Log Date: 10/28/98, 10/29/98 Log Cast: Aidon Semmes, Shenneret Veery Log Intro: A strange relationship is developing between Shenner and the former soldier named Aidon Semmes; although the man seems to delight in provoking her in the times they've encountered one another so far, he has also called the young musician beautiful, and has shocked her immensely by calling her beautiful to her face... by admitting to loneliness to her... and most of all by requesting a recording of some of her songs. But she's shocked herself even more by actually going to the effort of making the recording for the man, including on it what is arguably one of her most personal songs -- "Tomorrow We Leave for Mandalore". Once the disk is made, she heads up to Kichnar Station to seek Semmes out and give him the recording.... ---------- Aidon is just coming out of a small, somewhat shabby building. In all likelihood it's where he lives. This level's entry doors open up to admit the slim figure of Shenneret Veery, who peers warily down the corridor as she takes a few moments to orient herself. Her small burden jammed into a shirt pocket, the young musician squares her shoulders and starts down the corridor, looking for some sign of delivery slots or quarter numbers to mark where her intended destination would be. He pauses, glancing around as he always does when he's setting off. And then he goes still, like the waiting soldier he used to be. He's spotted Shenneret Veery, his sometime adversary, sometime... something. Aidon just waits, knowing where she's going. The girl sees the former soldier before she draws too near, and stops well before she's in danger of colliding with him. Then, lifting her chin up somewhat, she thrusts a slender hand into that pocket of hers, pulling forth the small data disc within, and holding it out as she strides determinedly forward. "This is convenient," she announces brusquely, without a hello. "Here. You... wanted this." Aidon takes the disc from Shenner and somehow catches hold of her hand, as well. He gives it a gente squeeze and says, "Thank you. Your songs, as you promised?" Shenner's fingers go stiff for an instant. She doesn't exactly jerk her hand out of the grasp of the one who's caught it, but the moment it's released, she does pointedly jab it and her other hand as well into her pockets. "Yeah," she replies, even more brusquely. "A few of 'em. What I had time to record today or find on disc already and copy." And she starts to turn, evidently believing her mission accomplished. "Don't go so soon," Aidon says quietly. "You only just got here. Have you eaten?" That does stop her, though it doesn't make her turn back around. "Not yet," she allows. Shen doesn't ask 'why?', though the implication of it is evident enough in her voice. He considers for a moment. And then Aidon says, "Because you're intiguing, and I like your music, and because I haven't eaten dinner yet either. Come along." He leads the way back towards the Core. The somewhat peremptory tone rankles with the girl somehow, and she drawls sardonically, "Where am I coming to?" She does fall into step with the man, though, carrying herself with a deliberately casual air that suggests that she's doing this because _she_ wishes it, and not because he -- or so it seems to her -- instructed her. "And are you buying?" Aidon says, "The Cantina. Yes. As a thank-you." He glances at Shenner and then ends with, "And I do thank you." Aidon heads coreward. Aidon has left. You head coreward. Level 3 -Residential Level- As you enter this well lit area you find yourself in a huge atrium. Many people walk about on this busy but not overly crowded area. This central level like many of the larger levels of the station stems off in four directions with the turbolift in the center. To the East a large medical bay can be seen. To the South an archway leads to Darsopan South Residence. This along with the Darsopan North Residence is where most of the station's populace lives. A walkway to the West leads to the KOS Gardens. OOC Note: Type INSPECT/CONTENTS to see what else is here. -=-=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=-=- => Aidon -=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=- Edgeward East leads to Level 3 -Medical Complex-. Edgeward South leads to Level 3 -Darsopan South Residences-. Edgeward West leads to Level 3 -KOS Gardens-. Edgeward North leads to Level 3 -Darsopan North Residences-. TurboLift leads to Turbolift. Aidon presses the elevator call button. The Turbolift arrives and the doors open. _Oh...._ "You're... welcome," Shenner states, trying for and more or less achieving a credibly casual tone. "Don't get too fancy with the menu, pal. You haven't heard the disc yet." Aidon enters the Elevator. Aidon has left. You enter the Elevator. Turbolift The turbolift runs up the core of the station. It's large, cylindrical shape runs the entire axis of the station. A panel of buttons is positioned by the lift