Log Date:
	3/29/98

Log Cast:
	"Kiriel Andurin" (Shenneret Veery), Nelun Good

Log Intro:
	Much to her alarm, the young musician "Kiriel" -- Shenneret Veery --
has had a second encounter with a mysterious vagabond who she knows only as
Nelun. During their first encounter, she'd discovered that Nelun seemed to
be suffering from some form of memory loss, and had offered to buy the
lost-looking fellow a meal, only to have her efforts turned askew when in
the grip of a fit of mindless fear, Nelun managed to get them both thrown
out of the restaurant to which she'd taken them. Nelun had then screamed
incoherently at her in the street, and ran off, leaving her to write him off
as a lunatic... someone who was none of her business.
	Shenner has discovered, however, that Nelun is still at large on
the streets of Coral City. The man has approached her again, asking her
for help, and she's attempted to repeat her earlier gesture by buying him
a meal. But, as before, he's stumbled into a fit of the same mindless fear
he'd suffered before -- triggered as far as Shen can tell by her observation
that he spoke like an educated man -- and the young bard has been forced to
chase him through the Market District. The chase has resulted in Nelun
inadvertantly getting himself badly wounded, and Shenner, begged by Nelun
not to take him to a hospital, has taken the only other course of action
she could think of: taking the wounded stranger to her own dingy little
flat, and tending to his injuries herself.
	It is now the next morning....

----------
Kiriel(#3773POACF)
This is a young human female, of about 5'6" in height, but of a delicate 
  enough build that there barely seems to be any substance to her. Her skin is 
  moon-pale, her already fine-boned features made pronounced by an utter lack 
  of extraneous flesh anywhere on her face. In stark contrast with her white 
  complexion, her hair is a dark brown; her green eyes, large, luminous, and 
  limned by dark brows and lashes, look out at everything she encounters with 
  an intelligent, haunted intensity. Those eyes, incongruous with her ethereal 
  frame, and taken along with a walk, stance, accent, and mannerisms seemingly 
  more suited for a brash young street tough, exemplify the contradiction that 
  anyone who observes this girl long enough can soon discover: that for all 
  her fragile appearance, this is no delicate flower. Rather, this young human 
  is one that burns.
Her hair is currently bound up to sweep back from her face in a braid that 
  drops to just below her shoulders, interwoven and tied off with strips of 
  green suede; from one of these strips dangles three clear glass beads and a 
  small brown feather. She is clad in an overlarge gray-green shirt, tied off 
  at the waist, and open at her collar and throat to reveal a water-blue, 
  lighter silken shirt beneath, along with the glint of a silver pendant on a 
  chain. Her pants are a utilitarian brown, old, but of a still thick and 
  sturdy cloth, tucked into equally utilitarian scuffed beige boots.
           
The night had gone relatively peacefully -- or at least, as peaceful as 
  Kiriel's nights tend to go. Nelun had slept undisturbed on the couch, and 
  after enough observation to determine he didn't seem liable to move any time 
  soon, the young musician had taken up his filthy coat, the length of cloth 
  she'd sliced off his pants, and her own bloodstained black clothing, and 
  tossed the lot of it into the cantankerous old washing unit in her tiny 
  'fresher room. Half-expecting the unit to choke halfway through the task, 
  and surprised when it hadn't, she'd then washed herself up, and settled down 
  for another night of bleary-eyed study. Only when she couldn't keep her eyes 
  open any longer had Kiriel finally collapsed in her bedroom... and as she'd 
  expected, she awoke about four hours later, shaking, sweating, unpleasant 
  dreams still roiling behind her eyes. Now, she's staggered awake, tugged on 
  other clothes -- not black, this time -- and stumbled into the kitchen area. 
  _Coffee,_ she thinks tiredly. _Just a little coffee..._

<OOC> Nelun_Good says, "Can I ask what the apartment looks like? Did you have 
  a desc setup already?"
<OOC> Kiriel says, "I have a visual idea of it, yeah, though I haven't desced 
  it anywhere. The flat's _very_ tiny. Room and a half, if you don't count the 
  'fresher room. The main room's got the sofa and a desk nearer to the door; 
  towards the back, there's a rickety table on one side of the little 
  half-wall that blocks off the kitchen area, which isn't an individual room 
  by itself, just a corner of the main room. Off to one side is a little 
  alcove which leads into the 'fresher room and the bedroom."

