wind just gets more and more intense; it doesn't cool you, but it drives the sand stinging against your skin, makes your next pull of water more gritty than usual. It just takes a moment to wind a cloth to cover your mouth and nose, to put your goggles on; the sand still scours your exposed skin, but that will help.
Windy's backed himself into a little alcove against the canyon wall, where the wind is a little lesser. He stares at you. He demands, "What do you think you're doing, Skywalker?"
"I'm going to find Huey. He's the only way we're getting home." Even aside from the dewback's homing instinct and strength, he has all your supplies, your rifles, your water.
"You'll never make it! You'll never find your way back!" Windy says it in a half-wail. Right now you feel you seriously dislike him. Does he have no loyalty? Huey belongs to him, lives on his farm! And he just gives up!
You turn away from him, resettling the cloth around your face, and move off with a parting, "Huey can't be too far!"
As you go, you hear him snap "I'm not staying here by myself!" and he takes his own precautions against the storm and follows. You're satisfied by that, in a grim sort of way, but you put the feeling aside to look for the dewback.
You call out his name and hear him grunting in response, and soon you find him on the ground, not just spooked but shaking. The supplies on his back are rattling against each other and he's making this low whine. Huey's more afraid than you've ever seen him.
Windy goes for the supplies - of course - and you put your hands on Huey's big blunt head, standing at his neck. "It's okay, little guy... We'll get you to cover." It's worked before, but this time you hear Windy stammering your name and staring in the same direction Huey is facing.
Down the ravine swirling dust and sand cut visibility, but there's a big shape moving in it, resolving as it gets closer. But you already know what it is.
Krayt dragon.
A canyon krayt, much smaller and darker and more agile than the ones in the Dune Sea, with a shorter muzzle and proportionately longer legs. It still almost fills the ravine from one wall to the next. Teeth flash. It doesn't bother roaring to try and stun its prey. It has to have seen that Huey has fallen.
You're strangely calm, and there's a cool feeling to your body. You have a chance, but you have to act fast. In an instant you're scrambling over Huey to pull your rifle free and take off the safety. The stock is braced against your chest. You aim, compensating for how Huey's rapid breathing makes his scaly side rock underneath you, and fire, two bursts to the head - to the brow ridges, above the eyes. They don't penetrate the krayt's scales, and but it hesitates, startled. So you take one arm off the gun to get Windy's rifle, and hold it out to him.
"Come on, Windy! We can hold it off!" The cloth around your neck has slipped to under your chin, leaving your airways exposed; no time to worry about that now.
"Run, Luke, run!" he wails - and he does just that, jarring his own gun out of your hand and to the ground.
The krayt dragon is advancing. You hold your ground, firing at its face again, but it's smarter than you want it to be, it's found an angle to hold its head at that means you can't get near its eyes. All you've done is annoy it. It's close enough that you can smell its reeking breath. You'd make a healthy mouthful.
Something happens. Later you're not sure what, you assume that Huey somehow knocked you off of his side to tumble out several meters behind him, the same way Windy had gone, away from the krayt. You've lost your rifle, and as you come to a stop and wincingly get back to your feet - no broken bones, again, but you're definitely bruised, you hear Huey cry out at last.
Huey.
You don't go back and dwell on the memories, but you're aware of them. The dewback's dry grooved tongue licking water from your outstretched hands as you tried to teach him to drink from a trough, when he was just a pup. The way he froze in his tracks when you and Windy put the training saddle on his back for the first time. Sitting in his saddle racing away from a family of agitated womp rats, laughing as you leave them behind. That pitiful lowing groan he made when you found a dead sketto on him, its teeth still embedded between his scales.
He trusted you.
It's your fault.
There's a crunch.
For a moment you stop, and a sympathetic pain rocks through your body. For a moment you can feel the spill of a punctured water tank, then teeth and a sickening sort of lurch. For a moment the world darkens.
But the coolness is back to your limbs, the calm - you hadn't noticed either ebbing away - and you slink away, moving slowly and smoothly so you don't catch the krayt's eye by running. "I'm sorry," you whimper. It's lost in the wind.
You can't afford to think about Huey now.