door, next to the list of floors they send the turbolift to. -=-=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=-=- => Aidon => Turbolift Control Panel(#5772L) -=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=- Out leads to Level 3 -Residential Level-. Aidon gives Shenner a thoughtful look before he hits the button. "True," he says. Aidon chooses level '4' from the Turbolift Control Panel. The Turbolift doors close. The Turbolift begins to pick up speed. The doors swiftly open. The Turbolift has stopped at Level 4 -Concourse-. Aidon leaves the turbolift. Aidon has left. [And very shortly, the young musician and the aging former soldier arrive at the _Blue Nebula_...] You open the door to the Blue Nebula and walk in. Level 4 -Blue Nebula Cantina- The Blue Nebula Cantina is a small, smoky bar. Catering mainly to the traders and spacers who visit the station, the Blue Nebula is known for a few of its unique beverages. Even the occasional resident will wander in looking for a drink and perhaps a little conversation. OOC Note: Type BAR HELP for bar commands. Type PLACE HELP for place commands. -=-=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=-=- => Aidon => Nino 'The Rat' Pasquali => Vanessa => Crystal -=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=- oreward leads to Level 4 -Northern Concourse-. Her hands stay in her pockets, her stride deliberately calm, her shoulders deliberately relaxed, as Shenner accompanies her companion into the Blue Nebula. She flicks a green glance around the place as she does, the reflexive sort of look half the denizens of the galaxy have developed -- a survival skill, really, in star systems so recently overrun by war. He bows Shenner into the cantina, the gesture oddly out of place here. Aidon doesn't appear to look around. But... perhaps he doesn't need to. He knows where every denizen is. He nods to an empty table, and says, "Let's take that one. It's almost in a quiet corner." "Whatever works," Shenner says blandly, though she gives her companion a veiled look at the bow. She steps that way, and settles her slender frame into one of the chairs, falling unconsciously into a bit of a slouch where she sits. "If you're buying, I won't argue with the seats." Aidon is, of course, ramrod straight when he takes his seat. Not that he can help it. When the wait-staffer comes to take drink orders, he orders his usual white death and then looks at Shener. "What'll you have?" He ignores her peculiar looks as easily as he would ignore mist on a cloudy day. "Cider and whatever you have in the way of sandwiches," Shenner answers, looking up to the staffer, her expression carefully controlled. After the order is taken and the woman moves off to attend to fetching it, the redheaded musician says, "So. You find all redheaded guitar players intriguing, or is it just me?" There's a slightly sardonic edge to her words. The waitstaff must have had some idea what Aidon wanted, because he doesn't seem to need to order. "I find many things intriguing," he says. "You, however, are the only redheaded guitar player that I find intriguing." Shenner snorts softly, an unladylike sort of sound, to go with her indelicate slouch. "Yeah? I ain't exactly complicated, mister. You must intrigue easy." He quirks an eyebrow. As the waitstaffer brings the drinks, Shenner's sandwich, and his meal of roast a vegetables, he takes up his glass and says, "i'm a simple man, Shenneret Veery. I like your music, and I might even like you if you weren't so prickly. As it is, at least I enjoy buying you a meal now and again." "So I'm prickly," the girl mutters, tossing off what she probably intends to be a sullen kind of shrug. Shenner ruins the effect of it somewhat, though, by glancing off across the bar and appending, "Thanks for the food, anyway." A slow grin wanders across Aidon's face. "You're welcome." he says in courtly fashion. "Were you ever not prickly?" "No," is Shenner's immediate reply, along with a smirk. "Might've escaped your attention, but it's a big mean galaxy. Soft and cuddly gets you squashed." He snorts. "Really. I hadn't noticed." His voice is level, but there is an undercurrent there. "just because the galaxy is mean doesn't mean you have to be." Shenner sits up out of her slouch, turning her attention at least ostensibly to the sandwich. Between initial bites and swallows, she replies in cynical tones, "Have to be to keep from gettin' squashed." "Is that so," he says. It doesn't appear to be a question. "There are billions of people in this galaxy who'll never be squashed and never be great. Maybe it's just because you want to be great." To that, Shenner snorts again. "No," she corrects, "I just don't wanna be squashed. 