Towards the living room the sounds of Kiriel's impoverished companion rustle 
  about. His return to consciousness is violently sudden; flushing dark red 
  shortly before sitting upright to gasp for air, the man's respiratory system 
  circles in the flood of air it had been seeking to find for the past 10 
  minutes. Nightmares of unrecognizable --and now unrememberable-- sort were 
  masked by the slow asphyxiation of a man too injured and blood-drawn to 
  support himself properly in the small, uneven sofa he slept in."Kiriel!" 
  Nelun's gasps. His cries and short breaths are quick-lived, but the 
  startlement of waking up so unexpectedly leaves him dazed, if not 
  prematurely awake.

Her head snaps round, diverting her attention from the coffee she's trying to 
  brew. "Nelun, hey, I'm here," she calls out, crossing the room in a few 
  quick strides, coming to the side of her guest on her couch.

Nelun's hand reaches out frantically for the girl's voice. He is imbalanced on 
  the couch, and in danger of toppling over along with it onto the flat's 
  floor. "Kir-Kiriel..." Along the entire lenght of the man's leg is a bloody 
  red coat, caked in with his skin.

"Hey... hey, I'm here..." The young musician kneels before the couch, reaching 
  to brace Nelun, not wanting him to fall. _Looks like he didn't sleep any 
  better than I did,_ she thinks, a look of sudden sympathy softening her 
  drawn features. "I'm here, pal. We're safe."

Nelun's eyes blink hard several times as he glances around, grabbing the arm 
  of the sofa with his own. His face is paling down now, drifting gradualy 
  from the flush red. "What...what happened...?"

"Uh..." Kiriel tilts her dark head a little, considering the question. "What, 
  you mean, just now, or what?"

"Just...now. What--" Nelun is interrupted by the twist of pain in his leg, 
  "Och! My leg..."

"Well... sounded like you were havin' a nightmare or something," Kiriel 
  observes. She looks her charge up and down, then rises up on her knees and 
  slips an arm in under Nelun's shoulders, to better settle him back on the 
  couch. "Lie still, pal. I kinda doubt you're up to getting up yet. I got 
  more painkillers in the medikit if you need 'em."

Nelun nods once, and then wishes he hadn't. Bringing his fingers up to his 
  temple the man, glancing at the horror of his leg slowly recollects the past 
  few hours. "Yeah...lots of painkillers."

The medikit hasn't gone far. Kiriel moves to it, and takes out a dose of the 
  painkiller she'd let Nelun have the night before. She fetches a glass of 
  water, too, and brings that back. Settling down on the couch's edge, she 
  offers first the pills and then the water, saying, "You can have what the 
  label on these says you can have, and if that doesn't work, well, we'll see. 
  Here."

The glass of water does the trick. Nelun downs it sloppily after popping the 
  pill in his mouth and swallowing noticeably. He moves his leg carefully with 
  his right hand, yelping shortly. "Augh!" His mutterings are unheard for a 
  few moments, until the girl suddenly realizes her name is being called, 
  "...KirielKirielKirielKiriel..."

"Ah, hells... shh... hey, it's okay..." The girl leans forward, hands moving 
  to the man's shoulders, trying to press him gently but firmly down to lie 
  still. "Take it easy. What can I do for ya?"

The remainder of the glass is spilt along the calf of Nelun's leg, cleaning 
  off some of the dirt and blood and being surpressed by the painkiller; 
  Nelun's cries are not that of pain but rather of scared surprise. He points 
  at the side of his calf skin, directly at a small, blinking orange light.

Kiriel blinks, seeing first Nelun's startled expression, and then shifting 
  where she sits to follow his frightened gaze. When she spies that light, she 
  visibly starts, muttering, "What the hells...!"