Once you've gone far enough away you notice that it's gotten darker, and you take the glowlamp off your belt, though you hold it and move carefully so you don't cast a shadow or shine a lot of light back there. There's a new sound, aside from the wind scouring sand against everything and the noise of a krayt dragon eating one of your friends. The sound is sobbing. For a moment you think it's coming from you, but no, the coolness has your chest too.
It's Windy, and he's holed up in a crevice in the ravine. A rush of horrified anger breaks your calm and chases some of that coolness away; if you can hear him, the krayt will too, when it starts to follow. You should leave him, go deeper into the canyon, but even as the thought comes to you you go into the crevice after him. It's more sheltered here.
"Windy," you hiss. He's curled up against the wall with his hands against his face, his goggles down.
When you touch him he cries, muffled, "It's coming for us. We're dead!" He's terrified. You've never been scared like that, like Windy is, like Huey was, the kind of fear that freezes someone up. You don't really understand it. It doesn't help anything.
It's going to attract the krayt dragon. You can't hear it eating anymore. Was that a scrape outside? "Windy, be quiet," you say, as gently as you can manage right now, but he's sobbing again, begging in a choked voice for his mother. There's a - it's not a sound, but you sense something, so you lunge at him and cover his mouth.
Too late. The krayt's head fills the opening to the crevice. It tries to get at you and Windy yelps "We're dead!" but you're not that worried - its horns are too wide to let it get through. It can't get you at all - it can't dig through to you either, not through rock. All the same, the two of you back away as the creature snorts and tries, sending loose bits of rock every which way.
The crevice doesn't go far before it narrows dramatically. There probably is another opening somewhere, you can feel air moving, but it's not something humans can squeeze through. The krayt can't get in, but you can't escape, either. As you take another pull from your canteen, you realize it's nearly empty. This could be bad.
You hear a weird, whistling cry outside, and the krayt stops scratching. Leaving Windy where he is, you creep carefully back towards the entrance, putting your goggles back up to peer outside warily. The creature's lying on the ground now, nostrils flaring rhythmically. You think you see a humanoid shape out past it, but when you blink it's gone.
"It's asleep," you tell Windy. "We can sneak past it."
He glares tearfully up at you. "And go where? Without Huey? In the middle of a storm? We're never going to get home." His sudden rage dissolves instantly and he sobs again. "They'll find our bones one day... just old bones..."
You're about to grab him and haul him out if you have to, but you hear a man clear his throat. There's someone in brown robes outside of the crevice, holding a staff topped with a glowrod. He pulls his hood back. It's an older man. You've seen him, you know him, but it's been a while.
"I'm Ben Kenobi. We don't have much time if I'm to get you boys home."
The first thing that hits you is the heat.
It is intensely, oppressively hot, so much so that the heat is a physical thing, as if you're submerged in liquid. It suffuses you totally. The endless expanse of yellow sand radiates it back up at you, so it hits from below and all directions as well as above. You're pouring sweat, but it's such dry heat that sweat on your skin evaporates instantly. The only thing that saves your clothing from being a horrible swampy welter is the fabric, which wicks it away and leaves only a faint, persistant dampness.
But you're used to this. As soon as the suns rise in the morning, you stop paying attention. After all, you've known this heat every day of your life. Regularly, rhythmically, you take a swallow from a canteen of water that is warmer than your own blood; you do this so often that you hardly notice that, either.
The second thing is the light.
There are two suns in the sky, low on the horizon - you don't have to look towards them to know this - and they beat down, both of them, stinging the exposed skin on your face and hands. The light bounces back off of the rock and the endless yellow sand; it is bright, it tries to stab your brain right through your eyes.
But you're used to this. This morning, before the suns were up you smeared a little kehal over your eyelids to cut the glare. There's only so much it can do but, well, you're used to the light. Once full morning starts each day, you don't really notice it.
The third thing is the sand. That same yellow sand that radiates the heat and reflects the light. Some of it's coarse and glassy, but some is fine, and it gets everywhere. Literally, everywhere. It's in the toes of your boots, gritting up your navel and the wrinkly skin between your fingers, in your hair, crusting to your nostrils and ears. There are grains of it in your mouth and clinging to your eyebrows.
You're used to this, too. You don't hate the sand. What would be the point? It's everywhere. Always. Even in the cool darkness of night in the homestead, even once you've cleaned yourself of the day's sweat and kehal, some sand remains. The sand itches and abrades a little, enough that it's at the edge of your awareness, but you don't pay it any attention.