'Great' has nothing to do with it." And she belts down a swallow of cider. "Is that so, songbird?" Hmm. Aidon's got a new name. Now, the question is, is it serious or mocking? He hasn't yet taken more than half a bite of his food. "Then why haven't you found yourself a safe young man, on a safe little world in some backwater corner where you. won't. be. scared?" He pauses for a moment, and then adds, "Because you're obviously scared of something." Shenner looks up, a smirk darkening her pale features, and she snaps caustically, "I don't need a _man_ to keep me safe, pal!" "Then a woman," Aidon says easily. "Or an Ewok, for all of me. They're cute enough. Still doesn't explain what you're doing out here and not tucked into a corner with a flower box on the window." Shen pins Aidon with a blazing green glare, and delivers her reply in biting tones: "I'm _here_ because I'm going to go to _school_." He waves that off, though he does grin at the fury in Shenner's face. "You," Aidon says, "could get a sound education on a thousand peaceful little worlds where they farm grain from horizon to horizon. Why aren't you hiding, songbird? Why aren't you running?" "Big girls," sneers the redheaded musician, "don't run and hide from scary things. That answer your question, or is there more you wanna know?" Shenner bites into the sandwich with all the force of a turbolaser pounding into the side of a ship under attack. Aidon rubs his chin and takes a bite of his food. "No," he finally agrees. "Big girls don't run and hide. They're also usually a little more civilized than you are." He grins at her with his eyes and just waits for the explosion this will provoke. Shenner doesn't, however, explode. She merely sneers harder, and drawls, "Maybe you aren't acquainted with enough big girls." His eyes go distant for a moment, and he grins fondly. "Oh," Aidon says, "I've known one or two in my time who were uncivilized. In a different way than you, though. And they weren't scared." His eyes darken, and he focuses on Shenner again. "Doesn't look like you're going to admit to it, though." He turns his attention steadfastly to his meal and falls silent. "What business would it be of yours if I _was_ scared of something?" snaps Shen, over her cider. Aidon hefts the disc that he'd set on the table next to his plate, and then puts it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He looks up at Shenner and quirks an eyebrow, as if that answers her question, and then goes back to his meal. "Well, I got _news_, pal, it's not an issue of _fear_," growls the girl, pointing a slender finger in annoyance at her table companion. "It's an issue of life just in general really _stinking_, and I'm here because this is where I wound up, if you really must know, okay?" "Does it now?" Aidon asks quietly. "You've lived so long that you're sure that life ... stinks. And there's no hope of redemption?" Shenner tosses off another one of those shrugs she probably fondly hopes appear indifferent, and tears off another mouthful of sandwich. After chasing it down with a swallow of cider, she answers, "Maybe. Hafta see how school works out." "Is that all there is to it then?" Aidon says in that same quiet tone. "The band, the music on the beach, and some schooling. Now joy in any of it? Not even in that beautiful tune you were playing when I got there the other day." That question seems to give her a little pause, and she doesn't look up, her attention at least ostensibly on her food. In between devouring that sandwich, Shenner finally answers gruffly, "Playin' music's different." "Is that so." Aidon says. The smile that might go with such a statement is nowhere to be found. Except, perhaps, in an imperceptible loosening of his shoulders. "Because it won't hurt you or leave you?" Shenner goes very, very still for a brief instant; is that a hint of color draining out of her face? Rather overswiftly, she seizes the cider mug, gulps down a swallow of it, and only then does she declare brusquely, "Music doesn't leave you unless you stop practicing." She gives Aidon another level stare, full of casual bravado. "It's more loyal than people, yeah. Point bein'...?" Aidon considers. "Point being," he says slowly, as if entirely uncertain that she deserves the answer, "that it's more loyal than people. Which means that the people you've known have been pretty damned low." At this, Shenner actually snickers. "You ain't never been to Mos Eisley on Tatooine, have you?" "No," Aidon agrees readily enough. "I have not." But he understands a little more now, perhaps. "And if that's where you're from, this must seem like paradise itself." The girl shrugs. "I'm from Belsavis. But I spent a year on Tatooine. You're right, this place is a helluva lot better than Mos Eisley any day of the week." And Shen slouches back in her chair again, the sandwich slain and eaten, her cider mug gripped in slender fingers. Aidon's plate is hardly touched, though he does take one more bite before pushing the plate away. "Where's your family, songbird? Why's the name Veery bother you so much on someone else?" "Don't have a family," says Shenner shortly. She doesn't look at the man who's bought her the meal; her