"It hurts..." Nelun grimaces, still pointing insanely at the light. Around it 
  just a few inches above are various other scratches, bruises, and cuts. The 
  light--or whatever is emitting the light--seems to be pushed out somewhat by 
  the smaller injuries.

"What the hells...!" the girl repeats, as she slides off the couch's edge to 
  kneel beside it, leaning over Nelun's leg, and staring wide-eyedly at the 
  light blinking forth from his abused flesh. Her head then snaps up, and she 
  studies her charge's face. "Do you know what this is?"

Nelun is in complete frozen terror. The red flush is most definitely gone now, 
  having been replaced by the pale whiteness of fright. The constant switching 
  between blood pressure is dangerously tipping the scale in a see-saw manner; 
  quite unhealthily. Back to his leg, the dot of light suddenly begins 
  blinking at a more repetitive rate, and a brighter flux.
Nelun_Good looks at you for a moment.

The girl's mind races. It's obvious she's not going to get a coherent answer 
  out of Nelun about this, not right now, at any rate. Instead, she frowns 
  darkly down at the winking light, and reaches round to probe gently at the 
  flesh around it with her fingertips, trying to get a better look. "What the 
  _hells_ is this," she murmurs.

Nelun jumps, yelling, "Aaugh! It hurts!" He screams, doubling over on the front 
  of the sofa. He crawls about the flat, knocking over the rickety table near 
  the door and panicking.

Knocked over onto the floor at the man's violent reaction, Kiriel lets out a 
  short, breathless curse, then tries to sit up. "_Nelun_...! Nelun, calm 
  down, pal, get a grip..."

Swinging around with the lenghts of his arms, Nelun smashes his fist into the 
  wall. The impact is loud, and there is an audible crack. Telling whether 
  it's the sound of bone breaking or wall crackling is superseded by the 
  sudden death of the light, which is easily seen on the back of his injured 
  leg's calf by the man's momentary pause to feel his hand. There is a brief 
  flicker of calm, before the light suddenly flashes, and Nelun posture arches 
  severely. He sprawls on the floor, convulsing twice and sleeping before the 
  light begins blinking--as normal.

Still half-pinned under the man, Kiriel squirms free just as he makes it over 
  close enough to the wall for that impact to happen. She hisses, and lunges, 
  but is too late to prevent his hand from colliding. Letting out another 
  curse, she has to settle for awkwardly catching him as he slumps over. 
  "Holy..." she breathes out, warily staring down at her mysterious guest, 
  waiting to see if he's going to suddenly rouse again.

There is a distinct buzzing sound, further echoed by the claustrophobia of the 
  flat. On the floor, Nelun's leg twitches, and the blinking light disappears 
  underneath his leg. His weight is suddenly heavier under the girl's catch.

"Holy gods," Kiriel whispers, staring down at the light vanishing under a veil 
  of seemingly normal... if injured... skin and flesh. Then she turns her gaze 
  towards the man slumped in her arms, and mutters at him uneasily, "Wh... 
  what the hells happened to you?"

Nelun is limp and unconscious yet again. The painkillers obviously had no 
  effect on the area surrounding the implant. Although the light seems to be 
  gone, a dullish-gray color formerly where the light blinked--so seemingly 
  harmlessly--protudes off the side of his injured calf. His face appears to 
  be flushed red once more, and his eyeslid are visibly moving in their sleep.

There's a cold little knot of fear coalescing in Kiriel's gut. She notes it, 
  and scolds herself, _This ain't Mandalore... get a grip..._ Frowning deeply, 
  she lifts a hand, notes it's shaking, and sternly forces it to stop as she 
  lifts it on up to smooth still-filthy hair back from Nelun's brow. "You're 
  gonna be okay," she whispers to him. "Promise. You hear me?"

Nelun's brow furrows. His eyes continue to move underneath their lids, forming 
  some strange dream, or perhaps nightmare. The limpness of his body seems to 
  rigidize at the moment of Kiriel's words. "Mmm...gonna be okay..." he 
  mumbles. "Gonna be...happy. Gonna...leave Bespin. Be an Imperial..."