You're hit by these three things and the fact that you're used to all three in one instant of awareness; on its heels come more epheremal things, like where you are, who you're with, what you're doing. You're out on the rocky edge of the Jundland Wastes trying to reach Ja-Mero Ridge on the back of Huey the dewback, with your friend Windy in the saddle behind you. Often you feel slightly antagonistic towards Windy, who is what your best friend calls "a follower" and who can be very annoying.
Most recently he's gone and fried the comlink, so you can't call for anyone and a sandswirl - a local storm - is boiling up. Huey can weather these things without cover, but even with goggles on and cloth wrapped around your faces, the humans will have trouble. And Huey's restless. You're steering him through a narrowing canyon, which cuts the light from the descending suns, though it's still plenty bright enough to see. The wind picks up; you touch your heels to Huey's sides, hoping to find shelter, and he obediently breaks into a faster pace.
It's a bone-jarring ride. You and Windy and all the supplies fastened to the saddle jerk and lurch wildly, almost flying off, but even as you go down a slope you're hanging on, right up until Huey reaches the bottom and smells something he doesn't like. He's young, he spooks easily. With a whining, disturbed snort, the dewback actually rears up onto his back feet and heavy tail, shaking his whole body, and you and Windy are thrown. Windy screams as he hits the rock. You grit your teeth and look up in time to see Huey disappear into a narrow, dark ravine, saddle and supplies still jouncing.
Being thrown stings, but nothing's broken, either of you. You stand and try to help Windy up, but he shoves your hand away and scrabbles up himself. "This is your fault! It was your idea to come here!"
What is wrong with him?! "Well, you fried the comlink!" you blurt furiously. You already know what you have to do. The wind just gets more and more intense; it doesn't cool you, but it drives the sand stinging against your skin, makes your next pull of water more gritty than usual. It just takes a moment to wind a cloth to cover your mouth and nose, to put your goggles on; the sand still scours your exposed skin, but that will help.
Windy's backed himself into a little alcove against the canyon wall, where the wind is a little lesser. He stares at you. He demands, "What do you think you're doing, Skywalker?"
"I'm going to find Huey. He's the only way we're getting home." Even aside from the dewback's homing instinct and strength, he has all your supplies, your rifles, your water.
"You'll never make it! You'll never find your way back!" Windy says it in a half-wail. Right now you feel you seriously dislike him. Does he have no loyalty? Huey belongs to him, lives on his farm! And he just gives up!
You turn away from him, resettling the cloth around your face, and move off with a parting, "Huey can't be too far!"
As you go, you hear him snap "I'm not staying here by myself!" and he takes his own precautions against the storm and follows. You're satisfied by that, in a grim sort of way, but you put the feeling aside to look for the dewback.
You call out his name and hear him grunting in response, and soon you find him on the ground, not just spooked but shaking. The supplies on his back are rattling against each other and he's making this low whine. Huey's more afraid than you've ever seen him.
Windy goes for the supplies - of course - and you put your hands on Huey's big blunt head, standing at his neck. "It's okay, little guy... We'll get you to cover." It's worked before, but this time you hear Windy stammering your name and staring in the same direction Huey is facing.
Down the ravine swirling dust and sand cut visibility, but there's a big shape moving in it, resolving as it gets closer. But you already know what it is.
Krayt dragon.
A canyon krayt, much smaller and darker and more agile than the ones in the Dune Sea, with a shorter muzzle and proportionately longer legs. It still almost fills the ravine from one wall to the next. Teeth flash. It doesn't bother roaring to try and stun its prey. It has to have seen that Huey has fallen.
You're strangely calm, and there's a cool feeling to your body. You have a chance, but you have to act fast. In an instant you're scrambling over Huey to pull your rifle free and take off the safety. The stock is braced against your chest. You aim, compensating for how Huey's rapid breathing makes his scaly side rock underneath you, and fire, two bursts to the head - to the brow ridges, above the eyes. They don't penetrate the krayt's scales, and but it hesitates, startled. So you take one arm off the gun to get Windy's rifle, and hold it out to him.
"Come on, Windy! We can hold it off!" The cloth around your neck has slipped to under your chin, leaving your airways exposed; no time to worry about that now.