gaze, dark and distant, is pointed off across the room as she swigs down some more of her cider. "Don't have one," Aidon asks, "Or lost it along the way?" He lets the question hang there between them as if hung from a cord. Shenner shrugs again, with only one shoulder, and then turns her gaze back round to Aidon. Her face has turned taut and set, her eyes still very dark within her pale features. "Mom was it," she grumbles, "and she died. Why the interest in the family I ain't got, anyway?" He purses his lips. "Because," he says tersely, "you nearly took my head off when I made an offhand comment about a good friend of mine. That's reason enough." Which maybe is true, but is that all of it? Unlikely he'll ever tell. The musician stares across the table at the man before her, and then says grudgingly, "You surprised me." There might be an apology lurking in there somewhere, though Shenner doesn't actually voice it. That actually brings a faint smile to Aidon's face; the first he's worn in close to an hour. In fact, he looks tired under that smile. Maybe it was a long day. "You," he replies, "surprised me right back. So your mother died. What about your father? Siblings?" "Didn't have 'em." Shenner tosses down the last of her cider, as she delivers this succint statement. He nods, not all that surprised. "Your mother was a prostitute," he surmises. Shenner stops. And stares, wariness and alarm and indignation all warring for dominance on her face. Aidon shrugs. "I was a soldier," he says. "I've seen one or two things, if not the cold part of life you seem to live in. I've seen a few toddlers in houses I wasn't supposed to be in." "Yeah," Shenner finally bites out, in low and grating tones, "my mother was a whore." "Rough life," says Aidon. "How long before you got thrown out of the house? Or did they want to make you earn your keep?" "I left before they could do anything," the girl barks, straightening up to her full height, her eyes and face and posture all going... well, _prickly_ again. Aidon waves off her defensive posture. "Turn it down, songbird. You're getting feedback. Smart of you. Your life'd be rougher if you'd stayed than it has been so far." "Yeah, well." Shen doesn't alter her wary posture, not much. Nor does she elaborate on the revelation that's come out between her and her companion, and from the glance she flicks towards the door, it's distinctly possible she's considering a retreat. He nearly laughs at that flickering glance. He's seen it enough times before. "Had enough, songbird?" says Aidon. Then the smile runs away from his face. "Told too much to someone who'll just disappear, haven't you." He turns his glass in his hands. That makes Shenner fire up another smirk, swift and defensive. "Everybody disappears eventually," she retorts. "That's the way life works, pal." He just turns his glass in his hands for a few more moments, and then looks up and meets Shenner's eyes. "I live," he says simply, "by myself in a run-down flat in the poorer part of the station. This drink," he holds it up, "is named loneliness. I drink it every night, either here or across the way. Everybody disappears eventually." Aidon looks at the drink for a moment, and then tosses back half of it. It is perhaps surprising that Shenner doesn't sneer at this, or get up and storm out of the bar. She only sits there, green gaze inscrutable, watching the aging man before her belt down his beverage. And at last she asks, "So what's _your_ story, anyway?" "You," he says quietly, "haven't earned it. But I'll tell you the punchline. Even though everyone disappears, there is good to be had in the moments in between, when there is love and laughter and joy. If you lose that, you might as well fly into the nearest sun and get it over with." Shen's mouth tightens; perhaps she senses a reproof in there. If she does, though, she doesn't comment on it. She merely gets to her feet, her expression going shuttered and closed, and she mutters, "Thanks for the food." The tension in his shoulders has returned, but he makes no move to stop her from leaving. "You're welcome," Aidon says, his eyes still on his drink. "Come by again, if you want to drink loneliness with an old man." Then he does glance up at her. "Maybe I'll come hear you play." Shenner stops, back to Aidon, in the midst of heading for the door. "We play five nights a week in the Sandbar," she answers roughly without turning around. "Hard to miss us." "Thanks," he says. Though Shenner may not be able to hear it from this distance. "For everything." She heard; the girl must have very good ears. "You're welcome," she tosses back over her shoulder, and then she heads for the exit. In moments, she is gone.... He looks back down as she leaves, first to the empty, askew chair across from him, then to his drink. He pushes it aside as well, and leans back in his chair. The ramrod straightness of his back shifts a little, as if a weight is settling in again. [End log.]