Kiriel freezes. _Imperial_?! Her hand goes still on Nelun's hair, and she has 
  to fight down a sudden vehement urge to drop him as though the contact of 
  his body with her arms had scalded them. After a moment, she wrests her 
  attention back to the matter at hand. Swallowing hard, she steadies herself, 
  and then murmurs, "Nelun. Hey, Nelun. Can you hear me?"

Nelun's dreamy ramblings continue, effectualizing his obliviousness to Kiriel. 
  "...officer...be a biological...no, I won't let you....stop it."

The girl sucks in a breath, torn between letting her charge ramble and moving 
  him off the floor -- besides, he's heavy, slumped against her slight form. 
  Finally, with her free hand, she shakes his shoulder a little, saying more 
  clearly, "_Nelun_."

"Muh...what?" the man says, eyes still shut closed.

That's _better_. Kiriel lets out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, 
  and says in that same clear tone, "It's Sh... Kiriel, pal. Look, we have to 
  get you off the floor, okay?"

"Muh...no. I like it." He says, rolling to his side away from the girl. 
  "...gonna be a imperial navy..."

Oof. The dark-haired girl manages to hang onto her charge before he rolls out 
  of her grasp entirely, then closes her own eyes in a brief reeling surge of 
  exhaustion. Then, opening them once more, she mutters, "Okay, fine, if you 
  like the floor, you can have it..." And she starts lowering him down.

With the side of his head pressed against the floor, the painkillers lulling 
  him further into the null void, and the effects of whatever the light had 
  done, Nelun's subconscious ramblings are thinly veiled. "I won't move...I'm 
  an Imperial...*sigh*...scientist...officer. Rebels...New Rebels..."

Once she's got Nelun safely lying down, Kiriel kneels there frowning, his 
  mumblings disturbing her more and more. She then rises silently and paces 
  into her bedroom, returning with her one thin, worn pillow and a blanket. 
  Kneeling again at Nelun's side, she slips the pillow in under his head.

"Mmmpf." The pillow buffs the floor from Nelun's head nicely, but garbles his 
  words as well. With the side of his face pressed against the fluff of the 
  pillow Nelun's ramblings are less than coherent.

"Imperial scientist, huh?" murmurs Kiriel, dropping the blanket, and moving 
  off again to fetch a few other things... a couple of ratty, ancient, but 
  clean towels from the 'fresher room, a bowl of warm water, a washcloth. With 
  these items gathered, she plops down next to the unconscious man. "Yeah, 
  that's about right, the only other people that get me in as much trouble as 
  Corellians'd hafta be Imperials. Hot karkin' damn. Well, I'll tell yah, 
  pal..." And she goes to work, dipping the washcloth in the warm water and 
  starting to wash off his blood-caked leg. "...Imperial or not, you're a 
  frekkin' wreck. What the kark am I gonna do with you?"

"Mmmpfh." Nelun drools.

Unseen, the features of the girl who calls herself Kiriel set into a grimly 
  exhausted mask, as she continues her task of washing away blood and grime -- 
  she doesn't want to think about how long it must have been since this ragged 
  man has bathed. She tucks a towel under his bare leg to catch water, and 
  makes a few passes to the sink to refill her bowl with cleaner water when 
  she needs to, keeping up a tired running commentary all the while. "You're 
  playin' bloody hell with my study schedule, yah know? And how the hell am I 
  gonna explain you to Trace? Yeah, I can hear it now, 'Yeah, I got this man 
  in my room, and I gotta buy him some clothes'... clothes." She pauses, 
  frowningly considering what's left of Nelun's tattered garb.

The orange coat the girl had cut for extra bandages was useless. And what 
  remained of Nelun's pants were barely modest. Once cleaned--or rather, if 
  cleaned--the man's shirt, visibly(if not by other means) sweat-stained and 
  grimy, might still be serviceable. New shoes, or perhaps tough boots, would 
  need to be purchased or found, given the marred conditions of the man's poor 
  feet.