"Run, Luke, run!" he wails - and he does just that, jarring his own gun out of your hand and to the ground.
The krayt dragon is advancing. You hold your ground, firing at its face again, but it's smarter than you want it to be, it's found an angle to hold its head at that means you can't get near its eyes. All you've done is annoy it. It's close enough that you can smell its reeking breath. You'd make a healthy mouthful.
Something happens. Later you're not sure what, you assume that Huey somehow knocked you off of his side to tumble out several meters behind him, the same way Windy had gone, away from the krayt. You've lost your rifle, and as you come to a stop and wincingly get back to your feet - no broken bones, again, but you're definitely bruised, you hear Huey cry out at last.
Huey.
You don't go back and dwell on the memories, but you're aware of them. The dewback's dry grooved tongue licking water from your outstretched hands as you tried to teach him to drink from a trough, when he was just a pup. The way he froze in his tracks when you and Windy put the training saddle on his back for the first time. Sitting in his saddle racing away from a family of agitated womp rats, laughing as you leave them behind. That pitiful lowing groan he made when you found a dead sketto on him, its teeth still embedded between his scales.
He trusted you.
It's your fault.
There's a crunch.
For a moment you stop, and a sympathetic pain rocks through your body. For a moment you can feel the spill of a punctured water tank, then teeth and a sickening sort of lurch. For a moment the world darkens.
But the coolness is back to your limbs, the calm - you hadn't noticed either ebbing away - and you slink away, moving slowly and smoothly so you don't catch the krayt's eye by running. "I'm sorry," you whimper. It's lost in the wind.
You can't afford to think about Huey now.
Once you've gone far enough away you notice that it's gotten darker, and you take the glowlamp off your belt, though you hold it and move carefully so you don't cast a shadow or shine a lot of light back there. There's a new sound, aside from the wind scouring sand against everything and the noise of a krayt dragon eating one of your friends. The sound is sobbing. For a moment you think it's coming from you, but no, the coolness has your chest too.
It's Windy, and he's holed up in a crevice in the ravine. A rush of horrified anger breaks your calm and chases some of that coolness away; if you can hear him, the krayt will too, when it starts to follow. You should leave him, go deeper into the canyon, but even as the thought comes to you you go into the crevice after him. It's more sheltered here.
"Windy," you hiss. He's curled up against the wall with his hands against his face, his goggles down.
When you touch him he cries, muffled, "It's coming for us. We're dead!" He's terrified. You've never been scared like that, like Windy is, like Huey was, the kind of fear that freezes someone up. You don't really understand it. It doesn't help anything.
It's going to attract the krayt dragon. You can't hear it eating anymore. Was that a scrape outside? "Windy, be quiet," you say, as gently as you can manage right now, but he's sobbing again, begging in a choked voice for his mother. There's a - it's not a sound, but you sense something, so you lunge at him and cover his mouth.
Too late. The krayt's head fills the opening to the crevice. It tries to get at you and Windy yelps "We're dead!" but you're not that worried - its horns are too wide to let it get through. It can't get you at all - it can't dig through to you either, not through rock. All the same, the two of you back away as the creature snorts and tries, sending loose bits of rock every which way.
The crevice doesn't go far before it narrows dramatically. There probably is another opening somewhere, you can feel air moving, but it's not something humans can squeeze through. The krayt can't get in, but you can't escape, either. As you take another pull from your canteen, you realize it's nearly empty. This could be bad.
You hear a weird, whistling cry outside, and the krayt stops scratching. Leaving Windy where he is, you creep carefully back towards the entrance, putting your goggles back up to peer outside warily. The creature's lying on the ground now, nostrils flaring rhythmically. You think you see a humanoid shape out past it, but when you blink it's gone.
"It's asleep," you tell Windy. "We can sneak past it."
He glares tearfully up at you. "And go where? Without Huey? In the middle of a storm? We're never going to get home." His sudden rage dissolves instantly and he sobs again. "They'll find our bones one day... just old bones..."
You're about to grab him and haul him out if you have to, but you hear a man clear his throat. There's someone in brown robes outside of the crevice, holding a staff topped with a glowrod. He pulls his hood back. It's an older man. You've seen him, you know him, but it's been a while.
"I'm Ben Kenobi. We don't have much time if I'm to get you boys home."