No getting around it, she supposes. Kiriel sighs, and addresses her charge, 
  "Congratulations, pal, you get to be the second man I've ever seen with his 
  clothes off, since I got the feeling you ain't gonna exactly be able to 
  stand up in my shower for a little while, and damned if if I'm gonna let you 
  keep stinkin' up my flat." Nevertheless, she's started to blush as she 
  cautiously reaches over to start removing that stained shirt. Tricky 
  proposition, that, and is going to require rolling him over once she's 
  gotten it half off. "Karkin' hells, pal, didn't it ever occur to you to at 
  least take a dip in the karkin' ocean?"

"Can't...swim..." the man mumbles, arms pulled up with his shirt. Moving 
  around in his sleep and flopping over, Nelun's mouth isn't mauled by the 
  pillow anymore, and neither is his back. Pulled forth the shirt is actually 
  easier to remove than thought. It's clothfoam exterior is slippery, although 
  wheter that's because of grime or just the material is a mystery(until it's 
  washed anyway)

Huh. Well. Still blushing, her reddened cheeks incongruous with the hard 
  little annoyed line of her mouth, Kiriel settles in to cleaning up her now 
  shirtless charge's torso. The shirt is tossed aside, eventually destined for 
  the 'fresher unit, and the girl peers warily up at Nelun's face as she 
  catches his mumble. "Can't swim, huh? You with me, pal?"

"Humma..." His entire upper body is covered in dirt, partly due to the fuzzy 
  fields of brown hair trapping it. However, empty, almost reddish spots 
  directly above his heart, and abdomen seem to stick out--literally sorely.

Simple water can't quite handle the level of dirt all over Nelun's upper body, 
  and Kiriel has to dart into her 'fresher room to grab a bar of soap to aid 
  her task. Once she starts cleaning away some of that grime, though, the 
  reddish spots show themselves, and the girl pauses, frowning again. "Now 
  what..." she whispers, dabbing cautiously at the skin around those spots.

Wincing slightly in his sleep, Nelun's body is cleansed and simultaneously 
  revealed of it's battered condition. There are scars and semi-healed burns 
  all over his chest and back. There look is deliberate, is if placed there by 
  some blaster charge--or rather, something less lethal but equally painful.

The girl's seen quite a bit in her young life, but what she finds under the 
  layers of dirt and grime is enough to darken her eyes, to bring a deeper 
  frown to her pale features. Finally settling Nelun back on his back, the 
  pillow nestling his head, she dabs the washcloth along his face and asks him 
  lowly, "What did this to you, huh? Who the hell are you?"

Swallowing thirstily from the subconscious images garnered by the splash of 
  cleaning water, Nelun refuses at first to even open his mouth. Licking his 
  lips but remaining in his consistent delusion, Nelun utters several more 
  words, perhaps out of some crazed dream, perhaps out of some worser memory. 
  "Impe-imp...interrogation...No, no..." The man shifts left and right, 
  muttering "No" against every second.

Kiriel's hands go still again, that knot of fear in her gut returning. 
  Whatever might be inspiring those mumblings, she knows for a fact that she 
  doesn't like the sound of it. His face as clean as she can get it, she dabs 
  at it with the other towel to get it dry, and then pats his brow with her 
  fingertips, awkwardly. "Hey," she whispers. "Shhh... it's okay, Nelun, go 
  on, sleep, okay? Shhh..."

Shaking his head away once the girl's hands leave his face, Nelun continues, 
  uttering repeatedly to the unknown interrogator in his dreams. "Can't 
  sleep...can't sleep..." he mutters. His shifting eventually stops; allowing 
  an already battered body slipping into exhaustion.

_One of us,_ Kiriel tells herself obstinately, _is gonna get some sleep._ She 
  can't exactly wash her charge's hair at the moment, but she does gently 
  brush the washcloth along the top and sides of his head, hoping to at least 
  get some of the surface grime off... and perhaps to just soothe him with the 
  motions. There's a lump in her throat, though, as she murmurs, "Shhhhh, 
  Nelun... shhh... you can sleep here, hey? It's safe. Shhhh." She reaches, 
  too, for the blanket, to tuck it over his half-clad form.

[The log ends here; Nelun and I never concluded the scene. Watch this space
 for further details....]